Enmeshed in Hong Kong's densely woven urban fabric, wedged between its towering mixed-use complexes and perched along its steep hillsides, sits a network of more than 500 miniature public parks comprising the smallest unit of the city's public open space network. Though plentiful, these so-called Sitting-out Areas - referred to locally as 三角屎坑 (literally: a "three-cornered shit pit") - have never been considered in terms of the collective resource they have the potential to be. This book presents a series of critical essays revealing the city's Sitting-out Areas in relation to Hong Kong's planning histories and shifting terrains, while also tracking how these spatial fragments have been shaped by concepts of publicness, accessibility and regulation. The second half of the book presents 44 richly illustrated case studies revealing the variety and idiosyncrasies of Hong Kong's smallest open spaces. Ultimately, the book argues that we can understand the high-density city not only through its buildings, but through the character and potency of its interstitial landscapes.

This book gathers the voices of four local Hong Kong theologians to reflect on the 2014 democracy protests in the city from the perspectives of Catholic social teaching, feminist and queer intersectionality, Protestant liberation, and textual exegesis. The volume also includes an extended primer on Hong Kong politics to aid readers as they reflect on the theology underlying the democracy protests. September 28, 2014 is known as the day that political consciousness in Hong Kong began to shift. As police fired eighty-seven volleys of tear gas at protesters demanding “genuine universal suffrage” in Hong Kong, the movement (termed the “Umbrella Movement”) ignited a polarizing set of debates over civil disobedience, government collusion with private interests, and democracy. The Umbrella Movement was also a theological watershed moment, a time for religious reflection. This book analyzes the role that religion played in shaping the course of this historic movement.

The Ambiguous Allure of the West examines the impact of Western imperialism on Thai cultural development from the 1850s to the present and highlights the value of postcolonial analysis for studying the ambiguities, inventions, and accommodations with the West that continue to enrich Thai culture. Since the mid-nineteenth century, Thais have adopted and adapted aspects of Western culture and practice in an ongoing relationship that may be characterized as semicolonial. As they have done so, the notions of what constitutes "Thainess" have been inflected by Western influence in complex and ambiguous ways, producing nuanced, hybridized Thai identities.The Ambiguous Allure of the West brings together Thai and Western scholars of history, anthropology, film, and literary and cultural studies to analyze how the protean Thai self has been shaped by the traces of the colonial Western Other. Thus, the book draws the study of Siam/Thailand into the critical field of postcolonial theory, expanding the potential of Thai Studies to contribute to wider debates in the region and in the disciplines of cultural studies and critical theory. The chapters in this book present the first sustained dialogue between Thai cultural studies and postcolonial analysis.By clarifying the distinctive position of semicolonial societies such as Thailand in the Western-dominated world order, this book bridges and integrates studies of former colonies with studies of the Asian societies that retained their political independence while being economically and culturally subordinated to Euro-American power.

Between 1949 and 1997, Hong Kong transformed from a struggling British colonial outpost into a global financial capital. Made in Hong Kong delivers a new narrative of this metamorphosis, revealing Hong Kong both as a critical engine in the expansion and remaking of postwar global capitalism and as the linchpin of Sino-U.S. trade since the 1970s. Peter E. Hamilton explores the role of an overlooked transnational Chinese elite who fled to Hong Kong amid war and revolution. Despite losing material possessions, these industrialists, bankers, academics, and other professionals retained crucial connections to the United States. They used these relationships to enmesh themselves and Hong Kong with the U.S. through commercial ties and higher education. By the 1960s, Hong Kong had become a manufacturing powerhouse supplying American consumers, and by the 1970s it was the world’s largest sender of foreign students to American colleges and universities. Hong Kong’s reorientation toward U.S. international leadership enabled its transplanted Chinese elites to benefit from expanding American influence in Asia and positioned them to act as shepherds to China’s reengagement with global capitalism. After China’s reforms accelerated under Deng Xiaoping, Hong Kong became a crucial node for China’s export-driven development, connecting Chinese labor with the U.S. market. Analyzing untapped archival sources from around the world, this book demonstrates why we cannot understand postwar globalization, China’s economic rise, or today’s Sino-U.S. trade relationship without centering Hong Kong.

The trajectory of Hong Kong films had been drastically affected long before the city’s official sovereignty transfer from the British to the Chinese in 1997. The change in course has become more visible in recent years as China has aggressively developed its national film industry and assumed the role of powerhouse in East Asia’s cinematic landscape. The author introduces the “Cinema of Transitions” to study the New Hong Kong Cinema and on- and off-screen life against this background. Using examples from the 1980s to the present, this book offers a fresh perspective on how Hong Kong-related Chinese-language films, filmmakers, audiences, and the workings of film business in East Asia have become major platforms on which “transitions” are negotiated.

Asian Alterity is an interdisciplinary theoretical analysis that vigorously contests the homogeneity of the mainstream Eurocentric values. Part I argues for the need for an alternate perspective to be introduced so as to understand the diversity of Asia's cultural differences at their varied development stages and to meet the complex challenges of the explosive urban expansion and disruptive changes in traditional cultures and lifestyles.Part II of the book consists of nine case studies of Asian major urban cities by well-established academic writers and urban theorists. Each author presents diverse aspects of urban dynamism. The case studies will collectively demonstrate a broad framework to understand the essentiality of the interdisciplinary mode of Cultural Studies as an important lens towards meeting the challenges in Asian Architecture and Urbanism.Highlights of the book:

Hong Kong’s border with Shenzhen is dissolving. By 2047, the border will likely not exist. Integration with the Mainland will remove distinctions created by the "One Country Two Systems" policy. The uncertainty surrounding what will happen has created anxiety relating to law, identity, freedom of speech, and voting rights. Caught in this debate is the Frontier Closed Area, a 1951 undeveloped buffer zone of estuaries, fish farms, forests, villages and military posts. In contrast, Shenzhen, has exploded into a metropolis of 15 million plus. The book explores this unique border ecology. Design strategies inserted within this ecology promote alternate forms of development. The example widens the discourse on borders to raise critical issues that impact the contemporary city.