Memoir Archives - Blacksmith Books

With Bare Hands: The true story of Alain Robert, the real-life Spiderman

HK$138.00
USD: US$17.61
CNY: CN¥127.53
GBP: £14.14
EUR: €16.45
AUD: AU$27.14
CAD: CA$24.06
JPY: ¥2,726
Overcoming vertigo — and countless injuries which have left him officially disabled — the 'Human Spider' has scaled nearly 100 skyscrapers worldwide: from the Petronas Towers in Malaysia to Taipei 101, from Chicago's Sears Tower to the Golden Gate Bridge. Reward and punishment have been received in equal measure — the flamboyant Frenchman has gained international fame and raised thousands of dollars for charity, but has also been arrested, beaten and prosecuted.

Many people ask whether it is madness to undertake such perilous ascents without the use of safety equipment. But in Alain's view, it is madness not to follow your dreams! This is the inspiring story of a man who has conquered fear and exceeded his own limits: the world's greatest urban climber.

"For Robert, tall buildings are his mountains. He eulogises the views from their summits and (police permitting) revels in the freedom." — The Guardian

Look inside this book
Click on the links below to view sample pages from With Bare Hands. You will need a pdf reader to view these excerpts.

Prologue The Hatchling

Add to basket Details
Wordjazz for Stevie: How a profoundly handicapped girl gave her father the gifts of pain and love

HK$108.00
USD: US$13.78
CNY: CN¥99.80
GBP: £11.07
EUR: €12.88
AUD: AU$21.24
CAD: CA$18.83
JPY: ¥2,133
by Jonathan Chamberlain In 1986, Jonathan Chamberlain and his wife Bernadette had their first child, Stevie, a daughter. Stevie was immediately diagnosed with Down's syndrome. A few months later it became clear that she had a serious heart defect that required a `hole in the heart' operation. Something went wrong during the operation and Stevie suffered a momentary lack of oxygen that left her severely brain-damaged. For the remaining seven and a half years of her life she was blind, epileptic and unable to sit, let alone walk. She was profoundly handicapped. Wordjazz for Stevie is the story of Jonathan's life with Stevie and the deeply beneficial impact she had on his life. It is a story of great love. It is also the story of how this almost overwhelming surge of loving energy led Jonathan to found first the Hong Kong Down Syndrome Association, and then later another charity to take into China the same idea that the key to supporting children like Stevie is to support their parents - and to see the problem as one involving the whole family. The story that Jonathan tells is made even more poignant by the fact that it deals also with his wife's unsuccessful battle with cancer. In the end Jonathan is left to bring up his son Patrick as a single father. This is a short book but intense and deeply moving. "This may be the most moving story you will ever read," said Britain's Sunday Telegraph. Look inside this book Click on the following link to view sample pages from Wordjazz for Stevie. You will need a pdf reader to view this excerpt. Pages 7-35

Add to basket Details
Don’t Joke on the Stairs: How I learnt to navigate China by breaking most of the rules

HK$128.00
USD: US$16.34
CNY: CN¥118.28
GBP: £13.12
EUR: €15.26
AUD: AU$25.18
CAD: CA$22.32
JPY: ¥2,528
China – what’s not to love?

Join longtime Hong Kong resident and Cantonese fundamentalist Cecilie Gamst Berg as she ploughs through the non-stop surreal-fest that is today’s China, stopping occasionally to ruminate about the travails of trying to make Cantonese a world language, and how the Chinese have invented a new English: Manglish.

In this book you’ll find answers to everything you wanted to know about China, such as:

What does “the slippery are very crafty” really mean?

What’s the etiquette for hitch-hiking in really small cars?

What’s the best way to gatecrash a Ketamine party?

Indeed, what is modern party etiquette in China? And:

How do you win a fist-fight with a hotel security guard?

Travelling by horse, train and sleeper bus from the deserts of Xinjiang, across the mountains of Tibet and Sichuan to the water buffalo fields of Hong Kong, Cecilie shows you how China is not only the most happening place on Earth, but also the most fun.

Look inside this book
Click on this link to view sample pages from Don't Joke on the Stairs. You will need a pdf reader to view this excerpt.

