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I can’t figure out what’s going on. Everyday I open my copy of the South China Morning Post and I read about another arrest or trial of some official or tycoon here in Hong Kong who's been brought up on corruption charges.
Either HK has way more than its share of corruption, or they have some mighty tenacious prosecutors, or the people of Hong Kong just really love seeing the once-high-and-mighty get their comeuppance.
I think it’s a combination of the three.
What I do know for sure is that Hong Kong courts have a 90% conviction rate. If you get arrested here, you are going to jail.
This past Sunday at the church we were visiting, I had a chance to chat with a man from Australian. After a few minutes of the usual pleasantries, I pointed to the bulletin and asked him if he knew anything about his church’s prison ministry. (Hey, while I’m here, I might as well see the inside of a Chinese prison –preferably as a visitor.)
No, he didn’t know much about their prison outreach. But he had been thinking recently that he needed to join. When I asked why, he said he had a mate (remember, he’s Australian) who had recently gone to jail.
His friend and former colleague had been convicted on a white-collar fraud charge and had just started serving a two-year sentence.
I was tempted to ask for more details about the crime. But being a white-collar, financial crime, I figured even if he could explain it, I wouldn’t understand it. So instead, I simply asked “Was the activity he engaged in pretty clearly criminal, or did it fall into a grey area?
Turns out the guy behind bars knew what the law was in Hong Kong and he knew he was wandering into dangerous territory. His lawyers had even warned him early on.
I wanted to get a feel for just how severe the justice system is in Hong Kong, so I asked “It was clearly forbidden in Hong Kong, but would this same activity have gotten him sent to jail in Australia or the State?”
“He probably would not have done any jail-time in Australia.” Then, almost as an after-thought, Mr. Sydney Opera House added “And in the States? Oh, he wouldn’t even have been arrested.”
Nice.
I don’t know if his comment sheds any light on the comparative differences between jurisprudence in Hong Kong, Australia, and the United States. But I think it does tell us a lot about the way the rest of the world perceives the business culture in the US.
Long live American-style, free-wheeling capitalism.
-Jack
When the US Surgeon General first required tobacco companies to print a warning on every pack of cigarettes, it read “Smoking may be hazardous to your health.” A few years later, the message was upgraded to “Smoking is hazardous to your health.” Since then, the warning has become even more dire.
Hong Kong has taken the whole idea of product warning labels one step further. Not only are tobacco companies here required to print a written warning on every pack of cigarettes, they are required to print a picture of the potential outcomes of smoking. So far, I’ve seen pictures of a foot with peripheral vascular disease, x-ray pictures of cancer-riddled lungs, and a face with cancerous tumors.
Apparently, this form of deterrence works.
I haven’t had a single cigarette since I’ve been here.
-Jack
By the way, I’m under strict orders from my wife not to pick up any more discarded cigarette boxes from the gutter. I guess, I’ll have to go back to collecting restaurant placemats.
Before we left for Hong Kong, I taught sixth-grade world cultures including China past and present. I have amassed quite the collection of artifacts for my China unit: fans, umbrellas, a copy of Mao’s little red book, hats, figurines.
When we eventually return to Chicago, there is a good chance that I will resume teaching world cultures. So everywhere we go in Hong Kong, I’m always looking for lightweight, inexpensive items that are emblematic of Chinese culture past and present that I can ship home. So far, I have some collapsible paper lanterns, a few coins, and a Coke can with both English and Chinese writing on it.
Sunday after church and lunch, we were strolling down Kings Road on the main island with some friends and their kids. It was the usual: open vegetable stand, cell phone store, small home electronic store, hole-in-the-wall restaurant. I found a few interesting things -including people- to take pictures of. But then we walked past a store that looked like it was selling piñatas. Kind of unusually for a city that doesn’t really have an Hispanic populations to speak of. But then it clicked and I knew immediately what I was looking at.
