BOOK TALK – Mark O’Neill
Wednesday 18th June 18:00 | The Library | £10 per person*
*Includes a glass of wine on arrival
Hong Kong is the most European city in Asia. The conventional wisdom is that Hong Kong was created by a combination of British colonial rule and the energy and entrepreneurship of Chinese people, but that is not the whole story. From its foundation, people came from continental Europe—Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Portugal—and have made an enormous contribution to the city. The Europeans have built churches, schools, hospitals, companies and institutions that still thrive today. Catholic orders from France and Italy saved the lives of tens of thousands of young Chinese girls who would otherwise have been allowed to die. A French bacteriologist found the cure to the bubonic plague that ravaged the city in 1894. A Hungarian Jesuit in Hong Kong was the world’s top China watcher for the first three decades of the Communist era. Germans built trading companies that helped to make the city the top commercial port in East Asia.
In this book, Mark O’Neill recounts the extraordinary story of these Europeans, with stories on people from the five major countries. He mixes history with personal accounts by many of them, including priests, business people, an art specialist, an expert in fine food and wine, a trilingual singer and a legendary disc jockey. He profiles the institutes that enable Hong Kong people to learn French, German, Spanish and Italian and the international schools that use these languages. Today the city continues to provide Europeans with opportunities and an excitement they cannot find at home. Their love affair with Hong Kong continues abated.