by Martin Booth
'I don't want to go back,' my mother said emphatically, breaking our silence. 'England is dreary, colourless, down-in-the-mouth. Lifeless. Just look at this.' She turned and faced distant Lan Tau, the rays of the setting sun fingering between the mountains. 'How can I live in Romford or Woking or Basingstoke after this?'
'Or Bath,' I suggested.
She laughed ironically and stood up, suggesting, 'Let's go back via Lugard Road.'
As we walked slowly round the mountain, the city unfolding beneath us, my mother said, 'I want to stay here. In Hong Kong. And I've been thinking. Your father will have to resign from the Admiralty and get a job here. In the government, perhaps. Tax is much lower here than in Britain and the salaries are a good deal higher.'
I noticed she did not say 'Back home' as so many of her friends did.
'Will he change jobs?' I wondered aloud.
'Oh, yes!' my mother replied quietly and with a cast-iron confidence. 'Maybe not this week, maybe not next month, but he will. You mark my words!'
My mother adored the apartment at Mount Austin. It was spacious and had views from every window for which any Hollywood star would have inserted bamboo splinters under their fingernails, she had Wong and Ah Shun to attend to the chores, Su Yin to cosset and Tuppence to spoil. Her Chinese circle of friends, larger than her crowd of gweipor acquaintances, regularly visited for tea, often staying on into the evening, much to my father's chagrin: as long as my mother had guests he had to ease up on the pink gins and whisky sodas.
At other times, she continued to go for picnics with them, swimming parties or chow, which meant a meal in a Chinese restaurant. To her friends' children, she was universally known as Auntie Joy. When festivals came round, she was invited along to the celebrations as an ersatz relative.
The gweipor in her only came out in the mornings when she went to play canasta and drink coffee with other European women. She went swimming as much as she could, the exercise keeping her joints flexible. When that was not feasible, she wrote letters and poetry and knitted baby clothes either for Su Yin, the various new-born of friends or a squatter charity. Yet both she and I knew the time was coming when we would be presented with the opportunity to leave the Peak. And we would have to take it.
Finally, after six weeks of intermittent mist and continuous painkillers, with no quarters becoming available, my parents decided there was only one thing they could do. Just in time for the beginning of the new academic year in September, we packed up the apartment, put our furniture in store, reluctantly dismissed Wong and Ah Shun with much shedding of tears (but with references so glowing Wong could have landed a job in the Savoy or the Ritz had he so chosen), signed me off the roll at the Peak School and moved across to take up residency once more in the Fourseas Hotel.
10
MONG KOK REVISITED
LITTLE HAD CHANGED IN THE STREETS AROUND THE FOURSEAS Hotel during my Peak-side sojourn. Mr Tsang, the shopkeeper, remembered me and greeted me with a stroke of my hair. The Communist Chinese school still held its patriotic morning assembly but with the stirring music now blaring from loudspeakers rather than the scratchy phonograph. The late-morning quayside at Yau Ma Tei was still slick with fish scales and entrails and the rickshaw coolies still slept with their machines in Soares Avenue at night. Ah Sam was not amongst them. I was told he had died of a weak heart, weakened no doubt by his rickshaw and the nga pin. His number 3 hat was being worn by another now.
When I went up there, I found the Ho Man Tin squatter area had been rebuilt but now it had a rudimentary sewage system and was provided with standpipes and a concrete laundry area. The thoroughfares between the houses were wider in order to serve as fire breaks.
The Queen of Kowloon still lived in her cockloft and was still tormented by the local children. Yet, now, I did not join in their mockery or railway gravel throwing. I had learnt much about the world since I had last seen her, learnt to differentiate between fun and cruelty, humour and contemptuous laughter, love and hate. On one occasion, I approached her with the intention of buying her a meal at a dai pai dong. I wanted to see if I could extract some of her life story. I knew enough of adults now to be aware that they all possessed incredible tales – if only one could get at them. I was taller now than when she had first seen me but, otherwise, I was little altered in appearance.
