暗黑旅遊 : 香港作家梁秉鈞的東歐之行 (1990~1991)

After the 1967 riots, Hong Kong’s 1970s economy was booming, the city was excavating its first subway, and air transportation had become more accessible to ordinary citizens, who traveled for leisure more frequently. As a result, a greater number of Hong Kong writers devoted themselves to travel writing, describing their new experiences overseas. Up to the present, however, systematic research on such travel writing by Hong Kong writers has been in short supply. As research in this area has developed, the Hong Kong author whose travel-related writing has received the most attention is probably Leung Ping Kwan 梁秉鈞 (pen name Yesi/Yasi也斯, 1949–2013). Leung started his world travels in the 1970s as a young man, with visits to mainland China (1974), Taiwan (1976), and Japan (1978). He shortly thereafter published a spate of essays and poems inspired by these travels. Between 1978 to 1984, he studied in the US. Upon his return to Hong Kong, Leung taught at the University of Hong Kong from 1985 to 1997, and then at Lingnan University from 1997 until his death. Throughout these years as both writer and professor of comparative literature, Leung participated in innumerable cultural exchanges that allowed him to visit many places around the world. During his final trip in 2012, Leung visited Zurich University, where he was awarded an honorary doctorate. Out of a lifetime of travel, however, it was his trips to Berlin and other former Eastern Bloc European cities immediately after the fall of the Berlin Wall that were of particular importance for him. These trips in 1990 and 1991 served as a turning point for his writing career in terms of style, marking his shift from the lyrical to a postmodern voice. The city of Hong Kong, an important theme in his writing, was at that time facing an uncertain situation. This paper will discuss Leung’s travel writing related to his two European trips in 1990 and 1991 within the particular context of Hong Kong history from the perspective of dark tourism. Leung also wrote longer essays about these travels, but for this article, I will focus primarily on his poems and the associated photopoetry collaborations he undertook with Hong Kong photographer Lee Ka-sing 李家昇 (1954– ).