Calling Lamma Story by Patsy Cheng and Phoebe Chau (2008, SEE Network Ltd, 88 pages, HK$78) a partial success may be overly generous. The book offers a distorted history of Lamma Island, one of Hong Kong's few unspoiled places. The authors take so many wrong turns that their bilingual (Chinese-English) journey through the past creates false impressions of modern realities.
Readers should enjoy the book's strong points -- its photographs and historical details. Photographers Ryan Wong, Pit Tong and Patsy Cheng did good work.
Evidently, so did research assistant Hebi Chan because the book offers details about Lamma's past little known to many of its few thousand residents. For example, the name for Sok Kwu Wan, a village full of seafood restaurants, translates “String Nets Bay” for the fishing nets often placed there to dry in the sun. The book even explains the “fish rafts” from which netting dangles as fish-farm enclosures.
Lamma Story makes a nice souvenir for the 14-square-kilometre island's weekend visitors, who focus on inhaling fresh air, hiking, swimming and seafood dining. A photo spread shows “different kinds of food” produced or processed on Lamma -- salted fish, dried seafood, sea urchins, dried octopus, moss, star fruit, bananas and papayas.
But the book's positives collapse under the burden of its shortcomings. Sponsored by a property developer, it depicts the sparsely populated isle, considered a paradise by many residents, as a place in decay. Passenger ferries reach frenetic, urban Hong Kong within 25 minutes. Yet Lamma endures a “state of underdevelopment” with minimal industry and no buildings taller than three stories.
“Lamma Island has not changed much in the past few decades,” the book laments. That's exactly what most Lamma Islanders, who commute to urban jobs, love about the place. It offers precious calm, serenity, sanity and refuge from the city. Factories and skyscrapers would spoil that.
Lamma Story's photos show empty, crumbling village homes: “In its heyday, the village (Tung O) had 600 residents. Now there are only three people.”
Although real, village decay isn't unique to Lamma. It's a decades-old trend in Hong Kong's New Territories and on outlying islands. Rural villages empty as the residents opt for “shoebox” city apartments. Significantly, the book carefully avoids showing the many new buildings in and near Yung Shue Wan, Lamma's largest community.
As Lamma Story says, the island's only big industrial complex is a Hong Kong Electric power station. Even traditional industries like farming and fishing struggle. Truthfully, those industries stagnate elsewhere too.
Do most Lamma Islanders want more “development projects”? “No way!” they'll yell.
For a book based on historical facts, Lamma Story holds far too many erroneous implications.
Approval rating: 22 per cent
(December 19, 2008)
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