Tuesday, May 31, 2005

Adventures of Japanese Housewives in Hong Kong

Many of you may wonder at my rather unorthodox title and wonder if I'm using cheap, lowest-common-denominator tactics to promote my blog, but actually I'm letting people know about an interesting talk. On Thursday, June 16th 2005, MPhil Anthropology Candidate Lam Wing-Sze will give a talk (in Cantonese) on the Adventures of Japanese Housewives in Hong Kong. It will be at 7pm in the Hong Kong Museum of History Lecture Theatre on the Ground Floor (the museum is on Chatham Road). Here is the speaker's abstract for the talk:

" 「嫁雞隨雞,嫁狗隨狗」似乎是天經地義的事,而普及印象中的日本婦女是千依百順的 典範, 身處香港的日本婦女更 是專心相夫教子。可是,在日本,女性早就靜靜地起革命,生活越來越多樣化,工作、婚姻、人生意義等都只是個人選 擇。那麼,這些「千依百順」的日本婦女為何要「嫁雞隨雞」?她們來到「菲傭比主婦多」的香港後,怎樣適應全職主婦的生活?她們回日本後又怎樣重新適應日 本?講者將藉著研究這些問題,探討海外日本女性的地位轉變及全球化對 她們的影響。

Japanese women are popularly viewed as passive, selfless and dedicated completely to their husbands and families. Japanese expatriate wives seem to fit this picture. However, studies show that women are undergoing a quiet revolution in Japan. Life is becoming more diverse, and women are emphasizing their individuality in career, marriage and meanings in life. How are these changes affecting Japanese housewives in Hong Kong? Are Japanese housewives really so passive? How are they adapting to life in Hong Kong? What problems do they face when they return to Japan?"


I for one think it should be quite interesting, and there is going to be some translation available for those needing it. Hope you'll come along!

In case you're wondering why we're plugging the talk, I (Dave) am a member of the Hong Kong Anthropological Society, which has a number of very interesting talks throughout the year. From time to time, I'll let you know about the interesting ones!

In case you haven't been we do recommend a visit to the Hong Kong Museum of History. The modern building belies the thoughtfully presented street scenes and dioramas of Hong Kong's past. It confronts the past of Hong Kong and its beginnings in opium, which is already a lot more than one might have expected given other museums and their obvious silences on taboo subjects.

Monday, May 30, 2005

The Population Problem, Then and Now

On our Central walk, we speculate only slightly facetiously, as to whether it is the high stress levels induced by a city with a tremendously high cost of living, tiny flats with no privacy and a hideously short expectation for returns on investment that brings about Hong Kong's abysmally low birth rate. Global condom maker Durex says that Hong Kong couples engage in intercourse less than any other territory in the world. That being known, then, it is no surprise that Hong Kong has the lowest birthrate in the world at 0.8. It is apparently even lower if one strips out all the mainland mothers that have come to Hong Kong to give birth - without them, it is a paltry 0.65, far, far below the replacement rate of 2. Given the falling interest on the mainland to immigrate to Hong Kong, it is becoming clear that the city has a major problem of an aging population. Donald Tsang, the Chief Executive designate and Roman Catholic, looks to champion the cause of a "three child" family policy to avert economic crisis.

So imagine my surprise today when reading a book written just 30 years ago by what was then a grizzled veteran journalist for the Economist and the Far Eastern Economic Review, talking about Hong Kong's population problem:

"Birth control needs more direct and active governmental enforcement - a sad word, but the essential description...population continues to bloat at more than two percent a year. About half of the Hong Kong population is under twenty years, and the number of women of childbearing age was 850,000 in 1974 and will probably be over a million in 1981. The Government has integrated thirty-two family planning associations into maternal welfare clinics, but has not yet invoked a realistic Singapore-style campaign to curtail births [they reversed their policy long ago, for the educated at least! ed.]; and, right or wrong, Roman Catholic influence in the colony's Medical and Health Services, some suggest, discourages public propaganda for the pill and other contraceptive stratagems. Chinese husbands in Hong Kong, as everywhere, thrust perseveringly to overcome any feminine bias in their chromosomes: they must have a son."

(Richard Hughes, Borrowed Time, Borrowed Place: Hong Kong and its Many Faces)

Amazing how things change. One wonders what has happened to the Chinese husbands and their 'thrusting perseverance?'

Friday, May 27, 2005

Paul Chater: The Father of Modern Hong Kong

Sir Paul Chater is a giant of Hong Kong history. When the great man died 79 years ago on this day, his passing was mourned in Hong Kong by bestowing on him the city's greatest honor - the stock exchange was closed for the rest of the day.

His complete achievements are too many to enumerate here, but he can be said, more than any other man, to have created modern Hong Kong.

He was a visionary. As a tireless member of the Legislative Council for four decades, he single-handedly pushed through the reclamation of the northern waterfront that allowed modern Central to develop - without him, the waterfront today would be on Des Voeux Road. He was a founder of the Hong Kong Electric Company and China Light and Power, recognizing the huge demand that would come for electricity. He also bought coal mines in Vietnam to fuel these facilities!

He was a businessman of genius. In combination with Jardine Matheson, he possessed the foresight to buy up much of the property of the modern Central district, giving the company he co-founded, Hong Kong Land, a huge slice of the lucrative Central office rental market, and more importantly a base upon which to grow the seamless retail environment that makes the district unique.

