I thought this was going to be a travel book but it is a pretty uneventful novel about an ex-pat family called the Mullards living in Hong Kong just before the hand over of Hong Kong to China from the UK in 1997. For many UK ex-pats I should imagine there was anxiety and trepidation about the hand over, known in this book as the "Chinese Take-away" because many families had settled in Hong Kong in their own British bubble and had failed to integrate with the culture, and had a wariness of mainland China. The Mullards, Mum Betty an overprotective interfering lady and her son Neville, known as Bunt (named after Baby Bunting) own a stitching and labelling factory in Kowloon Tong, and they have prided themselves on being able to compete with mainland Chinese factories and do not use child labour. Betty Mullard is a character I cannot stand, for all her love and mollycoddling, she controls her son's every move and is a bigot. Bunt is 43, he lives in the shadow of his dead older brother, his Mother insisted he should try to be her two boys. Bunt runs Imperial Stitching and fits in time at local strip clubs and brothels. This world comes crashing down when Mr Hung, a chinese army official makes advances to buy the factory. Bunt wants to cling on to his world but cannot face the harsh reality initially. Mr Hung's gifts and advances turn to threats. Bunt Mullard is forced out and made to leave Hong Kong. It transpires Betty Mullard always wanted to leave Hong Kong and she appears to have orchestrated this in collusion with Mr Hung. I found the book interesting for its descriptions of ex pat life in Hong Kong, and the book is very dark in places. What holds it all together is the unpalatable Betty Mullard, who is the epitomy of everything I hate: bigotry, ignorance and selfishness. Three stars. ( )

present-day Hong Kong, and created a chilling, perfectly paced tale of insularity, coercion, and irrevocable change. Neville "Bunt" Mullard lives a pseudo-British life with his dull-witted, prejudiced, and widowed mother, Betty. A docile, coddled child, Bunt took his father's place at Imperial Stitching, inheriting the business outright when his partner died. Now in his forties, Bunt leads a frightfully routine and sterile existence utterly controlled by his bitter and smothering mother. His only indulgences are chatting up the denizens of the girlie bars that line the secretive streets of Kowloon Tong and having furtive sex with Mei-ping, one of the stitchers. Foolishly satisfied with his lot, he tries to avoid any mention of the "Hand-over," the end of British rule of Hong Kong. Even he, mentally and emotionally swaddled as he is, knows that this is no small matter, nor does he trust the ingratiating but somehow sinister Mr. Hung when he appears out of nowhere, offering to buy Imperial Stitching. Theroux's taut and suspenseful unraveling of Bunt's little world is absolutely riveting, capturing, as it does, the haunting sound of the last nail being pounded into the coffin of the British Empire. ( )

Why do I think that Theroux, in naming his lead character “Bunt”, was one letter away from what he really wanted to call him? And I don’t mean “Dunt”. This novel was Theroux’s take on the handover of Hong Kong to China from the British. Basically, the story was about how we’ve been shagging the colony for years, exploited her citizens, pissed on her culture and wished we’d made it Southend on Sea. Now we were faced with an unsmiling, brutish, military regime who’d tolerate no nonsense or compromise in taking it back and making it their own.
Still, Theroux comes up with enough sarcastic asides and characterisations to keep you amused: “Whoever thought the Chinese were inscrutable had met one Chinaman, but not two”. His disdain for everyone peopling the book shines through and leaves you with the impression that this was a sweet and sour novel, without the sweet. ( )

Paul Theroux's Kowloon Tong (meaning nine-dragon pond, a district in Hong Kong) is a novel of Hong Kong on the verge of the 1997 handover. Written against the historical backdrop of handing a free Chinese city back to a totalitarian Chinese state, Kowloon Tong is far less glittering from the inevitably rip-roaring story for the global media, it is a piece of cobbled (opportunistic, maybe) fiction.
Neville "Bunt" Mullard was born and raised in Hong Kong, went to the posh Queen's College, and inherited the almost-monopolizing Imperial Stitching Company, which manufactured badges sewn on breast pockets of sports-jackets from his late father and his partner Henry Chuck. At 40, Bunt was not married, devoid of friends, frequented bars and brothels, but felt the pressure of his dead brother, dead father, and the late avuncular Chuck hovering near him at work.

