My grandfather's amazing life in China and how he found my mother

What a difference a century makes. One hundred years ago, a generous-hearted, independent-minded, Hong Kong-born Briton found a baby girl abandoned on his doorstep in Changsha, in China's Hunan province. He took her in and made her part of his family but, in doing so, drew the disapproval of his compatriots.

While widening income inequality is a divisive issue in Hong Kong today, in 19th- and early 20th-century "Britain in China", race and class divided the world of treaty ports and foreign enclaves.

Against a background of local hostility to the encroachment of the foreign powers, the British in China were obsessed with preserving their "Britishness" in an effort to retain the diplomatic and military support of London. In practice, maintaining "Britishness" became bound up with notions of "whiteness" and led to prejudice against British men who formed serious relationships with Chinese, Eurasian or White Russian women and the offspring of such liaisons, through blood or adoption.

Despite the racial animosity on both sides, Edward Francis Southan Newman had no hesitation in adopting the infant girl and adding her name to his travel document as his daughter, thus conferring British status upon her.

I have every reason to be grateful to Frank Newman. The baby he adopted - and later provided with an excellent education - was my mother. Marylou, as he called her, later became Louise Mary Gill by marriage, though was always known to her friends as "Billie". A few months ago, I knew almost nothing about my grandfather but, with the help of Lane Harris, assistant professor in history and Asian studies at South Carolina's Furman University, and the online archives of the and other newspapers, I have uncovered an amazingly full picture of him - and the price he paid for love.

Hong Kong in 1873 and, soon after, his parents, Edward and Mary Ann, moved to Chefoo (known as Yantai today), on the north shore of Shandong province and dubbed the "Brighton of China" because of its bracing climate. Chefoo had opened as a treaty port in 1862 and the Newmans owned and managed the Family Hotel, on the beachfront.