Smile Comes Before a Fall
Add to basket Details
Out of stock
No Minister & No, Minister: The True Story of HarbourFest

HK$125.00
USD: US$15.95
CNY: CN¥115.51
GBP: £12.81
EUR: €14.90
AUD: AU$24.59
CAD: CA$21.79
JPY: ¥2,469
In the depths of the 2003 SARS crisis, Mike Rowse (盧維思), a career Hong Kong civil servant, was handed the poisoned chalice of HarbourFest – intended to be (and which in many ways was) a psychological and commercial shot in the arm. Politics, as it often does, took precedence over sense, and Rowse was scapegoated for the perceived failings of this attempt to pull off a world-class entertainment festival in only three months.

Rowse endured disciplinary hearings and ended up taking the Hong Kong Government to court. He won.

This true story of HarbourFest is not just an insider’s account of the workings of the Hong Kong Government; it is also a thoughtful treatise on the drawbacks of the Ministerial Accountability System, a system which failed HarbourFest and Rowse, there being No Minister who ever took responsibility.

Details
Wanderings in China: Hong Kong and Canton, Christmas and New Year, 1878/1879

HK$90.00
USD: US$11.49
CNY: CN¥83.17
GBP: £9.22
EUR: €10.73
AUD: AU$17.70
CAD: CA$15.69
JPY: ¥1,778
By Constance Gordon-Cumming, introduced and annotated by Paul French

No. 2 in the China Revisited series

Inveterate Victorian traveller and prolific artist Constance Gordon-Cumming, born in Glasgow in 1837, roamed far and wide from the Scottish Highlands to the American West; the islands of Hawaii to southern China. Even among her many adventures, her 1878/1879 trip to Hong Kong was momentous. Gordon-Cumming arrived just before Christmas 1878 to inadvertently witness the terrible “Great Fire” of Hong Kong that swept devastatingly through the Central and Mid-Levels districts.

She then moved on to explorations of the streets, temples and Chinese New Year festivities in Canton (Guangzhou). Her detailed descriptions of the teeming streets of the city’s commercial districts and New Year temple fairs contrast with her temporary residence in the relative calm of the foreign enclave on Shamian Island. Venturing out of the city on expeditions, Gordon-Cumming gives us perhaps one of the most complete descriptions of the now long-gone market gardens of Fa-tee with the famed nurseries that cultivated a bewildering variety of flowers and ornamental trees.

Finally Gordon-Cumming returns to Hong Kong to observe the annual "Derby Day" races at Happy Valley in February 1879, a major event on Hong Kong’s Victorian-era social calendar. Gordon-Cumming is at one and the same time that rare travel writer who, while plunging into the throngs and crowds, manages to observe the minutiae of life around her.

“The flames rapidly gained the mastery, suddenly bursting from fresh houses here and there, where least suspected, and spreading from street to street. That night we stood watching this appallingly magnificent scene – the flames rising and falling, leaping and dancing, now bursting from some fresh house, shooting up in tongues of fire, now rolling in dense volumes of black smoke.”

Add to basket Details
Out of stock
Dragon Bones: Two Years Beneath the Skin of a Himalayan Kingdom

HK$128.00
USD: US$16.34
CNY: CN¥118.28
GBP: £13.12
EUR: €15.26
AUD: AU$25.18
CAD: CA$22.32
JPY: ¥2,528
Wedged deep in the Himalaya between India and China, the secretive kingdom of Bhutan guards its independence while around it, Sikkim and Tibet have been swallowed by the giants and Nepal is rife with unrest. Bhutan markets itself as the last Shangri-La, but a closer look reveals the turbulence that accompanies its efforts to join the Western world.

Murray Gunn and his French wife came to love and better understand Bhutan while living there for two years — but risked their marriage in the process. A travel memoir of discovery and change.

Look inside this book
Click on this link to view sample pages from Dragon Bones. You will need a pdf reader to view this excerpt.

11-19

Details
The Great Walk of China: Travels on foot from Shanghai to Tibet

HK$128.00
USD: US$16.34
CNY: CN¥118.28
GBP: £13.12
EUR: €15.26
AUD: AU$25.18
CAD: CA$22.32
JPY: ¥2,528
What kind of people would you meet if you decided to walk across the world's most populous country?

