Mark Kitto was the first westerner to return and live in Moganshan, a dilapidated, beautiful Chinese mountain village since the original foreign residents left in 1949. In millennial Shanghai, Kitto was the creator of the 'That's city magazine series”, the most popular and profitable English language publication in China since the North China Daily News, the paper of record of concession-era Shanghai. The UK Financial Times described him as a 'mini media mogul'. In 2004 he suffered the same fate as the man who built the Daily News. He lost everything to the Communist Party.
Rejecting the corporate world and the glamour of Shanghai, Mark persuaded his urbane Chinese wife to make Moganshan their permanent home. With their two small children, they took the bold step of moving their lives to the isolated village, taking over an old brothel to start a western-style cafe. In the process, the author uncovered the history of the mountain retreat; its 'discovery' and development by missionaries, its popularity with celebrities, drug dealers (Chinese and foreign), and its decay under the Communist regime.
