Inside the Red Mansion: On the Trail of China's Most Wanted Man

by Oliver August

Inside the Red Mansion is a suspenseful, slyly entertaining journey into the heart of the new China. Due to a mix-up on a routine reporting assignment, Oliver August stumbles onto the hunt for China’s most wanted man, Lai Changxing, an illiterate tycoon on the run from corruption charges. Sensing something emblematic in this outsized tale of Lai's rise and fall, August sets out to find the self-made billionaire, hoping that if he can understand how Lai reinvented himself, he will also better grasp the tectonic forces transforming modern China.

Lai embodies the story of China’s recent success as well as its Achilles’ heel: its command economy, blended with the free market, is riddled with corruption. Moving ever closer to the elusive tycoon, August introduces us to a people in the midst of head-spinning self-transformation. We meet a nightclub hostess and her gaggle of “Miss Temporaries”; powerful businessmen on a debt-settling round of nocturnal golf; and a foie gras king who markets his goose liver by the ton and prefers it deep fried. This is a China seething with desire, engaged in a slapstick fight with its past, and hell-bent on the future.

Inside the Red Mansion is the first book to capture the giddy vibe of contemporary China and its darker vulnerabilities.

Genres: China, Nonfiction, Crime, Current Affairs

268 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 2007

Reviews

[Lee · Rating 1 out of 5]

A shitty journalist with little knowledge of China writes a shitty book ostensibly about China, but he has a tendency to talk more about himself than his subject.

This book checks all the boxes of the bad China reporter. He tells us how he randomly wound up in China. He talks about how of a struggle it was learning Chinese. He tells us about each of his teachers of Chinese, sprinkling some of the Chinese he learned.

He has this tendency, like most bad China reporters who spend a couple of years in the country just to earn their journalistic spurs, to essentialize the Chinese people while also managing to say nothing about China by pretending like it is everything. "The new China had even more cliches than people...The country I lived in was both free and oppressed, at once, anarchic and authoritarian, totally chaotic and yet highly regulated. It was changing completely while still very much its ancient self. " What is great about this quote is that it seems to be trying to violate every good rule of Chinese reporting in the space of a few sentences. He does a great job of noting the cliches in the reporting of China, while also using each of these cliches in his own reporting. Either this is horrible journalism or perhaps just some sort of post-modern journalism.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

a very readable and fascinating account of present-day china through the eyes of a british journalist (former bureau chief of the times) as he investigates the spectacular rags-to-riches rise and fall of lai changxing, a former farmer who made billions smuggling various goods like cars into mainland china. supposedly lai was able to smuggle so much into the country (and build large skyscrapers and his own folly of an exact replica of the forbidden city) because the gov't allowed him to (via a massive bribery system/turning of the proverbial blind eye). and supposedly lai's efforts helped stimulate china's economy, until he got too big for his britches and had to disappear. along the way august oliver unveils a fascinating country (and its peoples) where the best way to get ahead is through "banditry." at the same time the gov't can step in anytime with a scary, creepy orwellian swagger. well written in an informative journalistic way, with very good insight into a country that is increasingly becoming a major, major real-time presence on the global scene.

[Andy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Inspired by Mr August's journalism style, I've been planning to write a book about Barack Obama. I'm going to wander around Chicago, catch a game at Wrigley field, eat some deep dish pizza, see if I can get into a taping of Oprah, and then suddenly realize Obama has gone to Washington D.C. I'll spend the final chapter comparing the pizza in DC to the pizza in Chicago, wondering how Obama is possibly going to govern a country with two such different interpretations of this classic Italian dish. I've already written the last chapter and--trust me--you're going to love it!

[Corinne · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this book up after reading an article by Oliver August in this month's Inside the Red Mansion is more a story about China's rocky political transformation than it is about Lai, the fugitive the book is framed around. This book gives a vivid sense of living in the seedy underworld of China.

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you're a journalist heading to China, I'd highly recommend this. Like the back says, the book is very detailed and gives you the same feelings the author had. It did take me longer to read it. The first few chapters were a bit slow but the story picked up and was easy to read. Gives a lot of history and background on Chinese culture.

[Mariah · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really, really, enjoyed Oliver August's "Inside the Red Mansion." It was fascinating reading about post-Mao China in the late 90s and early 2000s. His writing is colourful and engaging while also being very informative. I believe some of the more negative reviews are a result of the marketing of the book rather than the book itself. I feel like the descriptive blurb makes it seem more film noir than it really is. It's is more like anthropological participant observation rather than hunting down Lai Changxing. August develops a narrative of the life that Lai lived and the cultured that created it.

Prior to picking up August's book the familiarity I had with China was as a quasi-Communist surveillance state which I gleaned from short-docs and editorials. I do feel that my impression is still accurate, but it was illuminating learning about the daily life of Chinese citizens during this time period. August's descriptions of his treatment as a foreign journalist were also very eye-opening. I found it was quite shocking as well (maybe naively) hearing about the amount of bribery and government corruption at this time. I also had never realized how important food culture was in China. My only personal experience in China was having a layover in the Beijing airport for 3 hours, having a BBQ duck pizza at the airport's Boston Pizza (a Canadian franchise), and then getting finger-printed and iris scanned. Gotta love China!

[Feroz Hameed · Rating 3 out of 5]

the rise of Xiamen a sleepy town to metropolis of today is clearly captured in this investigative trail of Chinas most wanted man. A gooodread.

[Bettie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unabridged and read by author. This may be construed as an example of over-writing by some but I find the digressions interesting and August's voice entirely easy on the ear. The court case in Vancouver put China on trial as much as Lai.

