Hong Kong’s local writer Shu Xiangcheng has pioneered a course of local writing in Hong Kong literature that is unique to Hong Kong’s experience and composed entirely of local colours, and this has been recognised by critics. This article takes his long masterpiece The Sun Set as an example. Through his reproduction of Lingnan culture and Hong Kong’s regional features and people, we can see the picture of life with a strong Lingnan flavour sketched out by his delicate brushstrokes. From his reflections on urban expansion, we can see his “nostalgia” and “land-loving complex” with the port where he grew up, and his poetic and authentic language style, which provided valuable assets for the rise of local writers and the enrichment of Lingnan and Hong Kong literature later on. Unlike the vernacular writings of the Mainland and Taiwan in the same period, Shu Xiangcheng uses purely vernacular support to reproduce the reverse but romantic scenery of the ports at the same time when Hong Kong’s urban civilisation was progressing, in order to express his nostalgia for the disappeared ports in the expanding city, his praise for the simple folkways of the ports, and his critique of the city’s decadence and desires.

최근 중국 대륙 문학에 비해 상대적으로 비주류 문학이자 소수자 문학으로 인식되어왔던 홍콩이나 대만문학, 또는 전 세계에 흩어져 있는 화인(華人)들의 화문문학(華文文學)에 대한 연구가 점차적으로 증가하고 있는 추세이다. 이에 필자는 홍콩작가 예쓰(也斯)의 작품을 통해 과거 식민지 홍콩에 대한 기억과 흔적들이 어떻게 표현되고 있는지 살펴보았다. 특히 1970년 대 홍콩 정부가 시행한 사회개혁안 중 도시개혁으로 인해 사라져버린 특정 장소나 건물에 대 한 개인의 기억과 생각들이 작품 속에서 어떻게 나타나고 있는지 살펴보았다. 이를 통해 필 자는 식민지 홍콩이 중국 대륙의 정치, 사회, 문화와는 상당히 다른 자신만의 독자성과 로컬 적 특징을 어떤 식민지 역사적 과정을 통해 형성시켜왔는지 개인의 기억을 통해 살펴봄으로 써, 동시에 홍콩 문학 역시 그만의 독자성을 가지고 있음을 살펴보고자 하였다. 홍콩은 서로 다른 문화가 섞여서 만들어진 곳이다. 하지만 서로 다른 문화가 단순히 혼재되어 있는 것이 아니라 둘 이상의 서로 다른 문화가 섞여서 제3의 새로운 성질을 지닌 어떤 곳으로 재탄생한 것으로 볼 수 있었다. 그리고 그것이 예쓰가 그의 작품을 통해서 말하고자 하는 홍콩이다.

The purpose of this article is to research how women - especially housewives and housemaids - are described in relation to domestic/caring labor in Hong Kong fictions after 1997, and to estimate in which state the Hong Kong fictions are located on this matter regarding the gender equality problem. Although there has been improvement to the domestic gender equality in Hong Kong, it still is mostly the housewives who take full responsibility on domestic labor. The image of women as those dedicated to domestic labor is still being repetitively reproduced in Hong Kong fictions too. Moreover housewives are often narrated as unreasonable, irrational, unproductive beings, those who have no other choices but to do house chores and depend on their husbands. Furthermore, to housemaids (‘菲傭’) as social agent of domestic labor, the injustice of reification on women is done in the fiction as well as in the real world. Even the relationship of controlling and being controlled is built between housewives and housemaids of the same gender. Hong Kong fictions do not yet give enough attention to the significance of domestic/caring labor, which women still are entirely responsible to, on the issue of gender equality. Nonetheless, it is clear that Hong Kong fictions are showing the possibility of improvement on this matter.