 It’s been just under three weeks since I left Hong Kong, and I’m still in withdrawal. So this week I read Robert Wang’s rags to riches memoir, Walking the Tycoons’ Rope: How Ambition Drove a Poor Boy From Ningbo to Compete with the Richest Men of Hong Kong and Singapore (Blacksmith Books, 2012).
Wang’s book isn’t just the story of how he left China for Hong Kong at a young age and rose out of poverty to become the most successful attorney in Hong Kong. It’s also a history of modern Hong Kong.
Like most Chinese families from that era (circa WWII), Wang, his mother, and sister barely made it out of China to the British colony of Hong Kong. His father had already moved to Hong Kong before he sent for his family. But once the family was reunited, they never had enough to eat and had to share a cramped apartment with other families (one was the brother of the Young Marshal, Zhang Xueliang, which I thought was super cool).
In school, young Robert met Bruce Lee on their boxing team. According to Wang, Bruce was moody and a loner, and couldn’t keep up with the rigorous expectations of their school, so switched to another. But Bruce was always kind to Wang. After Bruce Lee rose to international stardom, Wang ran into him near the Star Ferry in the early 70s. It was a bittersweet reunion, what with Lee’s impending death.
As most of his classmates prepared to leave Hong Kong to study abroad, Wang applied to study in London. His living conditions didn’t improve in London and sometimes he couldn’t afford to eat a cooked meal for two weeks in a row. But once his luck changed, he found better living conditions and no longer went hungry. He also started dating a French woman who came from a family that didn’t approve of inter-cultural dating.
Back in Hong Kong, alone and with a law degree, Wang met Elaine Kwan, who became his devoted wife. He then embarked on a legal career so prosperous it would have been unfathomable to young Wang back in the 1950s. As Wang’s career took off so did Hong Kong. Gone were the days of the turbulent Cultural Revolution (which seeped into Hong Kong in the late 60s) and in came the steadfast years of Hong Kong’s manufacturing heyday.
Wang found himself rubbing shoulders with Hong Kong’s heaviest hitters, like Li Ka-shing and Sir Run Run Shaw. In the 1990s, he traveled to Singapore and single-handedly secured permanent residency for Hong Kong’s tycoons, just in case things turned sour after the 1997 handover.
As history would show, the only instability that hit Hong Kong at the handover was the Asian financial crisis. Wang fell on hard times, both at his law firm and in his relationships with the Hong Kong and Singapore tycoons. But like a phoenix rising from the flames, he bounced back once again and found joy in his family and philanthropies.
Walking the Tychoons’ Rope is a quick read at 379 pages. There’s never a lull in the story because Wang’s story is so fascinating. It’s also a testament to the amazing people of Hong Kong who have reinvented themselves over the decades to adjust to the changing times.
Besides a long list of gifts to buy for my kids, I also went to Hong Kong with a mission for myself: to buy a casual cheongsam or two. I’ve posted before about my search for the perfect qipao (the Mandarin word for cheongsam), but I guess cheongsams are for me what tattoos are for some folks. The more I buy, the more I want.
So on my first day in Hong Kong, while Tom ducked into the hotel for a late-afternoon snooze, I made a pilgrimage to G.O.D., or Goods of Desire, in Tsim Sha Tsui. As luck would have it, G.O.D. was at the end of a huge sale. Clothing items were 50% off!
First I found this colorful linen cheongsam. (My kids had just come off a marathon tantrum before this photo was taken. Can you tell?)
And this cheongsam top, which I’ve worn quite a few times since I’ve been back to Chicago.
I also found this casual cheongsam, which is like a shift dress with Chinese accents up top.
And this one.
I couldn’t decide which color I liked best, so I bought them both!
The problem with buying clothes on sale was that I wasn’t allowed to try them on. The shift cheongsams are on the big side–even after I put them through a couple of hot water wash cycles–but not too big that I won’t wear them.
Do you have a favorite cheongsam that you own or have seen in a film? Or do you have a place where you like to buy cheongsams. I’m always on the lookout!
