Navigating the Edges of Hong Kong: Q&A with Sheung-King by Brianna Wodabek
January 22, 2025
Batshit Seven. Sheung-King. Penguin Canada. $33.95, 336 pp., ISBN: 9780735245303
“Glen Wu (aka Glue) couldn’t care less about his job. He’s returned to Hong Kong, the city he grew up in, and he’s teaching ESL, just to placate his parents. But he shows up hungover to class, barely stays awake, and prefers to spend his time smoking up until dawn breaks.
As he watches the city he loves fall—the protests, the brutal arrests—life continues around him. So he drinks more, picks more fights with his drug dealer friend, thinks loftier thoughts about the post-colonial condition and Frantz Fanon. The very little he does care about: his sister, who deals with Hong Kong’s demise by getting engaged to a rich immigration consultant; his on-and-off-again relationship with a woman who steals things from him; and memories of someone he once met in Canada....
When the government tightens its grip, language starts to lose all meaning for Glue, and he finds himself pulled into an unsettling venture, ultimately culminating in an act of violence.
Inventive and utterly irresistible, with QR codes woven throughout, Sheung-King’s ingenious novel encapsulates the anxieties and apathies of the millennial experience. Batshit Seven is an ode to a beloved city, an indictment of the cycles of imperialism, and a reminder of the beautiful things left under the hype of commodified living.”
What inspired you to write Batshit Seven in view of globalization, transnationalism, and cultural identity?
I started writing Batshit in 2020, right before my debut You are Eating an Orange. You are Naked. came out. Back then, I was in Toronto, and a lot was happening in Hong Kong, the city I grew up in and where my family and many of my friends still reside. Amid these political changes, I wondered how a person outside of the city at that moment would navigate these changes when they returned. I was in quarantine when I returned home, learning about the events and changes from a distance as a returnee, someone who has spent years away, someone who is at once witnessing the political changes while, because of their returnee and quarantine status, being detached. Being close and at the same time far is perhaps a feeling international students and returnees experience. This is what Batshit tries to capture.How did you craft the character of Glue, considering his personal struggles with identity and belonging?
Glue is someone who is conflicted. He is confused. He needs to survive in the city where he grew up, but he is young, naïve, and has ideals. He is also in many ways privileged, having received a Western education and now living in a former colony of the UK. Glue is comfortable. At the same time, he feels oppressed.Could you share your thoughts on the intricate understanding of imperialism, market forces, and migration depicted in the book?
In the book, market forces, imperialism, and migration are depicted in Glue’s feelings. These are not only terms to understand the political status of a place. Glue’s body experiences the struggles of the place he is in. He is often constipated.Can you elaborate on the significance of the setting of Hong Kong in your novel?
The Hong Kong depicted in the book is not the Hong Kong portrayed in popular media. Glue’s Hong Kong is the suburbs. He lives far away from Central. He is at the border between Mainland and the New Territories. He doesn’t go to places where the neon signs and trams are. He lives near the airport. He is a returnee navigating the edges of Hong Kong.How did you balance the narrative between dark humour, social commentary, and political oppression?
The ridiculousness of political situations is highlighted through humor in Batshit. To me, the writing of Batshit is less about balance but more about finding the absurdity in social situations.What was your intention behind the unique storytelling style and structure of the novel?
I wanted the prose to move fast, mimicking the fast pace of life in the city, which is why the chapters are short. Numbers are also important to the book. The number seven in the title refers to the seventh month of the year, July, when Britain handed Hong Kong back to China. I play with the number seven in the final chapters of the book. There are two chapter sevens. The first, in Chinese, is written as 𨳍, slang for penis and pronounced similarly to the number seven. The word is also used to describe embarrassment. This is when Glue goes batshit and gets arrested. The final chapter, chapter seven, 七, is the chapter the book ends on.Can you discuss the significance of the Guanyin statue scene and how it contributes to the narrative?
Guanyin, like the monuments in the book, is symbolic of larger powers that dictate Glue’s life. Glue masturbating to these symbols is his way of dealing with his desublimated desires.Could you shed light on the role of language, meaning, and dislocating experiences in shaping Glue's narrative?
Glue speaks Chinglish. A part of him believes that by doing so, he is able to distance himself from his identity as an ESL instructor, a job he despises and sees as a colonial scam. But by doing so, he also becomes further away from his sister, the only person who cares for him.What were the messages or themes you intended to convey through your characters' development and plot progression?
In the end, Glue surrenders. In the beginning of his life, being educated in Hong Kong so as to be able to receive higher education abroad, his life was set, he feels. He became an ESL teacher, an immigration consultant. Glue is condemned. Batshit tells the story of the status of a post-colonial city in the 2020s.