Almost everyone knows that many places in the non-Anglophone world have had a long and tumultuous love affair with English, yet few are aware of China's flirtation, if not infatuation, with it. But with at least 200 million students of English in mainland China alone (Yong & Campbell 1995) – more than two-thirds of the population of the United States – the romance could hardly have been hidden for long. Kingsley Bolton has been letting the secret out for the past decade. This fascinating, timely, and very readable new book is the result of his many years of perseverance. In short, English in China has had “a long and barely remembered history” (p. xiii) which stretches back to the beginnings of maritime trade of Britain with Canton and Macao.

Bolton is Professor of English Linguistics at Stockholm University and past president of the International Association for World Englishes. For many years he was on the faculty of the University of Hong Kong, where he had an opportunity to witness at first hand many of the linguistic changes taking place in China and its environs. He has written extensively on the use of English in Asia, including his groundbreaking edited volume on autonomy and creativity in the English used in Hong Kong (2002).

Bolton approaches Chinese Englishes by focusing on five key issues, each receiving its own chapter. Chapter 1 gives a theoretical overview of the study of what is sometimes called “new Englishes,” “World Englishes,” or “English as a world language.” The basic argument is that many of the localized varieties of English used around the globe have developed into something autonomous, often quite different from what native speakers use in the United States, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand (to say nothing of Canada and Australia). These international varieties are thought to be not just dialects of “standard” English (however that might be defined), but to differ greatly from it in their social functionality, cultural ecology, and historical context.

Bolton does an excellent job of sorting through the current approaches to world Englishes, and his literature exegesis alone is an important contribution. Though often eclectic, he basically takes a pluralistic or “Kachruvian” (18–20, 43) stance, claiming that not only is English now part of the world's linguistic and cultural heritage, it is very much an Asian language (e.g., Kachru 1996, 1997). This position emphasizes the creativity of bilingual users of English, or those in contact with English. It also shows how English is nativized – or modified – to be used in a local context while at same time leaving its own mark on local languages in various ways.

Although English has had a long presence in southern China and Hong Kong, local linguists have been reluctant to admit the existence of an actual local variety until very recently. Bolton tells us that as late as the mid-1990s, some argued that “That there is no social or cultural role for English to play among Hong Kong Chinese; it only has a role in their relations with expatriates and the outside world” (41). He clearly dispels such claims when he discusses the development of a Hong Kong variety of English, starting from 1980 and extending to 1997 (chap. 2) and its emergence as a “new English” after the return of the colony to the People's Republic of China in 1997 (chap. 4).

Though the handover of Hong Kong was international news, often ignored was the role language – especially English – played in the rise of heung góng yàhn, a distinct cultural identity as “Hong Kong people,” in the last years of the 20th century. Most Hong Kong residents are immigrants from Guangdong, Fujian, and other southern Chinese provinces, or are descendants of those immigrants. Cantonese – admittedly a very ambiguous term – is the native language of the majority of the people in Hong Kong, and it is very different from Mandarin (or Putonghua, the national language of the PRC). For example, in the Cantonese dialects there are nine tones compared to Mandarin's four, direct objects precede indirect objects, and certain adverbs follow verbs (the opposite order from Mandarin; Ramsey 1987:102–4). As 1997 approached, the use of Cantonese reified the solidarity of the Hong Kong residents who were uncertain about what the future would bring.

Oddly, the turnover has been beneficial for English. In 1995 the PRC announced that upon assuming control it would make Hong Kong biliterate in Mandarin and English and trilingual in Mandarin, Cantonese, and English (93), a policy that is still in force. English continues to be the main language of instruction in most Hong Kong universities. In 1999, instead of encouraging Hong Kong's identity as a southern or Cantonese city, Beijing decided to promote Hong Kong as a “world class” or “global” city, necessitating the use of English if only for business reasons. As Bolton says, “It seems, therefore, that in Hong Kong's rapidly changing society English is here to stay” (200). And it should be noted here, too, that Cantonese also benefited from the presence of English. As PRC policy has traditionally been to promote Mandarin at the expense of local “dialects,” having another official language to compete against has weakened Mandarin's dominance, allowing Cantonese to take up numerous other sociolinguistic roles and functions that would have been denied it otherwise.

But does this translate into a true Hong Kong variety of English? Yes, claims Bolton, and he describes numerous formal features that give Hong Kong English its special flavor, including accent, vocabulary, and the way new coinages are made. But not all agree. Some, for instance, still see Hong Kong as a society where two largely mutually exclusive monolingual speech communities coexist, with a small number of linguistic middlemen serving as language and culture brokers. Bolton rejects such claims. Hong Kong is becoming increasingly multilingual and multicultural since the 1990s, even for ordinary families, for dozens of reasons. Besides the obvious advantages of knowing English for business or for professional advancement, other reasons why English is ubiquitous include the traditional bilingualism of Hong Kong's elite, overseas education for increasing numbers of students, biracial marriages, the importation of hundreds of thousands of English-speaking domestic helpers, and the use of English in international electronics communications (from the Internet to DVDs to video games).

In chapter 3, Bolton attempts to conduct an “archaeology” of Chinese Englishes since the mid-17th century. Using standard historical methods in examining British trade and settlement in China, and examining extant texts to reconstruct what the contemporary speech might have been like, he uncovers the “forgotten past” (47) of English in China, in particular in the south. Among these texts are missionary writings, sailors' or administrators' diaries, glossaries or dictionaries of pidgin Chinese English, and – as one commentator of the time quaintly called them – “native vocabularies published for the benefit of compradors and servants.” Almost all of these have fascinating stories in their own right. One example is “The common foreign language of the redhaired people,” the complete text of which is included as an appendix. This was published in Canton around 1835 and is probably the earliest Chinese glossary of the English language. One of the remarkable things is the number of items that are not English, but Portuguese or even Swedish (172).

Bolton discusses the current state of English in China, as well as mainland Chinese English, in chapter 5. There are some interesting surprises here as well. For example, missionary schools and Christian colleges were instrumental since the 19th century in bringing English to the Chinese, so the language has always been associated in some ways with evangelism. But I wonder if anyone would have been ready for the likes of Li Yang at the turn of the 21st century. Li is a combination New Age guru, motivational speaker, self-help therapist, and get-rich-quick late-night TV barker. The product this mega-showman sells is Crazy English, and he has turned this teaching method into a multimillion-dollar business in the PRC. His huckster nationalism fuels his public appearances – as well as the sale of his books and tapes – and has given him rock star celebrity status. He claims that by studying Crazy English – basically just saying a lot of simple things loudly and physically – one's confidence is boosted, and one is likely to become wealthy. As Bolton points out, “In the case of Li Yang's ‘Crazy English,’ we see another modernity at work, that of a rapidly industrializing China in which capital and capitalism serve the needs of the Maoist Marxist-Leninism reinvented as ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics.’ … Li Yang's approach appears to give voice to the material hopes of millions of Chinese in a variety of brash English that twangs American but rings global with its exhortation ‘Make the voice of China be widely heard all over the world!’” (257). Bolton's new book will help the rest of us, whether scholars or students, take notice of what could potentially be the largest English-using country in the world.