Author Zha Jianying says Hong Kong stands 'at a crossroads, confronting a crisis'

For author Zha Jianying, things in Hong Kong have become so complex that no words can truly convey the sentiment felt here.

The Beijing-born writer and contributor to The New Yorker magazine says something was different when she and her family returned last month for the first time since 2000, when she left after living in the city two years.

"The city remains modern and efficient even by Western standards. But after the handover and especially with China's economic take-off, I can feel things are not the same anymore," Zha told the South China Morning Post in an exclusive interview ahead of her talk at the Book Fair, which opens today.

"It seems Hong Kong is now at a crossroads, confronting some degree of crisis in its next move," she said.

Zha was among the first batch of students who left the mainland to study overseas after the Cultural Revolution ended in the 1970s. She returned to China in 1987 and left again after the bloodshed of the Tiananmen Square crackdown two years later. The idealism among like-minded young intellectuals in the 1980s became the subject of her first book, published in 2006.

"The people profiled in my book were leaders in various cultural realms in those days, including poet Bei Dao, pop singer Cui Jian, film director Tian Zhuangzhuang … and they were all eager to contribute in their own way to a better tomorrow for the country," she said.

But the gunshots of 1989 shook them up and made many realise their ideals were no more than empty thoughts, and they have since gone separate ways in reflecting on China's future.