by Vivian Yang
“And the rest, as they say, is history.”
“I’m afraid you flatter me, Miss Mo. Now that you know everything about me, can you entrust yourself to your sponsor?” he asked, taking my hand.
Withdrawing with a wince, I said, “Please don’t, Mr. Hua! I’m not the kind of girl you think.”
“No? And what kind of girl are you?”
I sat up straight and folded my hands over my lap. “Mr. Hua, it was very generous of you to have arranged for my work visa and put me up for the past week, but I intend to realize my goals in life through legitimate means. A casting couch is not something I will crawl on to. You may already know that I was born in Hong Kong and shall be able to reclaim my status soon.”
“Good Lord, looks like Hua Wen has just met his match,” he said with a self-deprecating snicker. “You know what they say: No concord without discord first. I have to say you are a real ‘Shanghai Surprise’, Miss Mo.”
“I take it as a compliment, then. Thank you. If you care to indulge me for a moment, I’ll show you my first impressions of Hong Kong. Perhaps it’ll surprise you some more.”
Dear Editor:
My initial impression of Hong Kong was one of familiar sights: dark-haired people, remnants of European colonial architecture, and a general pragmatic attitude towards life similar to that held by my home city folks in Shanghai. Then came the shocking remark by a working-class man that “They are better than us Chinese,” referring to Caucasians in general and the British rulers in particular. Empirical evidence suggests that his view is representative of not a small segment of the Hong Kong Chinese populace. The upper middle-class stay-at-home wives, for instance, try their utmost to emulate the Britons: they have supper not dinner, sample puddings not desserts, and take tea not coffee – in little fine porcelain cups with saucers, no less.
Within hours of my arrival in the Territory, I was introduced to the Martial Races Theory that the Nepalese and other South Asians are inherently more militant than the Filipinos due to the latter’s fun-loving nature. Such racial stereotyping is appalling to me. As a rare Eurasian in China, I have endured my share of appearance discrimination, although that is changing in Shanghai and my gawk-worthiness is fast on the decrease. Although I haven’t exactly been stared at here in Hong Kong, I have been greeted with fleeting glances not entirely devoid of judgment.
As entertainment in English is not available in Shanghai, I was particularly intrigued by the dubbing into English of the Cantonese kung fu stars and the equally incomprehensible yet rapid fire Cantonese-English spilled out by the celebrity TV chef of “Yan Can Cook” fame. Compliminting triad-fighting and stir-frying was a third genre -- programs beamed from America. There was the rerun of the 1991 William Kennedy Smith “… then I ejaculated” in the back bushes of the Kennedy Compound in Florida drama, the Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill public interest, pubic hair, soft drinks, hardcore, he says she says soap opera; and the more current and juicy, O. J. “Juice” Simpson double murder trial, where celebrity lawyer extraordinaire Johnny Cochran donned a ski cap to save the life of the erstwhile American footballer, along with Marcia Clark’s metamorphosis from an overworked and undersexed Los Angeles County prosecutor to a made-over look-alike of the homemaking queen Martha Stewart.
Hong Kong is where the Orientals meet the accidental Occidentals.
Jasmine Molotova
Mid-Levels
“Umm, a bit rambling but interesting perspective and keen observation, rather insightful for someone so new to this Vanity Fair. By the way, your English is excellent. I’ll see to it that this gets in the next issue.”
“But it’s only a draft and I’m still tinkering with it. Are you in any way connected to The Mandarin Literati?”
“Connected? I run it. You can say it’s a labor of love. The people on the ad side help put it together visually.”
“Really? I’m surprised that a businessman like you is actually running a magazine. I’m really lucky to have met you. I have been doodling things about my life for years now.”
“And now you can write your autobiography. How about From Pravda to Prada for a title?”
“You really are obsessed with Communism, aren’t you? What’s Prada, by the way?”