Today is Mother’s Day in the US and I’ve been making the rounds with my kids while poor Tom has to make his own rounds at work. I never pass up an opportunity to reflect on the past, so I took this time to think about my recent trip to Hong Kong and all I’ve experienced over the last 20+ years.
In other words, what’s changed four cities, two marriages, and three children later?
This photo was taken in the summer of 1991, as I completed my first year in Hong Kong.
And this a few weeks ago.
Again, 1991.
 In front of dorm at Chinese University of Hong Kong And two weeks ago.
I can’t complain about any of it.
Happy Mother’s Day, whether you’re remembering or honoring your mother.
Well before Tom and I left for Hong Kong, I’d played up our trip to our kids by promising something all kids love to hear: presents! Since I’ve been reading my kids books about Hong Kong since just after their birth, they were well-versed in the types of gifts found in the Fragrant Harbor.
I do love shopping, so it was a pleasure to run around Hong Kong trying to find the various items on my list. Tom was a great sport, as were the friends we met there.
First off, Martin wanted an abacus. I know Hollywood Road is touristy, but with only four days in Hong Kong, we just didn’t have time to comparison shop. So when we found this handsome case, I was already game.
And when we peeked in, it looked perfect.
Next on his list was a Hong Kong bus. Again, we ended up on the Peak, probably the ultimate in tourist trap kitsch. If I’ve learned one thing from traveling, it’s to always buy what you want or else run the risk of never finding those items again. So here’s the new and improved China Motor Bus we bought him. (The real thing was not this modern back when I lived in Hong Kong. Just saying.)
When I was Martin’s age, my grandparents bought me some fancy dragon slippers. I remembered seeing them in Stanley and even in a tourist store next to Chungking Mansions when I lived in Hong Kong. Stanley has changed and that tourist store is no longer next to the Mansions. In fact, no one I met in Hong Kong knew where to find these slippers (if you’re in the know, please leave a comment or send an e-mail). So my friend Rita bought the kids the next best thing–toy dragons.
The kids wanted these little dragons to be photographed with their larger Cathay dragon (received as part of our special Year of the Dragon Cathay airfare).
I bought myself a bunch of cheongsams and a Chinese top (if I muster up enough courage, I might blog about those, too), but was also on a mission to buy Rachel a new Chinese dress. When I found a stall in an alley off Queen’s Road, I impressed Tom with my bargaining skills and bought the kids these Shanghai Tang knock-offs. (Boy did it feel good to be back in Hong Kong!) Martin’s red shirt has an embroidered dragon and Rachel’s pink dress falls just above her knees. They love their new clothes!
For Rachel, I was commissioned by my grandmother to buy a jewelry box like the rectangular one my grandma had bought for me 30 years ago. Again, with a time constraint, I didn’t have the luxury to traipse around Hong Kong in search of an identical jewelry box. So when I found this one at the same antique shop where I bought Martin’s abacus, I bargained for both items.
It’s fashioned after a traditional Chinese pillow and has an inside similar to that of Martin’s abacus case. Incidentally, when I asked the shop owner how old these pieces were, guess what he said?
“New.”
I love his honesty.
To balance Martin’s four gifts, I needed one more for Rachel. She’s into the Chinese zodiac animals, thanks to a book I read to her about this subject, so I found this colorful string of the 12 embroidered zodiac animals. It’s hanging with a scroll Jake’s grandfather in Hubei province painted last year.
It’s usually most difficult to shop for a 13 year old boy, but not in Hong Kong! Besides the requisite t-shirt (from my alma mater, The Chinese University of Hong Kong), I also bought Jake a Chinese name stamp. It’s not a traditional stone one, but a rubber one that is used all over Hong Kong these days. I also picked up a stack of 50 lucky red envelopes with his Chinese last name on it. My friend Erica gave me a Jewish mezuzah in the form of Hong Kong’s Ohel Leah synagogue. I’ll hang it next to Jake and Rachel’s bedroom door so they can enjoy it.
