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"Too many pretty girls," Suzie said. "I am scared to lose you." "Nonsense, Suzie. You knock them all into cocked hats." Thus spoke Suzie Wong, Hong Kong's self-proclaimed "dirty yum yum girl," and her exceedingly English boyfriend in the bargirl district of 1950s Wanchai. It's impossible to determine whether Suzie comprehended this tender mumble in her ear--the more I read the line the less sure I become--but in that brief exchange one can grasp the essence of fiction out of Hong Kong since World War II. No matter what Hong Kong is, or was, the city that appears in novels is not a place of mere work, love or hijinks. It's an almost mythical site at which West meets East--never the reverse--disproportionately populated by foreigners, home to few but visited by many, where happy endings often involve a permanent departure from Kai Tak Airport. In the fictional Hong Kong, the Chinese are given a voice most often when they have something to say about the non-Chinese. "Fornicate those foreign devils!" proclaims Chinese fisherman Goodweather Poon in Noble House by James Clavell, the author who has introduced the largest number of readers to Hong Kong--and while characters in much of Hong Kong fiction talk peculiarly, no one cuts dialogue out of cardboard as roughly as Clavell. (Also from Noble House: "'Hurry up!' he shouted. 'Can I wait all manure-infested night? Prawns! Bring the prawns!'")
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