In August 2010, the China Daily reported, “The number of private enterprises reached 7.5 million, accounting for half of China’s gross domestic product, 70 percent of the nation’s technical innovations and 60 percent of its patents.” In addition, “China’s top 500 private companies have surpassed State-owned enterprises in many indicators, especially tax payments and employment creation, according to a report from the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce.”
In fact, Bloomberg.com says, “Many of the world’s richest self-made women are Chinese,” and Psychology Today.com tells us, “Women own more than 40% of private businesses in China.”
Meet one of those women. Judy Leissner was 24 when she became the CEO and President of 168-acre Grace Vineyard in Shanxi province, south of Beijing after she quit her job at Goldman Sachs.
The first grape-vine plantings were in 1997 and the first vintage in 2001. Judy started the winery because her father liked to drink. Today, Judy produces a quality wine—about 700,000 bottles annually.
Most people do not know that quality wine is produced in China. In fact, Judy has competition since there are about 400 wineries in China.
Judy says there is an opportunity in China to make a lot of money in a short period of time, because the country is developing and growing.
The difference between the wine market in China and the rest of the world is that most drinkers in China must drink because they have to. It’s part of the culture of doing business and developing guanxi.
In an update, Grape Wall of China.com visited Grace Vineyard in September 2011, and Jim Boyce says he visited Grace CEO Judy Leisser. He says, “About a week ago, she sent an email that the wines Grace bottled under screw cap earlier this year are doing fine and, if all goes well with final trials, the winery will switch closures this year for its entry level and premium level wines. Grace’s Premium Chardonnay ranks among the better Chinese wines and is found in top hotels and restaurants in Beijing and Shanghai.”
In addition, in an interview at 24×75.com with Judy Leissner October 17, 2011, she was asked how different the work environment for Grace Vineyard was compared to Goldman Sachs where she worked prior to becoming CEO of the vineyard in Shanxi Province. She said, “Goldman Sachs is a fast-pace, can-do, efficient place.” However, for the winery, she said, “The whole atmosphere was rather sleepy.”
In another question, Judy was asked about social responsibility and what those two words mean. She responded with, “We guarantee our growers basic income… Grace is a perfect example of an environmentally friendly and sustainable business. We provide many jobs for people from nearby villages.”
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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
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Almost half a century after her death, Anna May Wong (1905 to 1961) has not been forgotten.
As a child, Anna loved going to the movies and even cut school to go.
Between 1919 and 1961, she acted in 62 films. The Internet Movie Data Base says she was the “first Chinese-American movie star”.
To act, Anna had to play the roles she was given. The Western stereotype cast her as a sneaky, untrustworthy woman that always fell for a Caucasian man. The dark side of achieving her dream of acting in movies was that Anna had to die so the characters she played got what they deserved.
Anna often joked that her tombstone should read, “Here lies the woman who died a thousand times.”
Until Chinese started to emigrate to the U.S. in the mid-19th century, they had never encountered a people who considered them racially and culturally inferior.
However, the discrimination against the Chinese in America was only exceeded by the racism and hatred directed at African-Americans.
In fact, in the 1960s, many of the anti racist laws enacted during the Civil Rights era focused on protecting African-Americans, which created a protected class, and since the Chinese—due to cultural differences often did not complain—they were left behind.
In many respects, this racism toward the Chinese still exists in the US today and manifests itself through the media as China bashing, which supports the old stereotype.
When Anna May Wong visited China in 1936, she had to abandon the trip to her parent’s ancestral village when a mob accused her of disgracing China.
After her return to Hollywood, she was determined to play Chinese characters that were not stereotypes, but it was a losing battle. To escape the hateful racism, she lived in Europe for a few years.
Since U.S. law did not allow her to marry the Caucasian man she loved, and she was afraid that if she married a Chinese man he would force her to give up acting since Chinese culture judged actresses to be the same as prostitutes, she never married.
Anna May Wong smoked and drank too much. She died of a heart attack in Santa Monica, California at age 56.
Starting with the I Ching, The Book of Changes, almost five thousand years ago, the central focus of Chinese philosophy was how to live an ideal life and how best to organize society.
When the Chinese Communist Party gained power in 1949, previous schools of Chinese philosophy, except Legalism, were denounced as backward and purged during the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution.