He laughed. “Ah, how interesting. For most girls here in Hong Kong it would be the other way around. Nobody would know that Pravda is the official Soviet Union Communist newspaper Truth but everyone knows that Prada is a luxury Italian brand and one of the most hankered status symbols.”
“Just like The Mandarin World.”
“Nice one.”
“So what time do I report to work, Boss Wah?”
“What work?”
“Does Mandarin World have a modeling program?”
Man displayed a wicked smile. “Oh y-ye-ss, but casting couch is a prerequisite. Still interested?”
“Honestly I am disappointed. One would hope that someone who had floated to Hong Kong on stolen watermelons would have some compassion for a fellow youngster fresh off the plane from Mainland China, but then who can compel empathy?”
“Gotcha!” Man cackled with an American expression. “You are even more alluring when you’re mad. Why don’t you start tomorrow at Club Mandarin as a management trainee to learn on the job.”
“Club Mandarin?”
“My Shanghai-themed club in Central, perfect for a Shanghai Surprise.”
“Well, thank you, Man!”
He glanced at his watch and stood up. “Ah John should be at the car park now. May I give you a lift?”
“Thanks but no thanks. I’ll just walk across the street to Her Majesty’s Court. By the way, do you have a unit in there?”
“Yes, and you’re staying in it. But don’t worry, it’s yours for now and I won’t bother you. I’ve got a house each in Kowloon Tong and Sai Kung.”
17 The Long Long Life Bar and The Pen Ball
Situated in the heart of Hong Kong Island, Club Mandarin occupied the top floors of one of the grandest contemporary buildings that had only recently been dwarfed by newer arrivals. Its concept was to marry the stylish seediness evocative of Shanghai’s colonial heyday with contemporary European chic. The decorations were typical of a Chinese eatery, with wax-polished wood floors, retro furniture, slow-spinning ceiling fans and lighting reminiscent of 1930's Shanghai. Paintings and sculptures by avant-garde Chinese artists were on display throughout.
Marketed as a high-society hangout, it targeted expatriate executives with their often Asian but not necessarily first-time significant others or spouses, Sinophiles, and self-styled East-West relationship experts. The restaurant served home-style southern Chinese and fusion European haute cuisine. Club members spoke of intentionally ungrammatical and misspelled fortune cookie slips dispensing tongue-in-cheek classical Chinese wisdom.
A sampler:
Club Mandarin say No to greasy wok’n’eggroll.
Brown lice (the Cantonese, like the Japanese, confuse the l and r sounds) and white powder -- just do it!
Grand Master Hung sayed ‘Mandarin doll obey father, grandfather desires! (Confucius, incidentally pronounced Hung in Cantonese, was the Grand Master in question.)
The most talked about feature of Club Mandarin was the Long Long Life Bar. Knowing Man, I gathered that he got his inspiration from the slogan we as children were required to hail daily: A long long life to Chairman Mao! (literally: With the utmost respect we wish Chairman Mao ten-thousand boundless lives!) A replica of the former Shanghai British Men’s Club’s L-shaped mahogany bar, then the longest in the world, Club Mandarin’s version conjured up the image of Shanghai as the “Paris of the East” populated by Hongkie Shangkie merchant bankers, zuit-suited triad members, turbaned Sikh bodyguards, and cigarette-puffing European film star wannabes.
At this moment, as I slid my hand along the smooth shiny edge of the Long Long Life Bar, I could hear the pre-Communist Shanghai nightclub duet numbers played by my grandfather Kirill Molotov and his Filipina par
tner Coco; I could see my beloved Renaissance Shanghainese dancing to the strains of jazz music and drinking White Russians mixed not with baijiu but Kahlua.
As I studied Mandarin & Mao, the painting coupling a mandarin headshot with that of a Chairman Mao which Man had commissioned for the Bar, a déjà vu sensation of my menstrual onset at the Mao memorial service hit me. The artwork showed a Qing Dynasty official in a black velvet cap with a finial and bright tassels, but it was the scarlet red allocated to Mao that overwhelmed me.
