To mark the 20th Anniversary of the handover, PEN Hong Kong, a Hong Kong-based writers’ society, launched their first English anthology of essays, poems, fiction and artwork, Hong Kong 20/20: Reflection on a Borrowed Place on Wednesday night at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club (FCC) of Hong Kong. 

In front of a packed room, prominent artists and writers including award-winning journalists Ilaria Maria Sala and Louisa Lim, and the Editorial Director of Hong Kong Free Press Kris Cheng read extracts of their works, which reflects on the post-colonial development of Hong Kong after 1997.

Other contributors include the author of Umbrellas in Bloom (2016) Jason Ng, student activist Joshua Wong, renowned columnist Chip Tsao and award-winning poet Chow Hon Fai.

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An “empty chair” was placed on stage to honour the former President of Independent Chinese Pen Liu Xiaobo who has been imprisoned for advocating freedom of expression, and was recently released after being diagnosed with terminal liver cancer.

A Chinese edition of the anthology will be published later this year when sufficient money is raised for the translation and printing cost of the book.

Re-launched in November 2016, PEN Hong Kong promotes literature and defends the freedom of expression in Hong Kong and the rest of China. It is one of the 148 centres of PEN international which advocates freedom of expression in the world. 

Edited by Jamie Lam