Urban Anxieties: Representations of Ecological Crisis in Hong Kong Anglophone Literature

Hong Kong is one of the most important global financial hubs, with its fast-changing skyline that symbolises modernity and economic power. Yet, beneath this ultra-modern façade, the city is deeply filled with a profound sense of nostalgia. Hong Kong longs for the days of low- rise buildings that allowed for a more intimate connection, for traditional tastes that have vanished in the rush of modernisation. This radical metamorphosis has completely altered the environment, confining people to small, suffocating places, and leaving the city facing the repercussions of an unrestrained urban expansion. The loss of natural ecosystems leaves citizens alienated and struggling to connect with their rapidly changing surroundings. In this paper, I will explore the environmental impact of overpopulation and fast urbanisation in Hong Kong. This paper will focus on Hong Kong writer Xu Xi, whose choice of specific urban areas in her fiction represents a “time capsule” (Wong, 2010) that records the city’s past experiences and shows how the city’s ecosystem is becoming increasingly evanescent. In Evanescent Isles: From My City-Village (2008) and Dear Hong Kong: An Elegy for a City (2017), Xu Xi wanders around the streets of the city, as memories and nostalgia arise in her observation of urban spaces. Drawing on this, I aim to capture the tension between the urban environment and the natural geography of the city. By analysing her depictions of specific memories of her childhood in the city, I will examine how these locations serve as markers of environmental transformation and loss. In response to this escalating pressure on its ecosystem, Hong Kong has sought refuge in a collective nostalgia for its past days. I intend to examine how this retreat into memory is not an act of sentimentality, but a form of resistance, a way to reclaim and preserve a sense of self.