He knew how to take risks - and win. After the great typhoon of 1872, he spent HK$53,000 on buying up the Tsim Sha Tsui waterfront, against the conventional wisdom of the time that Kowloon would never amount to anything. He also invested in a state-of-the-art docks facility, again with Jardines, that became the Kowloon Wharf and Godown Company - the company later became a tremendous success. As a member of the Royal Hong Kong Jockey Club, he dominated the local racing scene, with his partner Sir Hormusjee Mody and himself calling themselves Mr. Buxey and Mr. Paul, discreetly winning 27 out of the 44 key races in one particular season.

Finally, he was incredibly generous. He funded a variety of charities, schools and even churches that were not of his Armenian Apostolic faith. Today, on the 79th anniversary of his death, an Armenian Apostolic service was held in St. Andrews church, with the blessing of both the Supreme Patriarch of the Armenian Faith and the Anglican Archbishop of Hong Kong. The choice of venue was an inspired one, since it had been 100 years ago that Sir Paul, originally christened Katchick Boghos Asdvadsaderian, had generously donated the funds that made the Anglican church of St. Andrew's possible. The ceremony was formal and traditional, and a group of Sir Paul's Armenian relatives and descendants, from Calcutta (where he was born) and elsewhere came especially for the event.



Yet this Armenian man has become a forgotten figure amongst most locals, except for those with a penchant for history and an appreciation for his great contributions to this city. The man deserves every accolade for all he has done, and should be remembered for being the most celebrated type of Hong Konger: an immigrant of modest means, who came here and made his fortune with vision, ability and hard work.

Thursday, May 26, 2005

Malaria's Grim Harvest in Early Hong Kong

I wrote last week about the plague in Hong Kong, and the insalubrious conditions of Chinese tenements at the close of the 19th century. But fifty years earlier, in the 1840s, it had been the colonials and their Indian soldiers that had been dying in large numbers from a different disease - malaria. As we know today, malarial fever was borne by mosquitoes. However, in the mid-19th century Western medicine had not yet recognized this as the source of the killer disease, having identified noxious vapours instead. This was still quite a close diagnosis, given that such vapors were to have been found at sources of stagnant water or swampy areas, which also happened to be ideal breeding grounds for mosquitoes. We will share many stories of this killer disease in our upcoming "Plague, Death and the Ghosts of Taipingshan" walk through Western district. But you may enjoy a taste of what we'll be offering in this quote from Montgomery Martin in 1847, a former Treasurer of the Colony, in his book Martin's China:[ed. Note: italics are mine]

"The structure [of the earth in Hong Kong] may be briefly described as consisting of decomposed, coarse granite, intermixed with a strata of red disintegrating sandstone, crumbling into a stiff ferruginous-looking clay. Here and there huge boulder stones, which gunpowder will not blast, may be seen embedded in a stiff, pudding earth, or they are strewed over the tops and sides of the mountains. Gneiss and feldspar are found in fragments. That the granite is rotten and passing, like dead animal and vegetable substances, into a putrescent state, is evidenced from the crumbling of the apparently solid rock beneath the touch, and from the noxious vapour, carbonic acid gas, or nitrogen which it yields when the sun strikes fervidly on it after rain.

On examination of the sites of houses in Victoria, whose foundations were being excavated in the sides of the hills, the strata appeared like a richly prepared compost, emitting a fetid odour of the most sickening nature, and which at night must prove a deadly poison. This strata quickly absorbs any quantity of rain, which it returns to the surface in the nature of a pestiferous mineral gas. The position of the town of Victoria, which may be likened to the bottom of a crater with a lake, prevents the dissipation of this gas, while the geological formation favours the retention of a morbific poison of the surface, to be occasionally called into deadly activity."

With such beliefs, it is no wonder that so many graves in Hong Kong's colonial cemeteries attest to doctors' inability to arrest the fearsome mortality rate amongst civilians and the soldiery alike....

Wednesday, May 25, 2005

Crusaders and the Portuguese Age of Discovery

I saw "Kingdom of Heaven" last weekend. As many of you know, it is a film about the Crusades. While there will be some conservative Western historians that will denounce it as being one-sided, the movie seemed to accurately convey both the extremism of some of the Christian organizations active in the Holy Land and the relative civilization of the Islamic protagonists that swept across that grand stage on their camels and Arabian thoroughbreds. Reminded me of Amin Malouf's "The Crusades Through Arab Eyes" and its fascinating summary of contemporary Muslim historians of the medieval period and their struggle to understand the Latin crusaders seeking butchery, glory, wealth and martyrdom.

Now many of you may ask, how is Dave possibly going to relate "Kingdom of Heaven" to our mobile phone walking tours? Well, for those of you who have seen the movie, you'll certainly remember Raynald de Chatillon, Knight Templar and one of the worst of the Christian plundering pirates (in real life he spent just as much time sacking Byzantine Christian as Muslim cities). Well, the Knights Templar had its share of both good and bad knights, but these Knights (known officially as the Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon) were unquestionably the most powerful military order operating in the Holy Land. They had been founded in the wake of the First Crusade to defend Jerusalem against the Muslims, but were also incredibly influential in Europe; their headquarters in Europe was in Tomar, Portugal.

At first the Popes of Rome were very much in favor of the organization; but with their incredible influence and power, and their domination of European banking and lending, made them much envied. Eventually, by order of Pope Clement V in 1307, the Templars were disbanded.

However, in Portugal, the order was simply renamed by a sympathetic monarchy there who were still fighting the Reconquista. It was renamed the Order of Christ, and the name of the Templars' headquarters changed to the Convento de Cristo. I had the great pleasure to visit this magificent structure in Tomar last March, preserved and refurbished by successive Portuguese monarchs.



