The Chinese edition of GHETTO at the Center of the World: Chungking Mansions, Hong Kong 《世界中心的貧民窟：香港重慶大廈》, written by Professor Gordon Mathews of the Department of Anthropology, is voted top 11 of the Seventh Hong Kong Book Prize.

At an interview on RTHK, Professor Gordon Mathews spoke of how Chungking Mansions was an interesting place to study. It is a commercial and residential structure in the heart of Hong Kong's tourist district and is home to a remarkable array of people. Traders, laborers, and asylum seekers from South Asia and Africa live and work there, and even backpacking tourists rent rooms in the Mansions. What attracted him most in the Chungking Mansions was that it was emblematic of a centre of the developing world in Hong Kong and of the way globalization actually works for most of the world's people.

Professor Mathews has made many friends at the Chungking Mansions during his research in the period of 2006 to 2010 and he still keeps contact with them every week. The Chungking Mansions has been changing since his research and become less a centre of low end globalization. There are considerably fewer Africans nowadays but the number of Mainland Chinese is increasing. The most profit-making business in the past was phone stores but now is guest houses as many Mainland tourists are looking for cheap accommodation in Hong Kong. However, fundamentally, Chungking Mansions has remained the same as it has long been—a center of multiculturalism in Hong Kong.

Professor Mathews is now undertaking a research on how African and Middle Eastern traders make their livings and lives in Guangzhou.

The Seventh Hong Kong Book Prize was organized by RTHK and the Hong Kong Publishing Federation, and co-organized by the Leisure and Cultural Services Department and the Hong Kong Public Libraries. The aim of the Prize is to promote quality reading and recognize outstanding Chinese publishing books.

The book received the Book Prize: 《世界中心的貧民窟：香港重慶大廈》

Professor Gordon Mathews received the prize on stage. Ms Yang Yang (first left) is the translator of his book