Martin Booth - Gweilo
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Evocative, funny and full of life - a beautifully written and observed childhood memoir of growing up in colonial Hong Kong shortly after World War 2.
Martin Booth died in February 2004, shortly after finishing the book that would be his epitaph - this wonderfully remembered, beautifully told memoir of a childhood lived to the full in a far-flung outpost of the British Empire...
An inquisitive seven-year-old, Martin Booth found himself with the whole of Hong Kong at his feet when his father was posted there in the early 1950s. Unrestricted by parental control and blessed with bright blond hair that signified good luck to the Chinese, he had free access to hidden corners of the colony normally closed to a Gweilo, a pale fellow like him. Befriending rickshaw coolies and local stallholders, he learnt Cantonese, sampled delicacies such as boiled water beetles and one-hundred-year-old eggs, and participated in colourful festivals. He even entered the forbidden Kowloon...
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Martin Booth is internationally known as a writer and biographer. An acclaimed novelist, his The Industry of Souls was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1998. When he was diagnosed with a brain tumour in 2002 he was inspired to delve into his Hong Kong childhood and write Gweilo. He died in February 2004, shortly after completing the manuscript.
Acclaim for Martin Booth's Gweilo:
'A more than worthy legacy to his prolific literary life, but also stands as one of the most original and engaging memoirs of recent years, all the more telling because it is so personal, witty and true' The Times
'Wonderful... it has such pace and power. The theme of good fortune may be ironic in the light of his death, but his memoir is, above all, a celebration of an enviable start in life... The portrait of his parents is particularly fine. There are some great comic moments too' Sunday Telegraph
'Highly evocative... As a sharp-eyed, sensitive child of a vanished Hong Kong, Booth earns his nostalgia. Booth has a grimmer excuse for recalling the past, writing these memoirs for his children before his death from cancer this February. His family are not the only ones who will enjoy the book' Daily Telegraph
'The best autobiographies are written by observers rather than participants, evoking memories and emotions familiar to us all... Gweilo is admirably evocative of the noise and bustle of Hong Kong half a century ago, but none of the characters Booth meets on his wanderings is anything like as interesting as his increasingly embattled parents... One longs to learn what happened next; but, alas, we never will' Sunday Times
'His finest work. Full of local colour and packed with incident' Evening Standard 'Books of the Year'
'Booth must rank as a giant of modern English letters... it is alive with delight in the new... Sadly there will be no sequel. So this sunny, luminous account of a very special time and place will have to serve as an epitaph... ensuring that he will remain forever young' Time magazine
'Full of colour and anecdote, wit and originality, his tale of the young "gweilo" (pale fellow) loose in an exotic motley of rickshaw coolies, street magicians, Triads, drunken expats and others is crafted with deftness and aplomb. My type of leisure reading off-beat and polished' Good Book Guide
www.booksattransworld.co.uk
Also by Martin Booth
NON-FICTION
CARPET SAHIB: A Life of Jim Corbett
THE TRIADS
RHINO ROAD: The Natural History and Conservation of the African Rhino
THE DRAGON AND THE PEARL: A HONG KONG NOTEBOOK
OPIUM: A HISTORY
THE DOCTOR, THE DETECTIVE AND ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE:
A Biography of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
THE DRAGON SYNDICATES
A MAGICK LIFE: A Biography of Aleister Crowley
CANNABIS: A HISTORY
FICTION
HIROSHIMA JOE
THE JADE PAVILION
BLACK CHAMELEON
DREAMING OF SAMARKAND
A VERY PRIVATE GENTLEMAN
THE HUMBLE DISCIPLE
THE IRON TREE
TOYS OF GLASS
ADRIFT IN THE OCEANS OF MERCY
THE INDUSTRY OF SOULS
ISLANDS OF SILENCE
CHILDREN'S FICTION
WAR DOG
MUSIC ON THE BAMBOO RADIO
PANTHER
PoW
DR ILLUMINATUS
SOUL STEALER
This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
ISBN 9781409084563
Version 1.0
www.randomhouse.co.uk
GWEILO
A BANTAM BOOK
ISBN: 9781409084563
Version 1.0
Originally published in Great Britain by Doubleday,
a division of Transworld Publishers
PRINTING HISTORY
Doubleday edition published 2004
Bantam edition published 2005
9 10 8
Copyright Martin Booth 2004
The right of Martin Booth to be identified as the author of this work
has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Condition of Sale
This electronic book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Typeset in 12/131/2pt Granjon by
Kestrel Data, Exeter, Devon.
Bantam Books are published by Transworld Publishers,
6163 Uxbridge Road, London W5 5SA,
a division of The Random House Group Ltd.
Addresses for companies within The Random House Group Limited
can be found at:
www.randomhouse.co.uk/offices.htm
for Helen, Alex and Emma, with love
and
in memory of my mother, Joyce, a true
China Hand
The colophon 
used in this book is of a dragon riding the waves. It dates to the pre-Christian Han dynasty and is thought to suggest that the legends of dragons were based upon saltwater crocodiles then extant in South China but now long extinct.
Gweilo Chinese slang for a European male translates literally as ghost (or pale) fellow, but implies a ghost or devil. Once a derogatory or vulgar term, referring to a European's pale skin, it is now a generic expression devoid of denigration. The feminine is gweipor.
It had never been my intention to write an autobiography. To do so smacked of arrogance: it was not as if I were a rock star, an explorer, a footballer or a member of the miscreant aristocracy. It is true that I have had an interesting and remarkably lucky life, but that is far from unique and I never thought to document it. I have never kept a diary, except when travelling, but I do have a very retentive memory, all the more so for its being permanently exercised by my being a writer.
Then, in October 2002, I was diagnosed with the nastiest type of brain tumour around. A craniotomy did little but confirm I was suffering from a curiously named cancer known as a glioblastoma multiforma grade IV. It was incurable, essentially inoperable and immune to chemotherapy. Whilst I was convalescing, with a metal plate and half a dozen screws in my head, and most of the cancer still in situ, my two children both in their twenties asked me to tell them about my early life.
Having tried, without even a smidgen of success, to persuade my father to do the same for me, and tell me about our forebears he went to his grave in adamant silence on the matter and I had never thought to ask my mother, who had died suddenly and at a comparatively young age seven years earlier I decided I would tackle the task of writing about my childhood, which was spent in Hong Kong.
Once I had set out upon the task, the past began to unfold perhaps it is better to say unravel before me. I did have some assistance in the form of a scrapbook and several photograph albums my mother had compiled, yet these did not so much prompt as confirm certain memories, flesh out anecdotes that have spun in my mind for years, rekindle lost names and put faces to them.
If the truth be told, I have never really left Hong Kong, its streets and hillsides, wooded valleys, myriad islands and deserted shores with which I was closely acquainted as a curious, sometimes devious, not unadventurous and streetwise seven-year-old. My life there has been forever repeating itself in the recesses of my mind, like films in wartime cartoon cinemas, showing over and over again as if on an endless loop.
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