Book talk in Hong Kong: Searching for Billie, Tracing Surprising Family Roots in China

Author Ian Gill talks about the main characters of his Anglo-Chinese family, who lived in China and Hong Kong from the mid-19th century until modern times.

The story starts when his great-grandmother married Ted Newman, a Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company steward, in Hong Kong in 1869. They founded the Family Hotel in Chefoo, turning it into one of the best-known hotels on the China coast.

Later, Frank Newman and his Chinese wife Mei-lan adopted a tiny Chinese baby in Changsha in 1916, who they named Billie, and sent her to top British schools in Shanghai.

The war led Billie to flee to Hong Kong in late 1937, where she helped set up the Chinese Government Information Office. In WW2, Billie was interned in Stanley camp, where she had both tragedy and an unlikely romance, of which Ian Gill was the product.

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