Long talk and many nights

Book Title｜"Long Talk and Many Nights" Author｜Mai Shujian Illustration｜Blue and White Studio Design｜Xicheng Production Publisher | Houhua Text Studio Publication date｜August 2022 ── In an era when we are tired of saying goodbye, people can leave, buildings can be abandoned, food can be lost, buses can be suspended... Memories are like the ship of Theseus, which has been demolished and rebuilt with the development of the city. When you dream back at midnight, what still makes you remember are the stories with you in them? "Later, Linda went alone to watch the Mid-Autumn Festival night scene on the rooftop of Good House. This time Linda looked down at the square patio. Residents on multiple floors hung colorful lanterns in the corridor, and another set of lanterns was hung diagonally by the corridor railings. In the middle of the courtyard, everyone suddenly lost their guard against the dirty bottom of the well and set off sky lanterns there. Praying for blessings, the sky lanterns flickered on and off, rising slowly and causing excitement among the residents. Words were written on all sides of the sky lanterns: eternal friendship, academic progress, good health, wishes come true, and peace is a blessing. ──〈Final Chapter: The Seven Seas Incident〉 "Long Talk" is the first novel by Hong Kong writer Mak Shu-kin. The story revolves around the small shop "Xi Xi Office" in the public housing estate "Kuao Estate". It is a must-have place for selling residents' daily necessities. The intertwined life trajectories of grassroots citizens. The twists and turns of the restaurant owner Su Gan's family reflect the rise and fall of public housing estates and cities. Anyone who has ever stayed in a housing estate will be familiar with the stationery shop, mushroom pavilion, family doctor clinic, etc. in the novel; thousands of families during the Mid-Autumn Festival Candlelights, the rainy scene on the patio in the windy season, and even the neighborhood K-carnival have all become unforgettable sights; the dark staircase corners, hidden bird, and elevators always seem to swallow people up. Public housing estates are an important urban space in Hong Kong, and the daily experiences and details written in the novel are full of local characteristics; however, in addition to the realistic life of ordinary people, mysterious and strange legends are also passed down orally through close neighborhood relationships. The Gu'ao Village described by Mai Shujian is a mixture of fiction and reality. The lives of citizens and prehistoric monsters are wonderfully intertwined, but the ending leads to a distant and confusing future. Looking back from the other side of time and space, is this lifelike housing estate, the days of hard work and love and hate of the people real, or is it just like the rhinoceros in ancient mythology, just a fantasy fabricated by someone out of thin air? Perhaps one day, people who have read this book will say this── A long time ago, that estate was not just buildings and roads; It’s still the place where we lived together. ── ◎ Recommendation (excerpt) Even readers of different generations, as long as they are Hong Kongers, read the Shangcheng written by Mak Shukin and encounter the offices, the stationery shops, the shopping malls, the buses, the subway stations, the stadiums, and the low-rent houses. Na Uk Estate in the resettlement area has a feeling of reunion after a long absence. Mai Shujian is full of sincerity, but pretends to be ambiguous and tells readers: "Long Talk and Many Nights" may be "a local chronicle of Shangcheng that can be passed down to future generations until the end of mankind." ──Chen Guoqiu (Hong Kong scholar) I read "Long Days and Many Nights" and felt the suction of the fine words, and I couldn't get out of the shadows and corners of the old housing estates. It's like watching "Along the River During the Qingming Festival" flipped ninety degrees and turned into a vertical and towering building, which is still adding bricks and tiles and growing. If you focus on someone somewhere at random, you will have stories and voices, and you will know the market prices, the flow of relationships, and the changes of the times. Those pop songs and TV series that keep playing in the background always remind people of some old times, but they are not just feelings and nostalgia. Guwa Village is like an old clock with a sophisticated internal structure - it is itself a container of time, and it can be outside reality, the gears rattle, and it continues to create endless stories. ──Gong Manhui (Malaysian writer and painter) In this encyclopedia-style novel, Shu Kin uses the fictional housing estate "Kok Au Estate" as the core to tell us about a period of Hong Kong that started in the 1970s and spanned more than 30 years, with a solid foundation of reality. story. Through the dazzling array of character portraits in the novel, the author not only depicts the characters' activity space, but also evokes touching memories in the lives of generations of people. ──Tang Rui (Hong Kong writer) It is like a "manual" that completely explains not only the physical architecture and living environment of housing estates, but also the daily life culture and social relationships created and shaped by these spaces. Originally, to tell all this, it might take many monographs to piece together a relatively complete picture. Instead, "Long Nights and Many Nights" uses the powerful power of fiction to show countless aspects of housing estates through Gu'ao Village. ⋯⋯This is a novel that makes people want to visit a public housing estate while reading it, sit down there and read it carefully. ──Huang Yuxuan (Hong Kong urban studies scholar)