It was early one evening in Mong Kok that I saw her for the last time. She was being chased by a woman who owned a fruit stall, with a stiff bamboo broom. The Queen was shuffling along as fast as she could go, dropping apples and oranges in her wake. At the sight of me, the stallholder immediately gave up the chase and started to retrieve her stolen merchandise. I went up to the Queen and addressed her in Cantonese.
'Good evening, madam,' I began politely. 'You should not have to steal. I would like to buy you food.'
She squinted at me, her eyes beady slits under a fringe of dishevelled, badly trimmed and matted hair. For a moment, I thought I was going to get a lucid answer. I was wrong.
She recoiled from me. Her hands rose over her head to the complementary stench of her armpits and general rank body odour.
'Kwai! Kwai!' she screamed in a falsetto voice that could have cracked a wine glass.
With that, she fled with far greater speed than she had to avoid the broom. A month later, I risked approaching her cockloft. It was occupied by a Chinese family. I felt guilty then. Had I, I thought, unwittingly driven her away? It was only later I realized she must have thought I was the ghost of the young heir to the Russian throne, returned from the dead to haunt her in her opium- and alcohol-befuddled dreams.
Things had changed, however, inside the Fourseas. Mr Peng was still the manager, but Ching had left, along with at least half the other room boys I had known. Ah Kwan was still the third-floor captain, but the whores had been moved out, the clientele now predominantly tourists or expatriates waiting for housing. The latter were exclusively British, the former almost exclusively American. The skull-faced gardener was no longer employed, his place taken by a kindly, elderly man who wore a battered trilby hat at all times and spoke to the plants in undertones of affection. Rumour had it that Skull-face had been 'chopped' – attacked with a meat cleaver – and done a runner for China. It was also discovered that he was more than just a card-carrying member of the Communist party. As such, he must have fallen foul of the fiercely patriotic and anti-Communist local Triad society and narrowly escaped a traditional execution of death by a thousand cuts.
Politics did not really enter into the lives of the Hong Kong Chinese. They were presided over by gods not governments. They had no vote, for elections were never held: members of the Legislative Council, Hong Kong's parliament, were appointed by the Governor. However, once a year, the spiritual world stepped aside momentarily and the population could display their political allegiances.
10 October was known as the Double Tenth, a public holiday celebrating the anniversary of the Wuhan uprising which sparked the 1911 Chinese Revolution and was the foundation of modern China. Strings of firecrackers were exploded. Buildings were decked out with huge and often badly executed portraits of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. They were surrounded by red and gold bunting and the Chinese Nationalist Kuomintang flag, which was then the national flag of Taiwan, whence Chiang had fled on losing mainland China to the Communists. The flag also fluttered in squatter areas and from tenement roof tops, washing poles, trees and even bicycle handlebars.
Not every building was so decked out, however. Some carried defiant Communist Chinese flags and a picture of Chairman Mao. This sometimes resulted in scuffles and street fights, observed by a large crowd of detached onlookers until broken up by the riot squad which arrived on grey-painted, open-sided police vehicles. Armed with long truncheons and rattan shields, they formed a phalanx and moved into the fray in complete silence save for the thump of their boots and a gweilo officer barking orders in fluent Cantonese through a loudhailer. After a few skulls were cracked and arrests made, the rema
ining assailants melted away. The onlookers followed them in suppressed mood, like football fans leaving a stadium after their side had been trounced. The fun was over until another Chiang supporter tore down a red flag or a Mao supporter desecrated a picture of the Generalissimo.
Street fights in general were often spectacles to behold, little short of urban, outdoor theatre. Normally docile, when the Chinese lost their temper they did it in style, shouting abuse with astonishing intensity and originality before eventually resorting to blows. Sometimes, the fighting consisted of little more than face slaps and the occasional artless punch, but if the protagonists possessed even a modicum of martial arts knowledge, the fights would involve back kicks and short leaps, stabs with fingers, and rabbit punches with hands shaped into hard blades. The injuries in the kung-fu type fights were always the worst unless a knife appeared from a sleeve: then the pavement would be spattered with blood before the police arrived. After a bloody fight, the street dogs would lick the pavement clean.