However, the influence of China’s five-thousand year old culture did not vanish as China’s Central Committee continues to plan and modernize while leading China into the future.
Most Chinese believe that true advancement and growth should only happen slowly, at a steady, measured pace, which means to grow but grow slow like a tree while following a well thought out plan to bring about changes.
Even the United States doesn’t change quickly.
In fact, it took almost ninety years to free the slaves, and women first sought the right to vote in 1848 at the Seneca Falls Woman’s Rights Convention.
Then seventy-two years later in 1920, American women finally earned the right to vote when the Nineteenth Amendment was adopted by Congress and was ratified by the states becoming a national law.
The last time women had relative freedom in China was in the seventh century during the Tang Dynasty when Emperor Wu Zetian, a woman, ruled the country.
Since 1982, when China ratified its Constitution, women in China have gained more freedom, power and rights than at any time in China’s history including the Tang Dynasty.
Critics in the West might point out that under the Communists, no woman has ruled China, but we could say the same of the United States and many other countries.
Today, Liu Yandong, a senior Party official, serves on China’s Politburo [a group of 24 people that oversees the CCP]. She is from Nantong in Jiangsu Province and graduated from Tsinghua University in 1970 with a degree in chemistry.
In fact, Chinese women today account for 40% of government officials. At least 21.3% of National People’s Congress delegates in 2008 were women (about 636 — the latest available data, according to the All China Women’s Federation).
Another example is Li Bin, acting governor of Anhui Province. In addition, 87.1% of China’s provincial regions have female vice governors. Women are also represented in the leadership of 89.4% of the country’s municipal governments. Source: Global Times
For comparison, in the United States, 79 women (of 435 representatives or 18%) serve in the House and 17 [of 100 or 17%] in the Senate. In addition, six women serve as governors [that's 12% of the total].
Then, ipu.org’s “Women in national parliaments” ranks China 52 [tied with Italy] of 188 countries. The United States is ranked 71, Thailand 75, South Korea 81, Japan 96 and India 99.
“Chinese women leaders have much in common. They generally all have a good education background, being mainly science majors, and solid experience in government. They are of a caliber equal to that of their male counterparts,” an All-China Women’s Federation expert said.
Why do so many of China’s critics expect China to change faster than the US did?
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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
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Dramatic changes in women’s rights have been achieved in a culture where for millennia women were stereotyped as inferior to men, had no rights and served as slaves, concubines and prostitutes. Marriages were arranged—sometimes at infancy.
In 1949, foot binding was abolished; the All-China Women’s Federation (ACWF) was formed and supported by China’s Communist Party (CCP). Change in China, as in the United States, has been a painful evolutionary process. However, the struggle for women to gain equality appears to have moved faster in China since the CCP came to power.
After the CCP was established in 1949, it took less than a year to liberate women and pass laws to speed this process along.
For a comparison, after the United States was established in 1776, it took one hundred and forty-four years until August 26, 1920 when the Congress voted in the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution giving women the right to vote.
At the 10th National Women’s Congress in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, in 2008, Deputy-Chairwoman HuangQingyi said, “Sex discrimination in employment should be eradicated and the income gap between men and women should be further narrowed.”
It was also been reported that domestic violence is a severe threat to women. Chinese authorities reported 50,000 complaints annually, according to figures released by the ACWF. The domestic violence fact sheet shows this is also a problem in the United States.
Role of Women in China Then and Now
Sexual discrimination was supposed to have been abolished in China back in 1949, when Chairman Mao Zedong famously announced, “women hold up half the sky”, but it wasn’t. It has only been a few years since China outlawed sexual harassment. Laws may be written to bring about change but change comes slowly.
Today, statistics show China has about 27,000 women and children’s rights protection agencies. However, China’s critics and enemies will only point out what they believe is wrong without giving credit to what has changed for the good of women in China.
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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
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According to historical accounts, foot binding appeared in China during the Sung Dynasty (960-1276 AD).
The process of foot binding usually started between the ages of four and seven. Feet were soaked in a blood and herb mixture. Toes were broken. Then the arch was broken. There was extreme pain since no pain relief was used. It is estimated that in a thousand years about two billion women went through the process.
What would you do for beauty?
