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A Catalog of Such Stuff as Dreams Are Made On
Dung Kai-cheung's A Catalog of Such Stuff as Dreams Are Made On is a playful and imaginative glimpse into the consumerist dreamscape of late-nineties Hong Kong. First published in 1999, it comprises ninety-nine sketches of life just after the handover of the former British colony to China. Each of these stories in miniature begins from a piece of ephemera, usually consumer products or pop culture phenomena, and develops alternately comic and poignant snapshots of urban life.
Dung's sketches center on once-trendy items that evoke the world at the turn of the millennium, such as Hello Kitty, Final Fantasy VIII, a Windows 98 disk, a clamshell mobile phone, Air Jordans, and cargo shorts. The protagonist of each piece, typically a young woman, is struck by an odd, even overriding obsession with an object or fad. Characters embark on brief dalliances or relationships lasting no longer than the fashions that sparked them. Dung blends vivid everyday details--Portuguese egg tarts, Japanese TV shows, the Hong Kong subway--with situations that are often fantastical or preposterous. This catalog of vanished products illuminates how people use objects to define and even invent their own selves. A major work from one of Hong Kong's most gifted and original writers, Dung's archaeology of the end of the twentieth century speaks to perennial questions about consumerism, nostalgia, and identity.
Dung's sketches center on once-trendy items that evoke the world at the turn of the millennium, such as Hello Kitty, Final Fantasy VIII, a Windows 98 disk, a clamshell mobile phone, Air Jordans, and cargo shorts. The protagonist of each piece, typically a young woman, is struck by an odd, even overriding obsession with an object or fad. Characters embark on brief dalliances or relationships lasting no longer than the fashions that sparked them. Dung blends vivid everyday details--Portuguese egg tarts, Japanese TV shows, the Hong Kong subway--with situations that are often fantastical or preposterous. This catalog of vanished products illuminates how people use objects to define and even invent their own selves. A major work from one of Hong Kong's most gifted and original writers, Dung's archaeology of the end of the twentieth century speaks to perennial questions about consumerism, nostalgia, and identity.
344 pages, Kindle Edition
Published June 21, 2022
18 people are currently reading
471 people want to read
About the author
Dung Kai-cheung
9 books7 followersDung Kai-cheung, a Chinese fiction writer born in Hong Kong, 1967. He received his B.A. and M. Phil. in comparative literature from the University of Hong Kong. He is an author, journalist, playwright and essayist. He works at a part-time lecturer at The Chinese University of Hong Kong and mainly teaches Chinese writing. His wife, Huang Nian-Xin works as associate professor at the Chinese department of The Chinese University of Hong Kong. His most important novels include "Atlas", "Histories of Time" and other award-winning books. Different from other local Chinese writers, Dung translates his own work into English versions. Dung is devoted to the education of youth writers. He writes preface and prologue for Hong Kong youth writers, some are his students in the Chinese department of Chinese University of Hong Kong.
(from Wikipedia)
(from Wikipedia)
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
April 14, 2022
**I received an ARC of this book from Netgalley.**
Taken individually these stories (or sketches) are cheeky, interesting looks at the not-so-distant past, and give a good sense of what Hong Kong was like in the 90's. Taken as a collection, however, these stories get repetitious fast. For the majority of them the set-up is almost exactly the same: there's a girl, she's into a certain product, the product basically becomes her personality, this attracts a boy, they date, they break up. Maybe if you read just a few stories at a time this is palatable, but if you plan to attempt, as I did, to read this book straight through this becomes so taxing these very short stories don't seem so short anymore.
Because of this I'm not sure that I'd recommend this to anyone who wasn't already specifically interested in reading about Hong Kong in the 90's. Even then, there may be stronger books out there.
Taken individually these stories (or sketches) are cheeky, interesting looks at the not-so-distant past, and give a good sense of what Hong Kong was like in the 90's. Taken as a collection, however, these stories get repetitious fast. For the majority of them the set-up is almost exactly the same: there's a girl, she's into a certain product, the product basically becomes her personality, this attracts a boy, they date, they break up. Maybe if you read just a few stories at a time this is palatable, but if you plan to attempt, as I did, to read this book straight through this becomes so taxing these very short stories don't seem so short anymore.
Because of this I'm not sure that I'd recommend this to anyone who wasn't already specifically interested in reading about Hong Kong in the 90's. Even then, there may be stronger books out there.
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September 28, 2022Dung Kai-Cheung’s A Catalog of Such Stuff as Dreams Are Made On is a literary collection fixated on things. More fragments of life than short stories, each vignette features an item or cultural phenomenon and spins it on its tail, exploring the relationship between humans, our things, and the way we create meaning and culture from them. Out of plastic, wood, and fabric, Dung constructs a still-life of 90s Hong Kong that is absurd, outrageous, fantastical, and true.
From cargo shorts to My Melody to Tomb Raider III, Dung’s collection is a museum of oddities, a time capsule of what it meant to be a person during that era and place, in the middle of radical political and social movement. Zooming in with blurred eyes, the stories together also formulate a parody of the social and material ego. Each one features a character who is changed by the chosen material item on physical and spiritual scales. While these transformations read very specific to the time – especially as analog memory dissolved into the digital age – they also have a sense of timelessness, a universal feeling of never feeling quite right amid an global yet exponentially intimate society.
In their forward, Dung acknowledges the obscurity of these materials and their book’s subject matter, pointing to obsolescence “itself an aesthetic value.” They wrote their vignettes from 1998 to 1999, choosing topics from local papers and magazines and letting each item take its own life. As a time capsule of an increasingly distant era and culture, A Catalog of Such Stuff as Dreams are Made On also stands in a wave of Y2K nostalgia, a yearning for all things unabashed, pixelated, and metallic. As readers, observers, and remembers, we look to books like these and timekeepers like Dung not just for their humor in observation, but the honesty and close attention they had paid to a time of glamor, angst, and Japanese soap operas, a time that was flawed and uncertain but sure of itself and its things.
