Armchair Traveler: Hong Kong

Time for another virtual trip, and we’re heading to Hong Kong, where the spring weather is warm and humid. Hong Kong is part of China - designated as a Special Administrative Region (SAR). A British colony, handed back to China in 1997, it is now a capitalist society. Not a single island, Hong Kong is composed of 263 islands, many uninhabited. 

Hong Kong holds the bronze Tian Tan Buddha - 112 feet high, with a hand raised to bless those who climb the temple’s 268 stairs - and many tall buildings containing “dragon gates”; openings in the buildings to allow dragons to pass through between the mountains and the sea. Roughly translated, Hong Kong means “fragrant harbor” and residents are called Hong Kongers. A financial center and cosmopolitan city, Hong Kong has 77 Michelin-starred restaurants, and is divided into food districts for tourism purposes.  

Two famous martial artists/actors come from Hong Kong: Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan. Bruce Lee was raised in Hong Kong and founded the Jeet Kune Do school of martial arts, as well as being largely responsible for the rise of martial arts film popularity in the 1970s. Jackie Chan trained at the China Drama Academy, and is an accomplished actor, acrobat and martial artist in Chinese and American films.

Check the list below to read more.

Martial artist books

Water Mirror Echo

Be Water, My Friend

Never Grow Up

Tao of Jeet Kune Do


Nonfiction books

Fodor's ... Hong Kong

Jeremy Pang's Hong Kong Kitchen

The Troublemaker

The Hong Kong Diaries

The Impossible City

Indelible City


Hong Konger authors

Noble House

The Honourable Schoolboy

The World of Suzie Wong

- Blog post by Beth Wood, the senior collection development librarian for Fort Vancouver Regional Libraries. Email her at readingforfun@fvrl.org

New at the Library

This is just a small sampling of the many new titles added each week to the Fort Vancouver Regional Library District collection. Visit the district’s 15 locations, our website at www.fvrl.org, or call (360) 906-5000 to reserve titles or find additional listings. 

Fiction

Upward Bound

Queen of the Night Sky

A Good Person

Nonfiction

The Naughty Cookbook

A Woman's Work

Outsmarting Cancer

Children

Mama Won't Mind

Taking Turns With Turtles

Landslide