Barbarian Lost (28 page)

“I find it graceful. Or what's the word?
Genteel
?”

“
Genteel
! Difficult word. Maybe better to use
refined
. Do you mean to say that Hong Kong has better-preserved Chinese culture, like Taiwan, than China itself?”

“Yes, perhaps,” Viv says. “There is also more dignity here maybe. From the freedom, I guess. When I first came here, it helped me make up my mind to pursue my studies in the West. There was also something else that struck me—another difficult word,
melancholy
, is it? A sad longing of the heart?”

“Yes! Melancholy is indeed a sad longing of the heart! You're hilarious!”

“Not a strong emotion but a pervasive one.”

“And is it good or bad, this little sadness in Hong Kong?”

“Does it have to be one or the other?”

“Come on! I mean, do you like it?”

“Maybe. Ask me again when we leave.”

We are heading toward Causeway Bay, a favourite neighbourhood of ours. We have reserved rooms in one of the many tenement hotels in the district. They're perfectly suitable—clean and safe—but tiny and without private bathrooms. Our establishment is a converted apartment nestled into the upper floors of a commercial building. The tiniest reception area has been set up in the apartment's entrance to manage half a dozen or so rooms. The advantage of this simple accommodation is its proximity to the action. We descend from our modest rooms into incredible bustle. Causeway Bay's streets are largely overrun by pedestrian traffic. The buildings are high and tightly packed together.

Hong Kong surely rivals New York for its urban jungle. The skyscrapers are like behemoths in a giant forest. Crawling between them, humans, even cars, are like tiny insects. The sky is distant and abstract. The streets are not laid out according to a grid but forced to wind around Hong Kong island's shoreline and rugged terrain. This breaks the lines of sight and gives one a boxed-in feeling between all the buildings.

The buildings are in the process of being upgraded. When they're all finally gone, I'll miss the old ones, those built quickly some sixty years ago. These lesser towers speak of the time when Hong Kong was not the glitzy powerhouse it has become. The
British Empire was crumbling, its protectorate, Hong Kong, a battered redoubt in a Far East swept up in momentous change.

Real estate has long been a problem in Hong Kong. To the islands initially acquired from China at the close of the First Opium War, the protectorate added first the Kowloon Peninsula and then an even bigger mainland tract called the New Territories. By the 1950s, China was unified under Mao and could not be made to cough up any more land to foreigners. From then on, Hong Kong would grow in great confinement. From 1945 to the mid-1950s, Hong Kong's population at least tripled. British subjects returned here after the Japanese occupation, followed by a constant trickle of people from the collapsing colonies of the East. A powerful presence but minute compared with the droves of mainlanders who fled the revolution in China.

To accommodate this expanding population on limited real estate, the city could grow only vertically. Both industry and habitation were soon packed into cheaply built concrete towers, nowhere so densely as in Causeway Bay, the most Chinese of neighbourhoods on the original Victoria Island.

Wartime industry had taught developed economies highly efficient new forms of production. These would be put to good use in Hong Kong, where labour was plentiful and cheap. This is the Hong Kong that still peeks through in cramped Causeway Bay. Unlike the megatowers that are replacing them, the old buildings have identifiable windows, not just metal-and-glass plate. They bear clotheslines, noisy air conditioners and visible wiring. Cheap metal signage hangs haphazardly off the facades at varying heights.

The manufacturing economy has long moved out of the neighbourhood, but intense mercantile activity remains. The buildings
are filled with the administrative offices of producers, distributors and brokers. The ground floors are home to countless shops. Over the years, the shops have moved from selling low-end merchandise and cheap clothing to offering high-end luxuries. Parts of Causeway Bay are now most fashionable and expensive.

Viv and I snack on skewers of fish balls and wash them down with coconut milk–tapioca tea topped with frogs' ovaries, a perfect accompaniment for people-watching. Come rush hour, the office workers pour into the tight streets to mingle with shoppers. For a couple of hours, the urban energy rivals any other great city for the world's most impressive spectacle of noises, people and lights.

