The notion of History underwent some changes since . It became more like personal histories. The degree of personal histories also depends on the age of the characters. A middle-aged person would have stronger sense of personal histories, such as a writer character named “Dictator” in , who talked about the histories of his personal career and of Hong Kong literatures. So there are more histories in his personal account. But for younger characters, such as the teenagers in , there were less historical elements as the characters were not at an age of revisiting their past. INTERVIEW// DUNG KAI CHEUNG different age. It is an interplay between the facts and the imagined. CITY and CHARACTERS JC: The ways you create characters are interesting. In some cases, your character settings are very clear, like the “Dictator” or “Teenager” you just mentioned; but in there are numerous less defined characters whose names all start with the letter V. How did you treat the relationship between City and Characters? How would one aspect become the driving force of the other? D: One factor of character settings is the literary form. There are many characters in the , since the writing form is very short, and I call this approach “sketchbook novel”. In these very short novels, I don’t think there needs to be a recurring character, instead I illustrated just one particular aspect of a character each time. In long novels there could be many characters too, but there has to be distinctive leading and supporting roles, in which leading roles would be more comprehensive. This is a matter of form. Another reason for the series’ short forms is the protagonist being the City, that is, Hong Kong. It is a collective, and this collective is made up by many individuals. So I created many characters and each was illustrated in very short length. This is the relationship that build up the . JC: The are not recent works. How do you feel towards this oeuvre now? D: I have always liked this series very much. What’s special about it is that it seems not to mean much if you only look at a few stories. might be more obvious for readers to notice the existence of some special thoughts behind the stories, but it is more difficult if you only read parts of and . Therefore, this series must be read in its whole, in order to see the whole picture. The contents are very fragmented and the subjects written are very common, but in fact there was a creative concept behind. I think this way of writing may be less seen in Chinese Literature. Though many authors would write short pieces, few would structure four books of short pieces together. This structure is 133