Samuel Porteous is an award-winning Shanghai-based artist/author with close to 20 years experience living and working in China…
For the last ten years he has been Chief Creative Director of Drowsy Emperor, a Hong Kong/Shanghai based small boutique design/content studio serving Chinese and Western audiences. He is currently artist in residence at TanYuan Gardens.
Samuel's work focuses on the special place China holds in the Western imagination, particularly in popular culture. His China analysis drawing on his earlier career as top China based corporate investigator and intelligence analyst has been published in the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, South China Morning Post, Globe and Mail, and Hong Kong Standard among others. He has also published widely in academic journals and authored groundbreaking government reports on the geopolitics of economic intelligence, targeted financial sanctions, trade policy and international organized crime. His writing on popular culture is published in various media platforms including Book and Film Globe.
Samuel also writes and illustrates the graphic novel series "Constable Khang's Mysteries of Old Shanghai" now available in both Chinese and English language versions.
He is represented by Creative Artists Agency (CAA).
Non-Fiction
China Analysis
Sam’s analysis of China drew mostly from his on the ground experience in the country serving as Asia Regional Manager of two listed major global risk management firms. While serving in this role he split his time between his offices in Shanghai and Hong Kong while conducting major investment due diligence, corporate fraud, and foreign corruption inquiries.
Links to China Analysis Samples Below:
Globe and Mail
“China’s Coronavirus Quarantine”
Wall Street Journal
“The National Security Threat to Free Trade” Can the Post WWII Trading System Survive?
Financial Times
“Willful Blindness Will No Longer Do” China’s War on Corruption”
Fortune China
“China’s IP Conundrum” An Emerging Leader in Research has New Reasons to Protect IP
South China Morning Post
“Security Issues Cloud Sino-US Acquisitions” 10 March 2008
“Anti-Corruption War Gets All Encompassing” 05 November 2007
Hong Kong Standard Columns Samples
“China’s IP Protection Conundrum”
“Potent Mix” China and India’s Roles in the Global Pharma Chain
“OECD Anti-Corruption Convention and the FCPA”
“Brain Trust of Dalian” Dalian Asia’s Davos”
“End of a Honeymoon” The Hard Part of China’s Africa Strategy Begins
“Tycoon Tales” China Corruption Absent Historical Context can Be a Tough Call
Multimedia: China in the Western Imagination
To see all multimedia, please click here.
Geopolitics, International Trade, & Economic National Security
Sam’s writing on geopolitics, international trade and national security has focused on often ground breaking analysis of trends and conceptualization of emerging issues.
Links to some samples of Sam’s published geopolitical, international trade and national security analysis are provided below:
Targeted Financial Sanctions
C.D. Howe Institute
Globe and Mail
Greed and Grievance: Economic Agendas in Civil Wars
“Smartening Up” Hong Kong Standard
Equity, Income Equality and International Trade
Canadian Foreign Policy Journal
“Populism Unemployment and Foreign Policy”
National Security and Free Trade & Investment
Wall Street Journal
Economic Intelligence and National Security:
Washington Quarterly
Impact of Organized Crime and Money Laundering:
Report Commissioned by Canadian Solicitor General
Marijuana Legalization:
Pop Culture Commentary:
Book and Film Globe
"The Best Movies About the Olympics"
Multimedia: Excellent Excerpts
Select samples from some of the worlds best thinkers. To see all multimedia, click here.
Multimedia: Words and Pictures Pioneers
Tributes to some of the men and women who combined words and pictures in unique wonderful ways. To see all multimedia, click here.
Fiction
Sam sometimes publishes fiction under the pen name Nathaniel Scobie. He is primarily focused on graphic novels and screenplays. He has written a screenplay inspired by Foo's life and is in discussion with some Los Angeles productions houses regarding a co-development deal. It is very early in the process.
As to graphic novels Sam has created, written and illustrated the first two books of the Constable Khang's Mysteries of Old Shanghai graphic novel series which have been published in China by major Chinese cultural publishing houses. This summer they will be available to audiences outside China on Amazon and other platforms.
