Abstract
This paper focuses on Hong Kong writer Xi Xi’s publication and editorial activities along with her other writing activities. By reading closely her zine publication enterprise Su Ye Literature and the writings she conducted at the same time, this paper argues that Xi Xi’s experimentalist writing during the 1970s is inseparable from her editorial and publishing undertakings; indeed, they work along with each other to carve out Hong Kong’s local identity and even extend globally when read with other forms of media activities. Different from other Cold War periodicals that were supported by funds from the United States, Su Ye Literature was a zine magazine that had more freedom in choosing its publication materials. Not only Anglo-American and European stuff, but Su Ye Literature also published materials concerning second and third-world literary production. It is within this artistic prosperity that Xi Xi finished her novel The Murray Building (《美丽大厦, 1978), a novel narrated by an elevator of the Murray Building, namely, Hong Kong’s governmental building. It is the brokenness of grammar throughout the novel that embodies how surviving the Cold War in Hong Kong involves not only resistance to colonial powers but also a critique of Sinocentricism. This brokenness of grammar, finally, this paper concludes, also engages a specific mode of seeing and living, explaining why Bruce Lee chose the Murray Building as the shooting site for his last film, The Game of Death (1978), which has attracted attention from the global Asian community.
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
2025 Special Focus—Oceanic Journeys: Multicultural Approaches in Publishing Practices
KEYWORDS
Zine Publication, Cold War Politics, Experimentalism, Media Studies
