The following transcript was generated by AI and may contain inaccuracies.
Carlie: Hey there, it’s Carlie with the Expat Focus Podcast. Are you on our mailing list? Sign up to be the first to know when new episodes drop, and get all the latest insights curated by our expert team, designed to help make your move abroad just that little bit easier. You can subscribe at expatfocus.com/newsletter.
British author Chris Ruffle wears many hats. He has spent three decades living and working across Asia, and he has more than a few tales to tell, both real ones and fiction, including in his latest audiobook, In a Strange Land. Chris, you have spent over 30 years in Asia. Can you tell me what was your initial motivation to leave the UK and move abroad?
Chris: There are a couple, really. My father was a sales engineer. I was brought up in the north of England, and he used to travel abroad selling pumps and compressors. He only spoke English, and it was a source of great frustration to him, so he encouraged his son to study foreign languages.
I did German and French and Spanish, the normal ones. I don’t think he imagined that would then extend to Chinese and Japanese, but that was one motivation. The other was on my mother’s side. She was from Sheffield in Yorkshire, which is a coal mining town, and her two brothers emigrated to Canada to work there. I visited them as a teenager, so that was a view of another world.
And then finally, when I was about to go to college, my relatives would ask me, “Well, Chris, what are you studying at college?” And I thought, “I’ve got to come up with an answer which will stop them asking.” So I said, “I’m going to do Chinese with philosophy.” That usually worked.
Carlie: Okay.
Chris: In Yorkshire in the 1970s, that sort of ended the conversation. And it just so happened that it became true. So it was an act of youthful rebellion rather than anything else.
Carlie: Did you actually have it in mind before you thought of it as a good conversation stopper?
Chris: I must have done, but…
Carlie: That’s amazing. So you always had those itchy feet to see what else was out there. As an Australian, I can relate. I think it’s a rite of passage for so many Aussies to want to see what’s beyond our shores.
Many Expat Focus listeners dream of building something in another country. Sometimes it’s voluntary, sometimes it’s out of necessity. You’ve done it, Chris — you’ve done many things. We were just discussing before we hit record that you seem to have your finger in many pies. But what stands out to me is that you’ve built a vineyard and a Scottish castle in rural China. I have so many questions.
Chris: Good. I can give you a little bit of background. I was living in China from the 1980s — 1983 was when I first moved there. I like wine, and the local wine was terrible, and importing wine was very difficult because there was something like a 100% import tax.
That was a source of frustration. I can remember it was one Labour Day weekend, a holiday, and I was going with my wife to a place called Pingyao, which is an old scenic town in Shanxi, in the north of China. One of my colleagues knew I liked wine and said, “Somebody set up this Grace Winery nearby and there’s a French winemaker. You ought to go and see him.”
So I did. A man called Gérard Colin from Saint-Émilion. We had a nice lunch and drank his wine, which was fine. And I said, “This is all good, but Shanxi is also a coal mining area, a bit dusty. Isn’t there a nicer place in China where we could make wine?” And he said, “I know this place.” That’s how the whole mad adventure started.
I’ve travelled all over China, first mining and then investing. So I went to the place he suggested as a possible vineyard, and I just came over the brow of the hill, and it was so beautiful with Tushan Mountain. There was a reservoir in front, and it really took me.
And the silliness of it — this was 2004, and the central government had banned golf course developments. The local government had thought this was going to be a golf course, and they couldn’t build one. So they had this spare agricultural land. We planted in 2005. That explains the vineyard part of it. The Scottish castle part is a bit more complicated.
Carlie: Did that get built where the vineyard is, or somewhere else?
Chris: Yes, it’s the same place. We planted a vineyard, and then I needed a winery, and I’m not French, so I couldn’t build a chateau. But as it happens, I once restored a castle in Scotland, in Fife, called Dairsie Castle.
Carlie: Of course you did.
Chris: I can remember the old architect standing on the site in Scotland as we were rebuilding it, and the rain was moving horizontally across the landscape as it tends to do in Scotland, and he said, “Wouldn’t it be nice if we could find a place with a better climate to build a Scottish castle?”
So I sent him a message saying, “Let’s build a Scottish castle in China.” And good on him, he came out. He was already 80 at the time, but we completed the project. If anybody wants to see pictures of the castle, it’s treatyport.com. Or the whole gruesome story is in my first book, A Decent Bottle of Wine in China.
Carlie: That’s amazing. And it’s there and operating today? Do you still run it?
Chris: Yes. It’s a sort of agritourism — you can go and stay there. And I have to say, it taught me a lot about China. Before, as an investor, you’re buying and selling shares. If it doesn’t work, you sell the shares and move along. But to actually have to operate in rural China, you have to work so closely with the Communist Party. It really made me understand and, in a way, value the local entrepreneurs — frankly, the amount they have to put up with to achieve things.