The Great Walk of China is a journey into China's heartland, away from its surging coastal cities, where the ripples of prosperity are only just beginning to be felt and many find themselves left behind.

Through his conversations with the people he meets along the way, the Chinese-speaking Earnshaw paints a portrait of a nation struggling to come to terms with its newfound identity and its place in the world. Our wandering guide never backs away from sensitive and sometimes uncomfortable topics, and captures the essential kindness and generosity of the Chinese people with brilliant clarity.

Look inside this book
Click on the following link to view sample pages from The Great Walk of China. You will need a pdf reader to view this excerpt.

Prologue

Add to basket Details
Great Leaps: Finding home in a changing China

HK$128.00
USD: US$16.34
CNY: CN¥118.28
GBP: £13.12
EUR: €15.26
AUD: AU$25.18
CAD: CA$22.32
JPY: ¥2,528
In Great Leaps, Colin Flahive explores China’s rural-urban migration against the backdrop of his own transition from Colorado to southwest China. There, in Yunnan province, he partnered with three friends to open a café that became much more than simply an outpost of Western cuisine in a far-flung corner of the world.

Over the course of a decade, Salvador’s Coffee House became home to more than fifty young women from mountain villages in the surrounding countryside. Most knew nothing about coffee or Western food, but they moved to the city to work at Salvador’s and earn their independence.

Great Leaps follows the challenges faced by Colin, his partners and his employees as they leave their old lives behind to make a new home in a foreign land. They encounter unlikely successes, endure heartbreaks and nearly lose everything. But by taking the leap together, they all find their own places in the modern Chinese dream.

Look inside this book
Click on the following link to read pages from Great Leaps. You will need a pdf reader to view these excerpts.

Chapter 1: From the Countryside

Add to basket Details
Forty Nights (Eating Smoke #2)

HK$118.00
USD: US$15.06
CNY: CN¥109.04
GBP: £12.09
EUR: €14.07
AUD: AU$23.21
CAD: CA$20.57
JPY: ¥2,331
The stand-alone sequel to the international bestseller Eating Smoke

Former commando Chris Thrall returned from a year in Hong Kong suffering severe psychosis from crystal meth addiction. The medical profession said recovery was unlikely and recommended admitting him to a psychiatric hospital.

“There’s nothing wrong with me!”

Chris refused all intervention and his life descended into a chaotic cycle of drug use that almost killed him... until salvation came in a surprising form.

In this long-awaited follow-up to Eating Smoke, Chris tells a harrowing yet refreshing and often hilarious account of addiction and one gutsy journey to recovery.

"After the harrowing events in Eating Smoke, if you thought Chris Thrall departed Kai Tak bound for a life of cream teas and Little England 'normality'... then you've likely not experienced the depravity and horror of drug addiction. In Forty Nights, Chris continues to confront his demons with his usual engaging honesty, side-splitting Royal Marine humour and storytelling at its finest." – Phil Whelan, RTHK

Add to basket Details
Designing a Life: A Cross-Cultural Journey

HK$148.00
USD: US$18.89
CNY: CN¥136.77
GBP: £15.17
EUR: €17.64
AUD: AU$29.11
CAD: CA$25.80
JPY: ¥2,924
Designing a Life tells the inspiring story of Kai-Yin Lo, a determined woman born to a wealthy Hong Kong family who had to build her own future following an abrupt change in the family's fortunes. After a first job at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Hong Kong, she made her way to Time Inc. in New York to establish a new life.

Encouraged by her first collection being accepted by Cartier New York, she employed talent, innovation and determination to become a designer of international renown, respected as an ambassador for cross-cultural exchange in art, design and thought.