Constable Khang's Mysteries of Old Shanghai
Old Shanghai of the late 1920s & 1930s, that "paradise for adventurers", overflowing with old world prejudices, international intrigue, gangsters, high finances beasts of the bourse and assorted secret and magical societies comes alive in these bicultural, broadly historically accurate, tales of a humble constable in the city's Chinese police force attempting to do his job in an increasingly complex and dangerous environment.
While the adventures of Constable Khang are clearly fictional they are also the product of an intensive attempt to capture the look and feel of Shanghai in the late 1920s and 1930s, in all its political and cultural complexity. The richly detailed artwork that characterizes the books has drawn inspiration from the author's review of thousands of archival photos, as well as, related artwork, historical records and histories of those tumultuous and intriguing times.
"Constable Khang's Mysteries of Old Shanghai: The Cat with the Telltale Tattoo!"
Constable Mee Mee Khang of the late 1920s & 1930s Shanghai Flower and Bird Market Constabulary has three days to find out where the strange kitten tattooed with the Chinese characters for murder came from. Three days to find the fortune teller who sold him and three days to determine why the richest man in Shanghai must have these answers!
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"Constable Khang's Mysteries of Old Shanghai: Constable Khang and the Black Angel!"
Constable Khang's search for the mysterious magician is complicated when in the midst of his inquiries a number of Shanghai's more notorious notables suddenly turn up missing. Khang is then drawn into the thick of what may be a related matter centering on the city's iconic Black Angel, the secrets surrounding that monument and, the sleeping habits of the city's criminal class and a mysterious woman who may have all the answers.
The two Khang books have also been published in special bilingual Chinese/English versions designed for the China market. The China versions of the books can be found HERE and other platforms. These versions are printed with the Chinese version at the front of the book followed by the English version so readers can practice their English or Chinese depending on their needs.
Pat Hobby Illustrated:
F. Scott's Fitzgerald's "Maps of the Stars"
An early exercise in Sam's graphic novel work this volume illustrates and Fitzgerald's caustic insider tale of . Sam also importantly annotates some of Fitzgerald's now more obscure references made in the story through useful endnotes and related photographs, helping Pat's world come alive.
In our first edition of the Pat Hobby series we illustrate Fitzgerald's "Homes of the Stars" an excellent introduction to Fitzgerald's beloved past his prime screenwriter Pat Hobby and his misadventures. In this tale a, once again, down on his luck Pat spots one of his beloved "angles" when some well off tourists mistake him for a tourist guide who can take them to the homes of the stars! This first story even includes a handy illustrated appendix identifying the many now obscuretime bound references made by our favorite Hollywood hack.
Pat Hobby may be an alcoholic, morally challenged, bitter, broken down “49 year-old” script writer whose best days are behind him but the imagination and creativity which long ago abandoned him at the typewriter leaps to life in his endless energetic schemes to wrestle minor financial concessions from the great and near great of the Hollywood studio system that has passed him by. In his glory days the work averse Hobby made “2,500 a week” went through 3 wives; all of whom gave up on obtaining alimony from him, and had a swimming pool. Now over a decade later he’s reduced to defrauding star struck tourists and skulking around the gates of the studios looking for charity “script polish jobs” --his best work includes substituting “scram!” for “get out of here!” -- from passing producers.
Pat Hobby, the writer who doesn’t read, the “set up man” who has no time for “art” was the comedic outlet for the frustrations and humiliations F. Scott Fitzgerald endured between 1937 and 1940 when the once lionized author, out of pressing pecuniary need and a fascination with this relatively new media, made his own deal with the studio devils. Up till his apocryphal death while eating a candy bar in 1940 Fitzgerald’s experiences in Hollywood fueled both the too often ignored Pat Hobby stories and his unfinished masterpiece “The Love of the Last Tycoon” the story of tragic studio head Monroe Stahr. And while the endlessly resilient Pat may not have belonged at the same studio canteen table as Mr. Stahr, in either a literary or studio hierarchy sense, one suspects had the inexplicably endearing Hobby managed to cadge a seat beside the moody wunderkind he would have walked away with at least enough “smackers” to ensure another pleasant day at the Santa Anita race track.
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