Sailing along the fading city lights : the cultural connection of a historic literary figure with the urban district of North Point in Hong Kong

Abstract

As a graduate of contemporary literature from The University of Hong Kong, and working as a cultural media professional and an aspiring heritage conservationist, the author has always wondered why historic figures of the literature field, especially women, is so under-represented in heritage interpretation. Among the most fascinating stories in heritage interpretation is about people and places. As such, the author has chosen Eileen Chang, a major women literary figure of the 20th century with a strong connection to Hong Kong’s North Point district, to be the focused subject of this dissertation. Cultural mapping of writer Eileen Chang’s connection with North Point is the basis for identifying and defining elements that create the unique character of places. The cultural mapping, with its soaring importance adapted within the conservation field to understand and analyse a specific area, is recognized by UNESCO as essential tool and set of skill in preserving the world’s intangible and tangible cultural assets, as well as “challenging existing concepts of heritage value to expand our understanding of how communities instrumentalisze heritage”. Not surviving ruthless bulldozers, the effaced traces of Eileen Chang’s inhabitancy and sojourns will still be mapped, as they are inseparable assets of a cultural repository of local knowledge and resources, which in UNESCO’s language, “are disappearing and deteriorating”. Only through exploring and articulating these assets which have remained indescribable, ineffable and unutterable, can one discover the indelible spirit of place of North Point, and provide the basis for determining part of the place’s idiosyncratic identity and character, leading to the basis for area conservation. As a tribute to Chang, the main title of this dissertation is translated from the last sentence of her Chinese novel that was written during her stay in Hong Kong’s North Point district: The Rice Sprout Song (《秧歌》) (1955). The scope of this dissertation is therefore about Eileen Chang the person and her connection with the place North Point.