“Kai-Yin is a polymath and a phenomenon, having seamlessly juggled an analytical career as a scholar, historian, teacher and editor, with the artistic and imaginative flair of an amazing jewellery, accessory designer and ceramic artist.” – Thomas Heatherwick, Founder, Heatherwick Studio, London

“In her role as Visiting Professor of the University of the Arts London, Kai-Yin Lo has done very valuable work as an effective contributor and ambassador, promoting understanding and application of cross-culture.” – Professor Jeremy Till, Head, Central Saint Martins, Pro Vice-Chancellor, University of the Arts London

“Never ceasing to learn and create, Kai-Yin has proven herself to be an outstanding artistic and intellectual entrepreneur who blends harmoniously the aesthetic and the practical. The Asia Society on both sides of the Pacific has benefited from her generosity of spirit and cultural expressions.” – Ronnie C. Chan, Chairman, Asia Society Hong Kong Center

“Kai-Yin Lo is a creative tour de force whose jewelry designs re-interpreting Chinese traditional design principles were at the forefront of a reappraisal of traditional Chinese culture. She also seeks to share her interests with others through the philanthropic support of dialogues and talks that foster an understanding of new issues in Asian culture. These have included some of the most important cultural leaders of our time, such as Xu Bing, Tan Dun, and Shen Wei.” – Melissa Chiu, Director, Hirshhorn Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

Add to basket Details
Roving Through Southern China: An American’s Explorations of Hong Kong, Macao and Canton in the early 1920s

HK$90.00
USD: US$11.49
CNY: CN¥83.17
GBP: £9.22
EUR: €10.73
AUD: AU$17.70
CAD: CA$15.69
JPY: ¥1,778
By Harry Franck, introduced and annotated by Paul French

No. 4 in the China Revisited series

In the 1920s the American travel writer Harry A Franck was known to readers as the “Prince of Vagabonds”. His wanderings were family affairs and he arrived in southern China in 1923 with his wife, their two young children and his mother. Franck always claimed that his travel plans were random, subject to chance encounters and whatever caught his eye.

He arrives in a Hong Kong which is building modern department stores and large houses while labourers sleep on straw mats beside the harbour. In Macao he visits temples, ancient forts and, of course, casinos. And then to Canton (Guangzhou), a city in flux where new buildings are transforming the waterfront, the ancient city walls are being demolished, and the traditional rookeries of small lanes are being replaced by wide asphalt roads as the city rapidly modernises. Franck also provides us with a highly detailed description of Shamian Island a year after the tumultuous strikes and boycotts that meant naval gunboats and barbed wire still protected the small foreign enclave.

Add to basket Details
Remembering Bruce Lee: And Jon Benn’s Other Adventures

HK$138.00
USD: US$17.61
CNY: CN¥127.53
GBP: £14.14
EUR: €16.45
AUD: AU$27.14
CAD: CA$24.06
JPY: ¥2,726
“Kung Fu?” The Big Boss Loves Adventure

Even four decades after the passing of Asian martial-arts superstar Bruce Lee (1940-73), his achievements still attract adoration from millions of movie fans. The biggest fan of all may be Jon Benn, who befriended the high-kicking hero while playing “the Big Boss”, a villain in Lee’s acclaimed 1972 movie The Way of the Dragon.

In Remembering Bruce Lee, a tell-tale autobiography, Jon reminisces fondly about his experiences with Lee and a lifetime of other adventures. From facing Lee’s fists of fury to riding in a cowboy posse, from almost starting the Third World War to a nude scene with sex symbol Bo Derek, much has happened to Jon for the sake of appearing in movies.

But that’s not all. From exploring ancient Mexican temples and falling into a volcano to eavesdropping on communists in Cold War Europe, from doing business with former Philippines dictator Ferdinand Marcos to girls-in-hot-pants waving Passports to Pleasure, one heck of a lot has happened to Jon away from the cameras too.

Look inside this book
Click on the link to read pages from Remembering Bruce Lee. You will need a pdf reader to view these excerpts.

Contents & Introduction

Add to basket Details
Where Strange Gods Call: Harry Hervey’s 1920s Hong Kong, Macao and Canton Sojourns

HK$90.00
USD: US$11.49
CNY: CN¥83.17
GBP: £9.22
EUR: €10.73
AUD: AU$17.70
CAD: CA$15.69
JPY: ¥1,778
By Harry Hervey, introduced and annotated by Paul French

No. 1 in the China Revisited series

As a young man in the southern United States in the early years of the twentieth century Harry Hervey dreamt of travelling to Asia. He also dreamt of writing novels, movie scripts and travel books. He would do all these things. Eventually, in 1923, Hervey managed to find a way to get to the Far East working on a cruise liner. He was to spend time sojourning in Hong Kong, Macao and Guangzhou. His impressions of his travels through southern China, contained in his 1924 travelogue Where Strange Gods Call, is both lyrical and detailed, as well as atmospheric and informative. Walking from Central to Kennedy Town; the basement “dives” of Belcher’s Street to the private dining rooms of Queen’s Road; Macao’s Praia Grande to its infamous fan-tan houses, Hervey is a fascinating flâneur and guide. So too in Guangzhou, a city in upheaval, where Hervey encounters those fleeing warlord violence in the north and is granted an audience with Dr Sun Yat-sen.

