Book review: A Walking Tour: Hong Kong by Gregory Byrne Bracken
Author James Clavell wrote that "you live for today and to hell with everything, grab what you can, because tomorrow, who knows? … nothing lasts in Hong Kong".
by Gregory Byrne Bracken
Marshall Cavendish
Author James Clavell wrote that "you live for today and to hell with everything, grab what you can, because tomorrow, who knows? … nothing lasts in Hong Kong".
Nine years after Irish architect Gregory Byrne Bracken first cast an informed eye over the city's notable landmarks and forgotten treasures in his charming walking-tour guidebook, our demolition-obsessed developers' insatiable bulldozers mean it's time for a second edition.
His spare, finely observed writing and more than 80 delightful architectural sketches remain, but the informative book, which also covers the historic buildings of Macau, has been fully revised, and has 20 new illustrations.
As you would expect, this slim, pocket-sized volume contains all the usual suspects: eight easy-to-follow city walks, with approximate duration times, including The Peak, Tsim Sha Tsui and Causeway Bay; handy, hand-drawn maps; and recommendations of not-to-be-missed places, views and shops.
Yet Bracken also provides an absorbing insight into the architectural types and terms of many of the city's buildings, plus a generous scattering of quirky cultural trivia: bamboo scaffolding, for example, is favoured over steel because it is lighter, five times cheaper, four times faster to raise and withstands typhoons better.