Exploring Hong Kong: A Visitor’s Guide to Hong Kong Island, Kowloon, and the New Territories by Steven K. Bailey with photographs by Jill C. Witt (ThingsAsian Press)

My favorite guidebooks are the ones that give me the background and the little tips that make me feel like a resident when I am visiting, so naturally I look for guidebooks written by people who have lived in the place they write about. While in Hong Kong recently, I was given a copy of Exploring Hong Kong, began reading it at night in my hotel room and gobbled it in one sitting—it is that sort of book—informative, conversational and absolutely gorgeous. From the clarity of its maps to the beauty of its photographs to the satisfying weight when held in the hands, it is a lovely object as well as a very good book indeed.

What Exploring Hong Kong is not is a laundry list of hotels and restaurants and shops; what this book gives you are neighborhoods--ways to explore them, how to reach them and what to enjoy when you get there. It offers the conventional sightseeing destinations and then gives pointers that only a resident would know—the exact details of how to ride the Travelator, the most challenging way of hiking down Victoria Peak, where to find a tiny piece of Thailand in the shadow of Kowloon Walled City Park, the best vantage point for viewing the nightly Symphony of Lights,  which of Kowloon’s street markets is the place to buy “hell money,” where to find pink dolphins off the coast of Lantau Island and where to go surfing on the island of Hong Kong

The natural world is still alive and well in Hong Kong and its environs, Bailey tells his readers, and a large portion of his book tells how to enjoy this little-known facet of one of the world’s great cities. Wild boars, feral cattle, macaques, packs of dogs that resemble Australia’s dingoes are some of the wildlife that visitors may encounter when they leave the sidewalks behind, and mountain climbing, kite flying, and tent camping are offered as alternatives to Hong Kong’s more urban pleasures. Ancient walled villages and “a windswept island of ghosts” are  easy  to reach and explore when readers are provided with Bailey’s careful and lucid instructions.

Perhaps the most invaluable information provided by Exploring Hong Kong is found in its first chapter, Traveling Around Hong Kong: An Instruction Manual, which explains why Hong Kong’s biggest bargain is its Octopus card. But as a devoted eater, I am most fond of the hints on where to find the best egg tarts, where to drink the highest form of available caffeine, tea mixed with coffee, where to find Five Flowers Tea, and where migrant Filipinas find their favorite comfort food.

Whether you will be in Hong Kong tomorrow or are planning to visit “someday,” Exploring Hong Kong is essential reading. Bailey and Witt, who launched their series with Strolling Macau, say their latest wanderings have been in Hanoi, with a guidebook to that city coming soon. I’m ready to go…~by Janet Brown

Available at ThingsAsian Books

Asian Godfathers by Joe Studwell (Atlantic Monthly Press)

You can't judge a book by its cover, or in this case by its title either. Anyone who fails to keep that tired old truism in mind when buying Joe Studwell's latest is in for a very big surprise. This book is not a rollicking romp through the Asian underworld, or the sort of glossy, glitzy true crime extravaganza that poses as investigative journalism. After all, Mr. Studwell writes for the Economist, not for Vanity Fair, and he admits that his title "is more than a little tongue-in-cheek."

Tycoons is the correct term for these "colourful, obscenely rich and interesting people" who dominate the economic turf of Hong Kong, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Indonesia. Governments come and go, underworld figures rise and are deposed, but the tycoons continue to flourish. Not even the economic meltdown of the late 90s significantly diminished their fortunes. Instead many of them became even more wealthy during that financial bloodbath.

Immigration and colonialism were the groundwork from which these fortunes came. The large influx of Chinese, Arabs, Persians, and Indians provided a hungry and willing labor force for colonial powers, eventually becoming "economic entrepreneurs," while the local aristocracy were used to govern the native population, becoming "political entrepreneurs." Long after the disappearance of colonialism, these divisions still remain in place.

Mr. Studwell makes it clear that the wealth of the tycoons is based upon monopolies, cartels, and perhaps most of all, a hardworking and frugal labor force who are encouraged, if not forced, to use saving accounts. Banks in Hong Kong and Southeast Asia, with their huge pool of "excessive savers," are ready sources of investment capital and "money makes more money."

Putting much of the blame for the Asian financial crisis upon the tycoons and their freewheeling financial practices, this book bristles with fierce economic facts that will deter many a casual reader. Those who persist will be horrified by the rapidity with which a region's economic structure can be reduced to rubble, and may wonder not if, but when, their own financial security will be devoured by shortsighted greed.

In the midst of all of the history and the economic gloom and the politics that are straightforwardly corrupt, the tycoons, the "godfathers," prevail through the book with the same resilience and charisma that sustain them in life. Chin Sophonpanich, the Thai creator of one of Southeast Asia's leading banks, is remembered by another financial leader as "absolutely charming—he had about six mistresses." Li Ka-shing, number ten on the 2006 Forbes list of the world's richest men, responded to the kidnapping of his son by withdrawing one billion Hong Kong dollars in cash, so huge a sum that the kidnapper couldn't fit it all into his car and had to make two trips to carry it away. An unnamed tycoon, whose son was sent a box of chocolates by a business rival, told his offspring to feed a piece to his dog, and if that wasn't fatal, "try one on his wife."

Although Mr. Studwell concludes with the confession that he used the "godfathers" as a "structural sleight" to convey a larger history, ultimately they take possession of his book with the same ease and expertise that they would absorb any encroachment on their territory. And why not? It all belongs to them.~Janet Brown