Hervey’s impressions of China would stay with him for the rest of his life, not least in his treatment for the 1932 movie Shanghai Express. Sadly, in the intervening century since the first publication of Where Strange Gods Call in 1924, Hervey’s name and work have been largely forgotten. Yet his early travel writing was to influence his later bestselling novels, popular short stories and Hollywood screenplays which, in turn, influenced American perceptions of Hong Kong, Macao and China.

This publication of Hervey’s impressions of southern China also includes the sketches of his good friend the Savannah artist Christopher Murphy Jr., which were included in the first edition of Where Strange Gods Call and bring Hervey’s descriptions further to life.

“Approaching Canton we were gliding past ugly, ramshackle dwellings and go-downs; grass-thatched house-boats, sampans, junks, and lighters, and millions of roofs that were flung in uneven terraces against the sky.”

Add to basket Details
The Girl Who Dreamed: A Hong Kong Memoir of Triumph Against the Odds

HK$138.00
USD: US$17.61
CNY: CN¥127.53
GBP: £14.14
EUR: €16.45
AUD: AU$27.14
CAD: CA$24.06
JPY: ¥2,726
At the age of 14, Sonia Leung was raped by her ping-pong coach.

She had moved from China two-and-a-half years earlier to join her family in Hong Kong, but she could not fit in. The family of six lived in a cramped subdivided hut in a Kowloon squatter village but rarely communicated with each other. The difficulties of adjusting to colonial Hong Kong heightened the tensions between her parents. Feeling trapped and unloved, Sonia was too afraid to tell anyone about the rape. She saved money by working part-time at McDonald's and, a year later, she bought a one-way plane ticket to Taipei and ran away from home.

The Girl Who Dreamed is a memoir of her childhood in mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan – and how, through work and further education, she found her way to an independent life away from the family and world from which she needed to free herself.

Add to basket Details
Year of Fire Dragons: An American Woman’s Story of Coming of Age in Hong Kong

HK$128.00
USD: US$16.34
CNY: CN¥118.28
GBP: £13.12
EUR: €15.26
AUD: AU$25.18
CAD: CA$22.32
JPY: ¥2,528
In 2010, bookish 22-year-old Shannon follows her Eurasian boyfriend to Hong Kong, eager to forge a new love story in his hometown. But when work sends him to London a month later, Shannon embarks on a wide-eyed newcomer's journey through Hong Kong – alone.

She teaches in a local school as the only foreigner, explores Asia with other young expats and discovers family history in Hong Kong, all while trying to hold on to her thwarted romance. The city enchants her, forcing her to question her plans. Soon, she must make a choice between her new life and the love that first brought her to Asia.

Look inside this book
Click on the following links to view sample pages from Year of Fire Dragons. You will need a pdf reader to view these excerpts.

One Two

Add to basket Details
Dateline Mongolia: An American journalist in nomad’s land

HK$138.00
USD: US$17.61
CNY: CN¥127.53
GBP: £14.14
EUR: €16.45
AUD: AU$27.14
CAD: CA$24.06
JPY: ¥2,726
Michael Kohn, former editor of the Mongol Messenger newspaper, is one steppe ahead of the journalistic posse in this epic Western set in the Far East.

Kohn’s memoir of his time in Mongolia is an irresistible account of a nation where falcon poachers, cattle rustlers, exiled Buddhist leaders, death-defying child jockeys and political assassins vie for page one. A turf war between lamas, shamans, Mormon elders and ministers provides the spiritual backdrop in this nation which had only just been liberated from Soviet rule. From the reincarnated Bogd Khaan and his press spokesman to vodka-fuelled racing entrepreneurs and political leaders unclear on the concept of freedom of the press, Kohn explores one of Asia’s most fascinating, mysterious and misunderstood lands.