There I stood by the front entrance and the time-blasted old Gothic Chapel. Now can you see what the next three photos have in common?








I'm not in all three photos so it's not me! Yes, for the highly observant of you, it is the gothic square cross that you see as a repeated pattern in the decorations of these battlements and balconies. Now where have you seen that cross before? Well, here is a hint - Prince Henry the Navigator, who spurred on Portugal's and Europe's Age of Discovery, was also the grand master of the Order of Christ for 20 years until his death.

This is why every Portuguese ship during the Age of Discovery, and many for a century afterwards, left Sagres, Oporto or Lisbon with a square cross, usually in red. Prince Henry was a man of discovery, but he was also a devout Christian that believed in the Crusades as a reality - that is why many of the Portuguese explorers en route to India often found time to hack up Muslim travelers, especially those to and from Mecca.

We discuss the Portuguese Age of Discovery extensively in our walk, "The Heart of Old Macau". In it we share how in the Portuguese empire, Christian proselytizing went hand-in-hand with the earthly desire for wealth through trade. Very understandable in the context of what we've just shared with you about Prince Henry! As the Portuguese and Spaniards discovered to their cost, this fervent missionary activity and in-fighting between Jesuits and Dominicans meant the loss of their immensely lucrative trade between Japan and China. Please give our walk a try if you'd like to hear about Macau's history at the high watermark of the Portuguese Empire! More details can be found at www.walkthetalkmacau.com.

Tuesday, May 24, 2005

A Conscientious Objector in the Opium Trade

Researching the 19th century opium trade is a beguiling activity. One first approaches the trade with abhorrence, realizing that the merchants brought untold misery to thousands of addicts across China. However, over time, as you read the documents and letters of these merchants, they become flesh and blood - self-made entrepreneurs that seem similar in outlook to today's modern tycoons in all respects save one - they peddled an illegal drug. The sympathy for them comes partly because one reads these letters generally without reading Chinese accounts of the scale of the addiction or even English missionaries' sobering reports on opium usage. Scholars that study them generally focus on the merchants themselves, and come to believe that these merchants were good men in their own way, and had their own moral code. Some scholars argue that because the merchants were not actually allowed to travel inland in China, they were never able to see the evil harvest of their trade. Also, it was said, they were subject to a different moral code in the 19th century, and would not have regarded selling drugs to an alien (Chinese) culture as a terrible thing.

Yet it is important to remember the sly nugget of wisdom William Jardine himself proferred to Karl Gutzlaff, a Pomeranian saddle-maker turned missionary in China:"We have every respect for persons entertaining strict religious principles, but we fear that very godly people are not suited to the drug trade."

In fact Jardine made this statement because he was trying to convince Gutzlaff, one of the few Europeans that spoke Chinese, to accompany his opium clipper on illegal runs to Ningbo to sell his drugs. After a crisis of conscience, Gutzlaff went for the money, reasoning that he would use the cash for preaching and distributing bibles. But it does demonstrate that already then, there was a recognition that the trade was an amoral, if not wholly immoral, activity.

Proof of this came with one of the scions of the firm, Donald Matheson. Young Donald had come to Hong Kong in his uncle James's footsteps, and was well on his way to amassing a huge fortune as a Director of Jardine Matheson. But he was also a very devout Christian, and the horror of his livelihood continued to prick away at his conscience. In 1848, he surprised and shocked all Hong Kong, especially everyone in his firm, by resigning his post, and effectively giving up the Matheson family's interest in the company. He shortly afterwards returned to Britain. An interesting postscript to this story is that Donald Matheson in 1892, as an elderly gentleman, still retained such an abhorrence for the opium trade (which by that time his old firm Jardine Matheson had exited) that he became Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade in England. Thanks to his tireless efforts and those of his colleagues, the opium trade was roundly condemned in Parliament - just 50 years after Chinese efforts to halt the same trade had moved that august House to go to War with China!

So let there be no mistake - the opium traders of the day were full aware of the pernicious evils of the drug they peddled, as much so as the Colombian cartels of the 21st century.

Monday, May 23, 2005

The Lascars of Old Hong Kong

In our upcoming SoHo guided walk, we'll be taking people to the section of Hollywood Road near the Man Mo Temple. Just near there is the legendary Cat Street, famous for knick-knacks and old historic curios. The two streets of curios on which these curios are displayed are officially called Upper and Lower Lascar Row. Who were the Lascars, anyway?

It was perhaps a slightly derogatory term that referred initially to Indian sailors. It actually was a northern Indian term of the Urdu dialect, lashkar, which referred either to sailors or to soldiers. It derived from Persian and in turn, Arabic origins, in al-ashkar, which means the Army in Arabic. However, over the years, it was bastardized in European and English usage as referring to any sailor of Indian, Southeast Asian or even African origin.

Early Hong Kong had many such "Lascar" sailors; this is evidenced in a report local heritage author Barbara Sue-White dug up in her research on a typical population breakdown on board an opium clipper ship. In this case, it was the Jamesina, named after one of the founders of what was then the world's largest opium trading firm:

"In 1832, the Jamesina, a small opium-smuggling ship owned by Jardine and Matheson, had ten Europeans, a crew of fifty-four Indian lascars, and four Chinese staff members."

So it is important to realize that while many European and American merchants did business in China, typically only a small portion of their crew were Chinese; the Lascars often made up the majority of the sailors on board. This made sense given that the major trade of the day was opium, which usually originated from Bengal in Eastern India.