Viv and I ride the tide and wander through the flowing crowds, revelling in the sights. The faces are young and, with few exceptions, Asian. The attire is classy and understated.

“Look at how genteel these two look,” I say teasingly to Viv, pointing to a dashing young couple.

“No joke. It's stylish here. When you meet him, I'm sure you will also agree that my old boss, Milton Chang, is the perfect gentleman. He's very smart but bashful and self-effacing. Not the norm for a newspaper editor, I might add.”

I have every reason to think Viv was an excellent student. Out of university, she was selected among her peers as a “cadet” at surely one of the most desirable newspapers for an aspiring Chinese journalist, the
South China Morning Post
. The internship was especially coveted because it involved a stint at the
Post
's headquarters in Hong Kong. The cadets perfected their English-language skills and were schooled in the great tradition of Anglo-Saxon journalism, arguably the finest in the world. The best of the cadets might even be offered permanent jobs at the daily. Another
sign of her competence: after the internship, Viv was given a job as a junior reporter for the newspaper's important Beijing desk. Milton was her supervisor and editor in Hong Kong.

“The
South China Morning Post
is not perhaps what it used to be,” Viv explains. “But it's still perceived as a seminal liberal institution in the Far East. Milton will have a lot to say about it. I'm not sure that he's terribly happy there. Or maybe it's just that he's naturally melancholy. You'll see.”

“All newspapers are in decline. They're not happy places in general.”

“Yes, but it's not just a readership issue with the
Post
but one of changing orientation. From the start, the
Post
was not just a British colonial newspaper. It had a strong Chinese republican element to it. One of its founders was a Chinese dissident against the Qing and a colleague of Sun Zhongshan.”

We meet Milton in a neighbourhood a few subway stops away. He's slight, bookish and, as expected, courteous and poised. It's fun to hear Viv adopt in English the same deferential if somewhat playful tone that I'd so often heard in Chinese.

It's very early evening and no one is hungry, but we agree that a busy restaurant would suit us best for a good conversation.

“This one is maybe too trendy. Shall we continue walking to find a café or something?” Milton says.

“It really doesn't matter,” I say. “Let's just go here.”

“Good. It at least seems relatively full. It's never any fun to be the only people in a restaurant.”

We order soft drinks and a few small dishes. After an exchange of pleasantries with her beloved ex-boss, Viv deflects all attention toward me, and Milton obliges her. He and I pass the ball around and work through the basics of our respective biographies.

With such a proper English opening, Milton reminds me of one of my old philosophy professors, a mild but terrifically thoughtful Englishman who taught analytical epistemology. We were always on eggshells in conversations full of deflection and retreat. As if the world of thought were unstable and delicate, requiring both careful hesitations and tender solicitudes between interlocutors, especially when it comes to affairs of the ego. I'm exaggerating, of course. Still, this kind of banter—serious but neutral talk—comes naturally to Canadians. The country's colonial heritage, I suppose. Beyond a token stretch to show that I know how to converse in this manner, I usually can't sustain it for very long, or at least don't want to. Not when strong intellect is also present. Then I definitely prefer the bare ego. For me, there is more complicity, more respect, in sharing the ego than attempting to conceal it.

Milton is not long to pick up on my roguish ways and soon has me talking about war, the United States, the Middle East, Africa, Canadian politics, the usual. As always, I give out my strong opinions without hesitation.

“So why China?” he finally asks about my work here.

“It's a story for the ages,” I tell him. “And we're entering one of its best parts.”

“How do you plan to deal with this story?”

“As a travel writer. An extension of the travel filmmaking that I've been doing. My mission is to track glimpses, chosen moments that might reveal the grand affairs that lie beneath. Then to sew them all together into something that's fun and easy to read.”

“You're not ambitious at all,” he says, laughing. “So what are you looking for in Hong Kong?”

“Identity politics. Cultural hybridization. That kind of thing.”

“I understand.”

