예쓰(也斯) 소설 ≪포스트식민 음식과 사랑(後殖民食物與愛情)≫의 홍콩 상상과 방식

Abstract

In Ye Si(也斯)’s collection of short stories ― Postcolonial Affairs of Food and the Heart(≪後殖民食物與愛情≫), the omnipresent narrators/author suggest the omnipresence of Hong Kong. Characters and events are imbricated across independent stories, producing rich referentiality and imaginary margins. The characters are the capricious and unstable ordinary commoners with their own concerns, and they speak and think of petty details of everyday lives and social relationships throughout the book. The narrators not only describe but also constantly comment and annotate on the characters’ accounts, words and behaviors in a trifling way. By doing so, the author transpose individual memories into a collective history, and also historicize and spatialize Hong Kong’s urban scape and social concerns. Through this writing strategy, Ye Si does not intend to present a coherent unity that could be seamlessly explained by particular theories or extrinsic standpoints. Instead, he attempts to represent a synthetic world composed by the complex entanglement of numerous individuals, accounts, memories and relationships. Hence, it seems that there is nothing that does not exist(everything exists)in Ye Si’s representation of Hong Kong. While everything may appear disorderly and chaotic, they are intertwined with each other in obvious or covert ways, and moreover, they mix, hybridize, and coexist with each other.