Kevin Sinclair was the maestro of English-language reporters in Hong Kong. He fearlessly rattled the incompetent, exposed the wicked and championed the weak. For four decades he chronicled Hong Kong’s tumult and triumph with incomparable insight, wit and style. In many ways, he was Hong Kong’s collective memory.
In this book he tells his story. A Kiwi born in 1942 and starting his career in Wellington, he worked on leading newspapers in New Zealand and Australia before coming to Hong Kong in 1968 with the burning desire to go to China. It took 15 years before he entered the mainland.
Sinclair started as news editor on the South China Morning Post in 1972. Apart from being a newspaperman, he was also a prolific book author with nearly 30 books to his name.
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A newspaper report is the first draft of history. Over four decades, reporter Kevin Sinclair covered the unfolding story of Hong Kong and China. Many of those events are now in the history books. What were front page stories -- like the Cultural Revolution, the unveiling of organised corruption in Hong Kong, the foundation of the Independent Commission Against Corruption, the building of the Mass Transit Railway, the changeover from British colony to a Chinese Special Administrative Region, typhoons, landslides, tidal waves of refugees, the ever-changing Hong Kong skyline, the fight to provide housing, the evolving education system -- are all now history. This book covers a vibrant, exuberant society that in the 1960s lived on the edge, emerging from poverty and the unknown terror of what was happening across the Shenzhen River. It reflects the uncertainty, the joy and the lurching path towards progress and prosperity. It tells the story of the men and women who built the new Hong Kong, laying a fresh framework on the strong foundations left by 156 years of British rule, and of the partnership between colonial rulers and a largely willing population happy to exist in peace.