China Cuckoo

By: Mark Kitto

Narrated by: Mark Kitto

China Cuckoo is the charming true story of a witty and eccentric sinophile Englishman and his China tree-change, narrated by the author.

Mark Kitto was the first westerner to return and live in Moganshan, a dilapidated, beautiful Chinese mountain village, since the original foreign residents left in 1949.

In booming millennial Shanghai, Kitto was the creator of the That's city magazine series, the most popular and profitable independent English language publications in China since the North China Daily News, the paper of record of concession-era Shanghai. 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 persuaded his urbane Chinese wife to make Moganshan their permanent home. With their two small children they took 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 uncovered 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.

Funny, touching, and inspiring, China Cuckoo is a rare and intimate portrait of life in rural China through the eyes of one man who has survived house fires, typhoons, corruption, and cultural clashes. It is an illustration of past and present China's relations with foreigners and it describes, in the words of one who has suffered and benefited from both, the risks and rewards of going "China cuckoo".

Mark Kitto has also published That's China, how a British entrepreneur took on the Chinese propaganda machine, the full story of his China publishing career, now available as an audiobook.

Mark Kitto currently lives in the UK where he is an actor, narrator, and editor.

©2009 Mark Kitto (P)2020 Mark Kitto

Great Multi-Faceted View of life in China

A small disclaimer: A Fortune Teller Told Me (Tiziano Terzani) is one of my favorite books, so I'm probably pre-disposed to liking this type of book, and China Cuckoo is in the same vein. It is a bit of travel, adventure, and The Money Pit (Tom Hanks film). But what is most interesting about China Cuckoo, is the layered view of China's history, It is set in the early and mid 2000s in a China that barely exists now, and the author sprinkles in history from the colonial era pre-WWII to set the stage for his discoveries in the mountain village of Moganshan near Shanghai. Reading it now, you can see how China has changed from just 10-15 years ago. 3 eras in 1 book! The real life characters in the book are revealed with candor and empathy, and I appreciated that there was no tone of condescension as you sometimes find in books about Asia. A good read, especially fun on road trips!