Drawing on his photographic memory, he started slowly transcribing his childhood.

But Andrew says he was a deer in headlights as his hands trembled and eyes watered.

“I was not scared of writing but I was scared of reliving the brutality and devastation of The Great Chinese Famine,” the debut author says.

His emotions bled on to pages and his first lyrical memoir was born.

“It took me 20 years to write the book and I often could not see the screen,” he says.

“It was incredibly emotional and I would often wipe away tears.

“During the biggest famine in Chinese history, people dropped dead in the street and my family was desperate, hungry and sick for a very long time.”

Historians say more than 30 million people in China died of starvation from 1958 to 1962.

Andrew says, during desperate and difficult times, his mother would tell him to look at the clouds in the sky, wait for the dark clouds to move and the bright moon would be his.

One Bright Moon, a sign of hope, became the title of his book. Over 332 pages, readers follow Andrew’s early life and his perilous escape from Chairman Mao’s China to his new life in Australia.

Andrew, now 70, says during a brutal period in modern Chinese history called “The Great Leap Forward” he was often sleepless, anxious and doubtful about his fervour as a revolutionary in Mao’s New China. Still, he chanted propaganda like nursery rhymes and devoted himself to the Party and its Chairman for a chance to be saved.

Months later, his father was banished to a political re-education camp. From then on Andrew, his three sisters and mother were “black sheep” – despised and left with few means of survival during the terrible years of persecution and famine.

After his father returned, things remained desperate. Escape seemed the only solution, so 12-year-old Andrew said goodbye to his family and fled to Macau, Hong Kong and then to Australia.

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Andrew now resides on the Central Coast of New South Wales and works as a passionate general practitioner.

“I have realised throughout my life, family is where every goodness comes,” the father-of-three says.

“If you love, tolerate, understand and care for each other, nothing is impossible.”

Andrew says he was inspired to write so he could leave “the best legacy” for his wife Sheree, children Serena, Harmony and Andrew-James and his seven grandchildren.

“Words and knowledge about your experiences mean a lot more than money,” he says.

As English was Andrew’s second language, he went to community college to learn the art of creative writing.

“After time at the NSW Writers Centre, I started sending my writing to competitions and then got a writing fellowship to the Australian Writers’ House Varuna in Katoomba,” he says.

“Amazing people worked with me and were very patient and sensitive to my writing. “Overtime I got more confident and had more than 20 short stories published.”

Andrew says writing — and rewriting — his manuscript was trying until he received a life-changing email on January 2, 2019.

“It was from a HarperCollins senior publisher,” he recalls.

“She read my manuscript and loved it.

“I couldn’t believe my eyes, they wanted to publish my book and the rest is history”.

Andrew says a special moment in the writing process was laying eyes on the cover of One Bright Moon for the first time.

“I did not know they would choose a picture of me for the cover,” he says.

“I was shocked when they blew up a picture of me as a young boy. It was six months after I arrived in Hong Kong and grandma had fattened me up.

“As I looked at the cover of the book, I wasn’t sure but I wished I would be all right one day and the bright moon would come out.

“I spent a lot of time thinking about how to present the book in a way that when people finish reading they are happy not depressed.

“I want to remind people that at the end of the tunnel there is a little spark of hope and we have to work towards that.”

Andrew says he is now planning the sequel to One Bright Moon and “can’t wait for everyone to read it”.