“Genghis Khan may have stormed across the steppes seven centuries ago but Michael Kohn has probably covered nearly as many miles around one of the world’s most remote and untamed nations.” — Tony Wheeler, founder, Lonely Planet

Look inside this book
Click on the following link to read pages from Dateline Mongolia. You will need a pdf reader to view this excerpt.

Chapter 1 - The Frozen Capital

Add to basket Details
The Cleaner: The true story of one of the world’s most successful money launderers

HK$200.00
USD: US$25.53
CNY: CN¥184.82
GBP: £20.50
EUR: €23.84
AUD: AU$39.34
CAD: CA$34.87
JPY: ¥3,951
with a foreword by Howard Marks, bestselling author of Mr. Nice

In the 1980s, Bruce Aitken became one of the world’s most successful money launderers. Discover the ingenious methods he used to shift vast sums of currency across the globe.

From humble beginnings in New Jersey, Bruce was destined to be a baseball player until fate intervened, in the form of a knee injury, and forever changed the course of his life.

What started innocently enough, by answering an ad in the newspaper, turned into a globe-trotting lifestyle of moving money – huge sums of money – for some of the world’s most notorious and shadiest characters. From the jungles of Vietnam to the money capitals of the world, Bruce moved in circles where people would unquestioningly hand over millions of dollars to him on a handshake, to be deposited into Swiss bank accounts.

Learn the truth behind the Lockheed Scandal, the Cessna-Milner affair, the Nugan Hand scandal and one of the largest drug busts in US history that brought the party to an end. It all started to crash via an event in Reno, Nevada, and nearly cost Bruce the rest of his life in prison.

“A unique and perfect insight into the money-laundering world of thirty-odd years ago.” – Howard Marks

Add to basket Details
Love, Money and Friendships

HK$148.00
USD: US$18.89
CNY: CN¥136.77
GBP: £15.17
EUR: €17.64
AUD: AU$29.11
CAD: CA$25.80
JPY: ¥2,924
In 1981, David Wong retired after 20 years as an administrative officer in the Hong Kong Government to chance his arm in the city’s cut-throat free market, as the managing director of a large multinational trading corporation. He soon discovered more legal and ethical boobytraps in business than he had bargained for. Nonetheless, he sidestepped them and in 1982, during the Sino-British negotiations to end British rule, he quickly sensed a unwarranted panic over the value of the Hong Kong dollar. He acted accordingly and made himself millions in weeks.

Wong then visited different parts of China with friends. In the process he fell in love with a young and beautiful member of the Communist Youth League. When he tried to marry her, however, the mainland bureaucracy threw a host of obstacles in his path. After all, he was perceived as a capitalist from Hong Kong. But Wong’s friends used their collective guanxi with members of the Politburo to gain him permission to marry the girl. The title of this volume is aptly Love, Money and Friendships.

Interlaced with Wong’s narrative are fascinating insights into aspects of China’s long and colourful history and culture.

LOOK INSIDE THIS BOOK Click the following links to read excerpts from the book.

Introduction

Add to basket Details
The Curious Diary of Mr Jam: Official humorist for repressive regimes

HK$118.00
USD: US$15.06
CNY: CN¥109.04
GBP: £12.09
EUR: €14.07
AUD: AU$23.21
CAD: CA$20.57
JPY: ¥2,331
He tried to bring comedy to Asia, but everyone just laughed at him

Sam Jam’s whole life had been a tragic mistake. As a humorist in Asia he had repeatedly been sacked, blacklisted and chased out of buildings.

But he refuses to believe that his audiences of conservative Muslims, Communist officials, religious police and Asian citizens in general have no sense of humor.

This funny, poignant tale, which the author describes as “a novel for legal reasons”, is more than just laugh-out-loud entertainment. It shines an essential light on what global culture will look like as eastern ways of thinking start to dominate.

Look inside this book
Click on the link to view sample pages from The Curious Diary of Mr Jam. You will need a pdf reader to view this excerpt.

