Nostalgia in the Chinese City: Antony Dapiran and Paul French – Hong Kong – 21/4/18
Posted: April 20th, 2018 | No Comments »Nostalgia in the Chinese City
Antony Dapiran & Paul French
Date: Saturday 21 April 2018
Time: 7:30-8:45
Venue: kubrick (Shop H2, Cinema Block, Prosperous Garden, 3 Public square street, Yau Ma Tei, Kowloon)
FREE ADMISSION | ALL ARE WELCOME
Nostalgia—from the Greek words nostos (‘homecoming’) and algia (‘pain’ or ‘ache)—a yearning for lost time and place, for a past where one perhaps felt more ‘at home’. We may feel nostalgia for our own past, or for earlier times we could not have personally known. And it seems that nowhere is this more sharply felt than in the rapidly developing metropolises of China. Our cities are sites of collective memory, and collective amnesia. Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing: all suffer forms of the “culture of disappearance”; all have ambiguous—sometimes wistful, sometimes problematic—relationships with the past. Whether in a tourist packed hutong, an old Shanghai-themed café, a G.O.D. store, or gazing at a lone junk sailing on Victoria Harbour—we encounter nostalgia triggers daily. It can be comforting or confusing, positive or negative. It is political and it is personal. Nostalgia is a community, even if those communities are long gone now.
Antony Dapiran is a Hong Kong-based writer, lawyer and photographer, and the author of City of Protest: A Recent History of Dissent in Hong Kong, published by Penguin. He has written extensively on China and Hong Kong business, politics and culture. A contributing editor of ArtAsiaPacific, his writing has also appeared in publications including the Australian Financial Review, the Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian, South China Morning Post, CNN International, Nikkei Asia Review, Hong Kong Free Press, Chart Collective and the LARB China Channel.
ABOUT PAUL FRENCH
Paul French is the author of the New York Times best seller Midnight in Peking (Penguin), currently being developed as a series for TV. He is visiting Hong Kong to launch his new book City of Devils: A Shanghai Noir (Penguin), centred on the dancehalls, casinos and cabarets of wartime Shanghai.
Cha Reading Series {http://bit.ly/2fnE9EE} takes the online journal out into the physical world. It brings together poets, writers, translators and artists who are in some way or other affiliated with Cha. Readings will take place in various impromptu locations across the city, in public and private rooms, lecture halls, on park benches, in front of billboards, next to a window scratched by tree branches. They will read their work informally or seriously. They will discuss issues, argue, debate and exchange. We also hope to form dialogue and explore specific pertinent topics that inspire or beset the contemporary world. Suggestions for future events can be sent to t@asiancha.com.
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