Our Xi Xi
Our City

The works showcased on this website are mainly from the participants’ who joined our creative writing workshops titled “Our Xi Xi | Our City.” Since November 2021, we have organized various workshops both online and in person (in areas like Sham Shui Po, Wan Chai, Kowloon Tong, etc.). Our partner organizations included Hong Kong Pupil Literature Monthly Magazine, After Life@One Seventh Bookshops, KUMA@One Seventh Bookshops, Boundary Bookstore, Hong Kong Integrated Nepalese Society, Migrant Writers of Hong Kong, Health Resource Centre, United Christian Hospital, Society of Rehabilitation and Crime Prevention, Sai Kung Store, San Wui Commercial Society Chan Pak Sha School, and Book Punch. Given the different backgrounds of the participants, some of our workshops were conducted in Cantonese while some were held in English, and each course varied from two to five lessons.

The workshops were part of the Education Plan of a research project led by our project leader Dr. Dorothy Tse, namely “Practice-based Research to Understand How Creative Writing Methods Can Defamiliarize our Experience: A Case Study of Re-Writing Xi Xi’s Fiction on Hong Kong” (supported by the Hong Kong Research Grants Council). This research explores “defamiliarizing” writing strategies derived from three works by Xi Xi: The Merry Building (1977), “The Marvels of a Floating City” (1986), and Elegy of a Breast (1992), and it applies these strategies to writing about Hong Kong today.

The term “defamiliarization” was first coined by the Russian formalist Viktor Shklovsky to identify the purpose of art, which he regarded as the recovery of the sensation of life in the face of habitual and automatic perception. Xi Xi is one of Hong Kong’s most prominent writers. Her insightful, avant-garde writing about Hong Kong is a prime example of “defamiliarizing” everyday life in the city. We consider literary works not only as objects of study, but also as resources for understanding and intervention.

These workshops were designed by our project leader with the help of two alumni from the Department of Humanities and Creative Writing, Lester Lau and Jerry Pun, and were taught by current students and alumni from the Department of Humanities and Creative Writing. The workshops adopted an interactive mode, offering new approaches and examples for creative writing education. We also see writing as a form of self-expression and communication that can lead to a more diverse and open society.

The selected works from our workshops were showcased at knock knock, Boundary Bookstore, and Book Punch from June 26 to July 10, 2024.