You know the people in this book. You'll remember the harassed waitress from your local Chinese restaurant. You've noticed those builders across the street working funny hours and without helmets. You've eaten the lettuce they picked, or bought the microwave they assembled. The words 'cockle-pickers', 'Morecambe Bay', 'Chinese illegals found dead in lorry' will ring a bell. But did you know that there are hundreds of thousands of undocumented Chinese immigrants in Britain? They've travelled here because of desperate poverty, and must keep their heads down and work themselves to the bone. Hsiao-Hung Pai, the only journalist who knows this community, went undercover to hear the stories of this hidden work force. She reveals a scary, shadowy world where human beings are exploited in ways unimaginable in our civilized twenty-first century. "Chinese Whispers" exposes the truth behind the lives of a hidden work force here in Britain. You owe it to yourself, and them, to read it.
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Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Hsiao-Hung Pai was born in Taiwan and came to Britain in 1991. She first started writing for Chinese publications and later for the Guardian, specialising in stories about the Chinese community. She covered the Morecambe cockle picking tragedy for The Guardian and in order to understand the plight of other Chinese migrants, she went undercover, and is the only journalist working in Britain who has truly penetrated the world of undocumented Chinese migrants. Hsiao-Hung now works as a freelance journalist, writing for the Guardian, the New Statesman, and others. Nick Broomfield's recent film GHOSTS was based on her work. CHINESE WHISPERS is her first book. Hsiao-Hung lives in London with her partner.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
The truth is stranger than fiction,
By Crofters Joan (Manchester UK) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Chinese Whispers: The True Story Behind Britain's Hidden Army of Labour (Paperback)
Shortly after I had completed my own thriller novel - The Tiger's Cave - I was given a copy of this book. My own research had been prompted by a true case involving a member of staff kidnapped by Triad members from a local restaurant. One of my neighbours was the DI who travelled with a colleague to investigate. With the co-operation of the Chinese authorities they were able to return to this country, arrest the perpetrators, and release the hostage. Despite what I had learned from that case, and other extensive research, Hsiao Hung Pai's book blew me away. The immense courage involved in going undercover, and in writing this expose', has paid off in producing a fascinating account of this wicked trade. A brilliant piece of investigative journalism. Read it, and help her to make a difference.
5.0 out of 5 stars
An other side of the world,
This review is from: Chinese Whispers: The True Story Behind Britain's Hidden Army of Labour (Paperback)
by Paul O'KaneHsiao-Hung Pai has written an important book. This freelance journalist, who specialises in Chinese and East Asian issues, has `gone underground' to amass evidence of the brutally unjust world in which migrant workers are forced to operate in Britain due to inadequate and outdated legislation. Loopholes, black markets and downright criminality allow obscene working conditions, violent and intimidating bosses, gang masters and threatening loan-sharks to bleed-dry people already forced by poverty to travel to so-called `first world' countries in search of some means of rescuing themselves and their families from the inadequacies of their emerging home nations. The writer's style and gift for description immediately brings home and makes real the unpalatable vision of a meat-packing factory shift on a tiny hourly rate; a cold onion field in the Midlands in the early hours; or a seedy suburban `massage parlour' (read `brothel') as well as crowded, dingy rooms packed with grubby mattresses shared by workers who pay for the dubious privilege. Meanwhile, the fact that Pai works secretly, for and alongside bosses known for their violent or brutal tactics (and gives many detailed names and places) makes the reading a nervous adventure as you begin to fear for the author's own safety. The writer's disgust at this urgent humanitarian issue comes through clearly but Pai uses her journalist's professionalism to balance her findings with the defensive statements of the shady agencies and employers she accuses. Furthermore, rather than polemically communicating mere hopeless anguish she regularly refers to the need for updated legislation to solve this Dickensian problem festering within a 21st century society. Just beneath the surface of the famous capital's tourist hotspots; in its suburbs; and away in lesser-known Midlands , Northern and East-Anglian towns, a pathetic, prone and powerless underclass works in unacceptable conditions, manhandling the very produce proffered by leading supermarket chains to sustain consumers in their superior fantasy of cornucopic choice. Migrant workers fear the police as much as their bosses and are afraid to present themselves to doctors or A&E wards when sick or injured for fear of discovery and deportation. Some die even before they reach Britain -as we know from hideous stories of suffocating trailers arriving in Dover or the Republic of Ireland. Others, like the so-called `cockle pickers' of Morecambe bay, die in tragedies which should not be allowed to occur in any country which thinks of itself as fair and decent (these events have been movingly portrayed by Nick Broomfield in his film `Ghosts' -also based on the work of Hsiao-Hung Pai). Cultural theorist Sarat Maharaj has compared the inexorable suction of the fatal Morecambe bay tide to that economic force which draws migrant labour from China to Europe, and one of the most pathetic and emotive images of the Morecambe bay tragedy remains that of people, aware of their imminent demise, saying goodbye to loved ones on the other side of the world, using mobile phones to express their fear, sorrow and ultimate folly.
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