Books about cities can open pathways to discover new places, and familiar places anew. Hong Kong is a much visited place. Over 50 million people stream through its hotels, restaurants and shopping malls each year. That is a lot of first impressions!

This book, written by fourteen reflective scholars about living and learning from Hong Kong, builds on the growing interest of using “place” as text while providing a model of deepening cross-cultural encounters. Each chapter is written in a personal and experiential style, exploring Hong Kong through the lenses of a range of disciplines that shaped individual author's perceptions and encounters.

The city is like a text one reads and deciphers, linking one’s sense of other cities with one’s present experiences of this city in this moment of time. In reading the city, readers discover not only what is “out there” in the ever moving surround of Hong Kong’s urban life, but also what is inside oneself as newcomer and as from another city and culture.