Fortune's bazaar The making of Hong Kong

Review by Booklist Review

Journalist England's history of the people of Hong Kong celebrates the innovation and vigor catalyzed by the mixing of diverse cultures. Established as a British colonial foothold in 1841, the city enjoyed a deepwater port and favorable location at the crossroads of ancient trade routes. But its true vitality, the author asserts, comes from its people, the "motley crew" of strivers, laborers, entrepreneurs, and intermediaries who built the imperfectly regulated, increasingly prosperous port city. They were not just British and Chinese but, rather, a rich and unique mix of ethnicities and affiliations from across Asia, Europe, and elsewhere. Hybrid identities and multicultural mixings--a massive ecosystem of "in-between people"--would become Hong Kong's norm, the dynamic engine of growth that allowed it to become a major economic hub and cosmopolitan cultural pivot point between East and West. The narrative is largely biographical, anchored in the complex trajectories of individual Hong Kongers. In the epilogue, England reveals that this book is part eulogy, as recent moves by Beijing threaten the "grey zone that had allowed Hong Kong and its multiple, mixed-up peoples to thrive."

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Journalist England (The Quest of Noel Croucher) takes a fresh look at Hong Kong's history by focusing on the "in-between people," or Hong Kongers whose roots don't go back to colonial Britain or mainland China. The British, seeking a trade station on the eastern coast of China, claimed Hong Kong in 1841, and China officially ceded the island in the Treaty of Nanking in 1842. Like other port cities, Hong Kong attracted people from around the world; early settlers included Parsis, a Zoroastrian "tribal group" from India that traces its roots back to Persia; Macanese; Malays; Filipinos; Japanese; Portuguese; and Jews from Venice and Baghdad. England profiles prominent members of these and other ethnic groups, contending that colonialism in Hong Kong was more collaboration than conquest: "Most Hong Kongers were collaborators because they chose to come to Hong Kong, they were self-selected." Nevertheless, Hong Kong's diversity didn't spare it from racial, ethnic, and class tensions, including the Strike of 1925, which "brought British rule perilously close to the edge of economic collapse." Since 1997, when Britain handed Hong Kong back to the Chinese, efforts by the Chinese government to curtail Hong Kongers' freedoms have been met with fierce protests, including the 2014 Occupy movement. Extensively researched and accessibly written, this is a winning portrait of Hong Kong's vibrant mosaic. Agent: Doug Young, PEW Literary. (May)

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Review by Library Journal Review

Following A Thousand Ships, which was short-listed for Britain's Women's Prize for Fiction and a best seller in the United States, Haynes's Pandora's Jar belongs to a growing number of titles that put the female characters of Greek mythology front and center as less passive or secondary than they've been regarded (25,000-copy hardcover and 30,000-copy paperback first printing)

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

A new history of Hong Kong, emphasizing the early traders and strivers of mixed ethnic backgrounds who shaped its singular development. "Hong Kong was precisely the handy kind of small but clever place always needed on the edge of huge empires--hideaway and refuge, petri dish or sewer, and always a service stop providing fuel of all kinds for next ventures," writes England, who has been a journalist in East Asia for years. Located around a spectacular deep-sea harbor, Hong Kong has served as a convenient outpost for the empowered British Empire after the Napoleonic Wars as well as an entrepôt for the "newly unemployed, adventurous young men, ready to explore the seven seas." While the majority of Hong Kongers were then and still are ethnically Chinese, England is keenly interested in what has attracted others to the city and the kinds of industry and family dynasties they created over the decades. After the British first visited Hong Kong in 1839, it became a hub on the thriving trade route, it had been a hub on the thriving trade route for centuries, attracting Jews, Parsis, Armenians, Indians, Malays, Filipinos, and the Tanka and Hakka people of China, all of whom were drawn to the myriad opportunities and created a mosaic of diversity. The author also shows how it became a place of refuge. "Chinese fled the Taiping Rebellion on the mainland, they fled poverty, women fled total control, and people left Macao, and South and Southeast Asia, in hopes of making their fortune in Hong Kong." As Chinese nationalism grew, tensions increased between those who valued the strength of diverse ethnicity and those who sought to maintain racial purity. England clearly delineates her deep research into Eurasian dynasties and moves more quickly through the Japanese occupation and British handover. An ambitious swath of Hong Kong social history, notable for particular insights about Eurasian entrepreneurs and dynasties. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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