Celebrate Repulse Bay’s Literary History….at Bookazine Repulse Bay, October 18, 2025

Posted: October 14th, 2025 | No Comments »

Bookazine is back at Repulse Bay…. So let’s celebrate by remembering the literary history of the old Repulse Bay Hotel, once the stunning resort centrepiece of Hong Kong Island’s “Southern Riviera”.

Eileen Chang’s aquamarine seas of Repulse Bay were the setting for romantic trysts while Han Suyin relished Sunday afternoon swimming parties with her secret lover. Jane Gardam recreated a world of moonlit dinners while Timothy Mo harked back to the hotel’s famous tea-dances. Martha Gellhorn and Ernest Hemingway celebrated cocktail hour while Emily Hahn drank gimlets and smoked cigars as the world fell apart around them.

For half a century, from its grand opening in 1920 to its closure in 1982, the Repulse Bay Hotel was a tranquil haven of passionate honeymoons and illicit affairs, curry tiffins and Sundowner drinks on the veranda. Literary guests included Noël Coward, Lin Yutang and George Bernard Shaw. In the late 1930s the hotel became a sanctuary for literary intellectuals fleeing war-torn Shanghai. Finally Repulse Bay became the site of travel writer Jan Morris’s classic evocation of Hong Kong as the symbol of Britain’s imperial sunset.

Join writer and historian Paul French (Midnight in Peking, City of Devils, Her Lotus Year) in conversation with RTHK3’s Annemarie Evans at Bookazine Repulse Bay for a glass or two of wine and some literary readings, anecdotes and memories of the old Repulse Bay Hotel.

October 18, 5pm – the event is free and you also get free access to the Repulse Bay’s current Eileen Chang exhibition (HK$40 normally) but please sign up here – for numbers (and to ensure there’s enough wine!!)…

---