The Manchu leaders of the Qing Dynasty (1644 to 1911) tried with little success to stop foot binding, and Manchu women did not bind their feet. Mostly Han (the majority in China) women continued the practice.
In 1928, the Nationalist government announced plans to do away with foot binding. This attempt to end foot binding met with mixed success. In rural areas, large feet were still considered unattractive and unacceptable and the practice continued.
While working in China for National Geographic on a three part Marco Polo series, Michael Yamashita, a veteran photographer, went in search of women who had bound feet. He found them living in remote urban villages.
In most of China, social and sexual customs resist rapid change. For millions of women, the practice would continue until 1949 when the Communists came into power.
Then the popularity of foot binding to enhance a woman’s beauty ended.
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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
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The dates the Britannica throws out are the Enlightenment, a European intellectual movement of the 17th and 18th centuries and the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, which called for full legal equality with men.
Merriam-Webster’s definition is “the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes” and “organized activity on behalf of women’s rights and interests.”
In fact, for centuries, Western women had been treated as chattel—the property of men.
After watching the video and reading the entry in Britannica and the definition in Merriam-Webster, it’s obvious that feminism was alive and well in China more than a thousand years ago during the Tang Dynasty.
In fact, Emperor Wu Zetian (625 to 705 AD) was a very early feminist that ruled the Tang Dynasty as an emperor and was China’s only woman emperor.
The Tang Dynasty was a time of relative freedom for women. Women did not bind their feet (for a few more centuries) or lead submissive lives. It was a time in which a number of exceptional women contributed in the areas of culture and politics. Source: Women in World History
Wu Zetian demanded the right of an emperor and kept male concubines. She also challenged Confucian beliefs against rule by women and started a campaign to elevate the position of women.
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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
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Now that we know more about the United States and Hawaii, where Sun Yat-sen lived as a teenager, his concept of a republic would have been very different from what the American democracy looks like today.
In addition, members of the U.S. Senate were not elected to office by the popular vote until 1913 when the 17th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was amended to provide for direct popular election of senators, ending the system of election by individual state legislatures.
If Sun Yat-sen were aware of the details of America’s political history and its limitation by the time he left Hawaii at the age of 17 in 1883, the republic and/or democracy he envisioned for China probably would have excluded many from voting—including all women.
In addition, by 1903, when Sun Yat-sen returned to Hawaii looking for support for his dream of a future republic and/or democracy in China, Hawaii was no longer a republic but was a territory of the United States—not a state—and its people were not considered American citizens.
The republic and/or democracy Sun Yat-sen might have imagined for China may possibly have included at last one House as a National Congress with its members appointed by the elected legislatures of each province, and women would have been excluded from voting and possibly considered the property of men as women were in the United States at that time.
In fact, it is possible that Sun Yat-sen would not have considered organizing a republic and/or democracy where the citizens elected China’s leader with a popular vote of the people since Hawaii’s Constitution of 1864 charged the legislature, not the people, with the task of electing the next king, who was King Kalākaua—the one forced to sign the 1887 Constitution four years after the young Sun Yat-sen returned to China.
Now that we know the differences between then and now, it is easier to accept that the Chinese Communist Party’s 1982 Constitution created a government in China closer—and maybe even better—than what Sun Yat-sen might have imagined for China.
How could Sun Yat-sen have envisioned a republic and/or democracy similar to what the United States has today in the 21st century?
In fact, under a Sun Yat-sen republic, children in China might still be considered the property of parents as they were in the United States until the 1938 Federal regulation of child labor in the Fair Labor Standards Act.
Before 1938, parents in the US had the right to sell their children into servitude and/or slavery depending on which state one lived in.
In addition, writing of the merits of a republican or representative form of government, James Madison observed that one of the most important differences between a democracy and a republic is “the delegation of the government [in a republic] to a small number of citizens elected by the rest.
When James Madison wrote this, the number of US citizens allowed to vote in federal elections was limited to white property owners (excluding Jews), which represented about 10% of the population of the US in 1776, which was similar to the voting rights in Hawaii during most of Sun Yat-sen’s life.
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
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If you recall from Part 1, Hawaii was not a democracy modeled after today’s United States when Sun Yat-sen lived there from the ages of 13 to 17 [1879 - 1883].
