A friend turned me on to Jess Row who lived in and wrote a book of short stories, The Train to Lo Wu, about Hong Kong. I found two great interviews with him here: http://www.writingclasses.com/InformationPages/index.php/PageID/268 AND here: http://www.thejohnfox.com/bookfox/2007/05/interview_with__1.html These are excerpts from both that I relate to. “At first in writing about Hong Kong I was trying to depict a place that was to me both extremely alien and uncannily familiar—a place with a certain dream-like quality.” “The city itself was so challenging, so alien, so insulting to my sensibilities …