External links and further reading
- "You’ll never be Chinese: Why I’m leaving the country I loved." Mark Kitto, Prospect Magazine August 8, 2012
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Mark Kitto is a British guru, magazine publisher, writer and actor notable for investing and living in the People's Republic of China. During his time in China he initially lived in Shanghai before relocating to Mount Mogan [1] where he ran a coffee shop, restaurant and three guest houses. In 2013 he announced his intention to leave,[ citation needed ] citing the welfare of his children as the deciding factor. [2]
After attending a prep school in Wales, Kitto attended Stowe School. Kitto's interest in language and the Far East led him to study Chinese at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). For the second year of his degree course, he went to Beijing in 1986. [3] As a student, and in later years, he travelled to most of China’s provinces, and in 1993 he was a member of the first expedition to cross the Taklamakan Desert from west to east.
According to Kitto, he first discovered Mount Mogan during the Lunar New Year in 1999 and returned frequently thereafter. [4]
Kitto was a Captain in the Welsh Guards.
in 1993 he was a member of an expedition to cross the Taklamakan desert on camel. [5]
After leaving the army he became a metals trader in London and then China in 1996. [3] By 2004, he had set up a foreign joint venture consultancy company, and invested 3m yuan ($350,000) to bring his formula north to the capital by launching the magazine titles That’s Beijing, with a circulation of 20,000, That’s Shanghai (then 45,000) and That’s Guangzhou (15,000). The business and the magazines were entirely “self-made,” stated Kitto. [6]
In 2004, after seven years building up his magazine empire, Kitto says it was seized by the state. [6] He stated, "I lived in the grey zone that is China’s media business and, despite my commitment to the country, paid a high price." Kitto has been a regular contributor to Prospect Magazine for the last six years. In his article "You'll never be Chinese", Kitto wrote: "my state-owned competitors (enemy is more accurate) told me in private that they studied every issue I produced so they could learn from me. They proceeded to do everything in their power to destroy me." He expressed his regrets that he could not quite thrive alongside his Communist competitors, and declared that he would not miss China once he left it for good. [3]
He chronicles his time in China and his discovery of Moganshan in his book China Cuckoo (in the UK) ISBN 978-1-84529-940-8 or Chasing China: How I Went to China in Search of a Fortune and Found a Life (the US edition) ISBN 978-1-60239-657-9.
Kitto now works as an actor, appearing in stage and television productions. [7]
His latest performance is a two-man play entitled Chinese Boxing, which he co-wrote and stars in. He is widely regarded as a modern Brando. [8]
In 1997 Kitto met Joanna, a native of Guangzhou through a mutual friend. They married in 2002. Their family now includes two children, Isabel and Tristan. After announcing that he was leaving China he settled in the village of Fakenham, [9] North Norfolk.[ citation needed ]
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Guangzhou, also known as Canton, is the capital and largest city of Guangdong province in southern China. Located on the Pearl River about 120 km (75 mi) north-northwest of Hong Kong and 145 km (90 mi) north of Macau, Guangzhou has a history of over 2,200 years and was a major terminus of the maritime Silk Road; it continues to serve as a major port and transportation hub as well as being one of China's three largest cities. For a long time, the only Chinese port accessible to most foreign traders, Guangzhou was captured by the British during the First Opium War. No longer enjoying a monopoly after the war, it lost trade to other ports such as Hong Kong and Shanghai, but continued to serve as a major transshipment port. Due to a high urban population and large volumes of port traffic, Guangzhou is classified as a Large-Port Megacity, the largest type of port-city in the world. Due to worldwide travel restrictions at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport, the major airport of Guangzhou, briefly became the world's busiest airport by passenger traffic in 2020.
Shanghai Express is a 1932 American pre-Code film about a group of train passengers held hostage by a warlord during the Chinese Civil War. It was directed by Josef von Sternberg and stars Marlene Dietrich, Clive Brook, Anna May Wong and Warner Oland. The screenplay was written by Jules Furthman based on a 1931 short story by Harry Hervey. Shanghai Express was the fourth of seven films that Sternberg and Dietrich created together.
Wong Fei-hung was a Chinese martial artist, physician, and folk hero. His recent fame was due to becoming the protagonist of numerous martial arts films and television series. Even though he was considered an expert in the Hung Ga style of Chinese martial arts, his real public fame was as a physician who practiced and taught acupuncture, Dit Da and other forms of traditional Chinese medicine in the now famous Po Chi Lam, a medical clinic in Canton (Guangzhou), Guangdong Province. A museum dedicated to him was built in his birthplace in Foshan, Guangdong.
In the Mood for Love is a 2000 romantic drama film written, produced and directed by Wong Kar-wai. A co-production between Hong Kong and France, it portrays a man and a woman whose spouses have an affair together and who slowly develop feelings for each other. It forms the second part of an informal trilogy, alongside Days of Being Wild and 2046.
