An American tour guide in Hong Kong giving Westerners a taste of her adopted home
- Little Adventures in Hong Kong founder Daisann McLane travelled the world as a journalist for Rolling Stone and The New York Times before settling in Hong Kong
- She helps others understand the unique culture of a city she feels part of, and is ready to stand up for
New York, New York I was born in New York City, in the mid-1950s. It was an excellent time to arrive in the world in an upwardly mobile household. My dad was the first person in our family to go to university. I grew up thinking of myself as cosmopolitan, even though we lived in a very modest house in Queens.
I remember our first flickering black-and-white television, watching cartoons and a kids’ show called Howdy Doody. My parents were Broadway lovers and we went to see all the musicals; it was the heyday of Rodgers and Hammerstein. I still know the words to all the songs from The Sound of Music, South Pacific and, my favourite, The King and I. Little did I know that one day I would actually go to Thailand.
Radio times I was drawn to music and books, since that was what was most accessible to me after my family made the great migration to the suburbs in the 1960s. I cultivated a rich interior world to counter the very conventional one around me. I listened to radio quite a bit. On the AM band you could pull in stations from all across America, at night, when the winds were right. Plus my dad had a short-wave radio, so I could reach across the globe.
Listening to stations in New Orleans or France was my way of travelling. I remember one night picking up a station in China, and hearing The East is Red. My great fortune was to come of age during one of the more interesting and culturally mobile times in the last century. It was the 60s, when popular music became a common language. I will always remember the first time I heard The Rolling Stones’ Satisfaction on the radio.
The Ivy Leaguer In 1972, I went to Princeton University (in New Jersey) on a full scholarship. My studies were liberal arts – history, cultural studies, that sort of thing. I still believe in a liberal education as opposed to career training like a business or journalism degree. Learning history, literature or anthropology is a much better foundation for getting through life than a narrow course of study.