City of the Queen
City of the Queen: A novel of colonial Hong Kong is a 2005 novel by Taiwanese writer Shi Shuqing .
content
Framework story
Hong Kong was an annexed area of the United Kingdom of Great Britain for over 150 years. The establishment of this British crown colony meant that the local population was faced with profound changes. Two cultures met on this island that could not have been more different. In the course of the occupation, more and more tension between the two parties emerged. Shi Shuqing traces this epoch marked by conflict and oppression in her novel. Her aim is to critically examine the history of Hong Kong under British rule. She pays particular attention to the discriminatory treatment of the British with the Chinese population.
Summary
Huang Deyun, a poor country girl, is kidnapped and shipped to Hong Kong. There she is forced to work as a prostitute in a brothel. One of her suitors - Adam Smith; an influential Briton - became her great love. He was to rule her life for a few years. In 1894, Hong Kong was hit by a dangerous plague. The former claimed many victims and brought enormous social upheavals with it. Huang Deyun becomes pregnant one day, and it later turns out to be a son. She was impregnated by Adam Smith. Unfortunately Adam leaves Deyun after a while, and Deyun has to take care of her son's well-being from now on. She later meets her future partner, with whom she also moves into a household. His name is Qu Yabing, and Qu is Adam Smith's subordinate. However, Qu leaves Deyun after a while, because he still connects Deyun too much with Adam and feels disgusted about it.
Deyun's life finally begins to change radically. She leaves her old life as a prostitute behind and begins to keep herself and her son afloat as a sensible employee in a pawn shop. Deyun's son Richard is very fortunate to have a Western education and thus later gets a well-paid job. Business is looking up for Deyun too. Richard meets his future wife Li Meixiu, whom Richard's mother Deyun had already chosen for him. She also organizes the wedding for them both. At that time, Hong Kong was a hotbed of riots and protests by the Chinese. The uprisings plunged Hong Kong into unparalleled chaos, and the power of the British Crown Colony was considerably weakened.
Eventually Deyun meets Sean Shelley. Sean is a senior employee at Wayfoong Bank and he meets up with Deyun. Later, however, he too joins the ranks of lovers who turn away and leaves Deyun. The Japanese invasion has already fully occurred on the mainland, when the Japanese storm the British crown colony of Hong Kong at the end of the 1930s. Sean should get to feel this invasion firsthand. Japanese soldiers arrest him and throw him in prison.
Now the novel makes a leap in time to Deyun's great-granddaughter Huang Dieniang. She is known for regularly attending dissolute parties and for having a cheeky mouth. Her friend, Peter Wong, can no longer cope with this species in the long run, as he has a completely different lifestyle than Dieniang. That's why he's leaving her. At the end of the novel, Hong Kong's tremendous changes in the period from the first British occupation to the return of Hong Kong to China are depicted.
See also
literature
- Shi, Shuqing (2005): City of the queen: A novel of colonial Hong Kong. Columbia University Press (New York).