[Original version of an article published as 'Hand it Over', Frontiers San Francisco 16/7 (7/31/97) and Frontiers Los Angeles/National 16/7 (8/8/97).]
Flying into Hong Kong’s famous airport, which lies practically between rows of apartment buildings, I thought: Why didn’t anyone ever tell me that Hong Kong was beautiful? Because it is beautiful: behind the crowds and freeways, the mountains always rise above, the sea below. The great natural harbor is vaster than anything manmade – it is one of the jewels of the Pacific, as dazzling as Sydney or San Francisco.
Welcome to China
It’s easier to understand Hong Kong if you see it as the Miami of China: its southernmost big city, a sprawling mix of races embedded in a background of humidity and palmetto bugs, surrounded with apartment buildings and freeways. The main difference is that Miami has a lot more crime; in fact, as in European cities, Americans are surprised (and even confused) by the safety of the streets and crowds.
I first arrived last March after three months of nervous indecision, of trying to answer the repeated question: Why would you go to Hong Kong now? But that’s an American attitude, rooted in our long distrust of China. From here, it looks as though the negative media blitz – special issues of Time and Newsweek, more than eight thousand visiting journalists looking for stories – is all an exaggeration, a panic generated to make news. Some of that panic serves other purposes, of course: it turns China into an Evil Empire, giving our military something to fix on after the end of the Cold War. Besides, if we construct an Us-and-Them universe, it implies that the Brits are good guys, allowing everyone to ignore their ruthless greed.
So far nothing has really happened to alter Hong Kong. Some things have changed: by July 1st, civil servants had filed the embossed Queen’s head off of post office boxes. And the name of the city has changed, at least officially – we now live in Xianggung, which is Mandarin for the Cantonese name Heung Gong, or Fragrant Harbor. And those two names may give you a taste of the complexity of living here, where the barrier of languages and cultures is so high that only the most educated can cross it effectively. It may seem a trivial matter – whether I can communicate with a taxi driver in Cantonese, or whether a retail clerk can help me in English – but the constant slight mutual incomprehension reflects the endless confusion between China and the West.
Handover: The First Party
On the Thursday before the Handover, we went to a salsa party called ‘Adios Gweilo.’ Gweilo is Chinese for foreigner, or more accurately ‘foreign devil;’ it’s not a word for polite company, but foreigners frequently use the word to expose, and hopefully discharge, racial and economic tensions. The party is held in a restaurant that looks over the straits; the terrace has an amazing view, and we can see across to Kowloon, where someone is experimenting with green lasers across the sky in preparation for a light show. The skyscrapers behind us are covered with vast neon dolphins and Bohenia flowers, symbols of the new Hong Kong.
This week saw a change in the atmosphere, in the way people talk about the future. Hong Kong residents, whether ‘expatriate’ (the nicer name for foreigners) or ‘local,’ had been calm about the changes for a long time. Everyone seemed sure that life would continue to be normal after the Territory became a Special Administrative Region, or SAR, of China. A few Cantonese colleagues even showed enthusiasm for the ‘reunification,’ especially since China has made it clear that it wants educated Hong Kong residents as its new business elite.
Change
Prakash, an Indian, grew up in Hong Kong to run one of its many tailor shops. On a weeknight in March, he has gathered some friends – a tall black American, a quiet French Algerian named Mohamed, and two Chinese boys with the incongruous names of Wendell and Terrence – for a drink at Post 97. This ironically named café is above the chic Club 1997, which is only gay on Fridays from 6 to 10 PM; after that, it closes for an hour for “restocking” (of beer and customers). Upstairs, in comfortable chairs among the well-dressed crowd, I ask Prakash: aren’t you worried about being an Indian in Hong Kong after July? – especially as the Chinese government has said that only “racially Chinese” will be considered citizens of the new SAR. He shrugs and says, I’m not worrying, we’ll see what happens and roll with the punches. I start to laugh, saying: well, that sounds like a thousand-year-old philosophy; and he begins to laugh with me.
But in the week before the Handover, Prakash is not so sanguine. Walking through Yau Ma Tei, he comments on the posters, the red flags – and seems anxious for the first time since I’ve know him. Suddenly it is unavoidable, this event that has been talked about for years – and it may have serious consequences for him. Fortunately, when we reach our destination, a Japanese noodle shop, he relaxes and we check out the men, from the henna-dyed headwaiter to the Japanese chef; but man-watching can’t always compete with history.
