BARBARA-Sue White has just had the education of a lifetime - but the American author and musician said there was still so much to learn and so much to write on the subject that has fascinated her for years.
A Californian-born visiting scholar with the Centre of Asian Studies at the University of Hong Kong and a professional violinist with a string quartet in the US, Mrs White seems an unlikely candidate as writer of the first book to be published on the Indian community in Hong Kong.
Turbans and Traders: Hong Kong's Indian Communities, published by Oxford University Press and on bookshelves as of next week, is the only comprehensive publication on one of the territory's oldest ethnic communities, an anthology of its historical place in society and its modern-day cultural, social and religious bearings.
Mrs White made the decision five years ago to produce a book that was respectful without being propagandist, honest without being critical and light-hearted without being flippant.
Hundreds of interviews and thousands of hours of research later, she's pretty well satisfied with the results.
Apart from the excitement and satisfaction of seeing her name on what has been a labour of love - all profits generated from the sale of the book will go to Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta - Mrs White is especially thrilled that through the project, she and her husband Lynn, a professor of Chinese politics at Princeton University, have made some of their closest friends.