Introductory chapters on Hong Kong, mainland China and the dualistic political concept that now defines, however precariously, the Special Administrative Region contextualize this diary-format account of one year in postturnover Hong Kong. In the end, Fenby (France on the Brink) concludes that, while life goes on more or less prosperously, after July 1997, "[t]he spirit which could have made something exceptional out of one country, two systems... has been stifled, without the people who could have given it life being allowed to make the difference." At their strongest, the diary format and Fenby's journalistic outlook lend power and immediacy to the often dramatic events transpiring on both sides of the border within one year: the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, suppression of Falun Gong, actions by Hong Kong's Triad gangsters, major business negotiations, labor injustices suffered by Filipino servants and dangerous hurricanes. Often, however, these accounts amount to merely a journalistic salad of anecdotes that verge on the indulgent and of gratuitous statistics (e.g., China manufactures half of the world's kettles and its Communist Party membership equals the population of France). Caught in the dichotomy of "here" versus "there," Fenby seems overly concerned with a narrow idea of defiance and disappointed when the local psyche favors pragmatism. Bent on finding "superlatives" and "contradictions" in the glittering metropolis, Fenby rarely penetrates its surfaces, and his role as the English editor of the South China Morning Post
often looms so large that one wonders if the quaint title isn't more applicable to his own tussles with the beasts of journalism, rather than to Hong Kong's unique negotiations with the mainland. (May)