I came to realize that the Chinese were a nation of spectators. From a full-scale riot to two rickshaw coolies squabbling over a parking space, they would gather to watch. On one occasion, I even saw bets being made on the outcome, with side bets being placed on spin-off likelihoods.
Gambling and being Chinese were synonymous. Apart from mahjong, they indulged in tin gau, a strategy game played with tiles vaguely similar to dominoes. It was the first Chinese game I learnt to play and, in time, I became sufficiently proficient as to risk a part of my pocket money on it with the rickshaw coolies and mechanics in the Fourseas garage. I seldom left a session down.
Other gaming pastimes included heads 'n' tails and coin tossing. Played with ten-cent coins, the players stood in a line facing a wall. The first player threw a coin at the wall. It bounced off and settled on the ground. The idea was to throw one's coin so that it would land as near to the bottom of the wall as possible, but not touching it. He who succeeded took all the money but there were strategies. One could hit another's coin away from the wall or one could partly cover it, in which case, your coin took its place.
Although by law gambling was illegal unless conducted in a licensed mahjong club or through official Royal Hong Kong Jockey Club horse betting offices, it went on everywhere. To eradicate gambling was akin to prohibiting the eating of rice. I not infrequently saw policemen on the beat call into a tea house for a bowl of gunpowder tea and a few hands of tin gau and, for all his gentility, the new Fourseas gardener kept a stable of fighting crickets in minute, ornate bamboo cages. He fed them grass and chrysanthemum sprouts but, despite my attempts to bribe him, he never took me to a match.
The fact that anyone in Hong Kong could support the Communist cause seemed beyond me. They had butchered, dispossessed and robbed millions. Not a single squatter had avoided Communist brutality and yet even some of the squatter shacks flew the scarlet flag of mainland China with its five gold stars.
One of the hotel staff, although not a Communist sympathizer, had fought as a partisan with them during the Japanese occupation. His name was Ah Lam. When I discovered his past, I sought him out and asked him why.
'Japanese more bad Communist,' was his pragmatic response.
'But why do people support the Communists now?'
'They wan' China one country. No like Taiwan, China, Hong Kong, Macau. Wan' China be one place for all Chinese.'
This seemed reasonable to me but I could not equate it in my mind with the atrocities of the recent civil war.
'But the Communists were very bad to the people.'
'All pe'pul bad to all pe'pul in war,' Ah Lam stated bluntly.
'Were you bad in the war?' I enquired.
'Me ve'y bad in war. One day, I show you.'
A few days later, as I was in my room doing my homework, there came a knock at my parents' door. It was Ah Lam asking to see them. I put down my pen and went through the adjoining door into my parents' suite.
'Master and Missee Bo Fu,' Ah Lam began, 'I wan' ask you for me take Martin New Te'ito'ies-side, show him some t'ing from the wartime. In wartime, I fighting Japanese for English. I East 'iffer B'igade man. Not Communist. Fight for England.'
He fumbled in his pocket and took out a small, brown cardboard box. On the lid were printed the letters OHMS and a crown with the words Official Paid round it. He handed it to my father who opened it and took out a medal. Cast in silver and attached to a red, white and blue ribbon, one side showed a lion standing on a dragon whilst on the other was the head of King George VI.
'Governor give me,' he continued, 'for fight Japanese. If Martin can come, I look-see him ve'y good. No p'oblem.'
My father had a we'll-let-you-know look on his face but my mother immediately acceded to the request, saying, 'Yes, I'm sure that's fine, Ah Lam.'
That Saturday afternoon, Ah Lam and I set off in the hotel Studebaker bound for Sai Kung, a fishing village at the far eastern end of the New Territories famous for its seafood and the distinctly Communist leanings of its populace. Ah Lam told me that the narrow road to Sai Kung, known as Hiram's Highway, had been built by the British military but had been much improved by the Japanese, using allied and Chinese slave labour. It was the only road that penetrated the Sai Kung peninsula, an area of mountains, forests and isolated villages approached only by remote footpaths and known to the Japanese as a hotbed of sedition.
As we drove over the airport runway, he said, 'We go Sai Kung-side, you no talk-talk about Communist. You just no talk, boy.'
