“I’m at a bit of a loss. I frankly don’t know what it is that’s made there. Something for electronic devices or computers, I think. And please don’t ask me how it is that we are visiting this factory.”
“Why not?”
“Trust me, my explaining how I made the contact would be too long and boring.”
“At least admit that it is funny that we are travelling to this one obscure factory through what must be the world’s greatest manufacturing centre. It’s like looking for a single tree in a great forest.”
“I hope it will be useful to you. But don’t blame me if it isn’t.”
The highway morphs into a grand boulevard that leads to others. Suddenly, the city tapers off into a dusty wasteland, at least a square kilometre of bare earth, recently scraped clean of whatever had been there before. To its south, I can see the water again. We are working our way to the shore.
Past the wasteland, the city starts again. It’s sparse and rough. The taxi halts at the side of a wide, unfinished turning circle. After the driver gets directions from pedestrians, we turn onto a final boulevard that has an almost industrial-park feel. Seven- or eight-storey industrial buildings neatly line up along the boulevard, intercut with sections of manicured lawns. We are going to building 10. The taxi driver says he’ll wait for us.
Viv and I walk around the building, looking for an entrance. We don’t find much of a lobby, only a door leading to a stairwell and a couple of elevators. Viv gets on the phone with her contact, the company manager, Mr. Jiang. He tells her to come to the sixth floor.
Jiang, a relaxed man in his forties, meets us as we exit the elevator. He ushers us into his office, where we drink tea. He seems perfectly at ease with our interest in the operation. As is often the case in Shenzhen, our host is a Mandarin, not Cantonese, speaker. He passes us his company’s trade catalogue. His outfit makes tiny electrical components for circuit boards, the tiniest needles in the largest haystack, a product so deeply embedded within the chains of production as to have almost no identity with the consumer, like a support column in a building, completely overlooked but necessary.
The resistors are partly for local production, partly for shipping elsewhere in China, but rarely for foreign outfits. Jiang explains that his company has expanded quite a bit in recent years and will be taking over more floors of the building in the coming months.
I ask where his employees live. He tells me that bigger companies nearby have employee housing facilities, but his company doesn’t have any dedicated housing. Fifteen years ago, employers had to provide lodging because there was nowhere for people to live and local transportation was undeveloped. Now, people sort themselves out. But it has been getting more difficult to find labour, he explains, even if the wages offered are comparatively high. He hopes that the flurry of development in this part of Shenzhen will help increase the potential workforce.
Jiang invites Viv and me to don white coats before entering the production facility. Factory would be a strong word for the facility; it’s more like a large laboratory. Thirty or so workers sit in tight formation, each performing the same tasks. They are nearly all women. A few of the supervisors are men. The women all wear white coats, hairnets, face masks and gloves. The room is windowless but brightly lit and well ventilated. Jiang explains that because the product is precision equipment, the company must carefully control the conditions of the facility.
The women work at their stations, peering through large magnifying glasses. They pick components from trays that contain an assortment of pieces, organized for assembly. They insert the minute parts into tiny white cylinders. The work reminds me of Chinese miniature painting, just as meticulous but more monotonous.
I am at a loss for questions to direct at our host. There seems so little to say. What sense can I truly make of this production? I ask about the workers. They work six days a week, I am told. The women seem mostly in their twenties. They have a pleasant if intensely focused demeanour to them, not surprising considering the precision of the handiwork. Like our grandmothers’ embroidery work, Viv comments. I do wonder about what dreams might come to them at night after days spent repeating the same few actions.
In the next room, the resistors are processed through a series of machines. A handful of employees supervise these automated processes. With some effort, I manage to get Jiang to comment on what’s involved: heat, pressure, then a vacuum. Another group of employees run a series of electrical tests to ensure that the resistors are up to spec. Finally, the finished product is packaged up in boxes.
We complete our tour in the company’s cafeteria. Some employees are on break and are engaged in happy banter among themselves in Mandarin, scarcely aware of our presence. Many employees originate from other provinces and don’t even speak Cantonese. In this way, Shenzhen now forms a strong link between the Pearl and the rest of China, a link long absent in a region that so often stood apart.
We emerge from the building into the golden light of the late afternoon sun. A group of workers coming from another facility walks past us. Cheerful young men and women, happy to have free time, no doubt. I can’t quite picture them heading to nightclubs or massage parlours. More likely, for bubble tea at one of the new malls, proud to merely look at the fancy merchandise that they won’t buy, just excited that they could.
I can’t say what will happen to all these workers—whether they are in Shenzhen for good or they’ll eventually return to their villages and towns. A bit of both, I guess. While they’re here, everything’s changing for them, and if they do return, they’ll be different people arriving in changed places. There’s no going back to the grime and isolation of before.
“It’s a happy time to be Chinese,” I say to Viv. “Such possibility opening up for the young people here.”
“I agree, it’s an exciting time. But the base needs to be built upon. Work is good. But the Chinese must work for more than wages, for more than just consumer possibilities.”
“Patience, Viv. The new life’s only just starting for them now.”
An elevated train takes us to Hong Kong. There’s a border control but it seems perfunctory. Back in the free world, some might think. I’ve flown back and forth from China into Hong Kong a number of times before, but have never gone by land.
“Of course, we should oppose borders for what they stand for and who they really benefit,” I tell Viv, “but I like the scenes at border crossings. If they ever disappear, I will miss them, masochistically perhaps.”
“I remember when I first came to Hong Kong five years ago,” Viv says. “It was for an internship at the South China Morning Post, my first time out of China. It was after reunification, and I was excited to be visiting a place that had evolved under a completely different political system than mine. I can say that I was also proud that Hong Kong had been returned to China, that an old period was over and a new had begun. I know many westerners were afraid of this happening, but for us in China, Hong Kong’s return was a moment filled with much hope. It could only be good for us.”
“For me, Hong Kong has always been a sanctuary,” I say, “a place to enjoy some comforts after much rougher travel. I remember dreaming of this place throughout my lengthy 1990 trip to China. I couldn’t wait to go shopping for electronics. And coming out of the sweaty tropics of Southeast Asia, I would find Hong Kong’s balmy climate ideal and its orderly ways relaxing—I’d go to the cinema.”
“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 s
ad 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?”
“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.”
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