City on Fire: A Novel of Hong Kong with Simon Elegant - New Books Network

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[00:00]
Facebook Ad Narrator
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[00:30]
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[00:37]
John Ross
Stop.
[00:38]
Simon Elegant
This is Simplisafe. Police are on the way.
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Simon Elegant
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[01:09]
John Ross
You're listening to the Books on Asia podcast. I'm John Ross and today for the very first time, we're going to Hong Kong. Our guest is Simon Elegant. His third novel is called City on Fire. Welcome, Simon.
[01:25]
Simon Elegant
Thank you very much. It's an honor to be on.
[01:28]
John Ross
I wouldn't go that far. Have you been drinking?
[01:32]
Simon Elegant
It's only 11am well, I'm flying to New York tonight, so I'm probably entitled to a beer, but. No, actually, maybe it's something in the tea.
[01:40]
John Ross
Okay. Elegant. An unusual surname. Memorable.
[01:45]
Simon Elegant
The name. It's a word that's cognate across all European languages, including Russian and German and the Romance languages. So it was originally E, L, L, a K, A N, T, but means the same thing. And they were a Jewish family running away from pogroms in the 1890s in Poland, Ukraine, actually Belarus, around there. And. Yeah. And when they got to Ellis island, basically the guy said, I don't know how to spell this foreign name. I'm just putting you guys down as elegant so that it has been since 1904.
[02:13]
John Ross
Okay, excellent. Yeah. So elegant. Yeah. When I saw your, your name, I thought, oh, Robert Elegant. Your dad. His novel, Manchu. I think it's the first historical book, the first novel I read about China, the transition of the Ming and Qing dynasties. Yeah.
[02:30]
Simon Elegant
Well, I can tell you an obscure fact which will may or may not delight you, which is the hero of that. Who's a guy called Francis Arrowsmith, who's completely feckless and never gets down to any hard work. Was based on.
[02:42]
John Ross
Yeah.
[02:43]
Simon Elegant
Yours truly. A reflection of my. Of our father son relationship at the time. This is told me by my dad. So, you know.
[02:51]
John Ross
Well, he's a fantastic character. What a wonderful name too. Arrow Smith, is it?
[02:56]
Simon Elegant
Yeah. Arrowsmith. Yeah. It's a real name in England, obviously. Like Fletcher. Fletcher means the same thing.
[03:01]
John Ross
A couple of takeaways. As a young man reading that Lucky devil. He gets to have three different wives. He's got a Manchu wife, a Chinese wife. What's the third one? Mongol.
[03:14]
Simon Elegant
You know, that was definitely. This is probably my father's wish fulfilled and not mine. But we won't go into that either.
[03:20]
John Ross
Please. But you know, I learned a lot about the Jesuits at the Beijing court.
[03:28]
Simon Elegant
Right. Which is a great subject. Yeah. As I say, I was actually. My father packed me off to a Jesuit boarding school in Lancashire and he was intrigued with them at the time. And I mean, if you're in Beijing, as I'm sure you've seen, you can. There's a little tiny remnant of the wall Right. On Zheng Ko Manwai Avenue, where. Which has still the astrolabes and the instruments that the Jesuits built there for the court. And that was kind of their inn, as you know. It is a great subject, Charles. All those guys. Yeah. And obviously Ricci as well.
[03:59]
John Ross
Wonderful. The Books on Asia podcast has a Japan focus. And this is our very first time covering Hong Kong. Listeners might not know that much about it. So we need to go back to the first Opium War.
[04:13]
Simon Elegant
Sure.
[04:14]
John Ross
And no surprise there, the British win, they get Hong Kong, that's what, 1842, the Second Opium War. They get Kowloon on the mainland. That's about 1860. And then the new territories are leased in about 1898. So it's a 99 year lease and that expires in 1997.
[04:39]
Simon Elegant
Exactly.
[04:40]
John Ross
But they don't just get back that leased part, they get back the whole lot.
[04:44]
Facebook Ad Narrator
Yeah.
[04:45]
Simon Elegant
Well, it would have been kind of impractical otherwise, but. Yeah. And obviously China was not the weak man of Asia or the weak man of the world that it was at that time. When the British first approached the Qing dynasty, it was the Qianlong Emperor. And he basically told them to go fly a kite when they. He asked them what they could possibly bring him. And quite rightly, he said, you don't have anything. And that's why they introduced opium was because there literally was nothing that China wanted to buy from the west at the time. So the only thing that they could do is become drug smugglers, which worked.
[05:13]
John Ross
Hey, you're underselling England. They had woollen sweaters. All right.
[05:18]
Simon Elegant
Exactly. Yeah. At any rate, so they did get Hong Kong. And it became honestly one of the most extraordinary stories of. Of a people drag them up. Not many people. And one of the things that drove Hong Kong was basically people running away from chaos in China, beginning from even as early as the Taiping Rebellion, right in the 1860s, all the way through to the Cultural Revolution. The great. Greatly before the Cultural Revolution and so on. So that 70% or more of people in Hong Kong were either direct immigrants themselves, refugees, or descendants of 70 plus, maybe more.
[05:51]
John Ross
Yes. So you've got all these refugees, just your common folk, but a lot of brilliant people as well. A lot of talented Chinese came to Taiwan, then Hong Kong. It's a little bit like your Eastern European Jews going to the United States.
[06:09]
Simon Elegant
Very much so, yeah.
[06:10]
John Ross
So Hong Kong flourished, but it had this handover looming over it after 1997. It wasn't too bad. The Chinese Communists had a pretty light hand.
[06:21]
Simon Elegant
Yes, they tended to. I think it was. I can't remember whether it was Menkius who said that the art of governing is like frying small fish. You have to have a very light hand. And unusually for the Chinese Communist Party, they actually did because they had some other problems like governing a billion people and so on and so forth. So. But unfortunately, the people of Hong Kong had developed ideas of their own, and they really believed that the idea that there were two. Two separate constitutions, and one of them applied to Hong Kong and the other to Chinese. And that was the agreement the British managed to get. And they took to the streets to demonstrate it in what I think is some of the largest per capita demonstrations ever recorded. If you say there are 5 or 6 million people in Hong Kong, whatever it is, and a million plus came out in the streets upon occasion, that's, you know, 20% of the population. So extraordinarily large demonstrations over and over again. And unfortunately, the final result, which everybody knew would happen, including the protesters themselves. Their motto, which is the epigraph for my book, is if we burn, you burn with us. So they always. And one of the focuses of the book is what drove these protests, especially the younger ones, when they knew that eventually China would step in one way or the other. That's the subject that fascinated me. That's why I decided to write the book in the first case, because I was there in 2019.
[07:35]
John Ross
20. 19, yes. Now, if we go back five years, we have the umbrella movement. Umbrella protest, 2014.
[07:44]
Simon Elegant
Right. I was there for that. So I. I did go and do some reporting there then, and that was fascinating. But it was embryonic for everybody, both the protesters and the police. And it was much more peaceful. They occupied quite extraordinarily the flyover that dominates the middle of town. So it's the equivalent of. I'm not sure what it'd be like, protesters occupying Fifth Avenue in New York for months on end. They did that in Hong Kong. The police were relatively restrained because they were just learning, but that all this changed by the time we got to 2019, and it had become very tribal. It's one of the things I explore in the book is that the feeling that it's us or them. The police really hated the protesters. They called them cockroaches. You know, they dehumanized them by that nickname. And it became. And the protesters, I say, had their own slogan, which was if we burn, you burn with us. A kind of fatalism. But they were amazing kids to talk to. I had given up reporting by then to do other things, from, you know, teaching to establishing a restaurant in Beijing, which is still there, by the way, the Temple Restaurant, if you. You're in Beijing, one of the best restaurants in the city. At any rate, I was doing other things. But when I went down there to do research for this book and spent some time on the ground with the protesters, I realized my impression of Hong Kong, which was very much what people think. Money grubbing, you know, practical minded, artless refugees who don't care a fig for anything except themselves and. And filthy lucre. These kids could not have been farther from that truth. They were some of the most idealistic, to the point of, you know, endangering their own lives. People I've ever met. It was extraordinary. And it made me realize the value of reporting and getting on the ground and talking to people. And I started freelancing again after that and, yeah, really reinspired me to become a reporter again, actually, because it was such an experience.
[09:30]
John Ross
Yes, I recall that if we go back to 2014, things kicked off in Taiwan six months before Hong Kong did. We had a youth movement here called the Sunflower Movement.
[09:44]
Simon Elegant
That's right.
[09:44]
John Ross
And it's mostly young people pushing back against the government, making some deals, economic deals, with China. But it was a surprise because, as you say, we had this idea that the youth were apathetic, kind of lazy, just using their smartphones. But no, they weren't and that was doubly so in Hong Kong where they actually faced real danger. It was a revelation to see the Hong Kong youth do what they did.
[10:11]
Simon Elegant
Indeed. And actually that's, as I say, talking to these kids on the ground. A lot of them obviously they're educated Mandarin. So between my terrible Kattanese and less, slightly less terrible Mandarin it was. I could just chit chat with them on the street when they weren't dodging. I mean, another amazing thing was how well organized they are. I didn't manage it. One of the problems with writing a novel about a situation like that is you get all this great material and then you think, I'd love to include it. But in fact I'm writing an essay for an online magazine called Crime Reads about how how many good reporters became crime novelists. Because you can use such wonderful material. But the essay is really about have to. How you have to cut. You know, it's as Hemingway recommended, that it's more like an iceberg than anything else. 90% should be under the surface and you shouldn't see it, but it should be there. But yeah, I did. I was watching these protests in Nathan Road, which is a main commercial strip in California Kowloon, and watching as the. They had a little factory, the protesters, in which they built petrol bombs, Molotov cocktails. They had a whole assembly line but they didn't want it too close to the actual confrontation line between the police. So they had a long line of protesters who passed these bottles stuffed with, you know, filled with gasoline about almost a kilometer down to the front side. And you could see them ending up there and then tumbling, you know, the smoky Molotov cocktail tumbling through the air over the heads of the police and exploding in the background. But yeah, I did have to leave all that. And it was actually during that protest that I thought, I don't think I can get this into a non fiction book because I knew some friends who are working on non fiction books and I thought that they would approach it in one day. Some very good books. Among the Braves is an excellent one. But I wanted a more, you know, really deeply human emotion. One of the other things that struck me, being in Hong Kong for I think three months at that time was how many people reported that they were divided from their parents, parents or you know, brother to brother, sister to sister, whatever it was. Even a husband and wife were split on the idea because people, some people were very fearful, understandably, that basically the People's Liberation army would move in. They didn't come to that in the end, but effectively it was the same result and that all the freedoms that Hong Kong enjoyed, and they really did at the time compared to China, would be extinguished. And they were.
