Liu Heung Shing’s China After Mao, black and white photography about China emerging from the Cultural Revolution was one of our first titles. Liu was to become the first Chinese photographer to win the Pulitzer Prize. David and Peter Turnley’s Beijing Spring, Pulitzer Prize-winning photography published in the wake of China’s June 4th incident, brought another relatively early success in illustrated books.

Meanwhile, Shirley Ingram and Rebecca Ng’s Cantonese Culture and Fred Schneiter’s Getting Along with the Chinese, for fun and profit, were establishing themselves as perennial best sellers in the Hong Kong market; Martin Williams’ Hong Kong Pathfinder as the city’s favored walkers’ guide; and Wendy Teasdill’s Walking to the Mountain, as a classic of travel literature about Tibet. During this same period, Alan Pierce’s Cheung Chau Dog Fanciers Society, a laconic tale set on one of Hong Kong’s offshore island became a local bestseller, prestaging our foray into fiction and other literary pursuits.

In 1997, Christopher Lingle’s The Rise and Decline of the Asian Century published despite legal attacks on the author by the Singapore government, predicted the monumental crash of Asian economies. Donald Kirk’s Korean Dynasty, Hyundai and Chung Ju Yung a definitive history of Korea’s Hyundai Corporation, further signaled our interest in broadening both the scope and geographic outreach of our list.

That same year, on the occasion of new poetry and fiction by Hong Kong writers Agnes Lam, Louise Ho and Xu Xi, we set out the Asia 2000 Manifesto and re-dedicated ourselves to our role as an independent Hong Kong publisher. In so doing, we also placed new stress on fiction, literary non-fiction and poetry. Successes have included Barbara Baker and Madeleine Slavick’s beautiful Round, Poems and Photographs of Asia honored at Seattle’s Bumbershoot Book Fair, and Christopher New’s China Coast Trilogy, about which the South China Morning Post has said, "To many people Hong Kong is almost entirely a commercial city. The last thing it could spawn, they would have thought, was a literary masterpiece. But it now appears that the improbable has happened…"

In May 2002, Alex Kuo’s Lipstick and Other Stories, received the American Book Award, the first time the award has been given to a book published outside of the United States.

To give better definition to our list, we have recently begun the task of dividing it in three. Literary titles will be published under the Orchid Pavilion imprint, crime fiction under the Black Butterfly imprint. The rest of the list will continue to be published under the Asia 2000 name.

Our books are finding their way into the major markets for English language books around the world. If your bookseller doesn't carry them, please suggest he or she does so. Otherwise, contact us directly at We fulfill readers' orders by sea free of postage charge.

We welcome your comments.

Michael Morrow
Publisher

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