Searching for Billie: A Journalist's Quest to Understand His Mother's Past Leads Him to Discover a Vanished China [9789887554660]

Overview

Ian Gill's first visit to Hong Kong takes an unexpected turn when he meets his Chinese mother Billie's friends, colleagues and fellow ex-prisoners of war, lifting the veil on a tumultuous past in Shanghai and Hong Kong. He moves to Asia and unravels her intriguing journey: from controversial adoption by an English postmaster in Changsha to popular radio broadcaster in wartime Shanghai, from tragedy and a doomed romance in a Japanese internment camp to being decorated by Queen Elizabeth II for services to the United Nations. He discovers a great-grandmother in a determined English farm girl who ends up owning a well-known hotel on the China coast in the 1870s – and he finally meets his father for the first time on a Canadian island in 1985. The backdrop for this fascinating family story is China's turbulent century between the Anglo-Chinese wars and the advent of communism.

The book, Searching for Billie: A Journalist's Quest to Understand His Mother's Past Leads Him to Discover a Vanished China [Bulk, Wholesale, Quantity] ISBN#9789887554660 in Paperback by Ian Gill may be ordered in bulk quantities. Minimum starts at 25 copies. Availability based on publisher status and quantity being ordered.