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Books Recommended by Teachers


Teacher information
Ms. Kam Ling-yi
Kwun Tong Government Secondary School

Information of the book

  • Title: Ghetto at the Center of the World: Chungking Mansions, Hong Kong
  • Author: Gordon Mathews
  • Year of publication: 2011
  • Call Number: 305.80095125 MAT

Introduction of the author

Gordon Mathews is the professor in the Department of Anthropology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is the author of Global Culture/Individual Identity: Searching for Home in the Cultural Supermarket and What Makes Life Worth Living? How Japanese and Americans Make Sense of Their Worlds, and co-author of Hong Kong, China: Learning to Belong to a Nation.

About the book

  • Chungking Mansions is an example of globalization in action. The residents of the building come from at least 120 different countries around the world. In addition to backpackers who love budget hotel, there are also overstayers from Kolkata and Bangladesh who work in restaurant in the building, selling counterfeit watches, mobile phones, etc. There are also businessmen, musicians and rappers from Africa. A group of stateless third world refugees and asylum seekers who form a unique community. Cultural diversity can be easily identified.
  • Gordon Mathews describes Chungking Mansions as the center of “Low-end Globalization”. There are no multinational corporations and huge capital flows. It is only a transnational flow of goods involving relatively small amounts of capital and informal, sometimes semilegal or illegal, transactions commonly associated with ‘the developing world’. We come to understand the day-to-day realities of globalization through the stories of entrepreneurs from Africa carting cell phones in their luggage to sell back home and temporary workers from South Asia struggling to earn money to bring to their families. Chungking Mansions—which inspires fear in many of Hong Kong’s other residents, despite its low crime rate—is not a place of darkness and desperation but a beacon of hope.

Enquiry questions

  • In general, what is the significance of cultural diversity to the Hong Kong society?
  • How is harmony promoted among different ethnic groups in Hong Kong?
  • How may people from different parts of the world react to globalization?