Non-fiction paperback: Do you notice the harassed waitress from your local Chinese restaurant?
What about those builders across the street working funny hours and without helmets?
You've probably eaten the lettuce they picked, or bought the microwave they assembled.
Do the words 'cockle pickers', 'Morecambe Bay', 'Chinese illegals found dead in lorry' ring a loud bell?
Did you know that there are hundreds of thousands of undocumented Chinese immigrants in Britain?
They've travelled here because of desperate poverty, and must keep their heads down and work themselves to the bone.
Hsiao-Hung Pai, the only journalist who knows this community, went undercover to hear the stories of this hidden work-force.
She reveals a scary, shadowy world where human beings are exploited in ways unimaginable in our civilized twenty-first century.
She exposes the truth behind the lives of a hidden work-force here in Britain.
You owe it to yourself, and them, to read it.
About the author: Hsiao-Hung Pai was born in Taiwan and came to Britain in 1991. She started writing for Chinese publications, and later for the Guardian, specializing in stories about the Chinese community. She covered the Morecambe Bay cockle-picking tragedy for the Guardian. In order to understand the plight of other Chinese migrants, she went undercover and is the only journalist working in Britain who has truly penetrated the world of undocumented Chinese migrants.
Hsiao-Hung now works as a freelance journalist, writing for the Guardian, the New Statesman and many UK-Chinese publications. Nick Broomfield's film, Ghosts (2006), was based on her work. Chinese Whispers (2008) is Pai's first book and was shortlisted for the 2009 Orwell Book Prize and the Glen Dimplex New Writers Award in 2008. Chinese Whispers has been dubbed "the most worth talking about books" by World Book Day.
Her second book, Scattered Sand: The Story of China's Rural Migrants was published in 2012 and has been named Migration Book of the Year by Migrant Rights Network.
Her third book, Invisible: Britain's Migrant Sex Workers will be released on 15 April 2013 by Westbourne Press.
The author is currently working on her first fiction book in Chinese. She lives in London.
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