Best Hong Kong History Books
Here you will get Best Hong Kong History Books For you.This is an up-to-date list of recommended books.
1. The Last Kings of Shanghai: The Rival Jewish Dynasties That Helped Create Modern China
Author: by Jonathan Kaufman
English
384 pages
0735224439
“In vivid detail…Examines the little-known history of two extraordinary dynasties.”-The Boston Globe”Not just a brilliant, well-researched, and highly readable book about China’s past, it also reveals the contingencies and ironic twists of fate in China’s modern history.”-LA Review of BooksAn epic, multigenerational story of two rival dynasties who flourished in Shanghai and Hong Kong as twentieth-century China surged into the modern era, from the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalistThe Sassoons and the Kadoories stood astride Chinese business and politics for more than one hundred seventy-five years, profiting from the Opium Wars; surviving Japanese occupation; courting Chiang Kai-shek; and nearly losing everything as the Communists swept into power.
Jonathan Kaufman tells the remarkable history of how these families ignited an economic boom and opened China to the world, but remained blind to the country’s deep inequality and to the political turmoil on their doorsteps. In a story stretching from Baghdad to Hong Kong to Shanghai to London, Kaufman enters the lives and minds of these ambitious men and women to forge a tale of opium smuggling, family rivalry, political intrigue, and survival.
2. Last Boat Out of Shanghai: The Epic Story of the Chinese Who Fled Mao's Revolution
Author: by Helen Zia
Ballantine Books
English
544 pages
The dramatic real life stories of four young people caught up in the mass exodus of Shanghai in the wake of China’s 1949 Communist revolutiona heartrending precursor to the struggles faced by emigrants today. A true page-turner … [Helen] Zia has proven once again that history is something that happens to real people.
New York Times bestselling author Lisa SeeNAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR AND THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR FINALIST FOR THE PEN/JACQUELINE BOGRAD WELD AWARD FOR BIOGRAPHY Shanghai has historically been China’s jewel, its richest, most modern and westernized city.
The bustling metropolis was home to sophisticated intellectuals, entrepreneurs, and a thriving middle class when Mao’s proletarian revolution emerged victorious from the long civil war. Terrified of the horrors the Communists would wreak upon their lives, citizens of Shanghai who could afford to fled in every direction.
Seventy years later, members of the last generation to fully recall this massive exodus have revealed their stories to Chinese American journalist Helen Zia, who interviewed hundreds of exiles about their journey through one of the most tumultuous events of the twentieth century.
3. Falling Leaves: The Memoir of an Unwanted Chinese Daughter
Author: by Adeline Yen Mah
0767903579
Crown (April 6, 1999)
English
The emotionally wrenching yet ultimately uplifting memoir of a Chinese woman struggling to win the love and acceptance of her family. Born in 1937 in a port city a thousand miles north of Shanghai, Adeline Yen Mah was the youngest child of an affluent Chinese family who enjoyed rare privileges during a time of political and cultural upheaval.
But wealth and position could not shield Adeline from a childhood of appalling emotional abuse at the hands of a cruel and manipulative stepmother. Determined to survive through her enduring faith in family unity, Adeline struggled for independence as she moved from Hong Kong to England and eventually to the United States to become a physician and writer.
A compelling, painful, and ultimately triumphant story of a girl’s journey into adulthood, Adeline’s story is a testament to the most basic of human needs: acceptance, love, and understanding. With a powerful voice that speaks of the harsh realities of growing up female in a family and society that kept girls in emotional chains, Falling Leaves is a work of heartfelt intimacy and a rare authentic portrait of twentieth-century China.”Riveting.A marvel of memory.
4. The Tao of Wing Chun: The History and Principles of China's Most Explosive Martial Art
Author: by John Little
Skyhorse
English
272 pages
Wing Chun is the most popular form of Chinese Kung Fu in the world today, with over four million practitioners. With 48 full-color illustrations, this guide will fascinate and educate anyone interested in the martial arts, from beginner to master. The art as it is presently understood has been handed down from teacher to student for more than three hundred years.
Until now, no one has ever stepped back and taken a critical look at why this art’s techniques are presented and performed the way they are. This book, by Wing Chun master Danny Xuan and martial-arts authority John Little, is the first to decipher these techniques that until now have been encrypted within this art.
