Then & Now | Has Hong Kong ever truly been home to any famous writers?

At a venue better known for staid lectures “on Andalusian dancing, the Elizabethan madrigal and the early works of Benjamin Britten” delivered to “a dozen or so faithful regulars”, Sylvia gave a polished, highly professional performance to a packed crowd, to the despair of the intellectually snobbish director, who “groaned inwardly as he heard her professional patter with the audience. Like Saturday night at the Palladium, he thought, in an abysm of distaste”.

At the lecture’s end – “A silence. Prolonged applause. The novelist sat down.” The director “shuddered. They had fallen for it, every one of them! […] the evening dress, the orchids, the musical voice, the utterly false stage management of the whole thing had held them as if spellbound. Never, never again must he make this mistake of pandering to public taste!”

But unlike Coates’ fictional heroine, few successful authors with glittering literary reputations have ever lived in Hong Kong – at least for long. Internationally famed writers are invariably birds of passage, who merely pass through the city on whistle-stop visits neatly slotted between larger literary festivals in Britain and Australia, and other regional book promotion events. Usually facilitated by local cultural groups, these brief sojourns are financially supported by corporate sponsors, with accommodation, flight upgrades and other sweeteners in return for some well-publicised speaking engagements during their stay and – of course – the right to proudly claim on all promotional material “that X was brought here by Y”.

As the Hong Kong market has always been minuscule by international standards – particularly for English-language books (whether fiction or non-fiction) – few locally resident authors ever make an adequate living from their work. Other subsistence income sources – a properly paid “day job” or a supportive spouse – are essential adjuncts.