by Ian Buruma
For years the likes of Dame Lydia and Simon Li, as well as such local tycoons as Y. K. Pao, who made his fortune in shipping, or newspaper editors like Louis Cha, have warned Hong Kong people not to rock the boat, not to push for “divisive” politics, which would only upset Beijing. After all, wrote Louis Cha in an editorial in Ming Pao on June 1989, the communists “are Chinese. There are good Chinese and bad Chinese, but most Chinese are good.” And, as Clive James described so well in Flying Visits, whenever there was a good party in China for a visiting British worthy, there was Y. K. Pao (“Powie”), grinning and hand-wringing like an oily comprador. No wonder such people have been so easy to intimidate. Louis Cha said it all in one sorrowful and all too typical sentence: “We felt we were doing our best to serve the country.”
The worthies are still doing their best. When, some months ago, the Hong Kong Arts Center wanted to screen a documentary film about China, footage of the Beijing massacre was censored, because, as a local official put it, “we have to pay attention to the shifting political sensitivities of the Chinese government.” One of the main galleries in the Arts Center has been named after Y. K. Pao. His son-in-law, an Austrian worthy called Helmut Sohmen, is chairman of the board.
No wonder, with an establishment like that, that Martin Lee has a hard time, and that few people in Hong Kong wish to stick their necks out when the tycoons and mandarins refuse to stick out theirs. Far wiser, if you have the chance, to take to the planes and move elsewhere.
We are Chinese by race. We love our country with Chinese blood flowing in our bodies. But we don’t like the communist system.
Martin Lee, Hong Kong, February 1990
In the past Hongkong people thought that they were colonial citizens. But after the signing of the Sino-British Joint Declaration, we knew that Hongkong would go back to China after 1997 and that Britain would not take care of us any more.
Letter to the South China Morning Post, February 1990
Martin Lee faces another, perhaps more intractable, obstacle than the cowardice, connivance and bullying of mandarins: the perennial question of many immigrant communities, especially the overseas Chinese: Where do they feel they belong? It is an important question, for there never was enough identification with the colonial Chinatown, ruled by benevolent British patriarchs, to stimulate the majority of people to engage in politics. This suited the patriarchs in the past, but it suited their subjects as well, for they were pleased enough to have escaped from political mobilization back home. As long as they were left alone, they were content to let the British mandarins govern. The recent halfhearted talk about democracy from the patriarchs themselves—who feel they must give their Chinese subjects some hope, even if only on paper, now that the British are gearing up to leave—must sound decidedly hollow to the Hong Kong Chinese and devious to the Beijing mandarins, who had counted on a neat transfer of power from one authoritarian government to another. That is what they meant, after all, by Hong Kong’s staying the same.
To develop a political identity, people must feel a sense of continuity, of a shared past, but also more importantly, of a shared future for which they can be responsible, as citizens, not subjects. This is precisely what is missing in Hong Kong. For once, Dame Lydia hit it right on the button: “Apart from lunatics, condemned prisoners and small children, Hong Kong people must be the only people in the world who seem to have no right to decide their own fate.” Political deals are negotiated over their heads, and their more critical representatives are dismissed and sometimes insulted in London and Beijing—Martin Lee’s protest activities have been branded as “counterrevolutionary,” and he claims to have been told in Beijing that, even if he were elected after 1997, he would not be allowed to be part of any government.
So who in this colony (tactfully called “territory” in the local press) do the Chinese residents think they are? Where do their loyalties lie? Ethnically and culturally, there is no question that they feel Chinese, sometimes defensively, sometimes aggressively so. The Chineseness of the overseas Chinese found its most popular expression in the kung fu movies featuring Bruce Lee, a native of San Francisco, who rose to stardom in Hong Kong. In one of his early films, entitled Fists of Fury, ethnic pride is the main theme of the story, set in Shanghai in the early 1930s.