Just then, the bartender offered me a drink on the house and I picked the first one on the bar menu, a Bloody Mao-ly.
That evening after returning to the flat I did some emotional unpacking. Boiling rice to the exact consistency for glue, I paper-mounted Uncle Fly’s calligraphy of Du Mu’s Zeng Bie (Presented upon Departure) so that it now had the texture of parchment and spread the scroll on the lacquer altar table below the tin mirror. I read and reread the following couplet, written in his graceful classical Chinese lettering:
So deep is my feeling that it is devoid of it all,
Gazing long at the wineglass brings no smiles at all.
An objet d’art.
An object of the heart.
Since arriving in Hong Kong, I had been carrying in my purse an English-Chinese dictionary purchased in a D’Aguillar Street bookshop. At this moment, I took out the 1949 Penguin’s dictionary from Uncle Fly and examined its cracked binding. With a trembling index fingertip, one dab of mashed rice at a time, I fixed the pocket-sized learning tool, smoothing the pages its original owner had fingered before, thinking of my Renaissance Shanghainese.
Also in my thoughts was of course Mother. Either she had never received my letter or she did not wish to contact me. Recalling how she viewed me as a potential rival in Japan, her not wanting to be in touch with me was understandable.
Finally, Wang Hong. I longed to hear from her. I could have called Secretary-General Zhao’s office and asked for Old Wang but with Mother not returning to the Conservatory, I couldn’t bring myself to face whoever would answer the phone.
And then, there was this pompous, British-accented “Hallo” from a schoolgirl, which was how I found out about the glitterati-filled opening of the Mandarin World branch in the Kowloon landmark The Peninsula Hotel.
The other day, I was strolling up Hornsey Road off Her Majesty’s Court, a popular dog-walking path for Southeast Asian domestic workers taking their employers’ pets for fresher air. This was the United Nations General Assembly of canines: English terriers, French poodles, German Shepherds, Maltese, Pekingese, even Russian borzois, many of them born in lands afar and flown in with birth certificates of blue blood. The maids carried with them their employers’ South China Daily Mail to use as fans for themselves while their charges behaved and as toilet paper when they fouled.
Chris Patten, the last Governor of Hong Kong, had arrived in the Territory in July 1992 with the Queen’s historical mandate, his family and Norfolk terrier cousins Whisky and Soda in tow. From the outset the two top dogs and three first daughters seized the imagination of Hong Kong Chinese and Western expatriates alike. Worcestershire, England by birth, the Patten pets were of immaculate pedigree with proper human names. Soda, the “canine first lady of Hong Kong”, was legally Alice Hanley Castle. Not all Hong Kong dog owners aspired to having their dogs included in the same league as those of the Governor’s, but some Mid-Levels residents certainly had their live-in pooper-scoopers go out of their way to try.
Being on Hornsey reminded me of the now departed Daisy, the matchmaker for me and Uncle Fly. The contrast was stark. Daisy’s breed was uncertain and her exact cause of death unverifiable. I wondered about the fate of that game restaurant and whether establishments like it should be allowed to operate at all considering the way they sourced their raw material.
Located at the beginning of Hornsey was The Mid-Levels Grammar School, the feeder school to Hong Kong Island English School where the Patten’s youngest was a student. As I passed, I couldn’t help but be distracted by the sobbing of a Eurasian girl in the School’s blue and white gingham uniform. Looking perplexed next to her was a Filipina, leash in one hand and newspaper in the other. On her shoulder was the girl’s “Hello Kitty” school bag.
“No use cry, Sarah! We go home. Later Ma’am will scold me.”
“No fair! No fair! Mr. Wah’s party at The Pen is the biggest in Hong Kong this year. The Governor’s daughter is going and so is Matilda. I want to go too!” Sarah, whom I now recognized from the premises of both the LEC and Club Mandarin, continued to wail.