Among the Chinese
Some basic words to learn: m’gai (with a rising tone) means thank you, please, excuse me; yau lok means stop here, useful on buses; and, most important of all, gweilo means foreigner – actually foreign devil. That last is slightly rude, like “queer” or “wop” – my Chinese teaching assistant is shocked when I say it, complaining, with a flip of her long black hair, that it’s “not a nice thing to say.”
If I may generalize about the more than five million Chinese in Hong Kong, I see a division between two broad age groups. The older Chinese are often small and tough-looking; they look hardy, and many of them are survivors of war, revolution and extraordinarily brutal invasions by Europeans, Japanese and by their own people. Their children, on the other hand, are tall and smooth-looking, well-dressed, polite, and often exquisitely beautiful; they stroll laughing through the expensive malls and streets of shops, protected by umbrellas from the frequent rain – almost as their parents, who might have immigrated at any time in this century, have tried to protect them from the past.
Handover: The Rave
On the Saturday before the Handover was the grand disco/rave Unity, which attracted thousands of people to a hotel ballroom in Kowloon to see Grace Jones and Boy George. Grace couldn’t quite manage to get through her long show (face it, it’s twenty years since her heyday), but the crowds were ecstatic, and stayed until early morning. Many gay men were in evidence, and no one seemed to feel the need to act straight, or to behave well at all. Unexpectedly, everyone seemed to be from the West – huge numbers of Aussie, American and European partygoers had flown in for the event, including a number of tall Germans. And that was strange: these hordes of pale faces seemed remarkably big, loud, pushy, even boorish – I thought, have I gotten that used to life in Asia?
Sex: Oriental
STUD ALERT: David Wu, the athletic, charming VJ on Hong Kong’s video channel, can be seen any night tossing a baseball around on the Wu Man Show. He teaches a strange but hilarious crash course in American slang, wearing hornrimmed glasses and a Hawaiian shirt, where he buzzes along the strange interface between Cantonese and English, trying to explain the word “short” as in “I’m a little short today” or “Man, you got the short end of the stick!” His video presentations specialize in Cantopop, the local rock music, which involves a vast industry of bands and production companies, with listeners all over Asia.
Gay life in Hong Kong comes in two varieties. The first recalls the years of concealment, since homosexuality has been legal only since 1991: it is a social life of dinner parties and private meetings, featuring moneyed expatriates and their boyfriends. The other is the bar-and-bath circuit, filled with gym-built, stylish boys flaunting gold watches and cel phones. In fact, most of the time it looks like West Hollywood, but with fewer blonds.
In navigating this multiracial environment, you might learn a few new words. “Rice queen” (probably a familiar term) means someone who likes Asian men; you might figure out its uncomplimentary opposite, “potato queen,” meaning someone with a sexual preference for white meat. You may also guess that “sticky rice” means Asian men who prefer each other. Given this labyrinth of desires and fixations, how is a gweilo potato queen like me to get by? Should I chat up the British Airlines stewards who dash in every week, or chase down American sailors at the Fleet Arcade? Or should I change my tastes, as everyone suggests?
Hong Kong is heaven for rice queens, and not only because of David Wu. The hot, humid summers, endless construction jobs and self-conscious athletic activity mean that there is an endless parade of bare chests and legs, mostly belonging to the remarkably fit. The city also boasts several bathhouses, the most successful of which is the weirdly named Game Boy Sauna; its clients are mostly “sticky rice,” so gweilos, while not unwelcome, won’t have much luck. It also has not one but two karaoke rooms – and, on my single visit there, I was appalled to see them both in use.
Handover: On the Night
July 30th is a sunny, busy day, and we are all frantically making preparations that suggest a New Year’s Eve of parties. A friend calls, asking me to videotape the ceremonies; another dashes upstairs to borrow money before she goes to watch from a boat in the harbor. Another friend asks if I want to join his bar-hopping friends, watching the broadcast in different pubs descending from the Peak. But I can’t go, as I’ve been roped into playing with the Chinese drum group in the British Handover ceremony – and so, wearing appalling lime-green T-shirts and baggies, we march into the pouring rain to open a pageant called The Spirit of Hong Kong.