Sai Kung was quiet. Fishing junks lay three deep at the quayside. On a few, children or women were washing down the decks. The nets hung from the masts, drying in the sun like giant furled spiders' webs. Scattered here and there on the dock were dead fish or their remnants, the leftovers from the catch landed that morning. Outside the quayside buildings stood buckets of sea water containing live fish or lobsters, their massive claws secured by wedges rammed into the claw joints, jamming them closed. Crabs clicked in other buckets, ten deep, their claws manacled by pliable bamboo twine. Seated on a low stool, a fisherman was tying them in bunches of three with a loop to act as a carrying handle.
Ah Lam parked the Studebaker in the shade of a wide-spreading tree and we walked through the village to a tea house, sitting at an outside table under an awning. He entered into a long conversation with the proprietor whom he obviously knew well. I sipped my tea and kept quiet. At length, Ah Lam introduced me to the tea house owner.
'How do you do?' he said, shaking my hand.
'Ho! Ho! Nei ho ma?' I replied.
He laughed at this, but I sensed the threat of malice hiding behind his laughter.
'You don't need to speak Cantonese with me. I speak English. So,' he went on, 'you are going with Lam here to see something in the hills. Do you know what you will see?' I said I did not. 'You will see what Lam and I did in the war. Lam is my good friend and old comrade.' He put his hand on my shoulder. 'Are you a strong boy?'
I considered the question and said, 'I think so. I can walk a long way. I walked from Tung Chung to Ngong Ping without—'
'I do not mean strong in your legs but . . .' his hand shifted to my head '. . . in your mind.'
I did not quite understand what he meant but answered that I thought I was. He grinned.
'It is a long walk. Maybe two miles. And it is a hot day.'
He put four bottles of Coke in a small string bag and handed me a tiny bottle opener in the shape of a Coke bottle. Thus provisioned, Lam and I set off along a wide path across paddyfields of waving green rice, the pale white grain hanging down like cascades of tiny opals, ready to ripen. As we walked, frogs leapt from the path into the paddy. Where there were stone bridges over watercourses, lizards ran helter-skelter ahead of us making for the security of a crevice.
'Who was that man?' I enquired.
'He my boss in war,' Ah Lam replied.
'Your boss?' I repeated.
'He East 'iffer B'gade off sser.'
'What is th
e East River Brigade?'
'In war,' Ah Lam explained, 'many Chinese pe'pul wan' fight Japanese but he no can do. Got no gun. But some pe'pul got gun. Communist got gun. They make small-small army, liff in mountungs . . .' He pointed to the east where the land was mountainous with narrow wooded valleys between grass- or bush-covered ridges. 'Dis mountungs. He call East 'iffer B'igade. He fighter, not sol-jer. Sometime Communist, sometime Kuomintang, sometime just man no like Japanese.'
'But what did you do?'
'Make trubbul for Japanese.'
After about half a mile the path, now narrower and cut into earth steps, left the paddyfields and started up a hillside carved into terraces upon which was growing a variety of vegetables. Here and there between the terraces were small platforms bearing rows of golden pagodas and one or two graves.
'What sort of trouble did you make?' I asked.
'Big trubbul. You know Watah-loo Road, near hotel, is a b'idge for t'ain. Kowloon-Canton . . .' he struggled with the word '. . . Wailway? One time, we blow up. Put plenty PE under b'idge. Phoom! No t'ain can go China-side long time.'
'What is PE?' I enquired.
'In English he call plas-tic ex-plo-sif,' he enunciated slowly. 'B'itish sol-jer come China-side, giff us.'
We carried on up the hill to a point where the path ran horizontally along the hillside, following the lie of the land. It was easier going now and, in twenty minutes, we reached a steep-sided wooded valley. Just as we were about to enter the trees, Ah Lam froze. I did likewise. Crouching down, he signalled me to move to his side and pointed ahead. Not twenty yards away was a wild boar, his tusks like old ivory, his back bristled. He did not look in our direction and, after a moment, moved off into the undergrowth. I began to stand up, but Ah Lam held me down. In less than a minute, the boar's sow crossed the path followed by seven piglets with light brown coats and thick, dark horizontal stripes.