I loved dipping in and out of this, like a magazine I bought on a layover 4 weeks ago and feel no rush to finish. Recommend this to fans of Youtube culture criticism essays, Y2K, and recovering Sanrio addicts.
From cargo shorts to My Melody to Tomb Raider III, Dung’s collection is a museum of oddities, a time capsule of what it meant to be a person during that era and place, in the middle of radical political and social movement. Zooming in with blurred eyes, the stories together also formulate a parody of the social and material ego. Each one features a character who is changed by the chosen material item on physical and spiritual scales. While these transformations read very specific to the time – especially as analog memory dissolved into the digital age – they also have a sense of timelessness, a universal feeling of never feeling quite right amid an global yet exponentially intimate society.
In their forward, Dung acknowledges the obscurity of these materials and their book’s subject matter, pointing to obsolescence “itself an aesthetic value.” They wrote their vignettes from 1998 to 1999, choosing topics from local papers and magazines and letting each item take its own life. As a time capsule of an increasingly distant era and culture, A Catalog of Such Stuff as Dreams are Made On also stands in a wave of Y2K nostalgia, a yearning for all things unabashed, pixelated, and metallic. As readers, observers, and remembers, we look to books like these and timekeepers like Dung not just for their humor in observation, but the honesty and close attention they had paid to a time of glamor, angst, and Japanese soap operas, a time that was flawed and uncertain but sure of itself and its things.
I loved dipping in and out of this, like a magazine I bought on a layover 4 weeks ago and feel no rush to finish. Recommend this to fans of Youtube culture criticism essays, Y2K, and recovering Sanrio addicts.
June 30, 2023
DNF. Such a cutely designed book but the content… Some sketches I just didn’t really get the point of, and others were just a wtf moment. Occasionally, there was a good one but too far in between that I gave up reading.
July 29, 2025
NYT Notable Books 2022: 44/100
This is tied for the worst-rated book on my TBR and I can kind of see why. Mostly I'm glad to know I'm not alone in disliking this book. I'm not sure if it was a cultural thing, or the fact that the stories were originally published in 1999 and feel dated, but this just didn't work for me. I found the cultural context at the beginning of some stories distracted more than added, since I kept waiting for that reference to be relevant, and overall the stories were just kind of mid. None of the stories really stood out at all, which was a bummer.
This is tied for the worst-rated book on my TBR and I can kind of see why. Mostly I'm glad to know I'm not alone in disliking this book. I'm not sure if it was a cultural thing, or the fact that the stories were originally published in 1999 and feel dated, but this just didn't work for me. I found the cultural context at the beginning of some stories distracted more than added, since I kept waiting for that reference to be relevant, and overall the stories were just kind of mid. None of the stories really stood out at all, which was a bummer.
November 29, 2023
If you lived in Hong Kong in the 90s or went frequently enough to remember, these short stories bring a lot of nostalgia. However, I feel much is lost in translation, and some of the stories are not interesting. Many are pointless and feel were written to highlight this one thing or phenomenon of the time.
November 20, 2024
(DNF) (TBR #182) (will donate)
I'm not super partial to flash fiction so this was a tough sell from the get-go, and the stories got repetitive REAL fast. obviously it's hard to get any character depth from flash fiction but the 'protagonists' were essentially always flat, consumerist young women, and the most we ever learned about them was re: their boobs...
I'm not super partial to flash fiction so this was a tough sell from the get-go, and the stories got repetitive REAL fast. obviously it's hard to get any character depth from flash fiction but the 'protagonists' were essentially always flat, consumerist young women, and the most we ever learned about them was re: their boobs...
January 8, 2023
had to force myself through this one- for having such small sketches, you'd think it'd be a quick read but they're (mostly) so unremarkable that it ends up dragging and becoming repetitive. it did give me a slight sense of hong kong in the 90's?
November 10, 2022
Brings 90s HK to life in 98 “sketches” on random objects you see in the city—bucket hats and cargo pants and many many electronics. It channels Chungking Express, except even more random.
January 5, 2023
Did not finish. Didn't care for the representation of women in this book.
July 18, 2023
BLAHHHH these were so boring and repetitive. i get the feeling so much was lost here in translation.
August 12, 2024
I read like 25 of these sketches & tbh I get the idea, calling it a day
June 13, 2022
This was a trip down memory lane, at least for some of the items mentioned. I haven't grown up in Asia but I've lived there for over 5 years. Many of the things mentioned, combat trousers, Snoopy, photo sticker booths would have also been a trend in other countries during the same time. A very interesting look at the same trends and how they were experienced by people in Hong Kong. I would have loved to see some ink or pencil sketches accompany each of the 99 sketches ( I just love illustrations in books).
Thank you Netgalley for providing me with a free copy in exchange for an honest review.
Thank you Netgalley for providing me with a free copy in exchange for an honest review.
June 27, 2022
This is a book to be savored and the format nicely allows for that. As a reader, I don't know all that much about Hong Kong in the 1990s so I found these vignettes to be fascinating and I needed to pause as I read them to consider what was being said and how it related to Hong Kong at that time and Hong Kong now. I imagine that anyone with any interest at all in Hong Kong would find these fascinating and if you lived through that time it would be a fun trip down memory lane. It's not for everyone, but being able to leaf through and pick and choose should widen the audience for this book. A sweet read!
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews