Escape from Hong Kong
Escape from Hong Kong

Author: Tim Luard

Publisher: Hong Kong University Press

Published: 2011-12-01

Total Pages: 385

ISBN-13: 9888083767

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On 25 December 1941, the day of Hong Kong's surrender to the Japanese, Admiral Chan Chak—the Chinese government's chief agent in Hong Kong—and more than 60 Chinese and British intelligence, naval and marine personnel made a dramatic escape from the invading army. They travelled on five small motor torpedo boats—all that remained of the Royal Navy in Hong Kong—across Mirs Bay, landing at a beach near Nanao. Then, guided by guerrillas and villagers, they walked for four days through enemy lines to Huizhou, before flying to Chongqing or travelling by land to Burma. The breakout laid the foundations of an escape trail jointly used by the British Army Aid Group and the East River Column for the rest of the war. Chan Chak, the celebrated "one-legged admiral", became Mayor of Canton after the war and was knighted by the British for his services to the Allied cause. His comrade in the escape, David MacDougall, became head of the civil administration of Hong Kong in 1945. This gripping narrative account of the escape draws on a wealth of primary sources in both English and Chinese and sheds new light on the role played by the Chinese in the defence of Hong Kong, on the diplomacy behind the escape, and on the guerillas who carried the Admiral in a sedan chair as they led his party over the rivers and mountains of enemy-occupied China. Escape from Hong Kong will appeal not just to military historians and those with a special interest in Hong Kong and China but also to anyone who appreciates a good old-fashioned adventure story.

Swimming to Freedom
Swimming to Freedom

Author: Kent Wong

Publisher: Abrams

Published: 2021-04-27

Total Pages: 314

ISBN-13: 1647001862

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When Kent Wong was a young boy, his father, a patriotic Chinese official in the customs office in Hong Kong, joined an insurrection at work and returned with the family to the newly established People’s Republic of China. Hailed as heroes, they settled in the southern city of Canton. But Mao’s China was dangerous and unstable, with landlords executed en-masse and millions dying of starvation during the Great Leap Forward.

Stranger In My Heart
Stranger In My Heart

Author: Mary Monro

Publisher: Unbound Publishing

Published: 2018-06-09

Total Pages: 275

ISBN-13: 1911586696

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Stranger In My Heart is about the search for understanding oneself, answering the question “Who am I?” by seeking to understand the currents that sweep down the generations, eddy through one’s own persona and continue on – palpable but often unrecognised. My father fought at the Battle of Hong Kong in December 1941, was taken prisoner by the Japanese and then escaped in February 1942, making his way across 1200 miles of inhospitable country to reach China’s wartime capital at Chongqing. Seventy years later I retraced his steps in an effort to understand a man who had died when I was 18, leaving a lot of unanswered questions behind. My book is the quest that I undertook to explore my father’s life, in the context of the Pacific War and our relationship with China. A picture of a man of the greatest generation slowly unfolds, a leader, a 20th Century Great, but a distant father. As I delve into his story and research the unfamiliar territory of China in the Second World War, the mission to get to know the stranger I called ‘Dad’ resolves into a mission to understand how my own character was formed. As I travel across China, the traits I received from my father gradually emerge from their camouflage. The strands of the story are woven together in a flowing triple helix, with biography, travelogue and memoir punctuated with musings on context and meaning.

Escape from the Japanese
Escape from the Japanese

Author: Ralph Burton Goodwin

Publisher: Frontline Books

Published: 2015-11-30

Total Pages: 180

ISBN-13: 1848329318

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Trapped in the depths of Japanese-held territory, it was rare for Allied prisoners of war to attempt escape. There was little chance of making contact with anti-guerrilla or underground organisations and no possibility of Europeans blending in with the local Asian populations. Failure, and recapture, meant execution. This was what Lieutenant Commander R.B. Goodwin faced when he decided to escape from the Shamsuipo PoW Camp in Kowloon, Hong Kong in July 1944 after three years of internment.With no maps and no knowledge of the country or the language, Lieutenant Commander Goodwin set out across enemy territory and war-torn China. Because of the colour of his skin he had to travel during the hours of darkness for much of what was an 870-mile journey to reach British India. Few of his fellow prisoners gave him any chance of succeeding, yet, little more than three months later, he was being transported to the safety of Calcutta. For his daring and determination Lieutenant Commander Goodwin was awarded the Order of the British Empire.

