Mark Kitto

The name is Cornish. I grew up in North Wales and served in the Welsh Guards (90-94). That was after a language degree in Mandarin Chinese at SOAS, University of London. I live in North Norfolk.

My main ‘thing’ in life was building a series of English language city magazines in China, where I lived for 18 years. They are/were called ‘that’s Magazines’: that’s Shanghai, that’s Beijing etc. They grew too big and in 2004 the Chinese Government seized my business and made it impossible for me to work in media in China. They finished me off by putting out the word that I was a Muslim separatist. I had rather upset them by taking them to court, and appeal. For the full story you could read or listen to ‘That’s China’, and for the happier sequel about living on a Chinese mountain in a village built a hundred years ago by missionaries, ‘China Cuckoo, How I lost a fortune and found a life in China’. I wrote a long-running column for Prospect magazine about life in rural China called ‘China Cafe’.

While I was living the life of a China-based 'mini media mogul', in the words of the FT, I did some acting, amateur, mainly in Beijing and in English, and professional, for the Shanghai People’s Arts Theatre, in Chinese.

In 2013 I realised ‘a life in China’ was not going to work out after all, primarily for my children's education (Prospect magazine, ‘You’ll Never be Chinese’) and I came home to the UK to become a professional actor.

Now I have put my skills and experience (writing, China and acting) together to create ‘Chinese Boxing’. How I came up with the idea is here.

I’m still an occasional China pundit and commentator. Recent press includes:

Supchina A 'Catch-up' Profile and Interview

'Why you should see Mark Kitto's Play' in the China Britain Business Council magazine.

And if you missed the links above, here’s print, kindle and audio for:

‘That’s China, How a British Rebel Took on the Chinese Propaganda Machine’

and

‘China Cuckoo, How I lost a Fortune and Found a Life in China’ 

HOW THE SHOW CAME ABOUT