Given both the economic, religious (many were Muslim) and racial bars of the time, were confined to this neighborhood of the Lascar Rows in or around the Chinese area of Taipingshan while in port. They often had some tiny carriage space in the hold of the boats on which they traveled, and would set out their wares in their very own bazaars right in Hong Kong while their ships were in port.

Lascars declined in proportionate numbers in Hong Kong as the city's merchants did business with a greater variety of ports, and as Chinese seamen were gradually recruited into merchant vessel service in increasing numbers. But the Lascar Rows of Hong Kong remain a testament to the once-flourishing community of (usually) Muslim sailors that manned Hong Kong's vital trade conduits to the rest of the world.

Friday, May 20, 2005

Tsim Sha Tsui Walk this Sunday at 3pm

We are doing our final free guided walking tour this Sunday at 3pm around Tsim Sha Tsui. Our walk discusses the districts origins as a smugglers' colony, its subsequent conquest by the British armed forces, and its settlement by Europeans, Chinese, Muslims, Parsees, Jews, and people hailing from every corner of the world. We'll tell you beguiling and evocative stories about the district's past, and its relationship to the frenetic, action-packed present! It will start from the Swindon's bookstore on Lock Road, as mentioned, at 3pm.

To RSVP, please contact Dave at 9772-4737 or e-mail me at dave@mobileadventures.com.

See you there!

Thursday, May 19, 2005

Local History in Singapore and Hong Kong

Stefan and I just returned from a very interesting trip to Singapore, where we are considering setting up some audio-guided walking tours. We've always realized that Singapore and Hong Kong have come to terms with its own history in very different ways, but it really sank home during this trip.

On Tuesday, there was an article in the Straits Times discussing how a major London auction house was bringing a valuable collection of personal papers of Singapore's founder, Sir Stamford Raffles, to market in Singapore. The auction house also noted that it had no intention of selling them in the UK, but wanted to sell it exclusively to a Singaporean bidder. That there is a local market for the papers of a colonial figure is in itself very telling about the more relaxed attitudes to the colonial period in Singapore compared to Hong Kong. The article also revealed that there are self-styled 'Raffles' historians specifically dedicated to studying the life and works of the country's colonial founder. Any visit to the local history museum demonstrates that there were problems with the colonial period in Singapore, but it is also quick to point out the marvelous success story of the strategically-located port city.

Some might say that Singapore has simply had much greater time for reflection on its past, and to co-opt historic figures in the national founding story. But I do not think it that simple - R.N. Captain Edward Belcher may be immortalized now in the upmarket Pok Fu Lam residential development of the same (and unfortunate name), but I doubt he or Plenipotentiary Elliot will ever be mentioned in a primary school history book of Hong Kong.

Indeed, I found Singapore very different from the story that greeted us today on our return about Ma Lik at the DAB promoting the patriotic indoctrination of Hong Kong people to a national identity. We were able to read how Education Secretary Arthur Li signed off on a plan to send a few hundred students to China every year to better understand the connection between China and Hong Kong, and the patriotism owing to the motherland. It is clear that there will be no city-specific attempts to sift through Hong Kong's history and forge from it a sense of civic-identity, a Hong Kong-specific history of which locals should be proud. As Hong Kong is now a part of China, it is felt that locals must be brought slowly into the sphere of national identity that is felt by the rest of the country.

I suppose that Hong Kong not being able to elucidate and re-imagine its own history is part and parcel of it not having become an independent country, as Singapore has. But still, it seems more obvious now than ever, that Hong Kong needs to recognize that it prospers not only as a part of China, but also because it is still different from China and has much to offer its new motherland. As such, the government here seems to be missing a great opportunity to inculcate a local identity alongside a new national one - and the best way to do that is by honestly, frankly and candidly re-assessing its own history. Impatient Hong Kong would be well served, as irritating a task as it may seem, to re-evaluate its own past with a warts-and-all perspective as it plunges headfirst into its new relationship with China. It has had a chip on its shoulder about the colonial experience - but expressing its dissatisfaction with the shortcomings of that era, and also truthfully acknowledging its positive contributions, is a necessary process. Having perspective on why it exists, how it persists, and the historic reasons for its past success and current raison d'etre in China will be an invaluable guide for it going forward. I'm sure Sir Stamford would have agreed.

Tuesday, May 17, 2005

The Bun Festival and the Plague in Hong Kong

Cheung Chau celebrated its annual bun festival last weekend. Unlike recent years, new steel-reinforced bun towers made the traditional climb of them possible again after years of safety concerns. The crowds were visibly more excited by the prospect this year, with many turning out in force despite the sweltering heat. Many of you I'm sure are also aware of the fact that the bun festival began in 1894 to commemorate the village being saved from the devastating bubonic plague that broke out that year, killing several thousand, mostly Chinese residents.

What is interesting about the outbreak of the Black Death in Hong Kong was that it had been widely predicted for at least two decades prior that a health crisis was looming. Many of Hong Kong's poorest Chinese immigrants crowded into tiny tenements in Western's old Tai Ping Shan district to eke out a living, trying to save as much as possible to speed up the day (often that never arrived) whereby they could retire back to their village in China. Health inspectors from Britain and local doctrs alike were struck by the appalling conditions in which many of Hong Kong's poor lived.

20 or 30 people, they observed, mostly men, lived in two or three storey buildings designed for 4 or 5. (Single men aren't generally very likely to keep a clean house, and the lowest common denominator amongst 30 men is likely to be particularly foul.) They shared the flat also with livestock they kept inside, such as pigs, chickens and even cattle, as well as all the associated vermin that would accompany such ventures. None of these buildings had adequate ventilation or sewage systems, and waste would simply be dumped onto the street.

