Jung Chang's My London

Home is…

Notting Hill. I love it because it is cosmopolitan and full of life. I feel very happy there.

Most romantic thing someone’s done for you?

For a while I lived in Paris and fell in love with the artistic way Notre Dame was illuminated after dark. On returning to London I found St James’s Park and Kensington Gardens were lit in a similar way. I found this subtle, discreet, beautiful lighting intensely romantic.

Last play you saw?

Chimerica at the Harold Pinter Theatre. It was an unusual take on that famous photograph of a lone man standing in front of a column of tanks. It’s good to keep alive the memory of Tiananmen; in China many young people have never heard of it because it was an unmentionable word.

First thing you do when you arrive back in London?

Check whether my potted plants have been properly watered.

Favourite pub?

When I first came to London we were not allowed to go into pubs — the Chinese translation of pub was ‘jiuba’, meaning an indecent place where nude women gyrated. I was torn with curiosity but when I did go into a pub I saw nothing of the kind. I was rather disappointed.

Building you’d like to be locked in overnight?

The V&A, for all its interesting things, from antiquities to modern art.

Earliest memory?

Thinking how green London was. I had come from a China that had just suffered ten years of the Cultural Revolution, when plants were condemned as bourgeois. When I was a child we had to go out and remove grass from the school lawn, so you can imagine my ecstasy when I went to Hyde Park and saw this green extending to the horizon under the majestic chestnut trees and flowers. I was mad with joy.

What would you do as Mayor for the day?

Make the Thames’ north bank more like the South Bank and increase the river bus service.

Favourite outlets?

For lunch my husband Jon Halliday and I often have soup or jamón from Tavola on Westbourne Grove. For my hair I go to Toni & Guy, and I swim at Bodyworks in Lambton Place. I love the starters at Le Café Anglais, especially the raw tuna marinated in ginger. For clothes I go to Paule Ka and for books Daunt in Holland Park.

Favourite discovery?

Grand boulevards like Kensington Palace Gardens.

Biggest extravagance?

A beautiful pearl as a pendant from Milleperle in Burlington Arcade.

Best piece of advice you’ve been given?

I learned English in China at a time when there were no foreigners there. We greeted people by saying, ‘How are you? Have you eaten?’ So in London I went around saying the same until an English girl told me not to.

Best meal?

At Min Jiang in the Royal Garden Hotel in Kensington. It’s named after a river that joins the Yangtze, and I was born in the city next to the tributary.

Best thing a cabbie has said to you?

‘You have a very nice perfume on, what is it? I need to get some for my wife. Oh, actually I won’t ask you; you’ll want to keep something unique to yourself.’

At the moment you are…

About to publish a biography of the Empress Dowager Cixi. She had lots of dealings with Britain; for decades, she used British men to run China’s Customs, which contributed to one third of the country’s income.

Best place to let your hair down?

My home is where I feel most relaxed.

Who’s your hero?

Dr Johnson, who said, ‘When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life.’

What do you collect?

Tea cups with fish-tail handles.

Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China (Jonathan Cape, £20)