Xuan and Little reveal how Wing Chun was designed holistically, based on the laws of physics, human nature, and biomechanics. It was also designed with economy, efficiency, and productivity in mind. Unlike other martial arts, Wing Chun doesn’t focus on making a person larger, more rugged, acrobatic or animal-like; rather, it focuses on making optimal use of one’s own bodily structure and power potential by applying the sciences of biomechanics and physics.
5. Defying the Dragon: Hong Kong and the World's Largest Dictatorship
Author: by Stephen Vines
Hurst (June 1, 2021)
English
352 pages
Defying the Dragon tells a remarkable story of audacity: of how the people of Hong Kong challenged the PRC’s authority, just as its president reached the height of his powers. Is Xi’s China as unshakeable as it seems? What are its real interests in Hong Kong?
Why are Beijing’s time-honouredmeans of control no longer working there? And where does this leave Hongkongers themselves? Stephen Vines has lived in Hong Kong for over three decades. His book shrewdly unpacks the Hong Kong-China relationship and its wider significance-right up to the astonishing convergence of political turmoil and international crisis with Covid-19 and the 2020-21 crackdown.
Vividly describing the uprising from street level, Vines explains how and why it unfolded, and its global repercussions. Now, the international community is reassessing relations with Beijing, just as Hong Kong’s rebellion and China’s handling of the pandemic have exposed the regime’s weakness.
In acrisis that has become existential all round, what lies ahead for Hong Kong, China and the world?
6. Swimming to Freedom: My Untold Story of Escaping the Cultural Revolution
Author: by Kent Wong
English
320 pages
1419751506
English
308 pages
Price:
$23.28
as of Jul 13, 2021
(6:01 pm)
Winner of over 20 awards including Rubery Award BOOK OF THE YEAR and Writer’s Digest GRAND PRIZEAn Extraordinary Multigenerational SagaA high position bestowed by China’s empress dowager grants power and wealth to the Sun family. For Isabel, growing up in glamorous 1930s and ’40s Shanghai, it is a life of utmost privilege.
But while her scholar father and fashionable mother shelter her from civil war and Japanese occupation, they cannot shield the family forever. When Mao comes to power, eighteen-year-old Isabel journeys to Hong Kong, not realizing that she will make it her home-and that she will never see her father again.
Meanwhile, the family she has left behind struggles to survive, only to have their world shattered by the Cultural Revolution. Isabel returns to Shanghai fifty years later with her daughter, Claire, to confront their family’s past-one they discover is filled with love and betrayal, kidnappers and concubines, glittering pleasure palaces and underworld crime bosses.
8. Asian Godfathers: Money and Power in Hong Kong and Southeast Asia
Author: by Joe Studwell
B008V4621S
September 23, 2008
English
The author of How Asia Works follows the money.Alarming …Enlightening … Joe Studwell should be named chief myth buster for Asian business (Financial Times). Hong Kong and Southeast Asia are home to five hundred million people, yet their economies are dominated by only fifty families whose interests range from banking to real estate, shipping to sugar, gambling to lumber.
At their peak, eight of the world’s two dozen richest men were Southeast Asian, but their names would not be familiar to most regular readers of The Wall Street Journal. A complex mythology surrounds these billionaires, but in Asian Godfathers, Joe Studwell finds that the facts are even more remarkable than the myths.
Studwell has spent fifteen years as a reporter in the region, and he marshals his unprecedented sources to paint intimate and revealing portraits of the men who control Southeast Asia. Studwell also provides us with a rich and deep understanding of the broader historic, economic, and political influences that have shaped Southeast Asia over the past 150 years.
9. The Perfect Dictatorship: China in the 21st Century
Author: by Stein Ringen
Hong Kong University Press
English
208 pages
The Chinese system is like no other known to man, now or in history. This book explains how the system works and where it may be moving. Drawing on Chinese and international sources, on extensive collaboration with Chinese scholars, and on the political science of state analysis, the author concludes that under the new leadership of Xi Jinping, the system of government has been transformed into a new regime radically harder and more ideological than the legacy of Deng Xiaoping.
China is less strong economically and more dictatorial politically than the world has wanted to believe. By analysing the leadership of Xi Jinping, the meaning of socialist market economy’, corruption, the party-state apparatus, the reach of the party, the mechanisms of repression, taxation and public services, and state-society relations, the book broadens the field of China studies, as well as the fields of political economy, comparative politics, development, and welfare state studies.