Lee plays a member of a kung fu school whose master is murdered by a gang of evil Japanese, who add insult to injury by stamping on the master’s picture and offering a calligraphy which reads “The sick people of Asia.” In the rest of the film, Lee redresses the insult by showing the evil Japanese what’s what—and not just the Japanese but also the white people, in the form of an odious Russian, whom the Chinese hero, his magnificent torso bared to the waist, hacks and kicks and pummels so convincingly that there can be no question left in anyone’s mind about the superiority of Chinese manhood.
The usual racial slights are rather crudely rehearsed, including the infamous sign outside the Shanghai park: “Chinese and dogs not allowed.” When Lee’s entrance is barred by the most grotesque-looking Indian the casting director could find, he demolishes the sign with a high kick and, while he is at it, demolishes a bunch of Japanese in kimonos too. The most evil character of all is, however, neither Japanese nor Caucasian but a Chinese collaborator called Wu, whose toadying to the wicked Japanese comes to a symbolic climax when he is forced at a geisha party to “walk like a Chinese”—that is, on all fours, doggy-style. Naturally, Lee knows how to deal with Wu: he beats him to death and hangs him from a lamppost.
Once in a while racial defensiveness breaks into racist aggression, not only in fantasy but in fact. The hostility toward the Vietnamese refugees, huddled in their ghastly prison camps in Hong Kong, is a case in point. To be sure, their arrival in large numbers poses a problem for a small, congested place like Hong Kong, but to hear Cantonese schoolchildren protest in front of TV cameras against sending Vietnamese refugee children to local schools because “they stink,” and to hear civic leaders virtually begging the British to send the refugees back to Vietnam, is to fast lose one’s sympathy for the plight of the Hong Kong Chinese themselves. And to observe, as I did recently, Cantonese accusing the Vietnamese of being “noisy” is to enter the realm of absurdity, for whatever the Cantonese virtues may be, silence is not one of them.
To be Chinese, then, is not the same as to be a citizen of China, but the relationship with the motherland is complicated, vague and wide open to political manipulation. “China,” wrote a Chinese-American in a Hong Kong magazine, “is a cultural entity which flows incessantly, like the Yellow River, from its source all the way to the present time, and from there to the boundless future. This is the basic and unshakeable belief in the mind of every Chinese. It is also the strongest basis for Chinese nationalism. No matter what government is in power, people will not reject China, for there is always hope for a better future a hundred or more years from now.”
China, in other words, is both real and utopian. To engage in politics in Hong Kong, indeed in all overseas Chinese communities, almost always means politics in China. The average Chinese restaurant owner in San Francisco or Vancouver may not have been interested in American or Canadian politics (“as long as he was able to make money”), but when it concerned the struggle between the nationalists and the communists he became passionately interested, for it involved the future of China. When that future is at stake, the ethnic, cultural and political merge in a sometimes combustible mix.
That moment arrived in the spring of 1989, when the students in Beijing occupied the heart of the Chinese empire. It was a sign for the Hong Kong people to show that they were more than rough-and-ready Cantonese traders; that they, too, cared for the motherland; that they, too, were Chinese to the core. It was in many ways Hong Kong’s finest hour: people supposed to be greedy money-grubbers donated millions of dollars to the Beijing students; people supposed to be indifferent to politics took to the streets. At one rally attended by rock stars, TV comedians, professionals, workers, i
ndeed le tout Hong Kong, almost a million turned up—one out of every six persons in the colony. Martin Lee, who spoke at last to a mass audience, must have hoped his hour had finally come. It was as if every person in Hong Kong had a glint in his or her eye—a glint of hope, of joy, of patriotism. But then the tanks of the People’s Army rolled, and soon the whole thing collapsed.
But not before a moving and dignified demonstration of grief swept over Hong Kong, which for several weeks was draped in black (the Western color for mourning, incidentally—the Chinese traditionally wear white at funerals). Even the procommunist press expressed its solidarity with the students and its disgust with the massacre. Every taxi in town flew a black ribbon; the New China News Agency, the unofficial Chinese embassy in Hong Kong, was surrounded by mountains of wreaths and banners decrying the “butchers of Beijing”; slogans in the streets compared Beijing 1989 to Nanking 1937. “Chinese must never kill Chinese” was another popular phrase (as though non-Chinese were more legitimate victims). There was even a banner hanging from the almost completed Bank of China building, decrying the butchery, and its architect, I. M. Pei, vowed not to engage in any more projects for the motherland.
