About this ebook
Revised Edition
To preserve his family, he sends his children away. Their success will carry them beyond his reach.
Guangzhou, 1910. As China’s imperial order approaches collapse, He Tianming sets an ambitious plan in motion. His six children will establish themselves across the institutions shaping a new century: banks and trading houses, industrial enterprises, political courts and the hidden channels through which wealth moves.
Together, they will form the Silent Stream—a network of capital, intelligence and obligation designed to protect the family through an age of upheaval.
But each sibling must find a place in an unfamiliar world, and every alliance carries its own demands.
He Jun navigates Shanghai’s underworld while protecting the family’s commercial interests.
Lucian He learns to wield the instruments of finance and influence in New York.
He Wei enters Japan’s industrial and aristocratic circles, where access brings dangerous knowledge.
He Jingliu moves through the political networks of Nationalist China, balancing family loyalty against the demands of power.
He Kai builds his position in Singapore and the wider Nanyang, pursuing opportunities that will test his judgement and his conscience.
He Yunzhu oversees the family’s financial connections from Macao, guarding the channels through which its wealth must move.
As war, occupation and revolution transform the world around them, the siblings’ connections become both lifelines and liabilities. The choices they make to protect one another will shape the inheritance they leave to their children.
Spanning the final years of imperial China, the Great Kantō Earthquake, the Second World War and the upheavals of 1949, The House of He is a story of ambition and belonging, and of the distance between building an enduring enterprise and keeping a family together.
This revised edition has been edited throughout, with refined prose and dialogue and reworked scenes. It includes a glossary of financial and economic terms and a glossary of cultural terms.
Discover more
About the author
Lee Simon is a lifelong student of the great, cyclical tides of history and the nature of power. He has a deep personal and professional familiarity with the cultures of Singapore, China, Japan, and the West, which informs his exploration of the complex, interwoven destinies of his characters. The House of He is the first instalment in a planned multi-generational saga.
