Adherents’ History in Stone: Autumn Chants on the Terrace of the Song Kings and the Landscapes of the Qing Dynasty Adherents in Hong Kong

In 1916, Chen Botao (1855-1930), an adherent of the Qing Dynasty who has taken refuge in Kowloon, Hong Kong, is drawn to the Terrace of the Song Kings (Sung Wong Toi) , a historic site left by two Song Dynasty emperors. He then starts to study its history and its surrounding historic sites, as well as invites other intellectuals to ascend onto the terrace, gather together, and produce literary works about it. Notably, these writings can represent the Qing Dynasty adherents in Hong Kong during the early years of the Republic of China. Su Zedong later compile the poems among them into the Autumn Chants on the Terrace of the Song Kings [Song tai qiu chang ](1917), which can be considered as the earliest published collection of Chinese poems written in literary gatherings in Hong Kong at that time. The historic sites of the Song Dynasty and Kowloon as a shelter form a special space in which scholars are able to explore the interrelated meaning between Chinese poetry and Hong Kong landscapes. Under the colonial system, the historical narratives and poetics lead into a unique arena of adherent literature in Hong Kong. The interaction between the “place” presented in Chinese poetry and the construction of the “landscape” in Kowloon’s Song Dynasty history establishes a context for diaspora poetics in Hong Kong of the early twentieth century.