Grief was followed by confusion. To be Chinese was no longer a simple matter. This was neatly demonstrated in June when the British foreign secretary, Sir Geoffrey Howe, turned up in a maladroit attempt to calm things down. He was greeted by a kind of battle of songs. On one side of town, in Victoria Park, where a hideous old bust of the queen-empress has found its last resting place, protesters gathered to demand the “right of abode” in Britain, as the country of refuge. They played a tape of Dame Vera Lynn’s “Land of Hope and Glory” and made speeches, often in English, about Hong Kong people not wishing to be second-class citizens, and displayed banners that said “Shame on you, England!” and “Howe can you sleep at night?” Dame Lydia Dunn flew to London to plead Hong Kong’s cause. Newspaper ads appeared in the English-language press, pointing out that “There is no point in being almost British.” The full-page ad was accompanied by a photograph of a Chinese boy in a British school uniform. The text deserves full quotation:
The coins in his pocket bear the impression of the Queen. On Saturdays he plays football. His school flies the British flag. He doesn’t think about freedom because he takes it for granted. He was raised in the British tradition in a British colony. He is one of the millions of people for whom Hongkong is home. And who want to continue living here. All they want is some form of insurance. And the only form of insurance that will mean anything to them is the right of abode in Britain. Otherwise, being almost British is like being homeless.
But another ad, asking for the same thing, made the point of emphasizing that “we wish to stay in Hongkong, as it is our home, and we are proud to be Chinese.”
The demand for insurance was understandable, even right; but why the stuff about the queen on the boy’s coins, why the reference to football, and what did pride in being Chinese have to do with anything? A conversation with Dame Lydia, or any of her peers, titled or not, tells one why. Those who understand the irony of playing Dame Vera’s song—and not many in Hong Kong do—are trapped between colonial dependence and old-fashioned Chinese patriotism.
There was, however, another set of songs being sung in Hong Kong that week. Members of the Hong Kong Federation of Students gathered in one of the busiest shopping areas of Hong Kong island and sang the Chinese national anthem. They handed out leaflets in Chinese saying that the right of abode in Britain would benefit only a small, rich elite, that it was humiliating to ask for help from the colonial masters, and that the duty of the masses was to stay in Hong Kong to struggle for a democratic China. “China and Hongkong are one family,” read the headline of their pamphlet, “and helping the motherland is the way to help Hongkong.”
Near the turnstiles of the ferryboat to Kowloon, a group of young people had set up a booth, representing a kind of mini-Tiananmen Square: the Internationale blasted from a loudspeaker, lurid cartoons of the blood-soaked Chinese leaders were displayed, and recorded speeches by the Beijing students were endlessly repeated. And in another ad, placed in a Chinese-language newspaper, a hundred show-business personalities renounced their right of abode in Britain, for “We Stand Upright and We Don’t Beg.”
And what, while Dame Lydia was begging the British for the right of abode, did her fellow worthies at the top of the Hong Kong heap say? Well, they didn’t all say the same thing, of course, but the predominant message was twofold: not to rock the boat any further in China, and to kick the Vietnamese boat people out as quickly as possible. The replica of the Statue of Liberty, or rather the Hong Kong replica of the replica that was crushed in Beijing, had to be removed from Victoria Park, for, as one prominent Hong Kong businessman, Vincent Lo Hongsui, said, “China will become skeptical about the people in Hong Kong if they continue to organize what Beijing has already criticized as counterrevolutionary activities.”