The problem was, the British were told by wealthy Chinese merchants that the poor Chinese preferred it that way, and to enforce health codes and building restrictions on a Chinese area would be counterproductive to the well-being of the colony. In other words, men like Sir Kai Ho Kai were saying that you'd be making a coolie's life in Hong Kong more expensive, and it would end up hurting Hong Kong's economy. Naturally, in late 19th century Hong Kong, the poor Chinese had little recourse to authority and were unlikely to voice their concerns, especially in the free market conditions of Hong Kong (i.e. no safety net).

The colonial authorities largely took on this advice, and a Sanitary Board they set up was largely toothless until it was too late - the Plague had to break out in Hong Kong, taking thousands of lives between 1894 and 1920, when it was finally and truly stamped out thanks to the brave efforts of the Shropshire Regiment, the Police and the medical services staff. Many of them had no place even to die and seek help, which explains the many coffin shops near the Man Mo Temple and the Tung Wah Hospital, which served as organizations in 19th century Hong Kong that would take care of sending the bodies of workers back to their heung ha. The unwillingness of the government to take advice until well into a health crisis of course has much more recent relevance with SARS in 2003.

You can enjoy a number of these and other stories in an upcoming walking tour we shall be doing in Hong Kong's fascinating Western district, featuring the disease, death and the macabre ghost stories of Chinese Tai Ping Shan. We'll be suggesting you try our walks at night!

Friday, May 13, 2005

Anton Chekhov and the British Colonial Plan

An age-old debate in Hong Kong is whether Hong Kong's success is more attributable to the sweat, toil and genius of Chinese laborers and entrepreneurs, or to the comprehensive system of British law and colonial administration. There are obvious arguments on both sides (until 1980, the Chinese did not really improve their lot economically except in cities dominated by European influence; or, the British colonial plan did not take hold or flourish in a variety of other states they colonized), but we find such hair-splitting tiresome when it seems obvious to us that both are equally responsible for the marvel that is present-day Hong Kong.

Anton Chekhov, on a visit with some Russian companions to Hong Kong a century ago, said as much in a letter to a friend Alexei Suvorin. He wrote:

"The first foreign port on my journey was Hong Kong. It has a glorious bay, the movement of ships on the ocean is beyond anything I have seen in pictures, excellent roads, trolleys, a railway to the mountains, museums, botanical gardens; wherever you turn you will note evidences of the most tender solicitude on the part of the English for men in their service; there is even a sailors’ club. I drove around in a rickshaw, i.e. was born by humans, bought all sorts of rubbish from the Chinese and got indignant listening to my Russian traveling companions abusing the English for exploiting the natives. Thought I to myself, yes, the English exploit the Chinese, the Sepoys and the Hindus, but they do give them roads, plumbing and Christianity; you exploit them too, but what do you give them?"

It has been clear that if there were not some attractive qualities to Hong Kong, six generations of immigrants would not have come to the city. British Hong Kong was a safe haven and a land of opportunity for many people, particularly Chinese, that wanted to escape chaos on the mainland, from the Taiping Rebellion all the way to the Cultural Revolution. The talented immigrants Hong Kong received, in turn, have played a dominant role in creating this modern marvel.

The question now is: now that the mainland itself is the world's greatest land of opportunity, for the first time in Hong Kong's history, what will that do to the human capital of the city? Has the relationship between the city and China been vampiric, head-hunting the best talent of China for a century and a half, or is it truly symbiotic, with Hong Kong in return financing and promoting development on the mainland? Time will tell. Our feeling though, is toward the latter.

Leave us your comments!

Thursday, May 12, 2005

A Free Walking Tour of Tsim Sha Tsui this Sunday

Please note that Stefan and I are conducting a live guided walk, free of charge, around Tsim Sha Tsui this Sunday at 3pm, starting outside the Swindon's bookstore on Lock Road. Our Walk is entitled: "Buccaneers' Den to Neon Mecca", and will discuss the area's transformation from seedy pirate village to a vibrant district, home to immigrants from around the world, and a magnet for local visitors. From Parsee bakers, Armenian tycoons and Sephardic hoteliers to Tsim Sha Tsui's connections to South China pirates, the American national anthem and Triad movie makers, we'll tell you stories of the district that will amuse you, perhaps shock you and enrich your knowledge of the area. The walk will last about an hour and a half.

To join us, please SMS or call me (Dave) at 9772-4737 or e-mail me at dave@mobileadventures.com.

Finally, given the seafaring theme that is part of any heritage walk in the entrepot port of Hong Kong, I wanted to share with you a brief tale sent via e-mail to me I found quite entertaining. As many of you know, sailing ships up until the time of the Opium War had cannon that fired iron balls. Now given the number of pirates and other undesirable elements on the high seas, it was a good idea to keep a fair number of the iron cannonballs these cannons fired close at hand.

Now the problem was, how could one keep the balls organized on a sometimes wildly pitching deck? The trick was to stack them in a square pyramidal formation - one on the top, four below, nine below that, and all resting on a bottom layer of 16 - for a total of 30 cannonballs. But the hitch then, was to find a way to keep that bottom layer from sliding around. Eventually, naval engineers devised a plate with rounded indentations called a 'monkey.'

The only remaining problem was that the 'monkey' could not also be made of iron, or the cannonballs would rust fast to the plate. So it was made of brass instead. The issue with brass, though, was that it would shrink faster and at contract at a higher cold temperature threshold than iron, so much so that the iron cannonballs would come right off the monkey. Hence the expression "Cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey."