In fact, when Sun Yat-sen lived in Hawaii, it was a kingdom ruled by a king and was a Constitutional Monarchy similar to but not the same as Great Britain at the same time.
It wouldn’t be until 1887, that the Hawaiian King Kalākaua was forced to sign the 1887 Constitution [after Sun Yat-senhad returned to China] of the Kingdom of Hawaii, which stripped him of any authority he had making him into a figurehead.
In addition, there was a property qualification in 1887′s Hawaiian Constitution for voting rights similar to what the Founding Fathers wrote into the US Constitution in 1776, and resident whites, who owned the property since Asians were not allowed to own property or could not afford to buy it, were the only ones allowed to vote.
Meanwhile, the American Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 excluded skilled and unskilled Chinese from entering the United States for ten years under penalty of imprisonment and deportation. In the US at this time, many Chinese were relentlessly beaten just because of their race.
Therefore, when Sun Yat-sen lived in Hawaii as a Chinese teenager, it was not a republic or a democracy and he was a second-class person barred from entering the United States.
The structure of the political system in the United States was also dramatically different from the one America has today.
In 1790, the Constitution explicitly says that only “free white” immigrants could become naturalized citizens.
In 1848, Mexican-Americans were granted U.S. Citizenship but not voting rights.
In 1856, voting rights were expanded to all white men and not just property owners.
In 1868, four years after the end of the American Civil War, former slaves were granted citizenship, however only African-American men were allowed to be citizens and the right to vote was left up to each state.
In 1870, the 15th Amendment was passed saying the right to vote could not be denied by the federal or state governments based on race [this still did not include women], but some states restricted the right to vote based on voting taxes and literacy tests.
In 1876, the US Supreme Court ruled that Native Americans were not citizens and could not vote.
In 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act barred people of Chinese ancestry from naturalizing to become U.S. citizens.
In 1920, the right to vote was extended to women when the 19th Amendment passed. Source: U.S. Voting Rights Timeline
What do you think Sun Yat-sen learned from these facts about a democracy?
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
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My wife and daughter returned from China last summer with a crate of Chinese movies on DVDs—there wasn’t one American movie in the mix and many do not have English subtitles.
Therefore, it is strange that the one Chinese film that impressed me the most (so far) was one I discovered at a local Half Priced Books. The movie was Life Show (2002) adapted from a book by Chinese author Chi Li.
Since the late 1980s, Chi Li has been considered a pioneer of “new realism” and her work depicts ordinary life in China so critics have identified her work with the Western school of “existentialism”.
In fact, it was the “ordinary element” of her work that I saw in the film which captured my curiosity to learn more. Since I’ve traveled to China several times since 1999 and not with tour groups, I’ve visited streets similar to the ones that appear in the film. I’m sure most foreign visitors to China that visit on packaged tours do not see the ordinary side of China as I have.
My wife says Chi Li is one of her favorite Chinese authors. The first time I was introduced to Chi Li’s work was through Life Show, which tells the story of Lai Shuangyang, a restaurant owner played by Tao Hong. Shuangyang’s life is busy dealing with family and business but she is lonely until one of her long-time customers, played by Tao Zeru, shows a romantic interest in her.
Zeru plays a middle-aged businessman, and Shuangyang takes a risk and the two strike up a romance that ends when she discovers he is the developer behind the modernization of the area where she has her restaurant. He offers to take care of her but it is obvious that Shuangyang values her personal freedom and independence and in a fiery scene, she breaks up with him.
Lai Shuangyang’s life is filled with complications. Her younger brother Jiuju is a drug addict in jail/rehab. The woman that loves Jiuju is Mei, who works for Shuangyang in her restaurant. Mei attempts suicide because Jiuju is not interested in her, and then Shuangyang arranged a marriage for Mei to another man, who is mentally ill.
Her sister in law, Xiaojin, is trying to regain the Lai family’s home, which was given to a neighbor during the Cultural Revolution. In addition, Shuangyang is at risk of losing her restaurant due to a redevelopment project in Wuhan.
Chi Li, the author of Life Show, is one of China’s best-known writers and several of her novels have been translated into French by publisher Actes Sud.
Chi Li was born 1957 in Wuhan, Hubei province, graduated from the Chinese Language Department of Wuhan University and then worked as an editor of a literary magazine called Fang Cao (Fragrant Grass).
