Coming Soon! Hong Kong Type: A Love Letter Late for One Hundred and Fifty Years
DKC in Translation
English translation of my novel Hong Kong Type: A Love Letter Late For One Hundred and Fifty Years is scheduled to be published here in weekly serialization from 17th Oct, 2023 onwards.
Introduction
Hong Kong Type is the first complete set of movable lead types in Chinese characters. It was minted by the missionaries of the London Missionary Society, with first attempts starting in Malacca in the 1830s, until completion in Hong Kong in 1851. It was then used to print the Chinese Bible and works introducing Western knowledge. It brought about the modernization of the printing industry in China, gradually replacing traditional woodblock printing by movable type printing.
In the twentieth century, with the rise of new modern types, Hong Kong Type fell into oblivion. It was until 2020, in an exhibition on the history of printing in Hong Kong, that the existence of Hong Kong Type was rediscovered. Since then, thanks to the devotion of Hong Kong Open Printshop, efforts have been made to unearth not just related historical documents but also the original types and matrices scattered around the world. For more information about the history and research on Hong Kong Type, please see this link.
This work is based on the facts about Hong Kong Type but it is not a historical novel. It is both about the past and the present. A typeface is where the word and the object meet, where culture and technology, or the spiritual and the material, converge. I may also say that the novel is about writing itself, which is both a letter and a record, a séance and a testament.
The novel is divided into three sections:
1. The main story set in Hong Kong from 2019 to 2020. The original section title 晨輝遺書 literally means the will or testament or suicide note of Sun Fei（晨輝）, the twenty-year-old female protagonist. “Sun Fei” means literally “morning” and “light.” The original has a sonorous and glittering feel, but it doesn’t quite work in English, for example as “Testament of Sun Fei” or “Morning Glory’s Testament.” Therefore, I render it as “Testament” for the sake of simplicity.
2. A series of conversations between Sun Fei and “character spirits,” whom she met while typing on her computer. The conversations take place on the screen, as lines alternately “spoken” by Sun Fei and some “voices” who claim to be the spirits of the historical Hong Kong Type. The original section title 活字降靈會 means literally “the séance of the movable types,” simplified here to “Séance.”
3. A love letter in six parts written by a male character called Dai Fuk（載福）who grew up in the early days of the colony, first as a student at the Anglo-chinese College, then as an apprentice at the printing workshop of the London Missionary Society. The letter is addressed to his beloved Heng Yi（幸兒）, a girl suffering from a cruel fate. The term 幸福 means “bliss” in Chinese, but it becomes an irony here. The timeline of their story is from the 1850s to the 1870s. The original title 復生六記 means “six books (or records) of resurrection,” the term Fuk Seng (coming to life again) is also a name Dai Fuk has chosen for himself.
The sections of the novel are as follows:
Testament 1
Séance 1
Testament 2
Séance 2
Testament 3
Séance 3
Testament 4
Six Books of Resurrection 1
Testament 5
Six Books of Resurrection 2
Testament 6
"Testament” section is free for all, while “Séance” and “Six Books of Resurrection” is for paid subscribers only.