Encore: The hidden corners of Emma's Hong Kong — fishing villages, beaches and ancestral graveyards

Novelist Emma Pei Yin ran away from Hong Kong as a teenager to start fresh in Australia. But she found herself repeatedly drawn back home whenever she put pen to paper.

Emma grew up in England and Hong Kong. But her life in Hong Kong wasn’t so much about the neon skyscrapers as it was about her family’s ancestral village, tucked away in the New Territories.

Emma spent her school holidays there with her grandparents, learning how to take care of the family cemetery and joining in Chinese Festivals.

Sometimes her gran...