Maureen de la Harpe

Maureen de la Harpe is a fourth generation ‘Shanghailander’ whose great grandfather went out to China in 1851; her grandfather was a Scot and her father sailed to Shanghai from Dublin in 1932.

When she was eight months old the city of her birth was attacked by Japanese forces and two thousand people lost their lives; at the age of five she was bitten by a rabid dog, and two years later her family and relatives were interned in a Japanese concentration camp where they were held until the end of WW2. 

The family left China a year later and eventually settled in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe today). Maureen married a farmer and spent the next ten years in the far north of the country where her three children, two sons and a daughter, were born. 

When civil war broke out, the family moved to the city where worked as a journalist and in publishing until the country gained independence.

In 1983, she emigrated to Australia with her daughter Lara and began a new career in journalism, publishing and public relations, settling in the Perth hills.

The author of two books with African themes, Maureen’s interest eventually shifted back to the country of her birth. Two visits to Shanghai with her daughter inspired them to begin tracking the lives of their forebears, which led to a trip to the Isle of Man to find her ancestral home.

Her new book, Dinner at the Cathay – A Memoir of Old Shanghai, is the story of their quest.