TELL ME A STORY: FORTY YEARS NEWSPAPERING IN HONGKONG AND CHINA
Kevin Sinclair, SCMP Book Publishing Ltd, US$25.64
Before journalist Kevin Sinclair finally “wrote 30” a few days before last Christmas, he amassed a body of work that was a testimony to the colourful, if not boisterous life he led covering events in the former British colony that are now part of history books. His autobiography, launched at a book signing event over which he presided, despite being in obvious ill health, is a celebration of a long career filled with lucky breaks and unique characters.
In 1968, the transplanted Wellingtonian arrived in Hongkong onboard the MV Oronsay, finally fulfilling a dream to work in Asia, this opportunity provided by The Star, then one of city’s thriving gaggle of tabloids. Sinclair described his workplace for the next two years as “…a vibrant human stew”, adding that many of his colleagues were “escaping a dubious chapter” from their past. “For some it was women, some horses, some the courts in their various homelands. Others had come seeking adventure, some for the younger sisters of Suzie Wong, or, a very few like me transfixed by the notion of the Chinese revolution.”
What emerges from Sinclair’s salty prose are his gifts as a raconteur and listener. He must have kept piles of his notebooks, otherwise how could details of incidents taking place many years ago be recounted so vividly? Or perhaps, he simply had an elephant’s memory. Either way, he tells it the way he saw it, many times using very refreshing un-PC terms.
And cleverly interspersed with the book’s chapters are summaries of some of the hundred of stories Sinclair wrote – “Horror Bodies Float Down the Pearl River”, “Vietnamese Just Kept Coming”, “Tropical Rainstorm Ellen” – and countless people he interviewed, among them hotelier Adrian Zecha, father-confessor to Chinese refugees Fr Lancelot, writer Austin Coates and industrialist Hari Raghavan.
Even his battle with the Big C, discovered when he was just 33, which left him totally voiceless and with a hole in his throat, was used as an opportunity to study and report on what millions of patients go through. While waiting for procedures, Sinclair would often be tapping away at his laptop. “I soon found there was a lot more to cancer than human cells that had somehow gone berserk. There was also a state of mind. You had to fight the disease mentally as well as relying on the radiation and chemotherapy,” he said.
Be warned, those with an interest in Hongkong or journalism, this book is extremely hard to put down.
Margie T Logarta
