Club Lunch: Fortune’s Bazaar - The Making of Hong Kong

ook synopsis: Has Hong Kong always been a Chinese city? Was it a model British colony? Or was Hong Kong something else - a Eurasian city with its own distinct history and flavour? These and other questions are the subject of Vaudine England’s Fortune’s Bazaar - The Making of Hong Kong.
This is the product of many years of research - in archives, in attics, and in new interviews with descendants of some of Hong Kong’s very first families for a close-up look at who lubricated the intersections between the many different ethnic, cultural, and trading worlds of early Hong Kong.
The argument is that without the Armenians, Parsis, Jews, Portuguese and the Eurasians of Hong Kong, this place would not have become the throbbing Asian port city it once was. Looking at the complex pasts of diverse people, Hong Kong emerges as a place built out of intense cultural intermingling, becoming a cosmopolitan city open to everyone. So real was this community of people from around the world that it was their sacrifice - of Eurasian soldiers during World War II, of Portuguese, Chinese and other agents behind the lines, of Bohra traders protecting western bankers, Parsi women feeding all comers - that laid the groundwork for postwar Hong Kong. Q&A moderated by FCC First Vice President Jennifer Jett.