China Cuckoo: How I Lost A Fortune And Found A Life In China

This new edition of Mark Kitto's modern China classic contains a new chapter about Mark’s adventures in rural China and also discusses his decision – after 15 years - to leave China. China Cuckoo: How I lost a fortune and found a life in China is the charming true story of a witty and eccentric Sinophile Englishman and his Chinese tree-change. Set in Moganshan a dilapidated, beautiful Chinese mountain village, the author, Mark Kitto, a former commodities trader and magazine publisher, is the first westerner to return and live in the village fifty years on. In booming Shanghai, Kitto co-created That’s Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou, the most popular, profitable and independent English language publications since the Daily News. The UK Financial Times described him as a, ‘mini media mogul’. In 2004 he suffered the same fate as the man who built the Daily News. He lost everything to the Communist Party. Rejecting the corporate world, and the glamour of Shanghai, Mark eventually persuades his urbane Chinese wife to make Moganshan their permanent home. With a toddler in tow they take the bold step of moving their lives to the isolated village, taking over an old brothel to start a western style cafe. In the process the author uncovers the history of the mountain retreat; its ‘discovery’ and development by missionaries, its popularity with celebrities, drug dealers (Chinese and foreign), and its decay under the Communist regime. Mark’s story is an illustration of past and present China’s relations with foreigners. It describes, in the words of one who has suffered and benefited from both, the risks and rewards of going ‘China Cuckoo’.