The "cultural imagination" of Hong Kong is currently a controversial subject. This thesis will review the many changes in the resources and room available for the cultural imagination of Hong Kong over the past fifty years through a close examination of the literary texts of three non-local writers in the social and cultural context of their times. They are Zhang Ailing, Liu Yichang and Shi Shuqing....[ Read more ]

The "cultural imagination" of Hong Kong is currently a controversial subject. This thesis will review the many changes in the resources and room available for the cultural imagination of Hong Kong over the past fifty years through a close examination of the literary texts of three non-local writers in the social and cultural context of their times. They are Zhang Ailing, Liu Yichang and Shi Shuqing.

Chapter One gives a brief account of the characteristics of Hong Kong culture and its significance for academic discussion as well as the criteria of selecting the works of the three writers for analysis. Chapter Two is a comprehensive study of Zhang Ailing's radical imagination of a secular Hong Kong as shown by the stories collected in Chuan Qi (Legends) published in the 40s and 50s. Chapter Three analyzes the sense of frustration and helplessness inflicted by the Hong Kong society on the individuals as represented in Liu Yichang's works of the 60s and 70s. It points out that the cultural Hong Kong that Liu portrayed could in fact be construed as an adaptation and survival strategy for the writer himself. Chapter Four focuses on Shi Shuqing's Hong Kong stories of the 80s and Hong Kong trilogy of the 90s. It argues that Shi's creation of a myth of Hong Kong from post-colonial perspectives in her trilogy is achieved at the expense of cultural imagination. The last chapter summarizes the changes that have taken place in cultural imagination since Zhang Ailing's times. It also points out the fact that room for the cultural imagination of Hong Kong Shrank considerably as the twentieth-century was drawing to its close.