“Might I ask you, a native Hong Konger, to what extent you consider yourself Chinese?”

“Me? I'm ethnically Chinese. I speak Cantonese, though I live and work mostly in English. But I hesitate to consider myself a proper Chinese national. I consider myself a Hong Konger. That's enough. I grew up in a place quite distinct from the mainland, and I believe in this distinction. For me, for now at least, embracing China would mean giving up on a few things that I hold dear.”

“Like what?”

“Freedom of speech. Freedom of assembly. The rule of law. To mention a few.”

“Aren't you happy that the prodigal son has returned to the family home?”

“Yeah, right,” he says after an initial laugh.

“Don't you feel pride in your Chinese heritage?”

“Pride in my heritage? That's amusing. Do I need mainland China for my heritage? Anyhow, shouldn't I choose what I take from my heritage? Get to decide what I respect and what I need? And frankly, have the right to do this wherever I choose to live?”

“So no good is coming out of China for you?”

“That's a harsh way to put it. I'm excited by what is happening to China. You understand that for my work I need to follow the events there religiously. Nothing is more important for my newspaper. But I enjoy it. Following the changes in China, I mean. I love travelling there. I'm thrilled for the mainlanders, that life is getting better for them. You know—more opportunities, more fun. How could I not? I'm married to a mainlander. Viv's friend, actually.”

“I didn't tell him,” Viv notes. “We were housemates as journalist cadets at the
Post
. I'm surprised you're mentioning it, Milton, dating among co-workers being sensitive and all.”

“He's surely not a gossip journalist. Look,” he says, turning back to me, “I don't trust the Communist Party of China. I don't see it relinquishing any political power. So don't be surprised that I'm not inclined to surrender any of my freedom to the idea of a unified China. I want China to move forward, but I don't want Hong Kong to move backwards.”

“How do you feel about the ‘one country, two systems' motto?”

“Like I said, I don't really trust the CPC. It's not sincere, not when it comes to politics. How could it be? The Hong Kong system is anathema to the party. Toxic, even. Hong Kong people want a functioning democratic system. This is pretty clear. It's a natural evolution for us. Something a long time in the making. But I'm not sure Beijing will tolerate Hong Kong ever truly becoming democratic. It makes concessions that are mere window dressing, always ensuring that it keeps control. Let's not forget the People's Liberation Army Hong Kong Garrison that is now posted here, the ultimate guarantor of control for Beijing.”

“Before, Hong Kong was a colonial protectorate with a governor named in London and a large British naval base. Do you remember when those guys bombed Canton?”

“Yes, to push their drugs,” Milton quips. “But that system was gone long ago. And frankly, I feel safer under the British Foreign Office's supervision than under that of the National People's Congress Standing Committee.”

“Do you consider yourself British?”

“No. There is much I admire about the British system and values. I'm proud of their influence in Hong Kong. But I consider myself a Chinese Hong Konger. Or let's just say a Hong Konger. This is also not a unique position. Might even be a majority here, who knows.”

“Tell me about your newspaper.”

“You mean its politics, I suppose?”

“Sure.”

“They are unstable. You have to first understand how Beijing pressures Hong Kong. Through carrot much more than stick—money, business, that is; that's what drives this place anyhow. And China now has the clout to buy into this place in a big way. If one could consider it a foreign investor, it would be by far the biggest on the scene. Here is an even easier way to convince Hong Kong tycoons to become pro-Beijing: China merely opens exclusive access to a part of the mainland economy to them.”

“Sounds like fair play to me,” I counter. “Good for Hong Kong development. A strong link to the 7 percent growth of the mainland.”

“Okay, even if we accept your idea—which, believe me, has many problematic aspects to it—the CPC is not like any other corporate entity that might invest here. Even if we accepted that it was, it uses its economic control in a coercive manner in the political arena. It uses it to manipulate the ‘democratic' system. Groups, not individuals, vote for our chief executive. We don't have universal suffrage.”

“Have you ever?”