The Cityscapes of Taipei, Hong Kong, and Singapore during the Cold War

Tze-ki Hon, Ying-kit Chan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2025
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781040789063
• Subtopic: Communism, Post-Communism & Socialism
• Index: History

This volume presents a comparative analysis of three key cities—Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taipei—during the Cold War. Strategically positioned within international trade networks, these cities also served as critical nodes for both regional conflicts and cooperation. The comparison primarily focuses on their urban landscapes, drawing on the memories embedded in their collective memoryscapes, the imagery presented in their filmscapes, and the perceptions of their inhabitants, as reflected in fiction and films that portrayed urban life and the experiences of ordinary people. The Cityscapes of Taipei, Hong Kong, and Singapore during the Cold War explores both the shared characteristics of these cities as frontiers in the bipolar global system (divided between Communism and the Free World) and their distinctive features as unique spaces shaped by their own meanings and opportunities.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Introduction: The Cold War through the Lens of Taipei, Hong Kong, and Singapore
• Part 1 Taipei
• 1. Building a Transnational Anticommunist Network: The Operation and Implications of the USIS Presence in Taipei
• 2. The Cityscape and Mindscape in Pai Hsien‐yung’s Taipei People
• 3. The Frontier Behind the Curtain: Contextualizing Eileen Chang’s “A Return to the Frontier”
• 4. The City through the Lens: Cold War Taipei in Bai Jingrui’s Films, 1960–80
• 5. Islamic Enclaves in Taipeiand Transnational Entanglements during the Cold War
• Part 2 Hong Kong
• 6. The Heart of the Berlin of the East: Victoria Park, Queen’s College, and Causeway Bay in Cold War Hong Kong
• 7. Pro‐Communist Mandarin Cinema in Cold War Hong Kong
• 8. A Model Market Town on the Cold War Frontier: Luen Wo Market in the New Territories, 1947–79
• 9. The Future Takes Wing: Kai Tak Airport and the Repositioning of Hong Kong, 1958‐78
• Part 3 Singapore
• 10. Cityscape and Memoryscape: The Cold War and Monuments of Commemoration in Singapore
• 11. Reading Multiculturalism on Screen: Cold War Politics and the Shaw Brothers Film Networks in Singapore and Malaya
• 12. Urban Planning as Cold War Battleground: How Singapore Built Its Nation‐State by Defeating the Barisan Sosialis
• 13. Changi Airport and the Making of Nonaligned Singapore: Neoliberalism and Neutrality during the Cold War
• Index