The Impossible City, a Hong Kong memoir by Karen Cheung

 

Publisher: Random House

Publication date: February 15th 2022

Pages: 352

In this memoir Karen Cheung takes the reader into present time Hong Kong. A Hong Kong that was shaken after the umbrella movement protests. She writes what she and her friends are dealing with in this city that changed forever after the 1997 handover from Great Britain, and which changes are getting stronger everyday, and results in many worries about the uncertain future of the city. Hong Kong's housing crisis, the author's suffering with depression, and the difference in social classes in the city. Which grows deeper as the city is so expensive and some things like housing seem only available for the rich. She writes about many unknown sides of Hong Kong, which are not always visible for the outsider. Her time at Hong Kong University, and she truly strikes a sensitive chord with what she writes about the international school system in Hong Kong, and how these schools where initially set up to offer schooling for the children of the colonizers, serve mostly the well-off expat  and well-off Hong Kong families, and have a superficial view on global citizenship in which the city figures as a form of amusement, and show very little to none interest in the local community. This is truly something to think about, as every other part of the book which shows  a very different view of Hong Kong from within. A very original and outstanding new book!!