Chasing China
How I Went to China in Search of a Fortune and Found a Life
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
An astonishing, cautionary tale of how Westerner Mark Kitto built a successful media empire in China, creating and running 3 magazines, only to have the state take his business, and his livelihood, away.
“I had fought off attacks from jealous rivals and been investigated by every bureau with the slightest connection to publishing, and by many who did not: nine in total. I had paid over 1 million Yuan in fines, and who knows how much more in administration fees to government 'agencies.' I had been accused of being a pimp, a China 'splittist,' a Falun Gong supporter, a pornographer and a spy. My staff had been extradited, my office computers confiscated, and my magazines impounded at the printers. I had got them all back. I had been through eight government publishing partners before China Intercontinental Press, and half a dozen advertising agencies.” —Mark Kitto on his experience as a business owner in China
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this memoir, entrepreneur Kitto describes his complex relationship with modern China, including the spectacular rise and fall of his magazine publishing business and his love affair with Moganshan, a small mountain village outside of Shanghai where he made his home. While he touches on the Chinese government's seizure of his media company in a few rancorous chapters, the business story takes a back seat to his personal journey and discovery of Moganshan, where he sought refuge from the harried pace and summer heat of Shanghai. During the rapid success of his business and through the ensuing legal and business roadblocks he encounters, Moganshan and the dilapidated villa he leases and renovates become a haven for Kitto, his family and his expat friends. Kitto's descriptive prose, although frequently uneven, sometimes self-indulgently therapeutic and marked by a self-conscious struggle to avoid imperialistic tones, shows clear affection for the country and draws the reader into Chinese culture, politics, history, marriage, business interactions and folklore through the lens of his daily life and relationships with the people of Moganshan.