[12:24]
John Ross
Okay. So I better just explain what the protesters are protesting about. Basically, it's Beijing not living up to the promise of two systems. One country. Hong Kong is losing the ability to choose its own politicians and there's this National Security Law looming. It's going to be introduced and it's just a blanket law. Anything you do we don't like, you're an enemy of the state. It doesn't really need to go through proper judicial channels.
[12:57]
Simon Elegant
Indeed. Just to illustrate the latest last month, I think the latest iteration of the National Security Law, which obviously was passed in the end, although in Beijing, not in Hong Kong, is restaurant compliance. So I'm not entirely sure how they're breaking national security laws, but they're having to comply. It's become beyond. It's sad, but it's also absurdly humorous as many of these states often end up being. They're beyond parody because they parody themselves. Yes. So the real issue all along was the National Security Law and that brought people out. And it's the climax of the book is the day that basically that law was passed.
[13:35]
John Ross
You have this violent background, political drama. And then you have a crime case, a mutilated body is found and Killian tongues. He is sent to investigate.
[13:49]
Simon Elegant
Yes. So he's actually been involved in the protest because what happens to the police was. Even though Hong Kong has one of the biggest police forces per capita in the world. And by the way, one of the best. Another thing that fascinated me, I was living in Hong Kong as a kid when they had all their. They had massive corruption problems and were cleaned up and they became known as Asia's finest because they were deeply not corrupt because of the measures taken then. At any rate, he's been a. Everyone has to serve because as a. Do their duty in cycles as anti. Anti. Demonstrate whatever you want to call them. They could be called riot police. So he's in there and gets involved in an incident in which one of the protesters is badly injured. So he's packed off to. In exile, although it's difficult to be exiled in a small place like that. But he sent away to an ex colonial police station on the border with China. And then a body is discovered, really a torso only in the local dump. And because there's nobody else to do it, he's. He's brought back in to investigate the case.
[14:45]
John Ross
Killian Tong.
[14:46]
Simon Elegant
Killian Tong, yes, the inspector.
[14:48]
John Ross
That's a hybrid name indeed.
[14:51]
Simon Elegant
I mean, Hong Kong, actually, few people know this, but about 7% of Hong Kong is foreigners. Many of you know, I know many people, a lot of Indian families who moved there to trade. But in his case, there were many, many people who came from Britain to join the police force for various reasons. And his father was one of them. A lot of Irish people. So his father was Liam Riordan. Excuse me. So he's got two last names, but the father died and then he was raised by his very Hong Kong, very China, Cantonese, non English speaking stepmother. So he's basically a Hong Kong kid, but happens to have reddish hair and white skin. So he goes by both handles. And obviously that's a bit of an issue in his rise in the police force, which has become fully, I don't want to say cynicized, but Hong Kong guys, and he's a bit of a standout. There still are. There are still leftover white Caucasian officers, but fewer and fewer. They're still judges actually as well, but fewer and fewer. So, yeah, which makes him a bit of an outsider looking in, which obviously is good for a novel, to be honest. And then the other important aspect, I guess, of the story is that his beloved younger sister, Jun, half sister, I guess, who's fully Chinese, is deeply involved in the protests and deeply committed to the protests and more or less cuts him off because she's so angry at him for what's happened during the protests. And her story is very much part of what happens in the book, too.
[16:16]
John Ross
Yeah, it's an excellent choice. And I think it would reflect some real situations of family split.
[16:22]
Simon Elegant
Absolutely. As I was saying, brother to brother, children with parents, often, even sometimes husband and wife. The splits were extraordinary because everyone, fundamentally, no one in Hong Kong was really confused about what the almost certain outcome of all this would be. So there are many, many people who said, don't support the protest because the only thing that can happen is you end up in jail in China or they clamp down and slaughter people in the streets the way they did at Tiananmen, that kind of thing. And they were right, basically. Although luckily, happily for all of us, there was no actual massacre. It was a quiet suppression.
[16:56]
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[17:19]
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[17:26]
John Ross
See terms I can understand both sides. You know, you could have sympathy for the protest is caused but then on the other side the reasonable point that it's not going to work out very well. And also if you're trying to run a business and the streets are clogged up, shut off, you're losing money, your sympathy will evaporate pretty quickly indeed actually.
[17:50]
Simon Elegant
And it's one of the reasons I wanted to pick a policeman as a protagonist. Even though that came as a bit of a shock to some Hong Kong friends because the policeman's in such was so vilified by the end of this they were really hated and their behavior was pretty awful. I mean really awful by the end it was very lucky, no one was killed. But the point was that there are many good, you know, still are probably, I don't know now but that, you know, there were many policemen who thought they were, who were doing what they thought was the right thing to preserve law and order and against a complete chaos. I didn't want to come down too heavily on either side, although I'm pretty sure, well, I know my book will not be distributed in the bookstores of Hong Kong, I can guarantee you that. I do know that already. So I guess they don't think it's a fair portrayal. But I did strive not to make it, you know, the awful police.
[18:35]
John Ross
No, I think policemen, especially honorable policemen in let's say despotic or authoritarian regimes are a very good subject because yeah, you obviously have this tension, this difficulty. And you know what? Policemen mostly are not rounding up human rights people. They're just doing day to day police work. They're exactly finding criminals even in really nasty places. The policeman's basic job is protecting society and getting criminals.
[19:07]
Simon Elegant
And in fact one of my major inspirations this is the series that's set during Soviet Russia that began with Gorky park by Martin Cruz Smith. Fantastic series of books about a policeman called Renko. It's exactly that. In fact, Gorky park begins because he goes to investigate a murder and the KGB come and be basically trample all over the scene, try and take it over from. Try and order him around and he's got A maneuver between them and the state. And it is, I think, a fascinating tension.
[19:35]
John Ross
Robert Harris's Fatherland.
[19:37]
Simon Elegant
That's another, Another good one. Another good one. Absolutely. There are, there are other ones. There's some in China, but there's never, I don't think, been a very good one. I, I don't think they're at the level of Gorky park and Martin Cruz Smith. But it is a great subject because you've got built intention and obviously tension is the stuff of fiction. Right. So
[19:56]
John Ross
you're a policeman, Killian Tong, he's under a cloud, he's wounded a protester and he's sent off to investigate the body. It's suspicious, it suggests something out of the ordinary.
[20:12]
Simon Elegant
Yes. No arms and no head, which obviously is a bit of a giveaway that it probably wasn't natural causes. The origin of the origin of this is I actually got a briefing many years ago when I first came up with the idea of this, from when the Hong Kong police were still giving briefings to reporters. I did apply to get a briefing or you know, to talk to their murder squads, but they didn't even bother to reply to the emails because they're in a different place right now. And this was the case in Hong Kong. When these murders do get committed, getting rid of a body is a real problem because it's such a tightly, you know, 7 million people and it's the most densely populated place in the world. And what this particular fellow in those days had decided killed his girlfriend and chopped her up in the bathtub and then transported. So yes, anyway, this fellow decides, whoever he is, the murderer decides to dump the torso in one of the four big public waste disposal public dumps in Hong Kong.
[21:09]
John Ross
Okay, so this corpse, missing limbs. Okay, My first thought there is revenge or no, they're cutting off tattoos from the limbs that might be identifying features.
[21:26]
Simon Elegant
Right. So no fingerprints, no head. And yes, indeed, those things become subsequently important in the book.
[21:35]
John Ross
But there's also some other missing body parts, shall we say.
[21:39]
Simon Elegant
Yes. Which are discovered, but also without any identifying marks or indeed fingerprints.
[21:46]
John Ross
How can we politely say that?
[21:49]
Simon Elegant
Oh, I see, Clue, word, eunuch, Emasculated, yes, castrated, whatever. I don't know what happens to you after death, but yes. So that is a pretty big clue, obviously that perhaps as you, as you said, revenge might be part of the works.
[22:08]
John Ross
So he's following this trail and as you might expect, it eventually weaves into political matters and high up positions. It's very exciting, very gritty, quite dark, but not too Dark.
[22:27]
Simon Elegant
Well, I hope not too dark. I mean it is a dark subject. Hong Kong is now. I mean it's a fascinating thing to anybody that the city now has effectively been shut, completely shut down. So it's in the same. It's probably even more oppressed in some in terms of freedom of speech and issues, although it's difficult to say than China is now. But the Hong Kong authorities are trying to be, you know, plu rai more Chinese than the Chinese and they're so, they're constraining free speech. There's just nothing and they, there's nothing exists. And as you know, they just put in jail the 78 year old tycoon Jimmy Lai, who decided to stay behind and made a choice, could easily, could have left. I think they were hoping that he would left. So that is quite depressing. But people are making. And 250,000 people, many of them with children, have taken advantage of the opportunity to go to the UK because they didn't want to raise their kids there. But obviously many people don't have the choice and they're trying to make what life they can in the existing society because also, you know, they're from Hong Kong and they love it and they want to stay behind and hope that things change.
