Not long after I arrived in Hong Kong in 1980 to work for this newspaper, a colleague invited me to the China Fleet Club on the waterfront in the raunchy Wanchai district of the island. The evening was memorable—not only because it provided a glimpse into the world of Suzie Wong (memorably depicted in the 1960 movie) but also because it introduced me to an essential fact about Hong Kong: It’s not just a Chinese city.
My dance partner that evening was a Hong Konger—a term not widely used back then—whose ancestry was a mix of British, Chinese and Portuguese. He was one of the melting pot of people who have been drawn to the dynamic port city ever since China ceded Hong Kong Island to Britain in 1842. In “Fortune’s Bazaar,” Vaudine England examines these “in-between people,” as she calls them, and their often overlooked role in the development of Hong Kong into a cosmopolitan, world-class city. Ms. England is a veteran journalist who has worked in Southeast Asia for years and the author of several works of Hong Kong history.