Content area
Full Text
Ghetto at the Center of the World: Chungking Mansions, Hong Kong, by Gordon Mathews. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2011. 241pp. $19.00 paper. ISBN: 9780226510200.
The title of the book puts together several spatial concepts that conjure up the imagina- tion of a place that is at once center and periphery, secluded yet connected, and fixed yet full of mobility. This is indeed an apt description or evocation of the specific site under study, namely the Chungking Man- sions in Hong Kong. The building is situated at the hub of a city that is itself a gateway to China and a node in the world. It is secluded from the rest of the city and yet it is a place of intensive global interchange. There, apart from the local Chinese, one finds an unusual concentration of people with diverse ethnic backgrounds from South Asia and Africa, including not only illegal workers and sex workers but also earnest traders traveling to sell and buy mobile phones, and asylum seekers awaiting a status. In their everyday life, these people, each carrying specific dreams and worries, play around with legality and illegality with different tactics and justifications and find their own ways of existence from mere survival to making a fortune for life.
Ghetto at the Center of the World presents a very engaging...