It was quite an experience, as you can read in the book. My wife, who is from Taiwan, has made me promise never to translate it into Chinese, because she thinks I’d get into trouble.
Carlie: Obviously there’s…
Chris: There’s lots of corruption involved, as one might imagine.
Carlie: We have had guests on the show before who talk about how what we see as corruption and bribes in the West is just part of doing business in Asia.
Chris: I had some quite funny ones. We also import Scotch whisky into China. We bring it in in bulk and bottle it downstairs in the winery, then distribute it.
Carlie: Naturally. Of course. It’s a Scottish castle — you can’t have one without whisky.
Chris: Exactly. But every time the whisky comes in, customs need a couple of bottles to test. So there’s that kind of thing that goes on.
Carlie: That’s just the way.
Chris: That’s the way. The other funniest one I had was when we’d finished construction of the castle and the safety inspector came round. She needed to sign off on it. I took her round and she seemed to be ticking the boxes, and I said, “Thank you very much for your work. If there’s anything I can do for you, let me know.” She said, “Handbags.” I said, “Sorry?” “Handbags.” So I had to draft my sister in on that one, to buy it appropriately.
Carlie: To go and get her an Hermès or something.
Chris: And that was suitably delivered.
Carlie: Wow, that’s wild. I can relate though to what you said about being somewhere else and wanting something you can’t get. I always say to my husband here in France, “I want to open a fish and chip shop.” I live in eastern France. It’s nowhere near the beach, and arguably fish and chips isn’t even my culture — it’s what Australia imported from the Brits.
But I really miss Aussie fish and chips, wrapped in white paper on a Friday night with a potato cake and some scallops and dim sims, and pickled onions in a big jar on the counter. I’m like, “I just want to open a neighbourhood fish and chip shop.”
Chris: For me it’s the mushy peas.
Carlie: Oh, the mushy peas.
Chris: That’s important. For a Yorkshireman, that’s important with his fish and chips.
Carlie: You see, we don’t really do the mushy peas so much in Australia. But my husband’s like, “Why would people come and buy that from you?” And I’m like, “Because it’s amazing and it’s a Friday night tradition.” And he’s like, “Yeah, but not here.” So one day, like Marie Antoinette and her private theatre, I will live out my fantasy of running a fish and chip shop. Maybe it’ll be a pop-up for one weekend only.
So your new audiobook — let’s get into that. It’s called In a Strange Land. It’s a series of short stories, and there it is on screen for those of you watching on our YouTube channel, Expat Focus. I was listening the other night and I got a kick out of chapter 17, A Local Dispute, because my family is actually from Malta.
Chris: Oh, I see.
Carlie: On my father’s side. And I was transported immediately to Strait Street in Valletta. I could visualise these characters, because it is my family — their attitudes, and just the absurdities of some things. So I really enjoyed that one.
Chris: Just on that one — listeners, this is difficult, but behind me, if you were watching the video, you’d see some rather unusual portraits.
Carlie: It’s a beautiful portrait, by the way.
Chris: Thank you. That’s because I planned to restore a palazzo in Valletta, and so I accumulated all this Baroque art.
Carlie: I was going to ask if this short story was based on real life.
Chris: Yes. And it never went through. There was a property dispute, so I’ve been in the courts for eight years in Malta, and I’m pleased to say that last week I won.
Carlie: Congratulations. Does that mean the palazzo can finally happen?
Chris: So that story is very personally motivated.
Carlie: I was going to say, when I was listening to it, I thought there was something that seemed very personal about it, and I wondered if it was true.
As expats or foreigners, Chris, a percentage of us actually choose our displacement. I chose to move to the UK. I chose to move to France. But it doesn’t mean it’s an easy experience, even when you’re choosing to do it. So what did researching the historical figures who feature in this series of short stories teach you about displacement and about exile?
Chris: I’d say over half of the characters, it’s involuntary exile. They’ve ended up there. The spark that set off the book was when I was in Kent, in a place called Chislehurst, and on the side of a building there was a blue plaque that said, “Napoleon III died here.” I thought, “What is an emperor of France doing dying in Chislehurst?” What a weird story.
So I researched it, and I wrote it from the point of view of his wife, Eugénie. Of course, he didn’t want to be there. But looking through them all, voluntary or involuntary, it was more the attitude they took to their exile.
In my work I’ve met lots of diplomats, for example, all over the world. Some of them become more English than the English, or more German than the Germans — they narrow in. The other side is to open up and say, “Let’s see what this place has to offer.”