[23:31]
John Ross
We here in Taiwan owe the people of Hong Kong a huge amount of gratitude because you showed that the two systems, one country formula which China thought Taiwan might adopt. Yeah, it showed the people here that's not going to work, to put it mildly.
[23:50]
Simon Elegant
Yes.
[23:51]
John Ross
Strengthen their resolve.
[23:53]
Simon Elegant
Yes, yes. Actually Taiwan. I was living in Taiwan until, I don't know, a month, a month ago as the bureau chief for the Washington Post Until Mr. Jeff Bezos decided to. And it's one of my favorite place, honestly, if I didn't live in Malaysia, which I do now because my wife is from here, I would love to live in Taiwan. It's one of my favorite places in the world. And it's also a precious bastion of the fact that Chinese people, as I'm sure you're aware, Sun Yat Sen was the first person who said that the Chinese people weren't mature enough for democracy, giving an excuse to many people down the years to do so. But Taiwan demonstrates that a robust democracy is perfectly suited to Chinese cultures. And in fact they take.
[24:30]
John Ross
Yes, free China. Free China. That has the old Cold War flavor attached to it, but it's. Yeah, it's true. It's a version of China where people are completely free.
[24:41]
Simon Elegant
Well, as you know, one of the key founding expressions of the Communist Party is. Which means that basically New China wouldn't exist without the Communist Party. And that is absolute nonsense, as is clear. Again, absolute nonsense.
[24:54]
John Ross
Yes. Yeah, I still don't accept their government,
[24:59]
Simon Elegant
I can tell that.
[25:02]
John Ross
What are some of your writing influences
[25:05]
Simon Elegant
you mentioned my dad, obviously having a reporter and quite prolific author, as a matter of fact, as a father, was a big influence on me. I saw the life he led, which seemed bloody good fun to me, just. And also getting involved in the most important affairs of the day, and I thought I really wouldn't mind doing that at all. And then separately I write slightly different books from him, but he also managed to write books and you know, in the end I. I am a bookworm and if I had to choose anything, I'd stop writing journalism altogether and just do books. Although as you we observed earlier in an earlier conversation, fewer and fewer people are reading and it's a dwindling thing. But that's fine. I really enjoy crime fiction and as I say, among, among the best is Martin Cruz Smith. There are other ones, like Michael Connelly, also an example reporter for the LA Times, as a matter of fact, who has written another ridiculously prolific fellow who's on like 28 books at this stage. Rather embarrassing if you're applauding fellow like myself, but a brilliant writer and his books about his detective in LA are excellent and really come because he covered the crime beat for the Los Angeles Times. So those were his big inspirations for me and I've always wanted to do one and I'm hoping to do a sequel too, which will be actually entirely set in mainland China. So going to some of the territory we were talking about earlier about, about being a policeman and an authoritarian state and trying to explore what are really complexities about the issue of a, of a policeman. And as I say, I've also just finished a thriller that's separate from these, which is about two Chinese girls who are adopted by American parents, grow up in Wisconsin. And one of them, as often happens in these cases, I have an adopted son myself and I've always been interested in the issue. Often in adopted cases, some of the adoptees get very interested in their roots, go and learn a language, return to the country of their birth, in this case China and other ones want absolutely nothing to do with it whatsoever. And in this case, one of the sisters goes back to China, learns to speak Chinese, becomes fascinated with Chinese cultures, and the other one ends up being a conflict photographer for Reuters and doesn't want to have anything to do with it. And the book kicks off because her sister disappears in Beijing and this lady is called out of an assignment in Afghanistan to go search for her sister. So that will be entirely set and also deals with policemen and the dilemma we mentioned earlier, which is having to try and be a policeman in an authoritarian state.
[27:30]
John Ross
Excellent. Yes. My crime fiction reading is very old fashioned, quite predictable. Raymond Chandler is a God for me.
[27:40]
Simon Elegant
Absolutely. And one of my early reviews said this book was a bit like early Raymond Chandler. I thought, my life is complete. I have nothing more to do be compared to Raymond Chandler. So I was very happy, to put it mildly, to get that comparison.
[27:59]
John Ross
Raymond Chandler, sort of a hybrid American English writer, really. You're a bit like that yourself.
[28:06]
Simon Elegant
I am. Whatever you call it. Mid Atlantic. Yes. I hold both passports. I went to, as I say, for better or worse, went to boarding school in Lancashire and then went to undergraduate in the US and then came back to Britain to do a master's degree. So, yes. Straddling the pond.
[28:22]
John Ross
Mm. Jolly good. Simon. It's traditional to wrap things up with three recommendations. Book recommendations. Books on Asia could be Japan, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong. What have you got for us?
[28:38]
Simon Elegant
My first book is called the Immobile Empire, A spectacular piece of historical writing by a French scholar called Alain Pigefitte. And it is about the first meeting, which I actually mentioned earlier in our conversation about the first meeting. But when Britain sent an envoy called Lord Macartney to meet with the then Qianlong emperor, McCartney refused to do the traditional obeisance, the kowtow, which was knocking her head on the ground nine times. And things went downhill from there. But this is an absolutely everything in China and modern Chinese history grows out of the impact of the astonishment the Chinese felt in encountering the west, because they did think they were the center of the world. This book is a fantastic account from the archives of wonderful.
[29:21]
John Ross
Yes, yes, that's a great book. And that episode, the Macartney expedition to Beijing to the Qianlong Emperor, is a wonderful, wonderful story. And you don't have a black and white story either. There was an effort on both sides to compromise, and they did eventually do sort of like a kneeling on one knee, right?
[29:42]
Simon Elegant
They did indeed.
[29:43]
John Ross
Yeah.
[29:44]
Simon Elegant
He managed to get around to it. And one of the lovely things about this book is just the son of one of the people who happened to be along on the voyage is really the only one who ended up learning to speak any Chinese, which isn't a great precedent. And some of it is top story. It's fantastic. I love that book. I've read it probably three or four times. The second book I'd recommend is much more modern. It's called Apple in China. And the Chinese bits are. It's a beautifully reported book by a Financial Times reporter about how Apple basically managed to make itself completely beholden to the Chinese. How the Chinese were, as often happens, far smarter than the Americans thought. They were out fox them literally because of the company they use called Foxconn at every turn and corner. And Apple could not function now. And really, if the Chinese decided to pull the plug, which they could, because they've copied, they've taken most of the technology and used it to their advantage. It's a beautifully reported book. Just in awe of the reporting by a great FT reporter.
[30:42]
John Ross
Another great choice. I've not read that, but I love that genre of doing business in China because, oh my goodness, it's just levels above living in China as like an English teacher or a missionary or traveling. When you actually have to spend a lot of money and do business in China, you're going to learn very quickly, aren't you?
[31:05]
Simon Elegant
Absolutely.
[31:05]
John Ross
It's going to be a tough education, Simon. It's not fun.
[31:09]
Simon Elegant
It is true. Absolutely. And actually on those lines, one of my former colleagues at the Washington Post wrote a great book about the whole Huawei, you know, a really important company. That's a very good book too. But I'm not going to recommend her book. As my third recommendation, I will be slightly self indulgent and recommend my daughter, Naomi Shue. Elegance, excellent novel, which is called Ginkgo Season. It doesn't actually have much to do with China, but I'm in a completely unprejudiced way. I think it's beautifully written and one of the amazing experiences for me is to see hoary old buggers like myself who read it because they know me, call me up and say I never would have read this book in a million years because I would have considered a quote on, you know, chick lit or some. Because basically they're male and chauvinist and they said it is beautifully written and I loved every minute of it, so. Or the podcast. The audiobook is excellent too.
[32:01]
John Ross
Yeah. What's the name of that? Ginkgo?
[32:04]
Simon Elegant
Ginkgo season. Ginkgo. Like the tree?
[32:06]
John Ross
Yes, yes.
[32:07]
Simon Elegant
The beautiful Japanese tree? As a matter of fact, yes. Originally, yes. That lived for hundreds and hundreds of years, so. And which you get the nut of in your chawanmushi if you're in Japan at all. Yes.
[32:19]
John Ross
And that story is about.
[32:21]
Simon Elegant
That story is a kind of Coming of age love story about a lady who's working at the young woman who's just graduated and is working at a museum in Philadelphia.
[32:30]
John Ross
Excellent. Anyway, Simon, it's been wonderful talking to you.
[32:34]
Simon Elegant
My pleasure. Really, John, I really enjoyed it. And it's also. I don't know why, but I did not. I wasn't that familiar with your podcast and I now have it firmly on my hard rotation list. So thank you for that.
[32:45]
John Ross
I'll be sending you a test in a week.
[32:49]
Simon Elegant
Okay.
[32:50]
John Ross
Yeah. So sorry about the poor connection. I'll clean it up so listeners won't have any idea how. How we struggled, but such as the suffering of the book life. Yes.
[33:01]
Simon Elegant
So where do you live exactly? You don't live in Taipei, right?
[33:04]
John Ross
I live in a small city called Pudzi in Jiayi County.
[33:09]
Ryan Reynolds
Okay.
[33:11]
John Ross
Not really famous for anything. As I've said on this show before, the inventor of instant noodles was born here. A Japanese man.
[33:20]
Simon Elegant
That's. That's pretty famous.
[33:22]
John Ross
Yeah. Before I push the stop button, Simon is bad of me. I should give the name of your novel again. City on Fire and Shame on me. I'm a book publisher and I haven't asked the book publisher's name.
[33:35]
Simon Elegant
The publisher is called Pegasus. It's distributed by Simon and Schuster, so that I hope a few more. But they're an indie publisher in New York. But yet it'll be available both in the UK and Australia and in the US and of course there's an audiobook and a. An ebook for those of you who are. And as I said, unfortunately I'm pretty sure that no booksellers will distribute it in Hong Kong, which is the place that it's about. But that's because the quote unquote. Giovanna. Yes, exactly.
[34:03]
John Ross
Excellent. Okay, bye. Bye.
[34:05]
Simon Elegant
Great. Many thanks, John. Sam.

