China Cuckoo
CHINA CUCKOO
How I lost a fortune and found a life in China
by Mark Kitto
A world -wide hit, China Cuckoo is the true story of an eccentric Sinophile Englishman and his Chinese tree-change. In booming Shanghai in the 1990s, Mark Kitto hit the big time. As a publisher, he created the most successful English language magazines in China. But on the verge of signing a groundbreaking deal, it all came crashing down. The Communist Party stole his business. Variously accused of being a spy, a pornographer and a terrorist, Mark retreated to Moganshan, a beautiful and isolated mountain village once favoured as a summer retreat by Shanghai’s saints and sinners.
With Monganshan’s rundown European villas and abandoned
tennis courts, the crumbling grandeur of a bygone era, Mark
falls in love with the place. He decides to rent and restore one of
the old houses. But this is not Tuscany or Provence. In a venture
that begins with a drunken banquet for local officials and
continues with house fires, typhoons, gangsters, brothels and the
finer points of making bacon, Mark weaves through village
politics and bureaucratic farce to gain a foothold, livelihood and
respect on the mountain top.
Funny, fascinating and perceptive, China Cuckoo is about getting on with life in the most unlikely
of places. It’s about the healing power of a small community even for an outsider. It is about
rediscovering your passion despite what happens to you. It is, in the words of one who has suffered
and benefited from both, about the risks and rewards of going China Cuckoo.
Biography
Mark Kitto was a Captain in the Welsh Guards before he became a metals
trader in London and then China. He created a unique publishing empire but he
lost it all to the Communist Party. Mark now lives in Moganshan, a village
built by missionaries in the early nineteenth century, with his Chinese wife and
two children. The family runs a successful western-style cafe that is bringing
foreigners back to the mountain retreat for the first time since the Communists
came in 1949.
How I lost a fortune and found a life in China
Murdoch Books
Author: Mark Kitto
ISBN: 9781741966589
RRP: $24.99
