{"product_id":"9789887554660","title":"Searching for Billie: A Journalist's Quest to Understand His Mother's Past Leads Him to Discover a Vanished China","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIan Gill's first visit to Hong Kong takes an unexpected turn when he meets his Chinese mother Billie's friends, colleagues and fellow ex-prisoners of war, lifting the veil on a tumultuous past in Shanghai and Hong Kong. He moves to Asia and unravels her intriguing journey: from controversial adoption by an English postmaster in Changsha to popular radio broadcaster in wartime Shanghai, from tragedy and a doomed romance in a Japanese internment camp to being decorated by Queen Elizabeth II for services to the United Nations. He discovers a great-grandmother in a determined English farm girl who ends up owning a well-known hotel on the China coast in the 1870s – and he finally meets his father for the first time on a Canadian island in 1985. The backdrop for this fascinating family story is China's turbulent century between the Anglo-Chinese wars and the advent of communism.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Simon \u0026 Schuster","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51936318718183,"sku":"China Studies","price":17.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0724\/3680\/9959\/files\/71n-N-jCTIL._SL1500.jpg?v=1774972581","url":"https:\/\/jfbooks.org\/products\/9789887554660","provider":"JF Books | 季風書園","version":"1.0","type":"link"}