The Maryknoll Sisters in Hong Kong, 1921-1969: In Love with the Chinese

The Maryknoll Sisters in Hong Kong, 1921-1969: In Love with the Chinese

by Cindy Yik-Yi Chu

Palgrave Macmillan $520

The Maryknoll Sisters arrived in Hong Kong in 1921. They were the third community of Catholic nuns to be established in Hong Kong, long after the French St Paul de Chartres Sisters and the Italian Canossian sisters. But they, too, were pioneers, for they belonged to the first American Catholic community of women founded for overseas missionary work, and Hong Kong was the first destination they reached.

The story told by Dr Cindy Chu, associate professor in Hong Kong Baptist University's History department, is of the sisters' lives and work in Hong Kong. More than this, it's the story of Hong Kong, revealed through the sisters' records and presented from their perspective, but also from the perspective of the Hong Kong masses whom they served and lived among. The book illuminates the lives of the Hong Kong people, whose work and industry is so often praised as a major element in Hong Kong's economic success, and it includes brief biographies of 'ordinary' individuals.

The book covers the half century during which Hong Kong reeled from the impact of the Sino-Japanese war, the second world war, the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong and the 1949 Communist victory in mainland China. To the huge Hong Kong refugee populations that resulted from three of these events, the sisters offered educational, medical and social services, spiritual guidance and nurture - and even some opportunities to earn money. When typhoons, mud-slides and fires occurred, they helped people to reconstruct their communities and lives.