10. Dragon Ride: True Stories of Adventure, Miracles, and Evangelism from China
Author: by Grace Jacob
XP (June 9, 2017)
English
278 pages
In the 48 true stories in Dragon Ride, the beauty of the Lord is seen through the eyes of Buddhists, atheists, idol-worshippers, Muslims, and an animist as they encounter Jesus. Dragon Ride records the actual conversations Grace had with her Chinese friends, and many of them embraced Christ as the answer to their deepest longings.
From her 29 years living in China, Grace writes about persecution, evading the police, saving lives, helping the homeless and disabled, and she even writes about the murder of a friend. But more importantly, she writes of a God who acts on behalf of His children, of a faith that grew in the crucible of China, and of learning how to effectively share the gospel.
Grace’s stories are raw, personal, and humorous, and she openly shares about her own spiritual struggles and growth.
11. Making Hong Kong China: The Rollback of Human Rights and the Rule of Law (Asia Shorts)
Author: by Michael C. Davis
English
166 pages
1952636132
How can one of the world’s most free-wheeling cities transition from a vibrant global center of culture and finance into a subject of authoritarian control? As Beijing’s anxious interference has grown, the one country, two systems model China promised Hong Kong has slowly drained away in the years since the 1997 handover.
As one country seemed set to gobble up two systems,” the people of Hong Kong riveted the world’s attention in 2019 by defiantly demanding the autonomy, rule of law and basic freedoms they were promised. In 2020, the new National Security Law imposed by Beijing aimed to snuff out such resistance.
Will the Hong Kong so deeply held in the people’s identity and the world’s imagination be lost? Professor Michael Davis, who has taught human rights and constitutional law in this city for over three decades, and has been one of its closest observers, takes us on this constitutional journey.
12. A Modern History of Hong Kong: 1841-1997
Author: by Steve Tsang
English
352 pages
1350137766
This major history of Hong Kong tells the remarkable story of how a cluster of remote fishing villages grew into an icon of capitalism. The story began in 1842 with the founding of the Crown Colony after the First Anglo-Chinese war – the original ‘Opium War’. As premier power in Europe and an expansionist empire, Britain first created in Hong Kong a major naval station and the principal base to open the Celestial Chinese Empire to trade.
Working in parallel with the locals, the British built it up to become a focus for investment in the region and an international centre with global shipping, banking and financial interests. Yet by far the most momentous change in the history of this prosperous, capitalist colony was its return in 1997 to ‘Mother China’, the most powerful Communist state in the world.
13. City on Fire: the fight for Hong Kong
Author: by Antony Dapiran
B07YM45KNB
Scribe (March 16, 2020)
March 16, 2020
One of the World’s most peaceful, orderly communities is suddenly struck by a sustained outbreak of violent radicalism. Police unmask the youths they’ve arrested to find many are children, as young as 10 years old. Behind them are shadowy groups with millions of dollars.
And at every battle are pictures of the world’s most powerful individuals: Xi Jinping and Donald Trump. Hong Kong’s civil unrest was the most reported news story of 2019 yet every salient detail presented was incorrect. There was never a proposed law to deport Hong Kong dissidents to China.
The city’s freedoms had not been removed. No two-million-person march took place. Police killed no one. No trains took arrested students to mainland jails. And agents from a global superpower were intimately involved but it wasn’t China.
15. DK Eyewitness China (Travel Guide)
Author: by DK Eyewitness
DK Eyewitness Travel
English
660 pages
DK Eyewitness Travel Guide: China reveals the magnificence of China’s greatest sights, including in-depth coverage of the Forbidden City and Terracotta Soldiers. The guide provides expert tips for visiting the Great Wall, cruising through the stunning Yangzi Three Gorges, and exploring the ultra-modern cities of Shanghai and Hong Kong.
Explore China’s cultural heritage through richly illustrated features on everything from the Beijing Opera to Confucianism, calligraphy, and the cult of Mao. DK Eyewitness Travel Guide: China includes 3-D cutaway illustrations, floor plans, and reconstructions of the major architectural sights, plus maps of the key cities and towns.
The best places to stay and eat have been provided by resident experts and recommendations on regional specialties will ensure you don’t miss China’s best dishes. Markets and festivals are listed town by town. With hundreds of full-color photographs, hand-drawn illustrations, and custom maps that brighten every page, DK Eyewitness Travel Guide: China shows you this diverse country as no one else can.