Summary7 min read

Podcast Summary: "City on Fire: A Novel of Hong Kong with Simon Elegant"
New Books Network — August 1, 2026
Host: John Ross | Guest: Simon Elegant

Episode Overview

In this lively and insightful episode, John Ross interviews author and veteran journalist Simon Elegant about his gripping new novel, City on Fire. Set against the dramatic backdrop of the 2019 Hong Kong protests, the novel weaves a tightly plotted crime story with a nuanced portrayal of political and generational tensions. Elegant draws on his own experiences as a reporter in Hong Kong, exploring what compelled so many young people to risk everything in the face of overwhelming odds. The conversation delves into historical context, the realities of modern Hong Kong, crime fiction influences, and the personal resonance of divided families during times of upheaval.

Key Discussion Points

1. Personal and Literary Background (01:08–05:50)

Simon Elegant’s Name: Simon shares the origins of his surname, “Elegant,” tracing it to Jewish ancestors fleeing Eastern Europe in the late 19th century. (01:44)
- “They were a Jewish family running away from pogroms... When they got to Ellis Island, the guy said, I don't know how to spell this foreign name. I'm just putting you guys down as Elegant. So that it has been since 1904.” – Simon Elegant (01:44)
Family Ties to Writing: Discussion of his father, Robert Elegant, and the influence of his historical novel Manchu. Simon reveals he inspired the “feckless” hero character at his father’s admission. (02:29–02:51)

2. Hong Kong: Historical Foundations (03:58–07:34)

Colonial History Recap: John and Simon outline key events – from the Opium Wars and British acquisition of Hong Kong, Kowloon, and the New Territories, to the 1997 handover. (03:58–04:39)
- “Not many people... One of the things that drove Hong Kong was basically people running away from chaos in China.... 70% or more of people in Hong Kong were either direct immigrants themselves, refugees, or descendants.” – Simon Elegant (05:17)
Comparison to Other Diasporas: John likens Hong Kong’s influx of talent to Eastern European Jews in the US. (05:50–06:08)

3. The Handover and Its Aftermath (06:09–09:30)

Hong Kong’s Changing Fate: Simon describes the pragmatic hands-off approach of the Chinese Communist Party after 1997, until local demands for democracy culminated in massive demonstrations. (06:20)
- Discussion of the "if we burn, you burn with us" protest slogan, which forms the epigraph to Elegant’s novel. (07:02)
- “What drove these protests, especially the younger ones, when they knew that eventually China would step in one way or another? That’s the subject that fascinated me... I was there in 2019.” – Simon Elegant (07:16)

4. Protest Movements and Street Experience (07:34–12:23)

Umbrella Movement vs. 2019 Protests: Simon contrasts the peaceful 2014 protests with the more tribal, violent 2019 events. Speaks about the dehumanizing language used by police (“cockroaches”) and the protesters’ fatalism. (07:44–08:25)
Revelations from the Ground: Simon’s reporting challenged stereotypes of Hong Kong’s youth as materialistic; he found them deeply idealistic and courageous. (08:44)
- “These kids could not have been farther from that truth. They were some of the most idealistic—to the point of endangering their own lives—people I’ve ever met.” – Simon Elegant (09:01)
Societal Divides: Many families (brothers, sisters, spouses) split over support for protests, an element incorporated into Elegant’s fiction. (11:37)

5. National Security Law and Aftermath (12:23–13:34)

Loss of Autonomy: Elegant describes the National Security Law as the “climax of the book,” detailing its sweeping, ambiguous reach and impact on daily life. (12:57)
- “Restaurant compliance. So I’m not entirely sure how they’re breaking national security laws, but they’re having to comply. It’s sad, but it’s also absurdly humorous as many of these states often end up being.” – Simon Elegant (13:14)

6. "City on Fire": Plot and Characters (13:34–16:56)

Protagonist Killian Tong: An inspector with a mixed (Irish and Chinese) background, estranged from his activist half-sister, which mirrors real family divisions in Hong Kong. (13:49–16:15)
- “His father was Liam Riordan... he was raised by his very Hong Kong, very China, Cantonese, non-English speaking stepmother. So he’s basically a Hong Kong kid... which makes him a bit of an outsider looking in, which obviously is good for a novel.” – Simon Elegant (14:51–15:28)
Crime Element: The discovery of a mutilated torso thrusts Killian into a murder investigation that uncovers both social undercurrents and political intrigue. (14:45–21:25)
- “No arms and no head... It probably wasn’t natural causes... in Hong Kong... getting rid of a body is a real problem because it’s such a tightly... densely populated place.” – Simon Elegant (20:12–20:54)

