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In his autobiography Stanley S.K. Kwan discusses his roots, Hong Kong after the War, Hang Seng Bank, the new China and home and country.
In his autobiography Stanley S.K. Kwan discusses his roots, Hong Kong after the War, Hang Seng Bank, the new China and home and country.
American women have lived in Hong Kong, and in neighboring Macao, for nearly two centuries. Many were changed by their encounter with Chinese life and British colonialism. Their openness to new experiences set them apart, while their "pedagogical impulse" gave them a reputation for outspokenness that troubled others. Drawing on memoirs, diaries, newspapers, films, and other texts, Stacilee Ford tells the stories of several American women and explores how, through dramatically changing times, they communicated their notions of national identity and gender.Troubling American Womenis a lively and provocative study of cross-cultural encounters between the Hong Kong and the US and use of stereotypes of American womanhood in Hong Kong popular culture. Stacilee Fordhas lived in Hong Kong for 18 years. She teaches history and American studies at the University of Hong Kong.
Opportunity in Crisis explores the history of late Qing Cantonese migration along the West River basin during war and reconstruction and the impact of those developments on the relationship between state and local elites on the Guangxi frontier. By situating Cantonese upriver and overseas migration within the same framework, Steven Miles reconceives the late Qing as an age of Cantonese diasporic expansion rather than one of state decline. The book opens with crisis: rising levels of violence targeting Cantonese riverine commerce, much of it fomented by a geographically mobile Cantonese underclass. Miles then narrates the ensuing history of a Cantonese rebel regime established in Guangxi in t...
In the first decades of the 20th century, almost half of the Chinese Americans born in the United States moved to China—a relocation they assumed would be permanent. At a time when people from around the world flocked to the United States, this little-noticed emigration belied America’s image as a magnet for immigrants and a land of upward mobility for all. Fleeing racism, Chinese Americans who sought greater opportunities saw China, a tottering empire and then a struggling republic, as their promised land. American Exodus is the first book to explore this extraordinary migration of Chinese Americans. Their exodus shaped Sino-American relations, the development of key economic sectors in China, the character of social life in its coastal cities, debates about the meaning of culture and “modernity” there, and the U.S. government’s approach to citizenship and expatriation in the interwar years. Spanning multiple fields, exploring numerous cities, and crisscrossing the Pacific Ocean, this book will appeal to anyone interested in Chinese history, international relations, immigration history, and Asian American studies.
Celebrated as a trading port, Hong Kong was also Britain’s “eastern fortress”. Likened by many to Gibraltar and Malta, the colony was a vital but vulnerable link in imperial strategy, exposed to a succession of enemies in a turbulent age and a troubled region. This book examines Hong Kong’s developing role in the Victorian imperial defence system, the emerging challenges from Russia, France, the United States, Germany, Japan and other powers, and preparations in the years leading up to the Second World War. A detailed chapter offers new interpretations of the Battle of Hong Kong of 1941, when the colony succumbed to the Japanese invasion. The remaining chapters discuss Hong Kong’s ...
After Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, leaders in China and the United States had high hopes of a lasting partnership between the two countries. More than 120,000 U.S. servicemen deployed to China, where Chiang Kai-shek's government carried out massive programs to provide them with housing, food, and interpreters. But, as Zach Fredman uncovers in The Tormented Alliance, a military alliance with the United States means a military occupation by the United States. The first book to draw on archives from all of the areas in China where U.S. forces deployed during the 1940s, it examines the formation, evolution, and undoing of the alliance between the United States and the Republic of China during...
Acclaimed historian Stephen Robinson brings to life a legendary last stand. Shanghai 1937. With invading Japanese troops poised to capture one of the world’s greatest cities after almost three months of brutal urban warfare, the Chinese Army begins to retreat – except for a single battalion that stays behind to fight. These soldiers led by Lieutenant Colonel Xie Jinyuan, known as the ‘Eight Hundred Heroes’, defended Sihang Warehouse – a six-storey concrete building and natural fortress. The men repulsed waves of Japanese attacks with intense bravery as thousands of spectators looked on from the relative safety of the British Concession inside Shanghai’s International Settlement. ...
This book examines the British cultural engagement with Hong Kong in the second half of the twentieth century. It shows how the territory fit unusually within Britain’s decolonisation narratives and served as an occasional foil for examining Britain’s own culture during a period of perceived stagnation and decline. Drawing on a wide range of archival and published primary sources, Hong Kong and British culture, 1945–97 investigates such themes as Hong Kong as a site of unrestrained capitalism, modernisation, and good government, as well as an arena of male social and sexual opportunity. It also examines the ways in which Hong Kong Chinese embraced British culture, and the competing predictions that British observers made concerning the colony’s return to Chinese sovereignty. An epilogue considers the enduring legacy of British colonialism. This book will be essential reading for historians of Hong Kong, British decolonisation, and Britain’s culture of declinism.
The story of an Englishman who lived through the last years of the Qing dynasty, was trapped in the British Legation during the Boxer uprising and went on to occupy a number of senior positions in the Imperial Customs as Commissioner of Customs in various ports, Shanghai Postmaster and first Director of the important Customs College.