“Guys, you go on ahead. I’ll catch up. Julie, I need a hundred bucks” (about US$12.50). I put the lens cap on my camera and went inside.
The Chinese of Hong Kong are not overly religious, but they are fairly beholden to tradition when it comes to all things related to death. The Chinese have traditionally sent their loved ones into the afterlife with a little cash to help them settle into their new life on the other side. They send the money along by burning it. Being the good stewards that they are, they haven’t used real money for a very long time. Instead, they buy fake money to burn. Why not. After all, their loved ones won’t know the difference. They’re dead.
But grandpa is going to need a lot more than just money if he’s going to make a go of it in the land of the dead. Therefore, one can also buy miniature paper cars and houses, paper food, paper clothes, and paper shoes. And that is exactly what I was looking at. A whole store full. Each item was packaged in a flat display box with clear plastic over it so you could see the contents. It was inexpensive, lightweight, and distinctively Chinese. Perfect. I was like Martha Stewart at a Nantucket rummage sale.
I felt a little conspicuous, being non-Chinese and pretty clearly a non-Buddhist. I was pretty obviously a big, fat tourist. But I don’t easily embarrass. Besides, the lady behind the counter did not raise any objections when it came time for me to use my very real cash to pay for a bundle of her fake money.
After ten minutes, I made my selection: a cardboard cell phone set, an assortment of packaged food items including ramen soup, some sort of cool origami paper flower-looking thingee, and a shirt/pants/tie combo (hey, just because you’re dead, doesn’t mean you can’t look good). And of course the obligatory wad of fake money. Grand total: about eight bucks.
This was so cool. My students back home would be fascinated by these items and they would help me communicate the importance in Chinese culture of venerating one’s ancestors.
A few minutes later, I caught up to Julie, the girls, and our friends at a camping supply store where the four young Chinese clerks were doting on our friends’ two little boys. The young ladies kept trying to dress the boys up in assorted wool hats. I found a stool to sit on while our friends debated the virtues of various backpacks.
When there appeared to be a lull in their shopping, I thought I would show my acquisitions to our friends. Being teachers, maybe they would be inspired to go back and buy themselves a little something. So I started to pull the assorted boxes from my shopping bag. I kind of propped them up in my arms so they could get a good look at the cool stuff I had bought.
But then out of the corner of my eye, I caught Julie doing that thing wives perfect after twenty years of marriage. She was clearing her throat and nodding toward the other side of the room. It was a virtual kick to the shins under the table. I turned to follow her gaze.
And there standing behind a table of thermal underwear were the four clerks in their matching green t-shirts. Whatever work they had been doing, had come to a halt. Wide-eyed, they were staring at us –well, to be more exact, they were staring at me. One of them broke the silence and asked me “Do you know what that it?” I looked down at all the stuff in my arms. I looked back up at her. I could only begin to image what she thought I was thinking. "No, you don't understand," I wanted to explain. "I'm a school teacher and I ... I would never do anything to . . . I . . ." Instead, I just nodded weakly and said “Yes, I do.” I started putting the items back in my bag. Julie just hung her head.
While our friends were snickering, I made a quick and graceless exit from the store. Just for good measure, I walked down two or three stores before I found a railing to lean against as I waited for the rest of the group to finish up. They weren’t long in coming. When they all found me, they were still laughing. Well, not Julie. She was mortified. For the rest of our trip home, I had inexplicably lost the urge to take any pictures. My camera stayed at my side. I was done being a bad tourist for the day
-Jack
In the city, it’s survival by any means necessary. We are still adding to our set of urban survival skills.
Last Sunday, we had the name of a church we and our friends wanted to visit and we’d even managed to figure out what bus we needed. Go us! We’d been told that the bus would drop us of fairly close to the church. (Experience told us it would not look anything like a tradition church, but would probably be inside one of Hong Kong’s innumerable, non-descript office buildings.)So far, so good.
