Project: An illustrated children's book of rhymes about places in Hong Kong
Date: Published 2010
With: Joanne O'Callaghan (author) and Seline Wu (designer); Peak Publishing, Ltd., Hong Kong
I lived in Hong Kong from 1985 to 1990 and have returned at least once a year since then. When I first left Hong Kong to study in Tokyo, I greatly missed living in a city ringed by sea. I still find Hong Kong one of the most exciting cities in the world, and the view of the harbour with the slopes of Victoria Peak rising steeply up from Hong Kong island's urbanised north shore is perhaps the most dramatic city view in the world. I have always wanted to create a set of woodblock prints of Hong Kong scenes, and this children's book--'My Hong Kong'-- is part of a long-term plan to do so.
Some time around 2008, Joanne O'Callaghan was raising her first child, Sophia, in Hong Kong and came up with the initial rhymes for 'My Hong Kong'. Joanne saw that there were few books of this sort about Hong Kong for very small children, and she set about visiting and revisiting the kind of places that she and her daughter liked and writing rhymes to each of them. Although a young visitor to Hong Kong would soon know about the pandas at Ocean Park, or the ride on the Peak Tram, they might not know about the park at the top of the Peak, or the walk along Bowen Road, or the fancy dress shops on Pottinger Street. Many of the other places mentioned in the book, such as South Bay or the Dragon's Back hike, are well-loved by older people, too, for their natural beauty and wonderful views.
Hong Kong is also distinctive for its incredibly varied forms of transport, not just the Peak Tram, but the public trams and double-deckers and, above all, the romantic and hardworking Star Ferries which plough back and forth across the Harbour hundreds of times a day. The seas around Hong Kong are full of other boats, too: tankers, cruise liners, battleships, container vessels, cargo lighters, and jetfoils.
The first full page in the book shows a small girl standing at a busy intersection in downtown Hong Kong introducing a classic view of the city to a small boy. She says: 'Hong Kong is a busy place, busy people, busy pace, shiny buildings fill the sky, people walking, rushing by.' But this is not all, and she entreats the boy, 'So let's explore where I belong--, Yes, let me show you my Hong Kong,' before taking him and other young children on a sprightly journey around Hong Kong in 14 rhymes.
'My Hong Kong' has 14 double pages of illustrations, and ends with a map of the whole area, including Kowloon and the New Territories, and marked with the places visited. The book is available at all major bookstores in Hong Kong, may be ordered online from Amazon, or by contacting Peak Publishing. Several of the prints from the book are available for sale. See Hong Kong prints in the works section of this website for details.
For the illustrations and the inserts, I cut over 100 blocks, approximately 6-7 per main illustration and 3-4 per insert. The Star Ferry double-page illustration is one of the most complex prints with 15 different colours, many of them overlapping. (See sequence below.)