Sometimes it has to do with the political situation. When I first arrived in China in 1983, it was still quite a closed society, so what you could do as a diplomat was quite restricted, especially if you weren’t fluent in Chinese. But a lot of it is just how you react to it.
Carlie: Yeah, definitely. I think there’s a lot to be said about the mindset and also your natural curiosity. I have felt guilty many times in my decade in France, because I meet people who say, “Oh, I’m such a Francophile. You’re living my dream life.”
I studied Italian and Japanese at school. I did an introduction to French and got scared by that R sound you have to make, and went, “No, I’m going back to Japanese class.” I never gave French a thought, or France a thought, in my life until I happened to meet my husband. So I feel like some people have this very natural calling to a place. Some people end up in that place, and that doesn’t mean they don’t want to be there, but they’re also not 100% passionate about it.
Chris: I think that’s true. One example: I spent some time in Hong Kong, which actually I didn’t like, because I found there were a lot of expats there who weren’t interested in China, really—
Carlie: Oh, really? Many people love Hong Kong.
Chris: —and there tended to be a high turnover. I much prefer living in Shanghai, which is somehow a real place with a bigger hinterland. That made a difference to me.
Carlie: You are now dividing your time between the UK, where we’re speaking to you today, and Taiwan — and you mentioned your wife is from Taiwan, so that answers my question about how Taiwan comes into the mix. And then you also spend time in China. Many of us living abroad struggle with that concept of home. For you, where is that now?
Chris: Home is where the heart is. It’s to do with family, wife, children and so forth. I guess the hardest time I had, the time I felt homesick, was the first time going to Beijing in the 1980s, when I was there alone. My parents were back in Yorkshire, and that’s the time I can remember staring at the roof thinking, “Chris, really? What have you done here? Is this the right thing?” But as I made friends and so on, that was fine.
I do like fish and chips with mushy peas, but I can eat anything, so I don’t have that problem. For some people that’s an issue. But I can cope with anything they throw at me, and you can imagine, in the wilder parts of China, there’s all sorts of weird stuff I’ve eaten. So that’s never been a problem.
The other thing which really helps an expat these days: in my early days my baggage would be full of books or CDs. Now, of course, it’s all downloaded, and no problem. So in that way you can also take a bit of home with you, in a much easier way.
Carlie: Oh, definitely. I’m a prolific podcast listener, says the podcast host. And the majority of my podcast listening is Australian podcasters, for example. You just have a bit of culture in your pocket.
Chris: Some things have gone the other way. Living in China in the 1980s, off work there was very little to do. This was pre-internet, and the television was terrible. So I used to write a lot of letters. When my parents passed away and I was cleaning their house, I found my mother had kept all my letters, bless her — all stacked in order, with all the terrible photographs I sent. That’s actually the basis of this book.
Carlie: The Barter Trade.
Chris: The Barter Trade, set in Beijing in 1983. The inspiration is all these letters. Whereas today — are people going to excavate all those emails? I don’t know. I doubt it.
Carlie: It’s something that occurred to me, Chris, when I was listening to this audiobook. One of my favourite books as a teenager and young adult was Going Solo by Roald Dahl, and he had the most incredibly rich, eccentric characters in it. Your stories really reminded me of Roald Dahl’s tales. These characters are such interesting, sparky people.
Chris: Well, thank you. And that really goes to it, because in preparing I was able to read a lot of their letters, their writings. So you get a sense of their style — how would they have written this? I slightly worry for modern-day historians about how that’s going to work out. Obviously we produce a lot now.
Carlie: Because we’re not writing letters anymore, right? They’re going to have to analyse the email archives.
Chris: The cloud, or something.
Carlie: Well, we’re not even sending many emails anymore. I randomly was searching my email and I found one I wrote to my mum when I first moved to the UK in 2013. I was writing her email updates about how things were going. I haven’t done that for the last 10 years. We’re now just doing Facebook Messenger videos or WhatsApp messages. So where is that history going to be stored?
Chris: Yeah, exactly.
Carlie: It’s very interesting. I also liked that you used a variety of voice actors for this. You really gave literally a voice to these individual characters, rather than one person reading the entire series of short stories.
Chris: Thank you. It’s important, because there are younger and older characters, and I also tried to get a female perspective. So, for example, instead of writing about Trotsky, it’s from the point of view of Mrs Trotsky.
There’s also one from a child — and this was someone I know. You talk about the parents voluntarily moving from China to England. But what about their nine-year-old son who’s dropped into an English school? How does he get on? So I wanted to try and capture that voice as well. Hence I picked the voice actors. And we had a lot of fun recording it at 20/20 Studios.