No Wall Too High
No Wall Too High

Author: Xu Hongci

Publisher: Random House

Published: 2017-02-02

Total Pages: 391

ISBN-13: 1473528224

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‘One of the greatest escape stories I’ve ever read’ Mail on Sunday An ordinary man’s extraordinary escape from Mao’s brutal labour camps Xu Hongci was an ordinary medical student when he was incarcerated under Mao’s regime and forced to spend years of his youth in China’s most brutal labour camps. Three times he tried to escape. And three times he failed. But, determined, he eventually broke free, travelling the length of China, across the Gobi desert, and into Mongolia. It was one of the greatest prison breaks of all time, during one of the worst totalitarian tragedies of the 20th Century. This is the extraordinary memoir of his unrelenting struggle to retain dignity, integrity and freedom; but also the untold story of what life was like for ordinary people trapped in the chaos of the Cultural Revolution.

Escape from Red China
Escape from Red China

Author: Robert Loh

Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing

Published: 2017-07-31

Total Pages: 477

ISBN-13: 1787207633

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The experiences and attitudes of a man who lived under Chinese Communism, rising to a position of importance before his decision to flee to the West, whose story describes much of life and society under Maoism. Robert Loh is the first educated Chinese to give a view from the inside of life in Red China. Son of a well-to-do family who was sent to study political science in the United States during the period when the authority of the Nationalist Government was disintegrating, Loh chose to return to Shanghai to contribute what he could toward reshaping China into a major world power. Robert Loh is at pains to make clear that he could not have survived, and indeed lived a relatively privileged life in communist China without giving in to much that he hated and despised.

How China Escaped the Poverty Trap
How China Escaped the Poverty Trap

Author: Yuen Yuen Ang

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2016-09-06

Total Pages: 345

ISBN-13: 1501706403

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WINNER OF THE 2017 PETER KATZENSTEIN BOOK PRIZE "BEST OF BOOKS IN 2017" BY FOREIGN AFFAIRS WINNER OF THE 2018 VIVIAN ZELIZER PRIZE BEST BOOK AWARD IN ECONOMIC SOCIOLOGY "How China Escaped the Poverty Trap truly offers game-changing ideas for the analysis and implementation of socio-economic development and should have a major impact across many social sciences." ― Zelizer Best Book in Economic Sociology Prize Committee Acclaimed as "game changing" and "field shifting," How China Escaped the Poverty Trap advances a new paradigm in the political economy of development and sheds new light on China's rise. How can poor and weak societies escape poverty traps? Political economists have traditionally offered three answers: "stimulate growth first," "build good institutions first," or "some fortunate nations inherited good institutions that led to growth." Yuen Yuen Ang rejects all three schools of thought and their underlying assumptions: linear causation, a mechanistic worldview, and historical determinism. Instead, she launches a new paradigm grounded in complex adaptive systems, which embraces the reality of interdependence and humanity's capacity to innovate. Combining this original lens with more than 400 interviews with Chinese bureaucrats and entrepreneurs, Ang systematically reenacts the complex process that turned China from a communist backwater into a global juggernaut in just 35 years. Contrary to popular misconceptions, she shows that what drove China's great transformation was not centralized authoritarian control, but "directed improvisation"—top-down directions from Beijing paired with bottom-up improvisation among local officials. Her analysis reveals two broad lessons on development. First, transformative change requires an adaptive governing system that empowers ground-level actors to create new solutions for evolving problems. Second, the first step out of the poverty trap is to "use what you have"—harnessing existing resources to kick-start new markets, even if that means defying first-world norms. Bold and meticulously researched, How China Escaped the Poverty Trap opens up a whole new avenue of thinking for scholars, practitioners, and anyone seeking to build adaptive systems.

Last Boat Out of Shanghai
Last Boat Out of Shanghai

Author: Helen Zia

Publisher:

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 545

ISBN-13: 034552232X

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"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 Revolution--a precursor to the struggles faced by emigrants today. 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, the last generation to fully recall this massive exodus have opened the story 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. From these moving accounts, Zia weaves the story of four young Shanghai residents who wrestled with the decision to abandon everything for an uncertain life as refugees in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the U.S. Young Benny, who as a teenager became the unwilling heir to his father's dark wartime legacy, must choose between escaping Hong Kong or navigating the intricacies of a newly Communist China. The resolute Annuo, forced to flee her home with her father, a defeated Nationalist official, becomes an unwelcome young exile in Taiwan. The financially strapped Ho fights deportation in order to continue his studies in the U.S. while his family struggles at home. And Bing, given away by her poor parents, faces the prospect of a new life among strangers in America"--

Escape from Paradise
Escape from Paradise

Author: John Harding

Publisher: John Harding

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 478

ISBN-13: 0971092907

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Subject: Autobiography. Escape from Paradise is a contemporary and true woman?s story set in Singapore, Brunei, Australia, England, and the United States. It involves Singapore?s famous Tiger Balm family, and a wealthy and mysterious family from Brunei?and the link between them, a young Singaporean woman, May Chu Lee. From its first paragraph, the book draws the reader into the ambiance of a cosmopolitan Asia never touched upon by any other book ?