Fortune's Bazaar

The Making of Hong Kong

Vaudine England

$34.99

Paperback

In stock
Ready to ship

QTY:

English

Corsair
30 May 2023

History; 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 lives are evolving 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 a Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China. 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.

By: Vaudine England
Imprint: Corsair
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 232mm, Width: 150mm, Spine: 28mm
Weight: 520g
ISBN: 9781472157157
ISBN 10: 147215715X
Pages: 368
Publication Date: 30 May 2023
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
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 research associate with the Hong Kong History Project, under the auspices of Bristol University, she brings her journalistic skills of investigative reporting and interviewing to the archives and old stories. She lives in Hong Kong and 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