What we saw, then, was a fine irony: those least emotionally involved with China were most inclined to appease the Chinese leadership, while the young patriots wanted to fight on. They, and Martin Lee, are still the only ones fighting—albeit for slightly different aims, since Lee confines his ambitions to a directly elected government for Hong Kong. Even as I write, in February 1990, 3,000 students are marching to the New China News Agency to protest against the inadequate Basic Law, whose final draft was recently imposed by the Chinese on a joint drafting committee, causing one of the Hong Kong representatives to return home in tears. On the eve of the lunar New Year, in February, I visited a “democracy booth” set up by the young patriots, to find out more about their views on democracy. I didn’t find out much, but bought a coffee cup engraved with the spirited, though not especially democratic, slogan, “I am Chinese. One country. One heart.”
And the British? They have done their best to appease the spokesmen of local bigotry and have forced the first group of Vietnamese to return to the country from which they risked their lives to escape. And they have appeased the worthies by offering the worthiest—50,000 of them, to be exact—the right of abode in Britain. This has already unleashed the British variety of bigotry, in the shape of right-wing Tories led by Norman Tebbit, who has vowed to fight against the admission of even one Chinaman from Hong Kong to the green and pleasant isle—an attitude shared, alas, by the Labour opposition, worried about losing working-class voters.
So far there has been surprisingly little overt hostility in Hong Kong toward Britain. There is a general but vague feeling of having been let down, certainly, but little outrage—a sign, perhaps, of the lack of emotional involvement with that country. Whatever most Hong Kong Chinese might feel they are, they don’t feel British—always excepting, of course, that small number of worthies, who appear, ad nauseam, in the social pages of the Hong Kong Tatler.
Perhaps to feel truly outraged at Britain, it helps to be British, for the most outraged criticism of the British government for not doing the right thing by its colonial subjects has come, by and large, from the British themselves, and particularly from those Englishmen who feel most outraged by the likes of Norman Tebbit. These tend to be patrician in background and inclination. It is no coincidence, for example, that the magazine which has done more than any other British publication to voice concern over the shabby treatment of Hong Kong is the Spectator. And the most trenchant, not to say outraged, critique of British government policy was written by William Shawcross, a gentleman of impeccable patrician credentials who has done more than any other writer to concentrate our fickle attention on the suffering of refugees.
Everything Shawcross says in his polemic Kowtow! is correct. Yes, “Circumspection, prudence, kowtowing, have been the watchwords of our behaviour.” Yes, “We have been afraid of [China’s] force, not confident of our strength.” All this is perfectly true; but how much strength does the old lion still have? And how much of this strength is it still willing to use for the sake of a lot of foreigners
reputed to eat monkey brains? Is there not a hint of outrage in these polemics at the fact that Britain is no longer a great power that can set right the world’s wrongs?
George Hicks, an Australian observer of the Hong Kong scene, has argued in a collection of articles, Hongkong Countdown, that by formally committing the British to govern Hong Kong until 1997, Beijing has London over the barrel. For to ensure a smooth transfer of power, with a minimum loss of face in both decaying imperial capitals, London doesn’t feel it can do much to thwart the wishes of China’s mandarins. Nonetheless, this shouldn’t let Britain off the hook, and the patricians are surely right that history can still make demands on the present, and Britain, even though it is now a somewhat seedy power of the second rank, is morally obliged to feel responsible for the fate of 6 million people being handed over to a harsh regime. For better or for worse, however, the estimable William Shawcross and the noble Spectator are less representative of the New Britain than is Norman Tebbit, who hates patricians, doesn’t care much for foreigners and, to use his kind of language, doesn’t give a toss for the legacy of Empire.
The Police Commissioner, Mr Li Kwan-ha, yesterday expressed concern at the marked increase in violent crime in Hongkong, which he said was caused by uncertainty about the future among young people.
South China Morning Post, January 1990
Vietnamese boat people are being forced to draw lots to decide who will attempt suicide in a bizarre plan aimed at winning international sympathy, it was alleged yesterday.
South China Morning Post, February 1990
The Twenties’ atmosphere of the Champagne Bar lured those who could physically manage yet more champers, and those with real stamina stuck it out until way after midnight—now that’s an opening!