My Latest for Macau Closer – Simon Kent’s Ferry to Hong Kong (1957)

Posted: February 7th, 2025 | No Comments »

Every couple of months I write a column for Macau Closer magazine on representations of Macao in popular culture. This time the story of a man stuck forever sailing between Hong Kong and Macao.

Published in 1957 Simon Kent’s Ferry to Hong Kong is a novel almost unique in its simplicity, though it could perhaps be better named Ferry to Macau. Let me explain…. Clarry Mercer is a troubled and washed up American in Hong Kong who, after a bar fight, is expelled from the British colony. The cops escort aboard the Fa Tsan, better known as the “Fat Annie”, a Victorian-era paddle steamer that provides a cheap, but slow, ferry between Kowloon and Macau. Arriving at the ‘drugged, stucco sprawl of Macau’, the Portuguese authorities deem his papers invalid and refuse him permission to enter. He then becomes a virtual captive aboard the Fat Annie, seemingly doomed to repeatedly make the crossing between Macau and Kowloon forever.

The book was a bestseller – did everyone feel somewhat adrift, unable to settle in the post-war 1950s? Britain’s Rank film studios made a movie version in 1959. Mercer became an Austrian called Hart (played by Curt Jürgens), Herzl was played by a suitably corpulent Orson Welles, and the dark Latin beauty Anna became a prim, blonde English governess played by Sylvia Syms.

Click here to read in full…

---