21.11.13 - Ho Ho Hong Kong

About a year ago, on our ‘orientation trip’, I was sitting in a café checking my emails accompanied by Kenneth, our friendly estate agent. We were waiting for Claire to come back from some errand. Indefatiguable, polite to a fault and unflappable, Kenneth had been amazingly patient and helpful, all day. But now, he seemed agitated and fidgety. He kept pushing his glasses up his nose and craning over his shoulder. Eventually he plucked up the courage and said to me, voice trembling a little with excitement.

“Er, excuse me sir? May I go see?”, pointing behind him, face aglow.

I peered past him. How it had escaped me I don’t know. There, in the middle of the atrium of the very average shopping centre we were perched in, was a winter scene straight out of a cartoon. A tree stretching several stories high, festooned with oversized baubles. Robotic elves and Santa figures, robotic, waving in unison. A grotto that people were milling in and out of. And huge, shiny presents, snugly buried, invitingly, in the very convincing fake snow.

Baffled both by this overbearing tableau; Kenneth's odd deference in feeling he needed my permission to do anything; and his childlike glee, I faintly nodded.

And off he went, mouth open and eyebrows raised, a picture of ecstatic joy (like the yet-to-be-conceived John Lewis bear, as he comes over that hill near the end of the advert. You know the bit I mean? Yeah, that bit). The phone emerged and he snapped away, a selfie here, a close up of a reindeer there, like everyone else in the crowd.

Welcome to Hong Kong any time from about mid-November on! It’s like Christmas in the bigger UK department stores or Oxford Street! But earlier in the year! In every shopping centre of any size! On crack!

And so begin 2 big themes of the run up to Yule. First, the ubiquity of not just these scenes, but of watching every person who passes snapping themselves, their friends, their colleagues, their dogs, their children next to, in and on these scenes. Hong Kongers go mad for these displays – as Kenneth showed me. Secondly, what I can only describe as a World War One style arms race between the shopping centres…but instead of bigger and better naval battle ships, it’s who can pull off the most ridiculous or outlandish displays.

So you’ve got an actual live band playing Christmas songs in the grotto at lunchtime? Well, I’ve got singing, waving penguins doing my music, like, all day.

Oh yeah? Well, check this – I’ve got a moving talking polar bear, and some singing penguins, and a tree whose lights flash in time whatever song is playing!

Hah, I’ve got animatronic reindeer, as well as a flashing tree!

So what, my tree has animatronic reindeer emerging from the top of the tree where the fairy should be and they’re singing!

I exaggerate. But honestly, not that much.

And here’s the thing, though. Yes, it’s kitschy. Yes, it’s garish. Yes, I do find it odd that it holds such a fascination in one of the top three most atheistic and not-particularly Christian places on earth. But. It is, somehow, really charming; and some of the engineering and design that has gone into these displays is bafflingly complex. It also fits very neatly at the very apex of Hong Kong’s hyper consumer culture, and the love of all things cutesy – so it works.

And hey, the whole blog is based on me taking a sodding picture of one of the scenes. And it won’t be the last I take, either I’m sure. Who knows, in the next one, I may even have to get a selfie, head-tilted, peace sign, next to a waving puppet Santa inexplicably singing “White Christmas”…

10.11 - Remembrance Sunday in HK - at once completely familiar, and totally alien

The Cenotaph. Marching bands. Military parades. The Last Post. Wreath laying. Religious readings. They do not grow old, as we that are left grow old…Rousing music and the national anthem.

All the standard ingredients for the Remembrance Day that we are all so familiar with from the TV broadcast of Remembrance Day in Whitehall. All present too in Hong Kong – right down to the fact that the Cenotaph is an exact replica to the one outside the Foreign Office.

But look even a little bit closer, and you’ll find a ceremony that is completely different here. Utterly unique to its post-colonial time and place. And entirely appropriate – odd to freshly minted expats like me perhaps, but a poignant and well-thought out occasion, that felt every bit as sombre as any gathering back in the UK is likely to be today.

The Cenotaph itself is flanked not by Government buildings, but the Hong Kong Club, HSBC and the Mandarin Oriental. And fluttering on it are the Hong Kong, HK Veterans’ Association and Chinese flags, rather than those of the wings of the UK military and Union Jack.

The marching bands, complete with bagpipers – looking immaculate in brilliant white with blue braid and shining black shoes – are not from some Scottish guards’ regiment or other, but the Hong Kong police marching band.

The military parading was performed not by veterans – though the ever diminishing and frail-looking  veterans of the fighting in Hong Kong in WWII were present – but by cadets of various types. Alarmingly, these included boys and girls who looked as young as 14, all of whom were armed with modern assault rifles, which in some cases were almost as tall as their bearer. The honour guards were older members of these groups, who all marched, much foot stamping and arm waving, to the corners of the Cenotaph plinth and then stood heads down and rifles pointed to the floor, stock still, for 45 minutes.

The Last post was played not from a balcony of a Whitehall department, but from the balcony of the Hong Kong Club.

The wreath laying was a complex affair, and included a much more diverse range of groups than you would expect at home. For starters, wreaths were laid from all 4 sides of the Cenotaph, with the groups broadly divided into – commercial/pillars of HK life (Jardines led that group); Government and overseas representatives; veterans’ associations; voluntary/community groups. And the layers were led not by Royalty, but a representative of the HK Government.