After our minute and a half of drumming history, the Chinese orchestra begins playing as beautiful sleeve dancers enter, accompanied by hundreds of children waving swatches of blue silk to represent the ocean, and others walking with red paper junk sails. This classical tableau gives way to groups that represent a modern Hong Kong – eight dancing credit cards behind a bunch of fashion models in raincoats and umbrellas, a troupe of young girls doing a Cel Phone Dance (one, look at your watch; two, raise an invisible phone to your ear) – and something that can only be called the Dance of the Strong Currencies, a roundelay with large disks emblazoned with £, $, ¥, and DM. This is all very graceful and not at all ironic – there’s no sarcasm about prosperity in Hong Kong. Of course, since it is the monsoon, it’s raining – the dancers’ sleeves are waterlogged, but they keep battling through their show.
After the Royal Marines, waterlogged but disciplined, end their long marching band segment, I wait backstage to see the fireworks. A charming but drenched children’s chorus huddles by the stage entrance. One of the guards, with that aggressive tenderness with which the Cantonese treat their children, hustles those of us with umbrellas over to collect little groups of grateful, blue-uniformed kids. Another guard eventually joins me and, when the band strikes up Auld Lang Syne, it turns out that he knows and plans to sing all the words, including verses I’ve never heard. He is tone-deaf but also confident, and it’s impossible not to join in. And so that was my Handover: standing under an immense souvenir umbrella in the pouring rain with four wet kids and a guard, belting out Auld Lang Syne in a slight Cantonese accent.
Sex: Occidental
STUD ALERT: There is a building by the waterfront of the island, past the network of freeways that recall downtown Los Angeles, called the Fleet Arcade. It’s meant for British sailors when they’re in town, but when an American fleet is in it’s full of nervous, muscular, short-haired servicemen. If you want to develop your talent for picking up servicemen, remember: always get them alone, away from their buddies. There’s a special Stud Alert for the tall, blond Brit who runs the bike shop in the arcade.
Some of the more successful bars include the classy, crowded Zip in Lan Kwai Fong, and Petticoat Lane in Central, which won an HK Magazine prize for best gay bar. The Fetish & Fantasy leather store, under the Central Escalator, serves as a community center for party tickets. All of these places are thriving, and the local hope is that, as Beijing opens up its policies (if not the law) on sexual preference, the Hong Kong gay community will be left alone. Unfortunately, as with all of the other British moves towards democracy and liberalization, the legalization of homosexuality was late (1991) and rather tentative; no anti-discrimination law was passed before the Handover, and a recent government poll showed that most respondents would prefer not to watch a movie, go swimming or sing karaoke with a homosexual. Nevertheless, Hong Kong gay life is highly regarded in Asia, where many cities have more cultural and legal oppression; at Zip, an excitable Irish boy with a great chest tells me that he regularly visits from Jakarta, where there is no gay life worth mentioning.
As for lesbian life, I hear that the vast Filipina population – mostly female, mostly working as domestics, and all extremely visible in Statue Square every Sunday – includes many women who have escaped the rigidity of family demands through lesbian relationships. Max and Gary tell me of their Filipina maid and her girlfriend, who – with her muscular shoulders and headcloth – are a startling contrast to the delicate, well-behaved women of the Chinese majority.
Handover: The Aftermath
Bernadette, a colleague from England, went back to the docks on June 30th at midnight to watch the HMS Brittania sail and hear the last piper play while the Royal Marines stood at attention on the ship. She found herself among a group of Brits, and when someone yelled, Three cheers for the British Navy!, everyone roared assent – quite amazing, since apparently even the Scots and Irish joined in. The man next to her turned and said, "We'll never see anything like this again – I'm Evan, and I'm from Dublin," and kissed her. She walked home up the hill, past the Governor's House, now dark, passing a number of well-dressed socialites coming from the last parties thrown for VIP expatriates. She says none of them seemed to know what to do – they looked lost and bewildered, as though they had just realized that they were in a foreign land.
•••
Late one night, I am awakened by a violent rainstorm that flings a river of water against my windows. I walk through my apartment without turning on any lights, and go onto the balcony to stand naked in the voluptuous summer rain. Down the hill I can see the outlines of villas and the vast bay dotted with the white lights of passing ships. And I think: is my view of Hong Kong distorted by my own luck in coming here – by the fact that, for me, Hong Kong has meant my first good salary, my first professional job, my first luxury apartment? But that is what Hong Kong has always meant, especially for the Chinese: a secure home, financial safety, a place where it is legal to prosper. Perhaps Westerners can afford to be sarcastic about mere prosperity; but here everyone understands how important it is to have, and to keep, what is theirs.
[Hong Kong, 7/15/97]