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.