Then & Now | Sex, scandal, scenery: wartime Hong Kong is fertile ground for a writer's imagination
Many a writer has taken liberties when using Hong Kong as the backdrop for historical fiction, writes Jason Wordie.
Hong Kong has been extensively exploited as the setting for novels since the mid-19th century. Then as now, most works were in the lurid, "penny-dreadful" category, with unusual sexual exploits, eye-popping scandals and obscure forms of Oriental debauchery liberally distributed, to help the pages turn faster.
SEE ALSO: Hong Kong, by the books
While fictionalisation of the Hong Kong war experience is a relatively recent phenomenon, published memoirs have regularly appeared from the late 1940s. Regrettably few, however, ever seem to have been seriously utilised. Nevertheless, "original research" is breathlessly paraded in promotional material to demonstrate just how much work the author did to achieve authenticity. On closer examination, however, most have only read a couple of readily available, highly coloured secondary sources.
In consequence, so-called "research" explodes throughout these texts like mustard gas shells. Any reader genuinely well informed about the events and circumstances described with such alleged attention to historical accuracy is left gasping in horrified disbelief. Tellingly, these scribbles have appeared in print when anyone who was actually an adult Stanley internee is either safely dead or too old to protest.