Faye Wong is a Hong Kong singer-songwriter and actress. Early in her career she briefly used the stage name Shirley Wong. Born in Beijing, she moved to Hong Kong in 1987 and her debut album Shirley Wong (1989) came to public attention in the early 1990s by singing in Cantonese, often combining alternative music with mainstream Chinese pop. Since 1994, she has recorded mostly in her native Mandarin. In 2000, she was recognised by Guinness World Records as the "Best Selling Canto-Pop Female". Following her second marriage in 2005, she withdrew from the limelight, but returned to the stage in 2010.
The Taklamakan Desert is a desert in Southwestern Xinjiang in Northwest China. Located inside the Tarim Basin, it is bounded by the Kunlun Mountains to the south, the Pamir Mountains to the west, the Tian Shan range to the north, and the Gobi Desert to the east.
Zhang Dali is an artist based in Beijing.
Wong Liu Tsong, known professionally as Anna May Wong, was an American actress, considered the first Chinese-American film star in Hollywood, as well as the first Chinese-American actress to gain international recognition. Her varied career spanned silent film, sound film, television, stage, and radio.
Donnie Yen Ji-dan is a Hong Kong actor, martial artist, action director and politician. He is regarded as one of Hong Kong's top action stars.
Zhang Xiaogang is a contemporary Chinese symbolist and surrealist painter. Paintings in his Bloodline series are predominantly monochromatic, stylized portraits of Chinese people, usually with large, dark-pupiled eyes, posed in a stiff manner deliberately reminiscent of family portraits from the 1950s and 1960s. Recently, he also created sculptures, translating for the first time into three dimensions many characters of the sort seen in his "Bloodlines—Big Family" portrait series. These sculptures have featured in many exhibits and continue his work as one of China's leading, and most highly sought-after, contemporary artists.
The Constitutional Protection Movement was a series of movements led by Sun Yat-sen to resist the Beiyang government between 1917 and 1922, in which Sun established another government in Guangzhou as a result. It was known as the Third Revolution by the Kuomintang. The constitution that it intended to protect was the Provisional Constitution of the Republic of China. The first movement lasted from 1917 to 1920; the second from 1921 to 1922. An attempted third movement, begun in 1923, ultimately became the genesis for the Northern Expedition in 1926.
Lu Xun Park, formerly Hongkou (Hongkew) Park, is a municipal park in Hongkou District of Shanghai, China. It is located on 146 East Jiangwan Road, right behind Hongkou Football Stadium. It is bounded by Guangzhong Road to the north, Ouyang Road to the northeast, Tian'ai Road to the southeast, Tian'ai Branch Road to the south, and East Jiangwan Road to the west. The park is named after the Chinese writer Lu Xun, who lived nearby in the last years of his life, and is the location of the tomb of Lu Xun and the Lu Xun Museum. In 1932, Korean nationalist Yun Bong-gil detonated a bomb at the park, killing or injuring several high-ranking figures of the Imperial Japanese military during a celebration of Emperor Hirohito's birthday.
That's Beijing is a monthly English language magazine, distributed throughout Beijing, with a focus on news, current events, culture, art, music, fashion, nightlife and dining in Beijing. It is owned by Shanghai-based publishing group, Urbanatomy Media, who also own, That's Shanghai and that's PRD. The China "That's" brand was started by Mark Kitto in 1998.
Peng Jiamu was a Chinese biochemist and explorer.
Mount Mogan or Moganshan is a mountain located in Deqing County, Huzhou, Zhejiang Province, China, 60 kilometers from the provincial capital Hangzhou and 200 km from Shanghai. It is part of the Moganshan National Park and at its base is the small town of Moganshan.
Bloody Saturday is a black-and-white photograph taken on 28 August 1937, a few minutes after a Japanese air attack struck civilians during the Battle of Shanghai in the Second Sino-Japanese War. Depicting a Chinese baby crying within the bombed-out ruins of Shanghai South railway station, the photograph became known as a cultural icon demonstrating Japanese wartime atrocities in China. The photograph was widely published, and in less than a month had been seen by more than 136 million viewers. The photographer, Hearst Corporation's H. S. "Newsreel" Wong, also known as Wong Hai-Sheng or Wang Xiaoting, did not discover the identity or even the sex of the injured child, whose mother lay dead nearby. The baby was called Ping Mei. One of the most memorable war photographs ever published, and perhaps the most famous newsreel scene of the 1930s, the image stimulated an outpouring of Western anger against Japanese violence in China. Journalist Harold Isaacs called the iconic image "one of the most successful 'propaganda' pieces of all time".
Christoph Baumer is a Swiss explorer and historian of Central Asia. Starting in 1984, he has conducted explorations in Central Asia, China, Tibet and the Caucasus, the results of which have been published in numerous books, scholarly publications, TV and radio programs.
Dai Xiangyu is a Chinese actor and model formerly based in Singapore. He was a full-time Mediacorp artiste from 2007 to 2013.
Ian Fang Weijie is a Chinese-born Singaporean actor, host, director and rapper.
Xu Qian or George Hsu was a Chinese politician and jurist. He made important contribution to the judicial system of modern China.