Wednesday, May 11, 2005

The First Muslims of Hong Kong

In our Tsim Sha Tsui walking tour, we reflect on why it is that the most eye-catching religious edifice on Kowloon's major traffic artery, Nathan Road, is not a church or a Chinese temple, but a mosque. The Kowloon Mosque, first constructed in 1894 and then rebuilt in 1984, is an imposing structure that dominates the busy corner of Nathan and Haiphong Roads, on the edge of Kowloon Park.




But a quick jaunt back in time to 1894 would have found this mosque on a sleepy road facing a few European-style houses, schools, and barracks. For it is important to remember that the entire expanse of Kowloon Park once served as an important military base for the Colony. And the Colony at that time was largely garrisoned by troops from the British Raj. Many of them were from Northern India, and were Muslim. So for a good part of the 19th and 20th centuries, Hong Kong owed its security from external threats to the Indian troops of the subcontinent. Even as late as the 1960s, Pakistanis were patrolling the Lo Wu border crossing with China, and two of them were killed by a hostile exchange with PLA forces. Building these invaluable troops a mosque for their prayers was the least the British could do for them.

The bravery of these regiments were proven time and again in various theaters around the world; Stefan and I both saw plaques commemorating them at that most wild of areas, the Northwest Frontier Province of modern-day Pakistan, which includes part of the Khyber Pass. Here we were with a very friendly armed escort in July 2001, on the eve of many dark, momentous events of which we were then blissfully unaware. The two gentlemen to our right are our friends Mark Siford (creator of our upcoming Sydney Walk, great Aussie bloke in the French foreign legion cap) and Stephen Stephens (fine man, tie-dyed conservative vegetarian from New Orleans by way of Singapore).




Today, Hong Kong has 80,000 Muslims. While a good portion are from the subcontinent, it is important to remember that about half of that number are actually Chinese Muslims (Hui), a good number from Central and Western China, and who trace their roots to Muslim traders on the Silk Road as far back as the Tang dynasty.

Food for thought! And it is fitting that Hong Kong's most imposing Mosque is located in its most colorful and ethnically diverse district.

Tuesday, May 10, 2005

Being A Pedestrian in Hong Kong

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the phenomenon of high-velocity pedestrians in Hong Kong, and Han Suyin's suggestion of where it comes from. Today, I'd like to offer up another reason for peculiar walking behavior - local acceptance of the notion that "the car is King."

I mentioned in my Rocco Yim piece that in pragmatic Hong Kong, traffic considerations are the first concern of the government and the Public Works Department when building anything new. Let me highlight the fact that their "traffic" concern, to the detriment of environment, heritage or public usability, means automobile traffic only. Little by little, the pedestrian in Hong Kong has been marginalized, his autonomy and freedom stripped away.

Since the Asian Crisis in 1997, the Government has been pushed to create work and jobs for people. What better use to put them to than constructing steel barriers on every sidewalk? Sure, it makes it easier for cars to speed around crowded neighborhoods, but it forces the solid walls of people to move through narrow sidewalks far inadequate to their needs at peak hours. I don't know how you feel, but as someone that enjoys walking, I feel violated every time a new one goes up somewhere, stopping me from crossing an empty street except at the crosswalks.

But what's been even worse is that in many districts, the pedestrian has simply been forced underground. A chief example of this is Tsim Sha Tsui, where the crosswalks on major roads such as Salisbury Road near the New World Centre and the Cultural Centre, or on Peking Road towards Canton Road, have simply been removed. Indeed, with the opening of the new KCR station, the ground beneath Tsim Sha Tsui is a maze of tunnels (I rather depressingly realized the best way for me to get from the Sheraton to the Hong Kong History Museum was Underground). Tsim Sha Tsui is still a very walkable district, but major parts have been cut off from one another except by underpass, and as walking-tour organizers, we are obviously against that happening. Think about it - what the PWD is saying is, pedestrians are simply lower life forms than car drivers. Keep 'em subterranean, while the smog-belching cars can have the run of the town. Is it, in fact, simply an acknowledgement that given the current deplorable levels of pollution in Hong Kong, that going forward more and more of all human activity will have to take place below ground? City planners must confront the consequences of their actions.

Except, of course, where the profit motive takes over. In Central, which is mostly owned by former opium smuggling firm Jardine Matheson's subsidiary, Hong Kong Land, all of their buildings are connected by walkways. People that work, shop and walk in their properties never need step down on terra firma, nor breathe non-airconditioned air. Since they are Hong Kong's movers and shakers, the big spenders, they are in effect exalted by air-conditioned walkways with plate glass windows that allow you to see the cars (and peons) on the streets below. Let's face it, a cynical view of Rocco Yim's 'Aesthetics of Connection' is simply a way to force people to spend money in the retail areas of buildings you herd people through every day. Think about it the next time you amble around Central!

Monday, May 09, 2005

Victoria Prison/Central Police Station as Museum of Justice

More on the movie theme - Over the weekend, I had the chance to watch a film from 1973. It was Papillon, starring Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffmann, and about two men sentenced for the rest of their useful lives to the godforsaken, malaria-ridden prison of French Guiana known by the area's most evocative name - Devil's Island. It is based on a true tale by Henri Charriere, about his terrible experiences there, and his eventual escape that finally forced France to acknowledge the horror they had created.

The movie itself actually only scratched the surface of the evils committed on the prisoners there and also on escaped slaves over a one-hundred year period. Any google search on "Devil's Island" will yield you harrowing tales of life in the fields of death, of failed escapes resulting in being eaten by piranhas or killed by bounty hunters on the way to Paramaibo.

