Golden Boy
Memories of a Hong Kong Childhood
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3.8 • 4 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
At seven years old, Martin Booth found himself with all of Hong Kong at his feet. His father was posted there in 1952, and this memoir is his telling of that youth, a time when he had access to the corners of a colony normally closed to a "Gweilo," a "pale fellow" like him.
His experiences were colorful and vast. Befriending rickshaw coolies and local stallholders, he learned Cantonese, sampled delicacies such as boiled water beetles and one-hundred-year-old eggs, and participated in vibrant festivals. He even entered the forbidden Kowloon Walled City, wandered into a secret lair of Triads, and visited an opium den.
From the plink-plonk man with his dancing monkey to the Queen of Kowloon (a crazed tramp who may have been a Romanov), Martin Booth saw it all---but his memoir illustrates the deeper challenges he faced in his warring parents: a broad-minded mother who embraced all things Chinese and a bigoted father who was enraged by his family's interest in "going native."
Martin Booth's compelling memoir, the last book he completed before dying, glows with infectious curiosity and humor and is an intimate representation of the now extinct time and place of his growing up.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this genial, absorbing memoir of life in Hong Kong during his civil servant father's three-year (1952 1955) post there, British poet, novelist and popular historian Booth (Opium; Cannabis; Hiroshima Joe; Industry of Souls; etc.) recreates a time of wonder and recollects Chinese culture as absorbed by a fearless seven-to-nine-year-old boy. Booth makes the newness palpable as he evokes his first experiences with the taste of coconut juice, the glow of phosphorescent plankton and a rocky rickshaw ride. While his conservative father shies away from local culture, impromptu expeditions with his intrepid mother lead to a fortune teller, a leper colony and a Buddhist monastery. With innocence, insouciance and something close to a street urchin's freedom, young Booth soaks it up a monkey ambush, a funeral procession, a typhoon, an opium den in Kowloon's Walled City all the while stuffing himself at dai pai dong (street food stalls), hanging about the squatters' encampment, learning Chinese and spending time with characters he was warned to avoid experiences he drew upon in his later work. No matter that the protagonist is a mere nine-year-old at the memoir's conclusion; this is a pitch-perfect, captivating tale for grownups.