A pathetic mama's boy, Bunt lived a life that synchronized with his mother's, so confining and dull. She knew so much (too much) about his life, his daily routine and his where about that he deliberately contrived to create secrets (the topless bar and an affair with an employee Mei-Ping) and manipulated his mother's mood.

As the British prepared to hand over Hong Kong to the Chinese motherland, the much-talked-about upheaval did not concern the Mullards, who lived nonchalantly at the Peak (a rich-and-famous, on-top-of-the-city neighbor which afforded panoramic view of the city and was away from, say, 95% of the colonial population). They executed their social fares with the small band of Brits at the Cricket Club, the English tea ritual at the Hong Kong club, outings to horse races by taxi, and lived as if the city and majority of its inhabitants (meaning the Chinese) didn't exist. The Cantonese was such grating noise that was remotely similar to any human speech. The Chinese food made them retch.

When a Mr. Hung, who spoke perfect English with an American accent, on behalf of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (soon to station in Hong Kong), offered 9 million to purchase the building of Imperial Stitching, the Mullards' world of insouciance was jolted. Through a series of minatory gestures that might have attributed to the missing employee Ah Fu and janitor Woo, for the first time in their life the Mullards learned the truth of the colony's prospect-smiling but threatening and know-it-all Chinese officials behind a system of bribes and disloyalty.

I have to applause to Theroux's keen eye on the geographical and cultural details of Hong Kong that are usually accessible to those who live in the city, the natives. His effort in nailing down the Hong Kong Chinese to the root is admirable and formidable-the inveterate trait to look after family, to not to say the thing that was no the heart, to say "I don't know" when you knew, to not to show feelings and emotion and (this is my favorite) to mob the exit on arrival in any transportation mean as if it was a panicky evacuation under an emergency. That's Hong Kong, in addition to all the incessant noise-the clanking of trams, the beeping of cell phones, and the ubiquitous charivari of Cantonese conversations that sounded like a hair-pulling argument, serenaded the city.

The book also deftly captures Hong Konger's despondency of the uncertain future. For over 100 years, under the British governance, Hong Kong stood as the only Chinese society that lived an ideal never experienced and realized at any time in the history of any Chinese society. The colony, which practiced capitalism, provided a stable home for refugees from turbulent events of Chinese history such as the Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward. Inhabitants of Hong Kong were those who fled the Communists in 1949 and their descendants. Thus in the proximity of 1997, a taut atmosphere hovered over the colony as everyone tried to secure an escape route, which usually manifested in the form of a foreign passport, a green card, a relative in Canada, or a marriage of convenience. Theroux has astutely seen to this political tension in his novel.

What infuriates me about this book and thus makes it a cobbled piece of fiction is the puerile plot. Theroux portrayed the Hong Kong Chinese women as some of the most naïve and gullible and stupidest species of the human. Women were constantly abased, manipulated, used, and sexually abused. As a native of Hong Kong, I could vouch that the chance of an affair between a foreigner and a factory worker is infinitesimal. The affair itself was stuck in a deadlock and the characters that involved in the affair were one-dimensional. Betty Mullard's ruler-ver-subject attitude toward the Hong Kongers was also snobbish and obnoxious. If the Chinese were really so out-of-focus and were like riddles to her, why couldn't she at least try to know the Chinese people? It was true the British were rulers and the Chinese the subjects, but what infuriates me is the arrogance on her part, not knowing she was in Hong Kong, where the majority was the Chinese people.

It occurred to me toward the end that the stitching company and its fate might have served as a symbolism of Hong Kong but I prefer not to give away. The ending was disappointing and ambivalent. It is a cobbled piece of fiction that astutely delves in the significance of the historical backdrop but sacrifices the backbone of the story. Readers will learn more about the culture of Hong Kong but disappoint at the story. ( )

Weak