7. Exploring Both Sides – Portrayal of Police (16:56–19:56)

Moral Complexity of Policework: Simon wanted to portray police with empathy amid vilification, drawing on influences like Gorky Park. (17:49, 19:06)
- “I didn’t want to come down too heavily on either side... I did strive not to make it, you know, the awful police.” – Simon Elegant (17:49–18:15)
Tension as Narrative Core: The difficulties of being an “honorable policeman in a despotic or authoritarian regime” serve as fruitful ground for crime fiction. (18:34–19:56)
- “It is a great subject because you’ve got built-in tension, and obviously tension is the stuff of fiction, right?” – Simon Elegant (19:36)

8. City’s Fate, Exile, and Hope (22:27–24:29)

Current Suppression and Emigration: Discussion of Hong Kong’s loss of press freedom, the jailing of activists like Jimmy Lai, and the exodus of residents. (22:27)
- “Hong Kong is now... probably even more oppressed... than China is now. But the Hong Kong authorities are trying to be more Chinese than the Chinese.” – Simon Elegant (22:27–23:31)
Taiwan’s Lesson: Hong Kong’s experience convinced many in Taiwan never to trust Beijing’s “One Country, Two Systems” promises. (23:31–24:29)
- “Taiwan demonstrates that a robust democracy is perfectly suited to Chinese cultures.” – Simon Elegant (24:18)

9. Writing Inspirations and Genre Reflections (25:02–27:39)

Crime Fiction Influences: Elegant credits his father, Martin Cruz Smith (Gorky Park), Michael Connelly, and Raymond Chandler as influences (25:04–27:39)
- “One of my early reviews said this book was a bit like early Raymond Chandler. I thought, my life is complete.” – Simon Elegant (27:39)

10. Book Recommendations (28:21–32:18)

Simon recommends:

The Immobile Empire by Alain Peyrefitte: On the first British embassy to China (28:38–29:20)
Apple in China: A journalistic account of Apple and Foxconn’s entanglement with China (29:43–31:05)
Ginkgo Season by Naomi Shue Elegant (his daughter): A coming-of-age love story set in Philadelphia (31:08–32:18)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

“If we burn, you burn with us. So they always... knew that eventually China would step in... That’s the subject that fascinated me.” – Simon Elegant (07:02)
“These kids were some of the most idealistic — to the point of endangering their own lives — people I’ve ever met. It was extraordinary.” – Simon Elegant (09:01)
“It’s sad, but it’s also absurdly humorous... beyond parody because they parody themselves.” – Simon Elegant on HK's National Security Law (13:14)
“I did strive not to make it, you know, the awful police.” – Simon Elegant (18:15)
“Taiwan demonstrates that a robust democracy is perfectly suited to Chinese cultures.” – Simon Elegant (24:18)
“One of my early reviews said this book was a bit like early Raymond Chandler. I thought, my life is complete.” – Simon Elegant (27:39)
“Ginkgo Season... beautifully written... one of the amazing experiences for me is to see hoary old buggers like myself who read it because they know me, call me up and say I never would have read this book... but I loved every minute of it.” – Simon Elegant (31:08)

Timestamps for Major Segments

Personal/Literary Backstory: 01:08–05:50
History of Hong Kong: 03:58–06:09
Handover & Protest Genesis: 06:09–09:30
2014–2019 Protests: 07:34–12:23
National Security Law and Impact: 12:23–13:34
Novel Overview & Characters: 13:34–16:56, 20:12–21:25
Police Portrayal in Fiction: 16:56–19:56
Hong Kong’s Suppression & Taiwan: 22:27–24:29
Crime Fiction and Influences: 25:02–27:39
Book Recommendations: 28:21–32:18

Tone and Style

The conversation is sharp, witty, and deeply informed, with both speakers balancing humor (often self-deprecating) with genuine candor and empathy about fraught political realities. John Ross provides succinct, sometimes wry, questions and commentary. Simon Elegant responds with infectious enthusiasm, literary sensitivity, and vivid storytelling drawn from both personal and professional worlds.

Conclusion

John Ross’s interview with Simon Elegant serves both as an illuminating exploration of City on Fire and as a primer on Hong Kong’s recent history and its tumultuous, unfinished story. Elegant’s experiences as a journalist infuse the discussion with immediacy and authenticity, while his passion for crime fiction and nuanced moral inquiry make this episode a must-listen (or must-read!) for anyone interested in Asia, political fiction, or the enduring struggles for justice and identity.

