Jessica Bellas records the most humorous moments of her first thirty months living as an expatriate in Hong Kong, from the media circus resulting from the dramatic rescue of her dog by the Hong Kong Fire Services Department to out-drinking Communist party officials in China to dodging confetti cannons. She also examines more poignant issues such as discrimination, racism and culture shock.
Maotai, Mooncakes & Monks is a memoir, culture shock guide, travelogue, political commentary and adventure rolled into one.
Foreword by Nury Vittachi - founding editor of the Asia Literary Review (see below)
Purchase your autographed copy here. Enter quantity.
Foreword
A Broad Abroad
Ditch the expert guides. Sometimes the most telling pieces of word-painting are those done by new arrivals.
While there are numerous specialist books telling us everything we might want to know about Hong Kong (and plenty of facts we don't really need to know), this is a worthy example of the opposite. It records the thoughts of a cheerfully open-minded visitor who arrives knowing almost nothing about the place and learns to adjust to life in Hong Kong “on the job”.
The result is a fresh, candid view of a community that turns out to be
a more refreshing read than the views of the usual over-learned insiders.
Jessica Bellas, who admits to being a loud, wide-eyed American “with the personality of a junkyard dog”, arrived in the glittering city on the southern coast of mainland China in 2006. Like most visitors, she was entranced by the energy of the buzzing, dynamic, lively society - and baffled by many of its conventions.
She also spent time in Hong Kong-related factories across the border in Mainland China, and gradually came to understand the complex relationship between these David and Goliath cousins.
From menus that offer “fatty intestines” to T-shirts emblazoned with
“Baby Drink Beer”, nothing misses her pen. And her adoptive community soon learned about her, too, as the Chinese tabloid press discovered her and her neighbors for some gleeful write-ups about the wackiness of foreigners.
But she is saved from the sins of political incorrectness and triviality by her unmistakable affection for her community, the sincerity of her efforts to understand her neighbors and her willingness to get into trouble to learn about her new friends.
Soon after her arrival, Jessica started writing a series of emails to tell her friends and family on the other side of the world what life here was like. The list of people who became hooked on her dispatches grew to several hundred and it became obvious that the writings should be preserved in a book.
But while Jessica makes no claim to be any sort of expert on Chinese culture, her access to information was bolstered by one remarkable skill she had that won her enormous respect from officials, factory bosses and academics alike: she could out-drink most of the men at social occasions, even when the drink being served was the infamously powerful Maotai rice liquor.
So I hope you'll enjoy the insights to our community that this welcome visitor offers. What better way to invite you to begin than with the word Gambei - cheers!
Nury Vittachi
Hong Kong, 2009
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