The second we stepped off the bus though, we realized that the piece of information we were missing was how to get from the bus stop to the church. The four of us –and our kids- stood their nonplussed. Shoot. What do we do now? Then our friend’s wife said under her breath, “Hey, look” and she nodded discreetly at a group of five or six Asians and Anglos walking by. They were well scrubbed and slightly better dressed than your average Hong Konger at 9:10 on a Sunday morning. A couple of them were carrying canvas book bags.
We shrugged. It was as good a plan as any. We fell into line behind them and started following them like lost puppies. I hope this works, otherwise we going to end up in a really weird part of Hong Kong.
Less than a minute later, our unwitting leaders lead us into the lobby of a glass skyscraper. And sure enough, there in the lobby was a sign for Island ECC and on either side of the elevator were two smiling women wearing “greeter” tags. Church was on the second floor. Overflow with video feed was on the third floor. Sunday school for the kids was on the sixth floor.
You don’t need to know everything. You just need to know how to get by with what you do know.
-Jack
When a traveler return from abroad and share with tales of his or her travel, sooner or later, his or her description seems to invariablely contain a summary of how crazily the taxi drivers drove and how clean the city was (or wasn't).
I’ve only ridden in a taxi twice since we've been here so I’m not really qualified to comment on the state of driving in Hong Kong. But I can say that Hong Kong is a very clean city. Its cleanliness is due in large part to an army of female sweepers.
It is almost impossible to walk in Hong Kong for any distance and not encounter one of the thousands of women who are employed to keep the sidewalks, alleys, bridges, and parks free of debris. These female sweepers all seem to be middle-aged or older and no matter what the temperature, they seem to wear pants and long sleeves.
Furthermore, they all wear wide-brim, straw hats usually with an extra strip of cloth attached all the way around the brim forming an additional wall of protection against the sun. The net effect is that Hong Kong appears to be kept clean by an army of faceless women.
They use brooms made with either straw or long, dried, palm fronds tied together. They make these bamboo-handled brooms themselves. The brooms get used so much that they wear out fairly quickly. It’s not uncommon to see worn-down brooms discarded on a pile of rubbish or in a trash bin.
While they may not set any speed records, the women do a good job. The streets and parks are fairly clean.
Now if only we could say the same about Hong Kong politics.
-Jack
Everybody here seems to have such an interest-ing story about where they’re from and how they ended up in Hong Kong. I knew that there’d be teachers and staff from all over the world teaching at I.C.S. But one phenomenon I hadn’t anticipated was the presence of colleagues who are ethnically Chinese but have come to Hong Kong via the States, Australia, Great Britain, New Zeeland or Canada.
One young man who is working in our building as an aide grew up in Boston and couldn’t possibly be more American. He took a year off of university to move to Hong Kong where he is living with his grandmother. He is using his time now to re-acquaint himself with Hong Kong and his Chinese heritage. He is also refining his Mandarin and Cantonese.
Another colleague has had an even more round-about journey to Hong Kong. His story starts several generations ago when his great-grandparents were among the countless Chinese who emigrated from China. In his case, his family ended up in Malaysia. Fast-forward two generations and my colleague’s father and his new bride immigrate to North America to go to college and seminary. Because Princeton wanted proof of financial solvency, his dad had to convince a wealthy uncle to wire transfer $10,000 into his bank account just long enough to generate a bank statement that he could show to Princeton. It worked and my colleague grew up in Toronto. Later, he married a girl from Indiana. They have two kids and have been living in Hong Kong for the last several years. He goes back to Malaysia every summer to visit his folks who have since retired there and to visit his extended family. But he is only able to communicate with a few of his forty-plus cousins. Having grown up in Canada, he does not speak any Chinese and only a few of his cousins speak English.
Everyone here has got a story to tell including people of Chinese ancestry who have found their back to China bringing with them only parts of their Chinese heritage.
-Jack
I can’t figure out what’s going on. Everyday I open my copy of the South China Morning Post and I read about another arrest or trial of some official or tycoon here in Hong Kong who's been brought up on corruption charges.