And whilst the religious readings were led and concluded by the CofE bishop of St.Paul’s, complete with billowing robes and stereotypically sonorous voice, he was joined in prayer by a Catholic bishop, a Muslim cleric, a Rabbi, a Hindu priest, a Taoist monk, a Buddhist monk and a Confucian priest.

The reading proclaiming that at the going down of the sun, and in the morning, We will remember them was read solemnly by a retired brigadier of a UK tank regiment; and a good portion of the crowd murmured the last line in response. So far, so normal. But I have never heard it said in Chinese before, nor heard the final line also repeated by the Cantonese section of the crowd.

Rousing music yes, but none of what you’d expect. Religious songs avoided, no marching songs that are linked to the British Army. But that did mean some other unexpected tear jerkers came out instead – Nimrod (which for me now, after the Opening Ceremony, will always equate with the Olympics) provided a particularly unexpected emotional journey.

And most notably, the sensitivities that make this ceremony such an intricate balancing act were clearest in who was not there. UK and foreign military personnel did lay wreaths, but either for veterans’ societies or in a diplomatic or even private capacity – no-one directly on behalf of any armed forces. Equally, not one person there was a direct representative of the Chinese Mainland government, nor from the People’s Liberation Army.

And so, as a result of these deliberate omissions, the bizarre denouement of what is usually a quintessentially British event was a rendition of the national anthem. The Chinese national anthem. Which was saluted by Hong Kongers, veterans of many ethnicities and the UK military personnel present in other capacities mentioned above. Without a single Chinese government or army representative in site.

As many of my posts keep saying – only in Hong Kong.

 

04.11 - Woh, yao tcheen ah! Embracing the expat stereotype in Island Crest

The flat was almost empty of our possessions. I stood hands on hips looking around at the echoey front room, wracking my brain to try to think of what we might have forgotten to do, and looking at evidence of our failed experiment of living in a ‘local’ block.

The terrace that looked like a plus on paper, but had twice bought water into our flat and been impossible to maintain given the crap our neighbours poured onto it daily. The massive bamboo edifice constructed outside our window that had heralded the start of disruptive and dusty works on the building. The aircon unit that had been broken for 4 weeks during the summer, and poured water more than once onto an electrical socket. The second bedroom visible through the adjoining door that had had a leak since we arrived, and a gaping hole in the floor. The mess behind our book case where a formidably sized family of cockroaches had recently take up residence.

Sigh. Quite the failure. Time to go and try again somewhere else.

Then behind me I heard some mutterings, whispers and gasps, and turned to see my neighbour Isabel and two other elderly ladies standing on the threshold of the open front door, leaning in, heads rubbernecking frantically, staring with ill-concealed curiosity. One lady said, breathless with excitement:

“You leaving?”

“Yes, I am”

“Wah, too many problem, ah?”

“Yes, lots of problems”

“Ah, ah, yes…May we take a look?!”

“Er…[the flat is clearly empty, what do they want to see?]…sure.”

They rushed in like children flocking to the base of a Christmas tree filled with presents, clucking and exclaiming. They opened cupboards, squinted into the fridge, scuttled into the spare room at a run. Quite extraordinary – who knew my empty flat could be so interesting?

As they were about to go, inspection done, one asked where I was going to. After a few false starts in English, I dredged the name of our new block in Cantonese: jun seng fung.

This caused open-mouthed astonishment. As one, they exclaimed “Woooh, yao tcheen ah!”, then gabbled at one another in rapid fire Canto, with much head shakings in my direction. Loosely translated, that means “Wow, so rich!!”

The big joke is we are paying perhaps £30 more a week for our new place. But their reaction says it all. The block we have moved into is wonderful, and looks more like a sleek hotel inhabited by the rich and famous from the outside and in the communal areas.

Spotlessly clean, nicely decorated. Compact but well-put together apartments. Plentiful, friendly, incredibly helpful staff. We know from friends who live here that they can organise any manner of handyman to fix any ill you might have at the drop of a hat. Unbelievable facilities after our manky stairway in 143 Second Street – a pool, a gym, onsite dry cleaning, a supermarket in the building.

Basically, a wealthy-looking, expat-drenched enclave, with all the attendant facilities you might imagine. Fulfilling every stereotype of what expats might want. I mean, the supermarket sells things from, swoon, Waitrose (!) and they even have recycling facilities, don’t you know dahling, where you throw your bins out? It’s like, almost unheard of in HK, so that sort of detail is what makes it just par-fect, you know?*

And so, my first reaction when my erstwhile neighbours were clearly judging me for my choice of move and for seeming to have unimaginable amounts of cash was to feel offended. But then, I thought – so what if it fits the stereotype they have in their minds? Stereotypes exist for a reason. The new flat, despite having been in it for less than 24 hours, feels more like home that the last one ever did. And if wanting a gym and a pool and a flat that fundamentally works and does not have its own creepy ecosystem makes me a dreadful expat, then sign me up to the Dreadful Expat Club right now.

Some thank yous. Cathy and Trevor used their final full day here helping us to move in, and their help and advice shaved hours off how long it would have taken us alone. And a big thanks to Ruth, Michelle, Louise and Rachel for coming to an impromptu house warming last night…I’d never understood what the term really meant before, but having friends and family over within hours of hauling the boxes in through the door seemed to bring the flat to life.

Ghastly typical expats in Island Crest, we may now be. But I think we are going to be very happy here.

*That bit was a parody…I think…