I also bought gifts for family and friends who helped with the kids while we were gone. Those have mostly been distributed, but I must say that tea, fans, Chinese silk jewelry cases, retro hotel drink coasters, and silk wallets have gone over quite well.
Since we’ve been back, the kids have asked me to return to Hong Kong to buy them more things. Ahh…
When I was in Hong Kong a couple weeks ago, my husband tripped on some stairs as we walked down a subway to ‘cross the street’. I screamed but couldn’t get to him as quickly as a young couple walking up the stairs. They stopped, helped pull him up, and asked if he was okay. He was, and we both thanked them profusely.
I was relieved for a couple of reasons. Number one, Tom was all right. But it was also reassuring to see this kindness in people we didn’t know. On our first day in Hong Kong, it would have been a bummer if no one had stopped to at least ask if Tom was okay.
In the US, I’ve seen similar mishaps and people are usually good about helping someone in need. But I’ve also seen many people just walk past someone who has fallen. Guest blogger Stuart Beaton shares his experience about this subject after he witnessed an accident over the weekend. Stuart lives in Tianjin, China and has a fabulous podcast site at http://rastous.podomatic.com/. Here’s Stu:
I learned today that here in China, helping someone is almost unknown. Especially if helping that person won’t result in any direct benefit to you.
This evening, Ellen and I were casually strolling in towards Iestan Department Store, which forms one corner of the busy “Walk Street” shopping area, when I heard a fairly loud thud from across the road. A man on an electric bike had mounted the curb, and slammed into a tree. His bike lay in the gutter, the wheels still spinning, and he was face down in a crumpled heap on the pavement.
And no one even broke stride to turn and look at him.
Well, I stopped, which forced Ellen to stop, and I went to cross the road.
“Don’t”, said Ellen, “don’t help him.”
Given that he could have been seriously injured, I wasn’t going to stand around and let him die from neglect.
I dragged Ellen protesting across the road, and made sure that he was still breathing, and not unconscious. Then I quickly picked up his bike from where it’d fallen, turned it off, and took the keys out of the ignition, and placed them in his top pocket. By now he’d managed to prop himself against the trunk of the tree, and there were no obvious signs of fractures or gashes – I got Ellen to ask him if he’d lost consciousness, but he hadn’t. Eventually he got back on his bike, and rode off.
But during the whole time I was helping him, not a single person at any stage even slowed down to offer assistance.
After he’d gone, Ellen berated me for helping him, saying that “He could have said you’d knocked him off his bike and hurt him, or that you caused the accident. You did the wrong thing, it’s bad to help people in China.”
“What if it’d been you?”, I replied, stung. “If you’d come off your bike, and might have hurt yourself, wouldn’t you want someone to help you?”
In the past, I’ve raised the idea of rendering assistance at accidents with the medical students I teach, and every time I’ve gotten the same impression – none of them would lift a finger to help someone outside of a hospital, when they were going to get some sort of paid reward for it. The whole idea is totally anathema to me, and it disgusts me that a society so large will do so little to help the members within it.
However, it’s not just the locals who won’t help people, the expats won’t lend a hand either.
I’ve lost track of the number of times the same group of individuals have said to me that they “want to help Ellen to find a better job” – but they never do. Empty platitudes mouthed to assuage their guilt, after Ellen has helped them with fixing the little problems in their lives.
Of course, there’s also the people who swore blind they were going to refer me to their friend at another Tianjin Uni, “tomorrow, I’ll come see you, give you his name, it’ll all be sorted”… . Strangely enough, I’ve not seen them in weeks, either.
Altruism is dead in China.
Guan Xi (“connections”) is dragging the corpse away, to melt down the gold fillings in its teeth.
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It’s been just under three weeks since I left Hong Kong, and I’m still in withdrawal. So this week I read Robert Wang’s rags to riches memoir, Walking the Tycoons’ Rope: How Ambition Drove a Poor Boy From Ningbo to Compete with the Richest Men of Hong Kong and Singapore (Blacksmith Books, 2012).
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