Loading summary

Transcript113 lines

[00:00]
Facebook Ad Narrator
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[00:30]
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[00:37]
John Ross
Stop.
[00:38]
Simon Elegant
This is Simplisafe. Police are on the way.
[00:40]
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[00:52]
Simon Elegant
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[01:09]
John Ross
You're listening to the Books on Asia podcast. I'm John Ross and today for the very first time, we're going to Hong Kong. Our guest is Simon Elegant. His third novel is called City on Fire. Welcome, Simon.
[01:25]
Simon Elegant
Thank you very much. It's an honor to be on.
[01:28]
John Ross
I wouldn't go that far. Have you been drinking?
[01:32]
Simon Elegant
It's only 11am well, I'm flying to New York tonight, so I'm probably entitled to a beer, but. No, actually, maybe it's something in the tea.
[01:40]
John Ross
Okay. Elegant. An unusual surname. Memorable.
[01:45]
Simon Elegant
The name. It's a word that's cognate across all European languages, including Russian and German and the Romance languages. So it was originally E, L, L, a K, A N, T, but means the same thing. And they were a Jewish family running away from pogroms in the 1890s in Poland, Ukraine, actually Belarus, around there. And. Yeah. And when they got to Ellis island, basically the guy said, I don't know how to spell this foreign name. I'm just putting you guys down as elegant so that it has been since 1904.
[02:13]
John Ross
Okay, excellent. Yeah. So elegant. Yeah. When I saw your, your name, I thought, oh, Robert Elegant. Your dad. His novel, Manchu. I think it's the first historical book, the first novel I read about China, the transition of the Ming and Qing dynasties. Yeah.
[02:30]
Simon Elegant
Well, I can tell you an obscure fact which will may or may not delight you, which is the hero of that. Who's a guy called Francis Arrowsmith, who's completely feckless and never gets down to any hard work. Was based on.
[02:42]
John Ross
Yeah.
[02:43]
Simon Elegant
Yours truly. A reflection of my. Of our father son relationship at the time. This is told me by my dad. So, you know.
[02:51]
John Ross
Well, he's a fantastic character. What a wonderful name too. Arrow Smith, is it?
[02:56]
Simon Elegant
Yeah. Arrowsmith. Yeah. It's a real name in England, obviously. Like Fletcher. Fletcher means the same thing.
[03:01]
John Ross
A couple of takeaways. As a young man reading that Lucky devil. He gets to have three different wives. He's got a Manchu wife, a Chinese wife. What's the third one? Mongol.
[03:14]
Simon Elegant
You know, that was definitely. This is probably my father's wish fulfilled and not mine. But we won't go into that either.
[03:20]
John Ross
Please. But you know, I learned a lot about the Jesuits at the Beijing court.
[03:28]
Simon Elegant
Right. Which is a great subject. Yeah. As I say, I was actually. My father packed me off to a Jesuit boarding school in Lancashire and he was intrigued with them at the time. And I mean, if you're in Beijing, as I'm sure you've seen, you can. There's a little tiny remnant of the wall Right. On Zheng Ko Manwai Avenue, where. Which has still the astrolabes and the instruments that the Jesuits built there for the court. And that was kind of their inn, as you know. It is a great subject, Charles. All those guys. Yeah. And obviously Ricci as well.
[03:59]
John Ross
Wonderful. The Books on Asia podcast has a Japan focus. And this is our very first time covering Hong Kong. Listeners might not know that much about it. So we need to go back to the first Opium War.
[04:13]
Simon Elegant
Sure.
[04:14]
John Ross
And no surprise there, the British win, they get Hong Kong, that's what, 1842, the Second Opium War. They get Kowloon on the mainland. That's about 1860. And then the new territories are leased in about 1898. So it's a 99 year lease and that expires in 1997.
[04:39]
Simon Elegant
Exactly.
[04:40]
John Ross
But they don't just get back that leased part, they get back the whole lot.
[04:44]
Facebook Ad Narrator
Yeah.
[04:45]
Simon Elegant
Well, it would have been kind of impractical otherwise, but. Yeah. And obviously China was not the weak man of Asia or the weak man of the world that it was at that time. When the British first approached the Qing dynasty, it was the Qianlong Emperor. And he basically told them to go fly a kite when they. He asked them what they could possibly bring him. And quite rightly, he said, you don't have anything. And that's why they introduced opium was because there literally was nothing that China wanted to buy from the west at the time. So the only thing that they could do is become drug smugglers, which worked.
[05:13]
John Ross
Hey, you're underselling England. They had woollen sweaters. All right.
[05:18]
Simon Elegant
Exactly. Yeah. At any rate, so they did get Hong Kong. And it became honestly one of the most extraordinary stories of. Of a people drag them up. Not many people. And one of the things that drove Hong Kong was basically people running away from chaos in China, beginning from even as early as the Taiping Rebellion, right in the 1860s, all the way through to the Cultural Revolution. The great. Greatly before the Cultural Revolution and so on. So that 70% or more of people in Hong Kong were either direct immigrants themselves, refugees, or descendants of 70 plus, maybe more.
[05:51]
John Ross
Yes. So you've got all these refugees, just your common folk, but a lot of brilliant people as well. A lot of talented Chinese came to Taiwan, then Hong Kong. It's a little bit like your Eastern European Jews going to the United States.
[06:09]
Simon Elegant
Very much so, yeah.
[06:10]
John Ross
So Hong Kong flourished, but it had this handover looming over it after 1997. It wasn't too bad. The Chinese Communists had a pretty light hand.
[06:21]
Simon Elegant
Yes, they tended to. I think it was. I can't remember whether it was Menkius who said that the art of governing is like frying small fish. You have to have a very light hand. And unusually for the Chinese Communist Party, they actually did because they had some other problems like governing a billion people and so on and so forth. So. But unfortunately, the people of Hong Kong had developed ideas of their own, and they really believed that the idea that there were two. Two separate constitutions, and one of them applied to Hong Kong and the other to Chinese. And that was the agreement the British managed to get. And they took to the streets to demonstrate it in what I think is some of the largest per capita demonstrations ever recorded. If you say there are 5 or 6 million people in Hong Kong, whatever it is, and a million plus came out in the streets upon occasion, that's, you know, 20% of the population. So extraordinarily large demonstrations over and over again. And unfortunately, the final result, which everybody knew would happen, including the protesters themselves. Their motto, which is the epigraph for my book, is if we burn, you burn with us. So they always. And one of the focuses of the book is what drove these protests, especially the younger ones, when they knew that eventually China would step in one way or the other. That's the subject that fascinated me. That's why I decided to write the book in the first case, because I was there in 2019.
[07:35]
John Ross
20. 19, yes. Now, if we go back five years, we have the umbrella movement. Umbrella protest, 2014.
[07:44]
Simon Elegant
Right. I was there for that. So I. I did go and do some reporting there then, and that was fascinating. But it was embryonic for everybody, both the protesters and the police. And it was much more peaceful. They occupied quite extraordinarily the flyover that dominates the middle of town. So it's the equivalent of. I'm not sure what it'd be like, protesters occupying Fifth Avenue in New York for months on end. They did that in Hong Kong. The police were relatively restrained because they were just learning, but that all this changed by the time we got to 2019, and it had become very tribal. It's one of the things I explore in the book is that the feeling that it's us or them. The police really hated the protesters. They called them cockroaches. You know, they dehumanized them by that nickname. And it became. And the protesters, I say, had their own slogan, which was if we burn, you burn with us. A kind of fatalism. But they were amazing kids to talk to. I had given up reporting by then to do other things, from, you know, teaching to establishing a restaurant in Beijing, which is still there, by the way, the Temple Restaurant, if you. You're in Beijing, one of the best restaurants in the city. At any rate, I was doing other things. But when I went down there to do research for this book and spent some time on the ground with the protesters, I realized my impression of Hong Kong, which was very much what people think. Money grubbing, you know, practical minded, artless refugees who don't care a fig for anything except themselves and. And filthy lucre. These kids could not have been farther from that truth. They were some of the most idealistic, to the point of, you know, endangering their own lives. People I've ever met. It was extraordinary. And it made me realize the value of reporting and getting on the ground and talking to people. And I started freelancing again after that and, yeah, really reinspired me to become a reporter again, actually, because it was such an experience.
[09:30]
John Ross
Yes, I recall that if we go back to 2014, things kicked off in Taiwan six months before Hong Kong did. We had a youth movement here called the Sunflower Movement.
[09:44]
Simon Elegant
That's right.
[09:44]
John Ross
And it's mostly young people pushing back against the government, making some deals, economic deals, with China. But it was a surprise because, as you say, we had this idea that the youth were apathetic, kind of lazy, just using their smartphones. But no, they weren't and that was doubly so in Hong Kong where they actually faced real danger. It was a revelation to see the Hong Kong youth do what they did.
[10:11]
Simon Elegant
Indeed. And actually that's, as I say, talking to these kids on the ground. A lot of them obviously they're educated Mandarin. So between my terrible Kattanese and less, slightly less terrible Mandarin it was. I could just chit chat with them on the street when they weren't dodging. I mean, another amazing thing was how well organized they are. I didn't manage it. One of the problems with writing a novel about a situation like that is you get all this great material and then you think, I'd love to include it. But in fact I'm writing an essay for an online magazine called Crime Reads about how how many good reporters became crime novelists. Because you can use such wonderful material. But the essay is really about have to. How you have to cut. You know, it's as Hemingway recommended, that it's more like an iceberg than anything else. 90% should be under the surface and you shouldn't see it, but it should be there. But yeah, I did. I was watching these protests in Nathan Road, which is a main commercial strip in California Kowloon, and watching as the. They had a little factory, the protesters, in which they built petrol bombs, Molotov cocktails. They had a whole assembly line but they didn't want it too close to the actual confrontation line between the police. So they had a long line of protesters who passed these bottles stuffed with, you know, filled with gasoline about almost a kilometer down to the front side. And you could see them ending up there and then tumbling, you know, the smoky Molotov cocktail tumbling through the air over the heads of the police and exploding in the background. But yeah, I did have to leave all that. And it was actually during that protest that I thought, I don't think I can get this into a non fiction book because I knew some friends who are working on non fiction books and I thought that they would approach it in one day. Some very good books. Among the Braves is an excellent one. But I wanted a more, you know, really deeply human emotion. One of the other things that struck me, being in Hong Kong for I think three months at that time was how many people reported that they were divided from their parents, parents or you know, brother to brother, sister to sister, whatever it was. Even a husband and wife were split on the idea because people, some people were very fearful, understandably, that basically the People's Liberation army would move in. They didn't come to that in the end, but effectively it was the same result and that all the freedoms that Hong Kong enjoyed, and they really did at the time compared to China, would be extinguished. And they were.
