The Donheads, England, late 1990s and early 2000s

Due to the rise of anti-British sentiment in Hong Kong leading up to their 1997 independence, Filth and Betty decided to move to a house in the Donheads. The Donheads refers to a collection of villages on the Dorset-Wiltshire border—“no place in the world is less like Hong Kong or the Far East” (8). It represents an ideal of British country living, a place of quaint villages and green hills. Betty and Filth’s house is an “old low stone house that could not be seen from its gate,” on a plateau overlooking “every sort and colour of English tree” (8). While it sounds like a lovely place to retire, Betty and Filth’s decision to move to the Donheads is curious. Both had spent most of their lives in the East, had felt that the East felt more like Home than Britain...