Streets

Jason Wordie has established an enviable reputation as a historian of Hong Kong who can communicate to a general audience and engage them with the way buildings and places reveal the history, changing nature and culture of Hong Kong. His knowledge of Hong Kong and its history is complemented by an eye for the intriguing, and a wonderful sense of the telling anecdote that humanizes and brings history to life.

In this book, he takes the reader on fifty tours through the urban and historic places of Hong Kong Island ranging from Central through Wan Chai, to Shau Kei Wan then to Shek O, along the south coast from Stanley to Aberdeen, completing a circuit of the Island through Pok Fu Lam, Kennedy Town to Sheung Wan. Each place is introduced with an essay that describes the area and the way it has changed, then the reader is taken on a walk around the area’s streets with the important, interesting, curious and historically illuminating sites described and illustrated.

This is a book to read for the pleasure that the author’s insights give to the lover of Hong Kong, to carry as one travels around Hong Kong, and to use as a guide book when following the suggested routes. The outstanding photographs taken by three of Hong Kong’s most notable photographers, Richard Abrahall, Tony Hedley and John Lambon, help make this not just a guide book, but a book to revisit many times as a handsome contemporary record of this ever-changing city.

Jason Wordie is a historian and writer with a particular interest in lesser-known aspects of Hong Kong. A long-time local resident and graduate of the University of Hong Kong, he lives in the New Territories.

“Jason Wordie, after absorbed and loving research, street by street, uncovers the layers of Hong Kong’s vanishing past. With sad and impish humour he has given us a delightful and definitive book.” —Sir David Akers-Jones

“Wordie reconnects us to the history of a society that lived at the edge of both the British and the Chinese empires. The streets of Hong Kong are full of curiosities that are expressions of our many different cultural identifications.” —Christine Loh

“For those of us who believe in the magic of Hong Kong, Jason Wordie has given us the words to prove it.” —Selina Chow