[12:24]
John Ross
Okay. So I better just explain what the protesters are protesting about. Basically, it's Beijing not living up to the promise of two systems. One country. Hong Kong is losing the ability to choose its own politicians and there's this National Security Law looming. It's going to be introduced and it's just a blanket law. Anything you do we don't like, you're an enemy of the state. It doesn't really need to go through proper judicial channels.
[12:57]
Simon Elegant
Indeed. Just to illustrate the latest last month, I think the latest iteration of the National Security Law, which obviously was passed in the end, although in Beijing, not in Hong Kong, is restaurant compliance. So I'm not entirely sure how they're breaking national security laws, but they're having to comply. It's become beyond. It's sad, but it's also absurdly humorous as many of these states often end up being. They're beyond parody because they parody themselves. Yes. So the real issue all along was the National Security Law and that brought people out. And it's the climax of the book is the day that basically that law was passed.
[13:35]
John Ross
You have this violent background, political drama. And then you have a crime case, a mutilated body is found and Killian tongues. He is sent to investigate.
[13:49]
Simon Elegant
Yes. So he's actually been involved in the protest because what happens to the police was. Even though Hong Kong has one of the biggest police forces per capita in the world. And by the way, one of the best. Another thing that fascinated me, I was living in Hong Kong as a kid when they had all their. They had massive corruption problems and were cleaned up and they became known as Asia's finest because they were deeply not corrupt because of the measures taken then. At any rate, he's been a. Everyone has to serve because as a. Do their duty in cycles as anti. Anti. Demonstrate whatever you want to call them. They could be called riot police. So he's in there and gets involved in an incident in which one of the protesters is badly injured. So he's packed off to. In exile, although it's difficult to be exiled in a small place like that. But he sent away to an ex colonial police station on the border with China. And then a body is discovered, really a torso only in the local dump. And because there's nobody else to do it, he's. He's brought back in to investigate the case.
[14:45]
John Ross
Killian Tong.
[14:46]
Simon Elegant
Killian Tong, yes, the inspector.
[14:48]
John Ross
That's a hybrid name indeed.
[14:51]
Simon Elegant
I mean, Hong Kong, actually, few people know this, but about 7% of Hong Kong is foreigners. Many of you know, I know many people, a lot of Indian families who moved there to trade. But in his case, there were many, many people who came from Britain to join the police force for various reasons. And his father was one of them. A lot of Irish people. So his father was Liam Riordan. Excuse me. So he's got two last names, but the father died and then he was raised by his very Hong Kong, very China, Cantonese, non English speaking stepmother. So he's basically a Hong Kong kid, but happens to have reddish hair and white skin. So he goes by both handles. And obviously that's a bit of an issue in his rise in the police force, which has become fully, I don't want to say cynicized, but Hong Kong guys, and he's a bit of a standout. There still are. There are still leftover white Caucasian officers, but fewer and fewer. They're still judges actually as well, but fewer and fewer. So, yeah, which makes him a bit of an outsider looking in, which obviously is good for a novel, to be honest. And then the other important aspect, I guess, of the story is that his beloved younger sister, Jun, half sister, I guess, who's fully Chinese, is deeply involved in the protests and deeply committed to the protests and more or less cuts him off because she's so angry at him for what's happened during the protests. And her story is very much part of what happens in the book, too.
[16:16]
John Ross
Yeah, it's an excellent choice. And I think it would reflect some real situations of family split.
[16:22]
Simon Elegant
Absolutely. As I was saying, brother to brother, children with parents, often, even sometimes husband and wife. The splits were extraordinary because everyone, fundamentally, no one in Hong Kong was really confused about what the almost certain outcome of all this would be. So there are many, many people who said, don't support the protest because the only thing that can happen is you end up in jail in China or they clamp down and slaughter people in the streets the way they did at Tiananmen, that kind of thing. And they were right, basically. Although luckily, happily for all of us, there was no actual massacre. It was a quiet suppression.
[16:56]
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[17:19]
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[17:26]
John Ross
See terms I can understand both sides. You know, you could have sympathy for the protest is caused but then on the other side the reasonable point that it's not going to work out very well. And also if you're trying to run a business and the streets are clogged up, shut off, you're losing money, your sympathy will evaporate pretty quickly indeed actually.
[17:50]
Simon Elegant
And it's one of the reasons I wanted to pick a policeman as a protagonist. Even though that came as a bit of a shock to some Hong Kong friends because the policeman's in such was so vilified by the end of this they were really hated and their behavior was pretty awful. I mean really awful by the end it was very lucky, no one was killed. But the point was that there are many good, you know, still are probably, I don't know now but that, you know, there were many policemen who thought they were, who were doing what they thought was the right thing to preserve law and order and against a complete chaos. I didn't want to come down too heavily on either side, although I'm pretty sure, well, I know my book will not be distributed in the bookstores of Hong Kong, I can guarantee you that. I do know that already. So I guess they don't think it's a fair portrayal. But I did strive not to make it, you know, the awful police.
[18:35]
John Ross
No, I think policemen, especially honorable policemen in let's say despotic or authoritarian regimes are a very good subject because yeah, you obviously have this tension, this difficulty. And you know what? Policemen mostly are not rounding up human rights people. They're just doing day to day police work. They're exactly finding criminals even in really nasty places. The policeman's basic job is protecting society and getting criminals.
[19:07]
Simon Elegant
And in fact one of my major inspirations this is the series that's set during Soviet Russia that began with Gorky park by Martin Cruz Smith. Fantastic series of books about a policeman called Renko. It's exactly that. In fact, Gorky park begins because he goes to investigate a murder and the KGB come and be basically trample all over the scene, try and take it over from. Try and order him around and he's got A maneuver between them and the state. And it is, I think, a fascinating tension.
[19:35]
John Ross
Robert Harris's Fatherland.
[19:37]
Simon Elegant
That's another, Another good one. Another good one. Absolutely. There are, there are other ones. There's some in China, but there's never, I don't think, been a very good one. I, I don't think they're at the level of Gorky park and Martin Cruz Smith. But it is a great subject because you've got built intention and obviously tension is the stuff of fiction. Right. So
[19:56]
John Ross
you're a policeman, Killian Tong, he's under a cloud, he's wounded a protester and he's sent off to investigate the body. It's suspicious, it suggests something out of the ordinary.
[20:12]
Simon Elegant
Yes. No arms and no head, which obviously is a bit of a giveaway that it probably wasn't natural causes. The origin of the origin of this is I actually got a briefing many years ago when I first came up with the idea of this, from when the Hong Kong police were still giving briefings to reporters. I did apply to get a briefing or you know, to talk to their murder squads, but they didn't even bother to reply to the emails because they're in a different place right now. And this was the case in Hong Kong. When these murders do get committed, getting rid of a body is a real problem because it's such a tightly, you know, 7 million people and it's the most densely populated place in the world. And what this particular fellow in those days had decided killed his girlfriend and chopped her up in the bathtub and then transported. So yes, anyway, this fellow decides, whoever he is, the murderer decides to dump the torso in one of the four big public waste disposal public dumps in Hong Kong.
[21:09]
John Ross
Okay, so this corpse, missing limbs. Okay, My first thought there is revenge or no, they're cutting off tattoos from the limbs that might be identifying features.
[21:26]
Simon Elegant
Right. So no fingerprints, no head. And yes, indeed, those things become subsequently important in the book.
[21:35]
John Ross
But there's also some other missing body parts, shall we say.
[21:39]
Simon Elegant
Yes. Which are discovered, but also without any identifying marks or indeed fingerprints.
[21:46]
John Ross
How can we politely say that?
[21:49]
Simon Elegant
Oh, I see, Clue, word, eunuch, Emasculated, yes, castrated, whatever. I don't know what happens to you after death, but yes. So that is a pretty big clue, obviously that perhaps as you, as you said, revenge might be part of the works.
[22:08]
John Ross
So he's following this trail and as you might expect, it eventually weaves into political matters and high up positions. It's very exciting, very gritty, quite dark, but not too Dark.
[22:27]
Simon Elegant
Well, I hope not too dark. I mean it is a dark subject. Hong Kong is now. I mean it's a fascinating thing to anybody that the city now has effectively been shut, completely shut down. So it's in the same. It's probably even more oppressed in some in terms of freedom of speech and issues, although it's difficult to say than China is now. But the Hong Kong authorities are trying to be, you know, plu rai more Chinese than the Chinese and they're so, they're constraining free speech. There's just nothing and they, there's nothing exists. And as you know, they just put in jail the 78 year old tycoon Jimmy Lai, who decided to stay behind and made a choice, could easily, could have left. I think they were hoping that he would left. So that is quite depressing. But people are making. And 250,000 people, many of them with children, have taken advantage of the opportunity to go to the UK because they didn't want to raise their kids there. But obviously many people don't have the choice and they're trying to make what life they can in the existing society because also, you know, they're from Hong Kong and they love it and they want to stay behind and hope that things change.