“Matilda go because she is debater. You go also when you get old to Island English School,” her forty-something chaperone with several gold-capped teeth said.
“Not ‘debater’. Debutante! It’s French!” Sarah corrected her.
“Okay, okay, I don’t know fancy French word but Sarah, please, we go home now!” the helper pled as she led the dog to the curbside to do its business.
The girl turned away from the sight and saw me. “Hallo, I’m Sarah. I’ve seen you before. Aren’t you Mr. Wah’s new model?”
“I work with him, yes.”
“So you can get me an invitation, right?”
“About The Pen Ball, ...” I said casually the next time I spotted Man.
He looked at me with jovial amazement. “What about it?”
“I’d like to be involved -- to learn on the job, as you said.”
“I like it when you take the initiative. I’ll let you talk to a few people and go to some meetings, then.”
I took in the sights and sounds of the soirée like a sponge soaking water. The gala would later play back in my mind’s eye like a movie, a skill I had acquired at the Film Studio from being ordered to commit to memory for later emulation every detail of the revolutionary film The Brightly Shining Red Star. This was an excellent chance for me to “learn on the job,” I told myself. I would eventually adapt some of the things I observed there to my own professional endeavors.
Eight hundred guests in formalwear swirled in the marble Peninsula Hotel lobby to the accompaniment of the Hong Kong Philharmonic, scintillating gems, clinking champagne flutes and all. There was a concurrent launch of the Changhaï Cheongsam line of apparel inspired by the 1930’s Shanghainese calendar girls, beauties in high heels and permed hair known for their flirtatious smiles, seductive poses, body-hugging cheongsams, and state-of-the-art European accessories.
The Pen was wrapped in silk drapes in the Mandarin World signature colors of lime green and fuchsia, descending from the mezzanine Shopping Arcade. A pair of giant mannequins bent into the shapes of M and W was hung from the ceiling, complementing the magnificent chandeliers. Seventeen-year-old debutantes outfitted in a new His and Her Changhaï Cheongsam line, young couples handpicked from Hong Kong Island English School, were formally introduced to the society. The debs wore shimmering silver silk gowns and long, black velvet gloves, and their beaux wore white silk bowties and black silk tails with a subdued “double happiness” character logo.
The Pen Ball went smoothly as planned. Man’s introducing me as “la jeunesse de Changhaï” led to a cameo of me in The Island Tattler’s coverage of the night. Of him, reporter Siobhan Foley wrote: “Man Wah has managed to transform his fifteen minutes of fame into a timepiece that tick-tocks around the clock. …… The Pen Ball was in every sense of the word a triumph.” By contrast, South China Daily Mail published an account about Mandarin World’s failure to open a branch on Madison Avenue in New York.
It was by far the most educational event I had ever attended. With the China Mail article in mind, I thanked Man for the opportunity and asked if it was true that he had been doing the feasibility study in New York when I first arrived in Hong Kong but decided against it.
“I haven’t ruled out anything, but from a marketing standpoint, it is much harder to establish an Asian brand name in a Western metropolis.”
“Right. However, I couldn’t help but n
otice that almost all the debutants at The Pen Ball were white, yet 95% of the Hong Kong population is ethnic Chinese, not to mention the highly visible groups of Indians, Pakistanis, Nepalese, and the small segment of Eurasians.”
“They aren’t sophisticated enough to be our targeted market and the half-breed’s numbers are miniscule.”
My face fell. Since arriving in Hong Kong I felt largely liberated from the unwanted attention associated with my appearance. But Man’s slur betrayed the locals’ prejudices. I realized in that instant my naïveté at believing that Hong Kong was the colorblind place where meritocracy ruled. Even back home in Shanghai, with the gradual returning of Western influences now, a face like mine would be more accepted and even welcomed. Uncle Fly’s advice over the phone that I shouldn’t jump to any conclusions in Hong Kong resounded in my ears. How I wished I could have him with me to give guidance!