Perhaps no other part of post-war Hong Kong experienced the trauma of rapid urbanization and industrialization as intensely as did Tsuen Wan. The district (including Kwai Chung, Tsing Yi, Ma Wan, and north-east Lantau) was once known for its sweet pineapples and fiercely independent villagers. The arrival of floods of refugees from China converted it into a loose hotchpotch of people and a polluted and overcrowded centre for Hong Kong's burgeoning textile industry and expanding port.

Tsuen Wan: Growth of a 'New Town' and Its People is the story of this metamorphosis. Formerly Tsuen Wan's Town Manager and District Officer, James Hayes offers a first-hand glimpse inside government and its relations with local residents at a time when Tsuen Wan was a guinea-pig for some of the administration's first efforts at relocating masses of people and implementing large-scale urban development, town planning, and more representative district-level government.

He writes with wit and insight of the local people whose traditional ways of life have been irrevocably altered by post-war growth.