What is interesting about movies like these, as great as it was, is the equally great morbid fascination with tales of suffering of our fellow men and women. Particularly with prisons, and with people in captivity do to survive and escape. There is a penchant for the macabre in all of us - hence our interest in places like Devil's Island, Alcatraz, the Tower of London, the Conciergerie, Lushun in Port Arthur (where the Japanese kept Chinese and Korean prisoners) Robben Island (where Mandela was jailed), and many others. What is clear is that there is an appetite for prisons.

Which makes it incredibly baffling why the Hong Kong government does not see that the site of the former Central Police Station and the soon-to-be-closed Victoria Prison would make an excellent tourist attraction. It would make a fascinating Museum of Justice, given the unequal treatment under the law of Europeans and Chinese in the early colony of Hong Kong, and the subsequent evolution of the justice system to address issues of fairness, opium and drug addiction and corruption. But the site would not have to be just another Museum. Given that there is still a working prison in situ, like all the other prisons that are now tourist attractions, the heritage experience could include 'simulated imprisonment' and night-time visits that are incredibly popular with both cultural tourists and more 'Disney-experience' visitors alike. And really, as much of the site as possible should be preserved, given that the fact that the Central Magistracy, Victoria Prison and the Central Police Station are all in one area harkens back to the early colony (1840s-1850) when all of those jobs - enforcer, magistrate, correctional officer - were all done by one man (the infamous Caine, who I shall blog about another time). And finally - and perhaps most importantly in Hong Kong - economically, the attraction could be hugely economically viable, as proven by the success of all of the prison attractions I mentioned earlier. Who wouldn't want to visit a site where macabre stories abound and that once housed political prisoners like Ho Chi Minh?

We at Mobile Adventures submitted a proposal to the Tourism Commission about this idea, they demurred and said it was up to the developers that were proposing solutions - it was not their responsibility. We have made our proposal available online - please judge for yourself, and also we'd love your feedback!

Friday, May 06, 2005

Hong Kong Movies: Demise or New Direction?

Many articles have been written in the last five years on the demise of the Hong Kong movie industry; the latest has been one in today's Taipei Times. The decline in production and in theater receipts is undeniable; the films produced have declined from a once-respectable 300 per year in the mid-1990s to just 64 in 2004. Where once new stars and heroes were discovered by movie studios, the same aging veterans are being trotted out to rehash old themes. The chief reason cited for the huge fall-off in box-office receipts (from HK$1 billion in the mid-90s to HK$445 million last year) is piracy. An ironic paradox too, given that many films here are produced by triad groups, when other triad groups (and sometimes the same ones) are the ones responsible for pirating the movies.

The interesting thing about Hong Kong is that it was once, next to Hollywood, the second largest film industry in the world - and unsubsidized, at that. Directors, actors and producers alike all prided themselves on being able to work on razor thin budgets and lightning-fast film schedules, from initial conception to final editing all taking place within a single month. Hot actors and actresses would sometimes do 20 films a year, sometimes on up to 3 films at once and sleep in their cars, wearing themselves out in the process. But has the decline all just to do with piracy?

Let us face it - a lot of those films were done quickly, and many of them were entertaining; some of them even good. But the vast majority of the films produced were very substandard. There are always exceptions, but pick up most any Tsui Hark or Ringo Lam film today that they'd made 20-30 years ago and frankly, they are very dated. Going back even further, the Shaw Brothers' 'Movieland' studios made 40 films a year and created lots of stars. But frankly, I find all the movies I'd seen as a child from that era now unwatchable.

There is a process of integration of the Hong Kong and mainland movie markets at work; but also there are more and more films from abroad, not just from Hollywood, but crucially from markets like Korea. The average Korean movie made today for export is generally of better quality that the average Hong Kong film, and the directors are more creative with scripts and storylines, and here's the crux of the matter - they take chances. The cynical, risk-averse production studios of Hong Kong have largely refused to adapt to new challengers from abroad, and are paying the price for sacrificing quality in the relentless drive for efficiency.

Of course, the local film industry is also suffering from piracy - that is undeniable when a quick jaunt over the border will yield you your pick of any recent movie you'd care to watch for 10 RMB. But in an effort of trying to find new audiences, a few films (like Kung Fu Hustle) are doing extraordinarily well. Anyone who's seen that film will see that a proper budget was allocated for choreography, for good screen shots, for editing and post production - and the effort shows through. Hopefully, the directors and producers of Hong Kong will stop trying to reprise the latest gangster saga and find new themes to develop. It's actually laughable that the historic pirate Cheung Po-Tsai has not been properly cast in a recent movie in Hong Kong, and it is up to Hollywood to cast Chow in such a film, completely out of the original context.

It's time for the local film industry to stop whinging and to evolve - to strive to become better. Hollywood, it is true, has learned a great deal from Hong Kong - but it is time Hong Kong learns from Hollywood. Not just in terms of Matrix-like action shots, but in terms of having cohesive plots and interesting storylines. We raise the issue of creativity in Hong Kong on our Tsim Sha Tsui walk - and we laud directors like Wong Kar-Wai, Stanley Kwan or Ann Hui that have made critically acclaimed movies within existing genres (as Ackbar Abbas, defender of the local industry, points out). However, by and large that is MIA here in Hong Kong.

