Full disclosure: I kinda, sorta have a (broadly-defined) passing acquaintance with Mark Kitto. Not enough to say we're friends - we're of different generations, in age and in 'China entrepreneur' seniority as well. Also, there are 'spoilers' in this piece, because I'm presuming that non-fiction can't be spoiled in the same way that fiction can.
It's an interesting feeling, reading the story of a man whose experiences paved the way for your own China venture. I picked up a copy of China Cuckoo by Mark Kitto because I recognised his name. From 2004-2006 I ran a website-slash-print magazine that was a smaller-scale version of Time Out in a second-tier Chinese city (orders of magnitude smaller - I was a staff of one with one part-time designer and one part-time ad sales rep). I've spent far too many hours of my time worrying about it and recounting its ups and downs since 2004, so I won't share anything here, but let's just say that Mark Kitto blazed the trail for all of us and he paid the price for his vision and skill.
Doing business in China, especially if it's a foreign-run business working on a fairly new product - in this case, expatriate-focused English language city magazines - you learn that identifying then following the rules is the surest way of never getting anywhere. In China you 'do' first and deal with the legalities later, especially if it's something relatively unusual or untried. Mark Kitto did just that: he built a media empire and lost it all when the Chinese government decided his runaway - and later sustained - success should be theirs. They tried everything to oust him, and finally succeeded by spreading the rumour that he was a Xinjiang separatist sympathiser and therefore a potential terrorist. His business partners betrayed him to save their own skin and he was locked out of his business, just like that.
(I was in China when it went so badly wrong for Mark and we were all talking about it. I remember feeling rather worried shit-scared.)
But this isn't a tale of woe. Many books about business in China are either of the 'You'll get rich with one billion customers - invest now' or 'Don't bother, you'll get raped' variety*. Mark managed to see beyond what I would have found completely hopeless and build a new, non-publishing-related life in a mountain village, Moganshan, near Hangzhou (modern-day photos). Now he runs a small coffeeshop** and lives there very happily with his wife and children.
This story is as much Mark's memoir as it is an ode to this lesser-known piece of paradise (except when the typhoon season hits). The bulk of the book describes - to horrific comic effect, especially if you've spent any time working in China - the various travails he's had to suffer to 'live the dream', as it were.
Mark's also done his homework, although it's only later on in the book that he tells the story of Moganshan. He's managed to get his hands on primary sources of information and recounts conversations he's had with current and former Moganshan residents (both in and out of China) who have helped to piece together what may be the best historical account we'll ever have about the place.
Moganshan's quasi-colonial history has obvious parallels with Mark's experiences in China - Moganshan was once a thriving holiday community made up of foreign missionaries and their families, rich Chinese, and any other foreigner who managed to buy a piece of land there. The locals who lived on the mountain made their living working for these seasonal tenants. Then the Communist revolution happened, all the property was seized, and the foreigners were kicked out of China.
It was only half a century later that another foreigner decided to make the place his home and open the first 'Western' coffeeshop on Moganshan. And now foreigners are re-discovering this mountain retreat and all it has to offer, bringing much-needed tourism revenue to the local Administration Bureau.
Mark's blazing a trail again. How does he manage to do it?!
This is not a house on Moganshan, it's is a colonial-era house on Gulangyu, an island that was an Opium War concession in Southern China. This is just to give you an idea of what types of houses may have been built on Moganshan.
Other recommended reading:
* Quite coincidentally, Canongate is publishing Peter Hessler's Country Driving next year. I refused to drive in China - being a passenger was harrowing enough.
** I am extremely keen to try the bacon he cures himself - if I ever go back to China I am definitely going to Moganshan.