Chapter 1

Add to basket Details
Confessions of a Hong Kong Naturalist

HK$138.00
USD: US$17.61
CNY: CN¥127.53
GBP: £14.14
EUR: €16.45
AUD: AU$27.14
CAD: CA$24.06
JPY: ¥2,726
by G. T. Reels

Confessions of a Hong Kong Naturalist is a natural history memoir, tracing the journey from novice to expert of an aspiring naturalist, Graham Reels, as he follows a trail of discovery into the miraculously fascinating and diverse world of Hong Kong's wildlife.

The memoir falls naturally into two parts, the first covering the seven-year period 1988-1995 in which Reels gained the knowledge and experience that qualified him to undertake the Hong Kong Biodiversity Survey in 1995-1998. Early chapters include descriptions of work as a research assistant at Hong Kong University, an M.Phil. study from a hut at Mai Po Marshes Nature Reserve, a survey of Hong Kong's freshwater wetlands, and work at Kadoorie Farm & Botanic Garden. The territory-wide Biodiversity Survey is covered in the second half of the book.

Throughout the memoir, different animal species that Reels encountered (mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, insects) are named and described, and their ecological or behavioural attributes discussed in a lively and informal manner. Similarly, a range of fascinating human characters whose lives intersected with the author's in his study of Hong Kong's wildlife are introduced and engagingly portrayed.

Add to basket Details
LING-NAM: Hong Kong, Canton and Hainan Island in the 1880s

HK$90.00
USD: US$11.49
CNY: CN¥83.17
GBP: £9.22
EUR: €10.73
AUD: AU$17.70
CAD: CA$15.69
JPY: ¥1,778
By Benjamin Couch 'BC' Henry, introduced and annotated by Paul French

No. 3 in the China Revisited series

Benjamin Couch “BC” Henry was a missionary in Hong Kong and southern China in the second half of the 19th century. He arrived in 1873 and remained until 1894. Yet he was much more too – a keen observer, a skilled naturalist and an intrepid explorer. His fascination with the flora and fauna of Hong Kong and southern China are obvious throughout the pages of LING-NAM.

The bulk of his career in China was spent in what was then commonly known as “Ling-nam”, the Pearl River Delta and environs of Guangzhou. These excerpts of Henry’s travelogue LING-NAM, published in 1886, contain one of the most detailed walking tours of Guangzhou that has survived. Similarly so his travels through the silk, tea and market garden regions adjoining the metropolis. Abd finally, we have Henry’s ground-breaking account of his expeditions around Hainan Island in 1882, then the most extensive undertaken to date by a foreigner. He was also a keen anthropologist interested in the island’s various ethnic groups, such as the Lois, as well as the various languages and dialects of Hainan. Henry’s portrait of southern China was built up over 20 years work and exploration in the region and provides one of the most in-depth looks at southern Chinese life from the growth of Hong Kong, to the bustling streets of Guangzhou, to Hainan’s “Island of Palms”.

“Drifting slowly by a large collection of flower-boats, gay with lamps and mirrors, and richly furnished with black-wood sofas and embroidered curtains… Dire confusion is often created among the slipper-boats, whose anchorage adjoins, by the surging of the steamer against their outer lines, causing them to jump, and sputter, and dart about like a swarm of ants, shell-like craft, whilst they vociferously hurl maledictions at the great steamer.”

Add to basket Details
My Private China

HK$128.00
USD: US$16.34
CNY: CN¥118.28
GBP: £13.12
EUR: €15.26
AUD: AU$25.18
CAD: CA$22.32
JPY: ¥2,528
What do normal people in China look forward to when they get up in the morning? What is the mentor of Lang Lang like? What about the personal friend of Chairman Mao – and how does his granddaughter relate to him after the murderous Cultural Revolution? What do the numerous evangelical Americans really think of the Chinese? How does the One Country, Two Systems paradigm work for Hong Kong?

For the last 73 years, American Book Award winner Alex Kuo has travelled back-and-forth between America and China. These letters and essays portray the private China, and provide indispensable cultural information for anyone interested in the People’s Republic in the 21st century.

Look inside this book
Click on these links to read pages from My Private China. You will need a pdf reader to view these excerpts.

