Mark Isaac-Williams brings the reader back to his Kowloon childhood in this delightful story of adventure and change. Growing up mainly at the Peninsula Hotel, he and his friends sometimes got up to mischief by "borrowing" rickshaws or spending days with a visiting circus. These were the years when Hong Kong was rebuilding after World War Two and absorbing millions of refugees from over the border, transforming a sleepy colonial outpost into one of the world's most modern cities, and Isaac-Williams was witness to it all. Accompanied by gorgeous illustrations of bygone Hong Kong customs like removing coffins from homes on bamboo slides and transporting cars in ferries across the harbour, The Hong Kong I Knew records a Kowloon that has all but disappeared in the name of "progress".

– Susan Blumberg-Kason, author of Good Chinese Wife