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Tang is promoting his own book, An Apple a Week, the anthology of English-language columns he wrote from 2004 to February this year for the local Apple Daily newspaper.
Tang, nicknamed Tango, is worried about whether or not the book will sell. This from a man who founded Shanghai Tang, the China Club in Hong Kong, Beijing and Singapore, and China Tang, the swish Chinese restaurant that opened last year in London’s snobbish Mayfair.
Because of anxiety about whether An Apple a Week would roll off the shelves or be relegated to the remainders bin, Tang says he employed “the marketing aspect of me”. He inserted photos to make the volume more accessible to those curious about his early years.
He also added prefaces and postmortems to help lure readers unfamiliar with parochial issues, such as the disappearance of Chinese culture from Hong Kong, and the controversial naming of a university building to recognise a $1 billion donation by Li Ka-shing — an idea fully supported by Tang, whose grandfather’s name Sir Tang Shiu-kin graces many a Hong Kong edifice.
Tang has also, as he says, “effectively become a prostitute”; “I go to every book signing I’m asked to and write in every book when asked to autograph it.” |
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His efforts have so far proved successful, and not only because a reprint and a paperback version of the book are already being planned. “I’ve had an extraordinary number of people who normally do not read telling me they’ve finished the book,” he says. “Maybe they were lying or just being nice but when you’re being told that, you feel like J K Rowling or Frederick Forsyth — it’s a great boost.”
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