[23:31]
John Ross
We here in Taiwan owe the people of Hong Kong a huge amount of gratitude because you showed that the two systems, one country formula which China thought Taiwan might adopt. Yeah, it showed the people here that's not going to work, to put it mildly.
[23:50]
Simon Elegant
Yes.
[23:51]
John Ross
Strengthen their resolve.
[23:53]
Simon Elegant
Yes, yes. Actually Taiwan. I was living in Taiwan until, I don't know, a month, a month ago as the bureau chief for the Washington Post Until Mr. Jeff Bezos decided to. And it's one of my favorite place, honestly, if I didn't live in Malaysia, which I do now because my wife is from here, I would love to live in Taiwan. It's one of my favorite places in the world. And it's also a precious bastion of the fact that Chinese people, as I'm sure you're aware, Sun Yat Sen was the first person who said that the Chinese people weren't mature enough for democracy, giving an excuse to many people down the years to do so. But Taiwan demonstrates that a robust democracy is perfectly suited to Chinese cultures. And in fact they take.
[24:30]
John Ross
Yes, free China. Free China. That has the old Cold War flavor attached to it, but it's. Yeah, it's true. It's a version of China where people are completely free.
[24:41]
Simon Elegant
Well, as you know, one of the key founding expressions of the Communist Party is. Which means that basically New China wouldn't exist without the Communist Party. And that is absolute nonsense, as is clear. Again, absolute nonsense.
[24:54]
John Ross
Yes. Yeah, I still don't accept their government,
[24:59]
Simon Elegant
I can tell that.
[25:02]
John Ross
What are some of your writing influences
[25:05]
Simon Elegant
you mentioned my dad, obviously having a reporter and quite prolific author, as a matter of fact, as a father, was a big influence on me. I saw the life he led, which seemed bloody good fun to me, just. And also getting involved in the most important affairs of the day, and I thought I really wouldn't mind doing that at all. And then separately I write slightly different books from him, but he also managed to write books and you know, in the end I. I am a bookworm and if I had to choose anything, I'd stop writing journalism altogether and just do books. Although as you we observed earlier in an earlier conversation, fewer and fewer people are reading and it's a dwindling thing. But that's fine. I really enjoy crime fiction and as I say, among, among the best is Martin Cruz Smith. There are other ones, like Michael Connelly, also an example reporter for the LA Times, as a matter of fact, who has written another ridiculously prolific fellow who's on like 28 books at this stage. Rather embarrassing if you're applauding fellow like myself, but a brilliant writer and his books about his detective in LA are excellent and really come because he covered the crime beat for the Los Angeles Times. So those were his big inspirations for me and I've always wanted to do one and I'm hoping to do a sequel too, which will be actually entirely set in mainland China. So going to some of the territory we were talking about earlier about, about being a policeman and an authoritarian state and trying to explore what are really complexities about the issue of a, of a policeman. And as I say, I've also just finished a thriller that's separate from these, which is about two Chinese girls who are adopted by American parents, grow up in Wisconsin. And one of them, as often happens in these cases, I have an adopted son myself and I've always been interested in the issue. Often in adopted cases, some of the adoptees get very interested in their roots, go and learn a language, return to the country of their birth, in this case China and other ones want absolutely nothing to do with it whatsoever. And in this case, one of the sisters goes back to China, learns to speak Chinese, becomes fascinated with Chinese cultures, and the other one ends up being a conflict photographer for Reuters and doesn't want to have anything to do with it. And the book kicks off because her sister disappears in Beijing and this lady is called out of an assignment in Afghanistan to go search for her sister. So that will be entirely set and also deals with policemen and the dilemma we mentioned earlier, which is having to try and be a policeman in an authoritarian state.
[27:30]
John Ross
Excellent. Yes. My crime fiction reading is very old fashioned, quite predictable. Raymond Chandler is a God for me.
[27:40]
Simon Elegant
Absolutely. And one of my early reviews said this book was a bit like early Raymond Chandler. I thought, my life is complete. I have nothing more to do be compared to Raymond Chandler. So I was very happy, to put it mildly, to get that comparison.
[27:59]
John Ross
Raymond Chandler, sort of a hybrid American English writer, really. You're a bit like that yourself.
[28:06]
Simon Elegant
I am. Whatever you call it. Mid Atlantic. Yes. I hold both passports. I went to, as I say, for better or worse, went to boarding school in Lancashire and then went to undergraduate in the US and then came back to Britain to do a master's degree. So, yes. Straddling the pond.
[28:22]
John Ross
Mm. Jolly good. Simon. It's traditional to wrap things up with three recommendations. Book recommendations. Books on Asia could be Japan, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong. What have you got for us?
[28:38]
Simon Elegant
My first book is called the Immobile Empire, A spectacular piece of historical writing by a French scholar called Alain Pigefitte. And it is about the first meeting, which I actually mentioned earlier in our conversation about the first meeting. But when Britain sent an envoy called Lord Macartney to meet with the then Qianlong emperor, McCartney refused to do the traditional obeisance, the kowtow, which was knocking her head on the ground nine times. And things went downhill from there. But this is an absolutely everything in China and modern Chinese history grows out of the impact of the astonishment the Chinese felt in encountering the west, because they did think they were the center of the world. This book is a fantastic account from the archives of wonderful.
[29:21]
John Ross
Yes, yes, that's a great book. And that episode, the Macartney expedition to Beijing to the Qianlong Emperor, is a wonderful, wonderful story. And you don't have a black and white story either. There was an effort on both sides to compromise, and they did eventually do sort of like a kneeling on one knee, right?
[29:42]
Simon Elegant
They did indeed.
[29:43]
John Ross
Yeah.
[29:44]
Simon Elegant
He managed to get around to it. And one of the lovely things about this book is just the son of one of the people who happened to be along on the voyage is really the only one who ended up learning to speak any Chinese, which isn't a great precedent. And some of it is top story. It's fantastic. I love that book. I've read it probably three or four times. The second book I'd recommend is much more modern. It's called Apple in China. And the Chinese bits are. It's a beautifully reported book by a Financial Times reporter about how Apple basically managed to make itself completely beholden to the Chinese. How the Chinese were, as often happens, far smarter than the Americans thought. They were out fox them literally because of the company they use called Foxconn at every turn and corner. And Apple could not function now. And really, if the Chinese decided to pull the plug, which they could, because they've copied, they've taken most of the technology and used it to their advantage. It's a beautifully reported book. Just in awe of the reporting by a great FT reporter.
[30:42]
John Ross
Another great choice. I've not read that, but I love that genre of doing business in China because, oh my goodness, it's just levels above living in China as like an English teacher or a missionary or traveling. When you actually have to spend a lot of money and do business in China, you're going to learn very quickly, aren't you?
[31:05]
Simon Elegant
Absolutely.
[31:05]
John Ross
It's going to be a tough education, Simon. It's not fun.
[31:09]
Simon Elegant
It is true. Absolutely. And actually on those lines, one of my former colleagues at the Washington Post wrote a great book about the whole Huawei, you know, a really important company. That's a very good book too. But I'm not going to recommend her book. As my third recommendation, I will be slightly self indulgent and recommend my daughter, Naomi Shue. Elegance, excellent novel, which is called Ginkgo Season. It doesn't actually have much to do with China, but I'm in a completely unprejudiced way. I think it's beautifully written and one of the amazing experiences for me is to see hoary old buggers like myself who read it because they know me, call me up and say I never would have read this book in a million years because I would have considered a quote on, you know, chick lit or some. Because basically they're male and chauvinist and they said it is beautifully written and I loved every minute of it, so. Or the podcast. The audiobook is excellent too.
[32:01]
John Ross
Yeah. What's the name of that? Ginkgo?
[32:04]
Simon Elegant
Ginkgo season. Ginkgo. Like the tree?
[32:06]
John Ross
Yes, yes.
[32:07]
Simon Elegant
The beautiful Japanese tree? As a matter of fact, yes. Originally, yes. That lived for hundreds and hundreds of years, so. And which you get the nut of in your chawanmushi if you're in Japan at all. Yes.
[32:19]
John Ross
And that story is about.
[32:21]
Simon Elegant
That story is a kind of Coming of age love story about a lady who's working at the young woman who's just graduated and is working at a museum in Philadelphia.
[32:30]
John Ross
Excellent. Anyway, Simon, it's been wonderful talking to you.
[32:34]
Simon Elegant
My pleasure. Really, John, I really enjoyed it. And it's also. I don't know why, but I did not. I wasn't that familiar with your podcast and I now have it firmly on my hard rotation list. So thank you for that.
[32:45]
John Ross
I'll be sending you a test in a week.
[32:49]
Simon Elegant
Okay.
[32:50]
John Ross
Yeah. So sorry about the poor connection. I'll clean it up so listeners won't have any idea how. How we struggled, but such as the suffering of the book life. Yes.
[33:01]
Simon Elegant
So where do you live exactly? You don't live in Taipei, right?
[33:04]
John Ross
I live in a small city called Pudzi in Jiayi County.
[33:09]
Ryan Reynolds
Okay.
[33:11]
John Ross
Not really famous for anything. As I've said on this show before, the inventor of instant noodles was born here. A Japanese man.
[33:20]
Simon Elegant
That's. That's pretty famous.
[33:22]
John Ross
Yeah. Before I push the stop button, Simon is bad of me. I should give the name of your novel again. City on Fire and Shame on me. I'm a book publisher and I haven't asked the book publisher's name.
[33:35]
Simon Elegant
The publisher is called Pegasus. It's distributed by Simon and Schuster, so that I hope a few more. But they're an indie publisher in New York. But yet it'll be available both in the UK and Australia and in the US and of course there's an audiobook and a. An ebook for those of you who are. And as I said, unfortunately I'm pretty sure that no booksellers will distribute it in Hong Kong, which is the place that it's about. But that's because the quote unquote. Giovanna. Yes, exactly.
[34:03]
John Ross
Excellent. Okay, bye. Bye.
[34:05]
Simon Elegant
Great. Many thanks, John. Sam.