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was this Irishman, scholars continue to debate over who is more deserving of the honorary title "Godfather of China's Modernism:" Sir Robert Hart or Deng Xiaoping, architect of China's new economic reform.

Lofthouse, thankfully, leaves the drier discourse to the academicians and instead beguilingly explores Robert Hart's riotous first years in the Orient, namely all the sex and violence that an expat living in mid-1800's China (what this reviewer calls the "Chaos Dynasty") would most likely encounter. Set to a tumultuous backdrop of the Taiping Rebellion, opium wars and foreign invasion, Concubine opens with an indelible portrait of besieged China emerging from its 5,000 year-old cocoon to realize that it just may no longer be the Center of the World it once thought itself as.

The days of nobles sipping tea by their lotus ponds are over; Shanghai and Hong Kong have become "foreign devil" enclaves of ill-mannered, lusty European merchants ("To gold and silver and the women it buys!") capitalizing on China's untapped treasures: opium, silk and spice by dayvirgin teenage girls by night. Such prurience might be too much for some readers to handle, however, as Lofthouse quotes the sagacious governor of Hong Kong, Sir John Bowring, advising a newly-arrived Hart, "Just because it is shocking, don't turn away from such lessons in life."

Not all of Concubine's literary cast are as erudite, and Lofthouse is obliged to painfully reveal many prejudiced discussions between Hart's compatriots which, sadly, to this day remain the general consensus of China by the intolerant west: "The Chinese can't manage thingsEveryone in China is out to fill his purse with silver, and there is little or no concern about the smooth running of the government or the economy. These fools are penny wise and pound-foolish. Stealing and telling lies is a way of life here."

They are nave statements against the Chinese heard all too often in the din of modern-day expat haunts around Beijing and Shanghai, but neither Lofthouse nor his 19th century protagonist buys into the stereotype; Hart diligently sets out to understand China's oft-misunderstood culture for himself despite the arrogance of his western counterparts who say of the Chinese, "It is their place to understand us. We don't have to understand them."

An unfortunate attitude many China expats (whom Hart refers to as "spoilers of the earth") share, yes, but if Hart's colleagues embody all of our fears and confusions about China, then we come

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