Stefan, who's sitting next to me at the moment, points out also that many films export the enigma of Hong Kong identity - not quite Chinese with a capital C, not quite Cosmopolitan given their very Cantonese identity. We discuss the positive aspects of this in our TST walk - that to us is the chief attraction of watching local movies. (given that many films are pretty average!) But at their worst, many very local films parody both Westerners and mainlanders and at heart, are very xenophobic. Local film-makers will have to stamp that out if they want to share their product with the rest of the world...

Thursday, May 05, 2005

The Pirates of Hong Kong

Hong Kong has had a long history of piracy. Before it was accidentally christened "Hong Kong" by British visitors interrogating Aberdeen (Heung Kong Tsai) villagers about the name of their island (the villagers thought the British were asking for the name of their village), it was called the Ladrones Islands. Named so by the Portuguese, it means "thieves" or "pirates" in the Lusitanian language. Piracy had been an endemic problem on the South coast of China, the edge of the Chinese empire. Read more about pirates during the Ming dynasty here.

At the beginning of the Manchu reign, great efforts were made to suppress the problem, given that many were actually Ming dynasty rebels. No measure being too strong, the Qing dynasty actually forcibly moved thousands of villages away from China's coastline in the late 17th century. The pirate problem was solved, because the pirates found no succor amongst coastal villages, but hundreds of thousands of Chinese starved or were reduced to penury.

The piracy problem never really went away, though. And by the beginning of the nineteenth century, it was back with a vengeance. Queen of the Pirates, Cheng Yi Sao, commanded as many as 1,500 pirate junks and 80,000 fighting men along with her second husband Cheung Po-Tsai (posterity seems only to remember him though - he will be portrayed by Chow Yuen-Fatt soon in a sequel to Pirates of the Caribbean). They defeated the Qing navy in open battle on a few occasions and were only beaten by advanced British Royal Navy gunships. Still, piracy continued to be a problem well into the 20th century in the seas around Hong Kong and Macau (including another famous pirate queen Lai Choi-San, who held Macau's government to ransom). You'll find more stories about pirates in both our Central and Tsim Sha Tsui walks! Tsim Sha Tsui, today a tourist Mecca, was too once a haven for pirates

And still is today, judging from the legions of copy watch sellers and other equally dubious vendors on Nathan and Peking Roads. It must be welcome news for the long-suffering defenders of intellectual property in Hong Kong that local boy scout troops now may earn an Intellectual Property badge. Even if they're eagle scouts though, I can't imagine them taking on the triad gangs behind these businesses!

Tuesday, May 03, 2005

Free Live Walk May 7th, Saturday, in Central

Hi everyone, just wanted to let you know that Dave and I will be doing a live, free 1-hour walking tour around Central this Saturday, May 7th. We'll be starting at 3pm sharp in front of the Prince's Building Godiva chocolate shop on Statue Square; you will be treated to complimentary drinks and light refreshments afterwards in the cool comfort of the Bookazine store of the same building.

Our walk is entitled The Rise of Hong Kong; join us on a journey back to Hong Kong's beginnings in the age of the opium clipper. We'll trace the city's meteoric rise as a world city from its dubious beginnings in the drug trade. Along the way, we'll tell some of the amazing, secret stories that lie buried beneath Hong Kong's skyscrapers, showing, as always, that truth is stranger than fiction.

Spaces are limited to 25, so sign up soon! You can e-mail me, Stefan White, at stefan@mobileadventures.com, or call or SMS me at 9522-3937 to register your interest.

For recent comments in the press about our walks, please visit our website's news section at www.walkthetalk.hk.

Sunday, May 01, 2005

Communists in Hong Kong

This being the First of May, I thought it appropriate to reflect on the past of Communism in Hong Kong. Naturally, just before and after World War II there was a substantial number of Chinese Communist agents in Hong Kong, shadowing Japanese and Chinese Nationalists alike. Their headquarters, surprisingly, were right on Queen's Road Central, right about where the New World Tower building is today. Back in the 1930s, there was a famous tea shop on that site, and it served as an effective front for Communist agents working in and around Hong Kong.

But with the Japanese invasion, the occupying Japanese troops would not tolerate a Communist presence in the territory. The spearhead of leftist resistance to the occupation came from the East River guerillas, largely coming from Hakka villages in the New Territories. Given the desperate straits Britain found itself in with the fall of Hong Kong and Singapore by 1942, they began to develop a working relationship with the guerillas, particularly with the British Army Aid Group headed by Sir Lindsay Ride. However, as an Allied victory became more and more certain, political considerations made this alliance untenable, as was the case in the Malayan jungles.

By the end of the war, with the Cold War about to descend, any explicit Communist political presence was not tolerated, and tension grew even stronger during the Korean War. But the institutions of the Communist Chinese in the mainland could not really be ignored for long after their takeover of China in 1949, and institutions like the Bank of China and the Xinhua, or New China News Agency, became the Chinese proxies in Hong Kong. Leftist sympathizers in the local population were not small, and became most apparent during the Star Ferry, or Red Guard riots in 1967 (their demonstrations in Central near some British batsmen ultimately led to the demise of the cricket club set up on the old Murray Parade Ground, now Chater Garden). Those young radicals like Jasper Tsang Yok-Sing, forged in the arbitrary colonial repression of that era, continue to play a major role in the (mostly) unelected section of Legco in the form of the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong .

Interestingly, I once posed a question to Jasper Tsang about his Communist past, and about whether he felt his ideals of that era were betrayed by the capitalism, oops, the socialism with Chinese characteristics, of the current era. He did not answer my question directly, but he did say that he still admired Mao Tse-Tung a great deal more than Deng Xiao-ping. Which effectively did answer my question...Anyway, that's all for now. Happy May Day!