The best course between two points isn't always a straight line for Stephen Bradley. Meet a man who takes the scenic route. By P.Ramakrishnan. Portrait by Graham Uden.
His album of impressive pictures reveals that Stephen Bradley, the new British Consul-General to Hong Kong, has captured the world with near-professional precision; the composition and colours of images from his travels are compelling. There is one image that's particularly striking: a crunched white Land Rover under a toppled truck. Window panes shattered as if bullets punched through the glass, the roof caved inward like crunched paper; whoever was sitting on the driver's seat couldn't have possibly survived that ordeal. But Bradley did.
"We were at an 'S' shaped bend on a hilly area, just outside Beijing and, on the way, there were carcasses of trucks and buses on either side. As we were driving up this mountainous zone, I was trying to avoid rubble when a truck came speeding down the hill, and from that truck's point of view, he couldn't have slowed down or seen the maze that he had to go through just after the curb," he says, as he relives the near-fatal moments.
"I saw it happen... slowly. How it was coming at me, could see it tumble, hear the ceiling crack, the glass shattered immediately and I had cuts and scratches. I kept ducking down. At a time my hands were still on the wheel and there was that moment when you wait for the whole thing to come crashing down. But it didn't. Someone somehow kicked the door open on the side and I crawled out."
Other than a few nicks and scratches, he survived the horrific accident with only vivid memories. In fact, in the photograph he took of himself near the tin-can leftover that was once a $700,000 car, there's no evidence of any bodily harm. "Whenever I'm very stressed and things are going a bit pear-shaped, I look at two pictures; one of my kids the other of this. The problems don't seem as big after that."
An unfortunate remnant of a journey which began in Paris, it's not the only thing that he remembers of his two-month adventure with his wife, Elizabeth. "I had stored up a lot of vacation time so when I got wind of my diplomatic posting in China, we set off on the 16,000 km drive - from Paris to Beijing. I was getting to work, but we took a more scenic route."
Having joined the foreign office soon after college, he's had to pick up the shift base with family in tow every three years, but the perpetual emigrant enjoys being on the move. Even now, in Hong Kong he goes trekking every weekend in different spots as an explorer.
He asserts his life-long attraction to the Far East, which has lured him back time and time again. "I am a complete sino-phile, Chinese culture has always fascinated me. I studied Mandarin in university and I first came to China in the early 1980s as a student when China was, at that time, completely inaccessible to foreigners. We were about 20 British students and went to Fudan University. It was brilliant. We roamed around places where they had never seen a foreigner before, oceans of people in green and blue Mao suits. We stayed in pretty spartan conditions but it was all so exciting. There I was, speaking Chinese all day and night."
Hong Kong itself, of course, was also another attraction on the horizon. "I had first come to Hong Kong in '78 with my girlfriend from university (who is now my wife, by the way) and as her family's here, we've been to Hong Kong often. We have lived here before, and I worked in the old government office as a political advisor. My wife worked in a law firm in the early '90s. I really see Hong Kong as our second home."
So where is home? "Well, I feel rather nomadic. We go around the world carrying our collection of paintings, books and CDs. I was born in the States but then my early years were in England; but we've constantly been travelling, as far as I can remember. I have been a bit of gypsy, I suppose."
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