A sumptuous 11"x11" book of text and color photos (by Benno Gross & Kwong Chung Kwan) on shops and vendors in Hong Kong selling jade, sandalwood, rice, calligraphy . . . . A delight. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.
Once a forgotten base for fisherfolk and pirates on the outer fringe of imperial China, Hong Kong became one of the glittering prizes of Britain's expanding empire. Soon after its founding in the 1840's, adventuresome British merchant princes, Chinses compradors, Armenian entrapreneurs and Parsee traders were rigging sails and heading for its craggy shores. They brought with them a spirit of enterprise, aggressive energy, and visionary skills and the entrepôt quickly spun itself a web of trade - and a deserving reputation for innovation and survival. Hong Kong has won itself an international status that belies its size.
Encounters with China spans a turbulent century that began when foreigners first secured a foothold in China in the 1840s, and ended when China again retreated into self-imposed isolation following the birth of the People's Republic in 1949. This handsome book evokes an era of extraordinary encounters between East and West, between the aggressive breed of merchants that were a product of Europe's industrial revolution and the complacent mandarins of the world's oldest civilization, the Middle Kingdom of Manchu China.