Carlie: I think there’s a lot in this for everybody, which is really nice. And they’re beautifully timed as well. I’m one of those people who loves — as much as we’re all video podcasting these days — I still appreciate the audio form, for just being able to do other things. It was very lovely just to put on your audiobook and potter around and listen to these.
So for an expat listening to your audiobook, whose life may be naturally filled with transient friendships, many moves and uncertainty, is there a reassuring or grounding message that you hope they take away from these stories?
Chris: I think that’s difficult. My own suggestion is, as I said, this openness to the experience: while I’m here, let’s see all there is to be seen, eat all there is to be eaten and drink — that kind of attitude.
And you mention transient friendships, but again, technology has helped so much with that. In recent years I’ve been able to keep in touch with these guys scattered all over the world in a way that… well, you’d have had to be very disciplined in letter writing to do it otherwise.
Carlie: It is true. I had some great pen pals when I was a kid. But you know what? I also think the technology is a little bit of a crutch, because somebody is only an instant message away. I think sometimes those friendships can’t feel as meaningful as if you put the thought and effort in.
I still make care packages for friends a few times a year. I’ll see some French products and things, and I’ll put them together in a little box. I’ll pay an exorbitant amount for postage, but it’s my gesture to say, “Hey, I’m thinking of you, and I saw this and thought of you.” And I like to think that it sometimes makes their day.
Chris: That’s nice. Well, I get to keep up with people because I do still travel to Taiwan and China. And because I’m in the hospitality business, I can say to Americans or Europeans, “Come over. When you come to visit China, you’ll stay at the castle.”
Carlie: Stay at the Scottish castle. That’s exactly what you do when you come to China.
Chris: It sounds ridiculous, but actually I find hardly any foreigners see the Chinese countryside.
Carlie: Can I ask about the soil? Okay, a couple of questions — so many questions. Back on wine, Chris: were they producing wine in China before you got there? And two, what’s the soil like, and what sort of wine are you producing?
Chris: It’s obviously a huge place, with many different types of soil. In my area near the coast, I think there was a Hungarian count making wine about 100 years before me. In my little area, the benefit is that it’s granitic soil — the castle was built out of granite, so it looks like Aberdeen. In French terms, I think it’s closest to your southwest region.
One of the wines I produce is called The Drunken Beauty, named after the—
Carlie: He’s showing it on screen. That looks gorgeous.
Chris: It’s a red wine, and it was inspired by Banyuls. Have you ever drunk Banyuls? It’s from the southwest of France.
Carlie: I don’t think I have. Well, see, I’m in Riesling country here.
Chris: This is a natural sweet red wine, and I found it goes really well with the spicy Chinese cuisines like Sichuan or Hunan. Often I’ve been offered these meals and they give you some Grand Cru, and you eat your spicy noodles and it just kills it. You can’t taste it. But this one actually survives. So we sell this to the Sichuan restaurants and Hunan restaurants and so forth. And that little area, Banyuls, has a similar granitic soil. The key there is that it drains well.
My biggest headache in making wine in this area is rain in August, and therefore mildew. The red grape type which does best is one called Marselan, which is a relatively new French hybrid imported from France. The bunch is very spread out, and we have a constant sea breeze, so it dries out the grapes and avoids the humidity problem. That’s my other main one — I’m showing on the screen a wine called The Commissioner, made from Marselan.
Carlie: Beautiful.
Chris: Most of my wine uses these old black and white photos of foreigners working with Chinese. So in this case it’s Lockhart Stewart, who was the commissioner of Weihai, which was a colony nearby, having what appears to be a drink of wine with the 76th descendant of Confucius. I found this in the records office in Scotland.
Carlie: Oh, that is fascinating. This has been such an interesting conversation, Chris. You must have so many stories. Where can our listeners find more of your work? You showed us a few of your books on screen, as well as your wine. If our listeners are interested in exploring your work or visiting your castle in China, where should they go to find out more?
Chris: The books are all on Amazon and so forth. The audiobook’s also on Apple and some of the other audiobook platforms.
Carlie: It’s called In a Strange Land.
Chris: In a Strange Land is the latest one. The wine is basically domestic sale in China, though, being English, I do bring it into the UK through a company called Real Wine Company. So anybody listening from the UK, if you look them up, all the Chinese wines there are my wines.
And then if you’re visiting China, you’re most welcome to come and stay at the Scottish castle in Shandong. That’s treatyport.com, and that’ll bring up all the details on the website.
Carlie: Amazing. Chris, thanks so much for coming on the Expat Focus Podcast.
Chris: My pleasure. Lovely to talk to you.
Carlie: That’s it for today. Have you built something unique in a new country? Maybe you’re realising my dream of opening a fish and chip shop. Let us know all about it on our YouTube channel or other social media platforms. Just search for Expat Focus, and I will catch you in the next one.