Hong Kong's Golden Boy

on Martin Booth's first day in Hong Kong in 1952, his parents took him to lunch at the British naval base where his father was about to start work. There the seven-year-old was confronted with a frightening plateful of leggy crustaceans unknown back in England. As he recounts in Gweilo , a memoir of his first three years in the former crown colony, a naval officer briefed him on local customs: "Whenever someone offers you something to eat, accept it."

Booth followed the advice, ingesting more new food, culture and adventure in those three years than most people manage...