ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights the case of Hong Kong writer Wan Kin-lau 溫健騮 (1944–76), who participated in the University of Iowa’s globally recognized International Writing Program (IWP). Through tracing his transnational trajectory from Hong Kong to Taiwan, then to the USA, and to his eventual return to Hong Kong, the analysis explores how Wan critically reshaped his Bildung and changed from a modernist poet to a leftist. His engagement in debates with Ye Si (P. K. Leung) exposes the difficulties of tackling the dichotomy of coloniality and the Cold War in Hong Kong in the 1970s. The controversy brings back to our attention a forgotten but significant writer whose alternative voice shows glimpses of the road not taken by mainstream Hong Kong literature.