Introduction Counting The Re-Taking of Hong Kong

Add to basket Details
Searching for Billie: A journalist’s quest to understand his mother’s past leads him to discover a vanished China

HK$148.00
USD: US$18.89
CNY: CN¥136.77
GBP: £15.17
EUR: €17.64
AUD: AU$29.11
CAD: CA$25.80
JPY: ¥2,924
Ian Gill’s first visit to Hong Kong in 1975 takes an unexpected turn when he meets his Chinese mother Billie’s friends, colleagues and fellow ex-prisoners of war, lifting the veil on a tumultuous past in Hong Kong and Shanghai.

He moves to Asia and unravels her intriguing journey: from controversial adoption by an English postmaster in Changsha to popular radio broadcaster in wartime Shanghai, from tragedy and a doomed romance in a Japanese internment camp to being decorated by Queen Elizabeth II for services to the United Nations. He discovers a great-grandmother in a determined English farm girl who ends up owning a well-known hotel on the China coast in the 1870s – and he finally meets his father for the first time on a Canadian island in 1985.

The backdrop for this fascinating family story is China’s turbulent century from the Anglo-Chinese wars of the 1840s to the advent of communism.

Look inside this book:
Contents and Chapter 1

Add to basket Details
The Hong Kong Letters

HK$138.00
USD: US$17.61
CNY: CN¥127.53
GBP: £14.14
EUR: €16.45
AUD: AU$27.14
CAD: CA$24.06
JPY: ¥2,726
In 1969, at the height of China’s Cultural Revolution, a yacht sails out of Hong Kong and disappears. The world’s press takes up the story of the crew who are presumed lost at sea. But Gill and her friends are very much alive, held captive in a Chinese fishing village by Communist militia. As she faces questioning by the People’s Liberation Army, there’s a lot that Gill would rather not tell – that her crew-mates are British soldiers; her flatmates are Japanese, old adversaries of the Chinese; or that her boss, the doyen of advertising in Hong Kong, is well known for ‘firing Reds’.

In this spirited memoir, where Mad Men meets Han Suyin’s A Many Splendoured Thing, Gill recreates a Hong Kong of the imagination. Twenty-one, attractive and naïve, wined and dined by Hong Kong’s elite, Gill learns to stand her ground at her job in an advertising agency under the directive of the narcissistic Mrs Church. Her luck changes when Paddy O’Neil-Dunne joins the firm – he is just as eccentric but much more fun. After several visits to a casino in the nearby Portuguese enclave of Macau, Paddy embarks on the longest roulette game ever played and he insists Gill join in. But Gill finds the sparkling waters of Hong Kong’s seascape more seductive than the world of business and money; she takes up sailing and falls in love.

The backdrop is a gift. The Colony is an anachronism, a last vestige of British colonialism. Yet as Communist ideology gathers pace in neighbouring China, Hong Kong seizes every new opportunity and so does the author. Unexpected twists and a host of funny, bizarre and whimsical events are captured in her lyrical memoir.

Carefully bundled and tied together with ribbon, Gill’s letters from Hong Kong had remained untouched for nearly fifty years. When she untied them, she remembered her father’s words: “I think there’s a book in there.”

Add to basket Details
Eating Smoke: One man’s descent into drug psychosis in Hong Kong’s triad heartland

HK$138.00
USD: US$17.61
CNY: CN¥127.53
GBP: £14.14
EUR: €16.45
AUD: AU$27.14
CAD: CA$24.06
JPY: ¥2,726
Chris Thrall left the Royal Marines to find his fortune in Hong Kong, but instead found himself homeless and hooked on crystal methamphetamine.

Soon he began working for the 14K, Hong Kong’s largest crime family, as a doorman in one of their nightclubs in the Wan Chai red-light district.

Dealing with psychosis, conspiracy and the ‘foreign triad’ – a secretive expat clique which, unbeknown to the world, works hand-in-hand with the Chinese mafia – he had to survive in the world’s most unforgiving city, addicted to the world’s most dangerous drug.

“A triad-controlled nightclub is not a clever place to work if you’re addicted to a drug with a tendency to induce horrifying paranoia. A lot of bad stuff is going to happen and it’s very easy for an Ice-addled mind to imagine that even worse stuff is also going on. This is at the heart of Thrall’s nightmare and it’s a narrative device that makes Eating Smoke work so well.” – South China Morning Post

Look inside this book
Click on this link to view sample pages from Eating Smoke. You will need a pdf reader to view this excerpt.

Excerpt 1

Add to basket Details