Paper Tigress: A life in the Hong Kong government

Description

Rachel Cartland came to Hong Kong in 1972 as one of just two female expatriates in the Hong Kong Government’s elite administrative grade. Before she retired in 2006, her life was shaped by the momentous events that rocked Hong Kong during those action-packed years: corruption and the police mutiny, the growth of the new towns, the currency crisis of 1983, Tiananmen Square, the change of sovereignty and the devastation of SARS. The backdrop to her story ranges from Kowloon’s infamous Walled City to Government House to the rural New Territories. Paper Tigress is full of humour and incident and, at the same time, an accessible account of modern Hong Kong and the forces that shaped it.

“Rachel’s remarkable recollection of an exciting era in Hong Kong not only brings back 40 years of shared memories, but is a fair and often amusing story of how colleagues in the Administrative Service worked together to build up this modern city – and, in the process, injected core values that hopefully will stand Hong Kong in good stead for years to come.” – Shelley Lee Lai-kuen, GBS, OBE, JP, former Permanent Secretary for Home Affairs

“Rachel Cartland was just 22 and fresh out of Oxford University when she arrived in Hong Kong in 1972 as one of only two female expatriate civil servants. Now 63, she has written a tell-all tale, Paper Tigress, about her 34 years in the civil service, which stretched into the post-handover years. But as she looks at the city today, she hears an echo of her early years in Hong Kong. ‘The city today reminds me of Hong Kong in 1977 when the community was so tense because of corruption; it is yet again at a real crucial turning point in its history,’ she says.” – South China Morning Post

Rachel Cartland was interviewed for Stuart Beaton’s podcast.

Susan Blumberg-Kason featured a story by Rachel Cartland describing how Paper Tigress came about.

See pictures from the book launch (a Facebook photo album).