Mending Bodies
Hon Lai-chu, translated by Jacqueline Leung
Two Lines Press: 2025
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Patchwork Dolls
Ysabelle Cheung
Blair: 2026
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City Like Water
Dorothea Tse, translated by Natascha Bruce
Graywolf Press: 2026
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While ‘hard’ resistance in Hong Kong has been crushed, so-called soft resistance remains. Three recent works of fiction deftly step over red lines to tell a more accurate story of recent events vis-à-vis the current official narrative.

Although the city can no longer shout, the real Hong Kong story is still being told in loud whispers. This is demonstrated in Hon Lai-chu’s full-length novel, Mending Bodies; Dorothea Tse’s series of vignettes, City Like Water; and Ysabelle Cheung’s short story collection, Patchwork Dolls. All of these are set in unnamed modern cities that are thinly disguised depictions of Hong Kong. These stories continue the type of storytelling used in Xi Xi’s Marvels of a Floating City (1997) and Dung Kai-cheung’s Atlas: The Archaeology of an Imaginary City (2012)—as a place that experienced decolonisation without gaining independence, Hong Kong’s geographical and historical uniqueness has always been ripe for surrealistic fictional treatment.

In Hon’s Mending Bodies, a government programme incentivises couples to “conjoin” by surgically attaching themselves to one another, promising a flourishing economy, ecological revitalisation, and personal fulfilment. This calls to mind Hong Kong’s return to the sovereignty of the People’s Republic of China and the One Country, Two Systems governance framework that was described as being a “bridge”, a “wedge”, and even a “moat” whose drawbridge could be lowered and raised so the “river water” and “well water” would not mix. Anyone who has studied Hong Kong’s political system for the last twenty-nine years or so will note the artificiality of such a conjoinment.

• Tags: Dorothea Tse, Hon Lai-chu, Hong Kong, Issue 45, Jennifer Eagleton, Ysabelle Cheung