Chi Li rarely travels and avoids “literary circles”. “If my unsociability is thought to be a flaw, I admit I’m a person with a flaw,” Chi has said.
Chi Li, Chinese author of "Life Show"
During the Cultural Revolution, like millions of other young Chinese, she was sent to the countryside to become an “educated youth”. Later she studied medicine and practiced for five years before becoming a teacher.
Today, she is a member of the National People’s Congress (NPC), which provides an opportunity to discuss politics with other representative of the NPC providing an understanding/education of China’s policies and political atmosphere.
Chi Li’s work relates to love, marriage, divorce and extramarital affairs of contemporary Chinese life, while her characters are imbued with common human traits such as ambition, deceit, jealousy, and sexual desire. Her work, Comes and Goes, was a story of extramarital affairs occurring in Wuhan and became a TV series of same name.
The city of Wuhan comes alive in her work—enough to be considered a character. Although many of her novels have been translated into French, there are no English translations yet, which is a shame.
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
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Having spent over four straight years in the Chinese Mainland without leave, it was with both anticipation and apprehension when I finally crossed the southern border into Asia’s wealthiest city – Hong Kong.
Who wants to fly into Hong Kong?
Despite its one-stop-shopping popularity with Mainland expats needing new clothes and a new visa, I truly had no idea what to expect in the former crown colony that supposedly makes even rich men feel poor.
Rather terrified of exacting reverse culture shock, I hence saved English-speaking Hong Kong and its “One Country, Two Systems” self for the tail end of my journey across the 33 Chinese provinces.
And it is from there I report that all my preconceptions and fears about Hong Kong were—true.
To quote the under-appreciated American author Thomas A. Carter (me!) upon his brief sojourn in the legendary Chinese city, “I’ve never felt more poor than when I was in Hong Kong—I’ve never felt more ugly than when I was in Hong Kong.”
DAY 1: Cross the Shenzhen-Hong Kong border at Louhu and catch the immaculate KCR railway, immediately impressed that nobody is staring, shoving or spitting.
Arrive in Kowloon’s southern peninsula and emerge from the underground into the land of lights – Tsim Sha Tsui.
Blinded with excitement, I have to ask a resplendent group of Indian women draped in saris where the Mirador Mansion is.
They point their gold-ringed fingers straight up. A towering, rust-stained concrete block, one of Hong Kong’s only affordable accommodations.
I check in to a claustrophobic dorm room (three times the price of a Mainland dorm and three times as small), then hit Nathan Road.
Peering up into the neon lights, tripping in the crush of the crowds, I feel just like a migrant worker back in Beijing.
DAY 2: Awoken at 6am by one of my bunkmates stumbling in after a long night.
His name is Pat, a young American backpacker with long red hair whose introduction is immediately followed by a long-winded narrative about his two-week romp in Hong Kong, including scoring with the mythical “Asian girls who LOOOVE foreign guys.”
When I counter that I never had any such luck, the fast-talking but likeable Pat proffers some off-the-cuff advise (“Dude, lose the beard”) before launching into more useful information.
“It’s Sunday, okay, and there’s gonna be, like, 120,000 Filipino nannies and maids on their only day off – and looking for boyfriends!”
I’m a little dubious of Pat’s generalizations, but sure enough his mobile rings continuously with calls from adoring cleaning ladies he met the Sunday before.
An afternoon stroll around Statue Square indeed reveals a literal blanket of thousands of picnicking South Asian women (Hong Kong’s largest migrant communities) whose collective chatter sounds just like a large flock of seagulls.
When I attempt to candidly photograph one attractive young Filipino, she shouts “Hey! I klick jor ass!”
So much for getting a date.
DAY 3: Fieldtrip to Shek O beach on Hong Kong Island’s south side, savoring the soft sand and splashing in the subtropical South China Sea.
Supposedly this place is packed out on the weekend, but that’s what weekdays are for, no?
It’s one of those moments when I enjoy being unemployed and chase my fun in the sun with a tram ride up Victoria Peak for a breathtaking evening vista of skyscrapers, which appear to be constructed entirely out of lights.
Photo by Tom Carter
Dafnit, an Israeli girl clearly in awe of the Hong Kong skyline, remarks, “We have no tall buildings in Israel. Oh wait—we have one!”
