creative historical writing
As part of a project of “creative historical writing”, you will write about a historical event that happened to/in Hong Kong, in the voice of a contemporary, real or fictional.
- For example, you could be a British trader in China, writing, in 1841, a letter to the wife they have left behind in England, about the ongoing (first) Opium War, commiserating about the difficulties of trading with the Qing Or you could be a Shanghainese entrepreneur fleeing the closing days of the Chinese Civil War and establishing their business in Hong Kong.
- While the body text shall be written entirely from the point of view of the character you have chosen, you must justify what you put in her/his mouth with the use of numerous footnotes explaining the situation then, as described in historical documents or the academic literature. For example, if you are an immigrant textile worker describing to her family back in Guangdong the working conditions in the factory she works at, you should quote, in footnotes, contemporaneous newspaper reports, academic books or articles that support the fictionalized description you are
It is a work of “creative fictional history”, so to speak: you are encouraged to be creative in the character and events you choose to write on, but you must be accurate about the historical events you are describing! This assignment must be backed up by at least 4-5 good quality sources (i.e. academic journal articles, academic books, contemporaneous newspaper articles).
ORDER NOW