In 1999, shortly after arriving in Beijing as The Times 's China correspondent, Oliver August set out on the trail of China's most wanted man, Lai Changxing. An illiterate peasant from the coastal city of Xiamen,
Lai created his own shipping empire from nothing before vanishing abruptly when the Communist Party accused him of corruption and fraud. Once the richest man in the country, Lai was now public enemy number one because his immense wealth became a threat to Beijing's power. Oliver August's highly entertaining search for Lai takes him to the brothels, backwaters and boardrooms that define the spirit of an emerging nation. Fascinated by Lai's story, the author visits the town where he was born, travels on the boat used by his smuggling racket and stays in the hotel where government investigators interrogated and tortured his helpers. The book investigates the tycoon's meteoric rise, his catastrophic demise and the mystery that surrounds his disappearance. After two decades of capitalist reforms, the New China seems to have more cliches than people. Both free and oppressive, anarchic and authoritarian, totally chaotic yet highly regulated, China is changing completely whilst seeming to stay itself. Part investigation, part personal memoir, Inside the Red Mansion is a deeply atmospheric journey into the New China. From the austere bureaucrats of Beijing to the gilded pirate coast opposite Taiwan; from the Gobi desert plains where migrant labour is recruited, to the skyscrapers and nightclubs of boomtowns like Xiamen, Oliver August's gripping yet thoughtful account reveals the dark side of China's economic miracle and a nation finally awakening to its desires.



from new asia books http://www.newasiabooks.org/index.php.... This article bugs me because it makes no reference to which 'Times' is alluded to.

ETA - The Thunderer is the Times in question

I have just found the video : http://video.google.com/videoplay?doc...

[Becky · Rating 3 out of 5]

Whole title:
“Inside the Red Mansion: On the Trail of China's Most Wanted Man”

I enjoy non-fiction about China today, usually travelogues of some sort like the ones by Peter Hessler or Rob Gifford’s China Road. They’re not great books but since I’ve been to China they’re just kind of interesting to me. - Like so this is how those people I saw all around live and think.

Inside the Red Mansion is a bit different (well - they’re all a bit different). August decided to investigate the notorious criminal, Lai Changxing. Lai started as a poor farm boy and ended up worth many billions of dollars due to his knack for entrepreneurial importing and judicious bribing. Profits went into real estate. He ended up in Vancouver fighting deportation to an almost sure torture and execution. At his height of glory Lai was a bigi-time operator, player, casino and dance hall mogul - wining and dining (and woman supplying) the power brokers of Red China.

One of Lai’s “business” projects was a night club called “The Red Manion” - taken from a classic Chinese book of the same name. August didn’t spend much time actually inside the material Red Mansion but he did spend time tracking down it’s owner and visitors.

The book is fast and fun although it gets a bit creepy at times - how much corruption can you stand to hear about? Everything and everyone becomes suspect.

I did look Lai up on the web and found some interesting stuff - a YouTube feature and a Time magazine article.

[Booksy · Rating 2 out of 5]

A story of one of the self-made millionaire - Lai Changxing - was part of shaping the New China in the end of the 90s, who in attempt to escape prosecution in China, fled to Canada. Sadly, what could be a truly fascinating and thrilling story, became nothing more than just a record of events, people, history lessons snippets - all of these intertwined in a dry, journalistic and perfunctory way. Another distracting feature - the book that I "consumed" in audio format - was narrated by a person whose pronunciation of the original words and expressions was incredibly distracting as the narrator quite clearly didn't speak Mandarin and did a very poor job trying to just vocalise the pinyin version of the vocabulary. Frequently, I couldn't even guess what the real word was.

Anyway, a good effort to tell a life story (most likely worth telling).

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

I admit to huge bias concerning China and suffered enormous trepidation at reading this book. I was pleasantly surprised when, upon cracking it open, I found that the author had not drunk the China kool-aid. This book is less about the corrupt fugitive himself and more about what he represents in the context of Chinese history, the crazy way politics and business blend into a mad mish mash of culture and society that makes for very amusing and bizarre anecdotes.

It's light reading for those who are heavy into China (Hi Dad!) but I thought it was a breath of fresh air after hearing so much about how China is taking over the world.

[Jeff · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book deserves kudos for being the only English book (that I can tell) about Lai Changxing--an interesting subject to be sure! Unfortunately, there is just way too much filler and almost nothing about Lai until halfway through the book. If you're not familiar with China, you might find the author's impressions of the country interesting. If you've spent any amount of time there yourself, you'll likely find it a little boring.

[K C · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting, and for someone who know nothing about China it provided a good lesson on how China works , its current business climate (or at least current 10 years ago when the book was written) and the relationship between entrepreneurship and a state controlled economy. But try as I might I was unable to get excited about the author's search for Lia or why he had the obsession.

[June · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's not the most exciting premise, but while the author is on the trail of the "most wanted man," he examines the lives of ordinary Chinese and how they are dealing with a new capitalist system. And he has a lesbian sidekick!

[Nicholas · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting to learn more about daily life/biz in China but this story didnt need a whole book.

[Rob Koch · Rating 3 out of 5]

I guess the book was interesting but could have been half the length. He didnt make any new points after about 100 pages. If you are interested in China it might be worth skimming.

[Danu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pengejaran berita tentang koruptor no.1 di Cina yang tiada henti dari penulis.

[Ryan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Pre-read. My local library blows.

Post-read. Some sense of China's geography would have helped but consider all the corruption in the country, I'm not sure why anyone would find this appealing.

[Jason]

good

[Rui Igreja · Rating 2 out of 5]

Searching for the allegedly most wanted man in China.