DAY 4: Spend the day traversing Kowloon, the fashion billboards of TST segueing into seedy massage parlor billboards as I descend northwest down the Nathan Road side-streets, the sun lost behind precipices of neon signs stretching horizontally over the sidewalk.
The markets of Mong Kok are mobbed with uniformed students on lunch break: long-haired boys with untucked white shirts and loosened ties, and made-up girls in little outfits out of a Japanese kogal/hentai fantasy: knee-high black stockings, short skirts and a Louis Vuitton bag to carry their pencils and books.
They have tattoos, tongue piercings and smoke cigarettes.
After commenting that they are the hippest students in China I’ve seen, one 15-year-old boy replies in perfect English, “Yes, so cool, but so young.”
Photo by Tom Carter
DAY 5: I want to see how the other half lives and spend the day in Central, Hong Kong Island’s microcosm of capitalism. Cross Victoria Harbor by the centuries-old Star Ferry through a morning miasma of pollution and follow white-collared crowds of businessmen contending with cell phones, briefcases and lattés into their respective skyscrapers.
Later observe as many women shopping in designer department stores – these must be the wives. I notice that they all clutch their purses as I walk by, then realize why as I catch a glimpse of myself in the reflective facade of the Bank of China tower.
My head cast down in self-consciousness, I almost get rolled over by a Rolls (driving on the wrong side of the road, damn Brits!), then almost again by a double-decker cable car.
Everyone in Central must be against me.
My insecurities are firmed up that evening in Lan Kwai Fong, a gentrified neighborhood of upscale restaurants and bars on the Island’s northern escarpment.
Photo by Tom Carter
The steep streets are congested with young, well-to-do westpats toasting yet another successful day of money-making. I can’t believe there are so many white people in China who aren’t English teachers!
They are all smartly dressed and have well-groomed hair; I am wearing cutoff army pants, low-top fake Converse, an eight year-old t-shirt that I bought used, nor have I shaved or cut my locks in the 2 years I’ve been on the China road.
I want to belong, but I don’t. It’s one of those moments when I regret being unemployed.
DAY 6: I give the Island another chance and take the night ferry across the harbor to the north end’s older and seedier nightspot, the infamous Wan Chai.
Recall it is where Richard Mason penned his 1950’s tale of forbidden love, “The World of Suzie Wong,” though a lot has changed since he wrote “take a minute’s stroll from the center and you won’t see a European.”
The pick-up bars still line the road, yum-yum girls luring passersby into their neon-lit dens, but these are the illegitimate daughters of Suzie Wong, not of Chinese but Thai dissent, wearing not elegant silk cheongsams but cheap miniskirts raised to immodest heights.
And unlike the kindly ladies of the Nam Kok Hotel, these modern-day working girls are vicious, mercenary, cold.
When a group of obviously disappointed white boys emerge from one venue exclaiming, “In Thailand they take off ALL their clothes,” the brown-skinned door girl in plastic go-go boots is quick to shout back, “Then go to Thailand!”
Further down Lockhart, I follow a couple of older Europeans primed with drink and flirting heavily with a lovely bouquet of girls looking for generous company.
After making their arrangements, one of the men leans on me and confides, “Wy mife, I mean my wife, thinks I’m *HICCUP* at a conference.” The remaining girls give this poor writer a cursory glance then quickly cross the street away from
me.
DAY 7: I wake up feeling dejected and classless; the expatriates of Central don’t want me, nor do the waterfront girls of Wan Chai.
I take a stroll around TST, passing by friendly knots of third-world hustlers hanging out in front of the Chungking Mansions, the immigrant ghetto of Kowloon that serves as temporary living quarters for Hong Kong’s financially insolvent émigrés.
Photo by Tom Carter
A street corner tout from Kashmir says to me “The Mansions is where anyone not wearing pastel shorts or a suit stay.”
I realize this mad cauldron of multiculturalism is the only place I truly feel at home in Hong Kong.
The Africans on the never-quiet front steps always high-five me, the Pakistanis all think I’m a Muslim (must be the beard), and the Indians bat their eyelashes at me.
The Chungking Mansions are the international haunt for anyone who is no one, and I am one of them. It is a peasant’s epiphany – in Hong Kong, I am the ‘nongmin.’
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse 
