Fortune's Bazaar

The Making of Hong Kong

Vaudine England

$59.99

Hardback

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English

Corsair
12 September 2023

Asian history

A timely, well-researched, and vibrant new history of Hong Kong that reveals the untold stories of the diverse peoples who have made it a multicultural world metropolis-and whose freedoms are endangered today.

Hong Kong has always been many cities to many people: a seaport, a gateway to an empire, a place where fortunes can be dramatically made or lost, a place to disappear and reinvent oneself, and a mixing pot of diverse populations from literally everywhere around the globe. A British Crown Colony for 155 years, Hong Kong is now ruled by the Chinese Communist Party who continues to threaten its democracy and put its rich legacy at risk. Here, renowned journalist Vaudine England delves into Hong Kong's complex history and its people-diverse, multi-cultural, cosmopolitan-who have made this one-time fishing village into the world port city it is today.

Rather than a traditional history describing a town led by British Governors or a mere offshoot of a collapsing Chinese empire, Fortune's Bazaar is the first thorough examination of the varied peoples who made Hong Kong. While British traders and Asian merchants had long been busy in the Indian and South East Asian seas, there were many from different cultures and ethnic backgrounds who arrived in Hong Kong, met and married-despite all taboos-and created a distinct community. Many of Hong Kong's most influential figures during its first century as a city were neither British nor Chinese-they were Malay or Indian, Jewish or Armenian, Parsi or Portuguese, Eurasian or Chindian-or simply, Hong Kongers. England describes those overlooked in history including the opium-traders who built synagogues or churches, ship-owners carrying gold-rush migrants, property tycoons, and more. Here, too, is the visionary who plumbed Hong Kong's harbor depths to spur reclamation, the half-Dutch Chinese gentleman with two wives who was knighted by Queen Victoria, and the landscape gardeners who settled Kowloon and became millionaires.

A story of empire, race, and sex, Fortune's Bazaar combines deep archival research and oral history to present a vivid history of a special place-a unique city made by diverse people of the world, whose part in its creation has never been properly told until now.

By: Vaudine England
Imprint: Corsair
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 236mm, Width: 160mm, Spine: 36mm
Weight: 651g
ISBN: 9781472157140
ISBN 10: 1472157141
Pages: 368
Publication Date: 12 September 2023
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Vaudine England was a journalist for three decades in South East Asia and Hong Kong for the BBC, Reuters, the Far Eastern Economic Review and several London newspapers. Now a researcher at Leiden University, the Netherlands, and a research associate with the Hong Kong History Centre at Bristol University, she brings her journalistic skills of investigative reporting and interviewing to the archives and old stories. After decades based in Hong Kong, she now lives in Amsterdam. Fortune's Bazaar is her first book.

Reviews for Fortune's Bazaar: The Making of Hong Kong

As a history of Hongkong, not just as a British colony, or an exotic Chinese enclave, but as a cosmopolitan city of many creeds and races, Asian and European, Vaudine England's book is unsurpassed. Her take on the so-called Eurasians, who have played such a large part in Hongkong's history, is fresh and essential to a better understanding of this unique place -- Ian Buruma