The menu at the Hung Kee Seafood Restaurant
Sai Kung, New Territories

In a Food Paradise

This is my final blog entry of the year. In a few hours I will depart for two weeks of scuba diving in the Philippines. I’m due to return to Hong Kong on January 6th, just a few days before the start of classes. Of course the end of this year is also the end of the decade, the first of the new century and millennium. As in most societies, such a milestone moment has prompted some self-reflection in Hong Kong. This has been the first full decade of unification with China and what was once the uncertain post-1997 future is now well over ten years old. Tempest fugit. As befitting the occasion, many of the local opinion makers on TV and in the newspapers have been looking back on what has happened and not happened. They agree that, overall, the HK SAR has fared quite well. It enjoys stability, record prosperity, and its peculiar place in the world is in no danger of disappearing. Hong Kong is now China’s portal to the rest of the world (rather than west’s to China) and consequently its importance in the international market is greater than ever before.

Some here lament that there is no real democracy in Hong Kong, Certainly there is no institutional democracy, but there is an undeniably democratic spirit in the culture of this place—one that China has wisely allowed to exist unmolested. Hong Kong has its own imperfect legislature with “functional constituencies” in which elected members represent professions (teachers, businesspeople, civil servants, etc.) rather than districts based on census data and the principle of one-person-one-vote. The chief executive is answerable to party leaders in Beijing but also to the people of Hong Kong (albeit in a less formalized though equally real way). The media has substantial—though not unlimited—freedom and street protests against HK and PRC policies are a daily occurrence. The protesters, as a rule, are very well mannered—in fact, many are silent (we should be so lucky in America). Yet they can be quite sharp. One clever protest poster recently showed a picture of Donald Tsang as a desperado and underneath it in western cowboy lettering the words “unwanted dead or alive.” Ouch. Most important of all, the Hong Kong judiciary remains the final word in civil and criminal cases. This, above all things, is reassuring to foreign and Chinese investors who remain confident enough to establish new businesses in Hong Kong believing that if legal disputes must go to court they will do so in a place that upholds contracts and whose judicial system has integrity and is not leaned on by politicians. At least in this regard some things have not changed since the handover and any Briton looking at Hong Kong today should be proud of what has remained even after the Union Jack was run down the pole for the last time in 1997. However, in fairness to the Chinese it must be noted too that Hong Kong is more democratic now than it was during the overwhelming majority of the time it was under the British. In any event, the overall assessment of Hong Kong’s recent past and the predictions for its near future are largely positive.

Right now, most Hong Kong people do not seem terribly concerned with politics. It is just a few days before Christmas and the malls are full of frantic shoppers. In a society that can at times seem obsessed with commerce, consumerism, and the trappings of material success, the Christmas season is embraced wholeheartedly by Hong Kong people, Christian or otherwise. Public spaces are decorated in varying levels of tastefulness. As in New York’s Rockefeller Center, here in Hong Kong an oversized evergreen tree is shipped in (from Manchuria or Siberia, presumably), erected in the middle of Central, and lit up from top to bottom. The shopping malls have decked their halls and they continuously pipe in the most insipid Christmas jingles through their sound systems, just like back home. Christmas sales and advertising abound, but I have seen no department store Santa Clauses (Chinese children would probably be terrified sitting on the lap of a fat European with a white beard and red nose—and rightly so). Not to sound like a Scrooge or a Grinch, but by now I have had more than my fill of it all and am starting to look forward to a more authentic and less commercial Christmas experience in the Philippines.

One thing that I will certainly miss while I am away from Hong Kong is the food. Since arriving I have never ceased to marvel at the culinary bounty of this city and have very quickly come to take for granted an endless array of delicious, varied, and easily available food. It is a challenge even to begin describing the gastronomical scene all around me. Suffice it to say that Hong Kong, like Paris or New York, is one of the great culinary cities of the world. It may even be the greatest. Food here is an integral part of the culture, economy, and aesthetic richness of this place; it is to Hong Kong what music is to Vienna or Nashville, art is to Florence, fashion is to Milan, or architecture is to Chicago. Those who dismiss Hong Kong as a slave to mammon and a cultural wasteland with its dearth of art galleries and writers’ colonies and its bland architecture should try to eat out more often. Hong Kong’s great artists may wear aprons and chef’s hats, but their creations are no less impressive than if they painted on a canvas or chiseled in stone. Many of the chefs are world famous and the disposable income in Hong Kong matched by its demand for luxury and fine dining makes this a desirable place to begin or to advance a culinary career.

Hong Kong people do dine out a lot. Most of them live in shoebox apartments and often choose to have parties and large family gatherings in restaurants where there is more space. It is a Sunday ritual for families to eat out and the thousands of restaurants here are packed with customers. Five-star restaurants are found throughout Hong Kong but it is as easy to find a cheap and delicious meal just about anywhere. Noodle shops and Dim Sum stands are a stone’s throw from most MTR stations and offer up steaming hot bowls of the freshest and tastiest Cantonese staples. Supermarkets have kitchens and can pack up meals to go just as readily as the takeaway stands. My experience is that eating out or bringing home takeaway is usually cheaper, faster, and better than trying to cook at home. In fact, since arriving in late August I have cooked exactly one meal in my kitchen—and that was during my first week here before I wised up. The centrality of food in Hong Kong culture and society is really amazing and was one of the easiest realities to become accustomed to once I arrived. In fact, I wonder if it is possible to have the reverse of culture shock: to experience in a new place a change in culture that makes me feel more like I belong and then to look at my own culture and wonder how I could have ever considered that to be normal. The one exception to all this is 7-Eleven. There is one on every other street corner and, like at home, the morning commute would not be complete without a quick stop in. Except that here you can buy pork dumplings at the register, but no coffee. I still have not gotten used to that.

One can get any kind of food in Hong Kong. So far I have eaten at top-notch Spanish, Italian, Indian, Thai, Vietnamese, and Japanese restaurants. In particular, Hong Kong Island and Kowloon boast a wide array of tapas bars, New York delis, Texas steakhouses, Bistros, Trattorias, Irish and English pubs, teppanyaki rooms and every variation of Chinese eatery. While the western food here is quite good, it is ridiculously expensive… well, maybe not so ridiculous given that many of the key ingredients are flown in from around the world: mozzarella from Naples, chorizo from Madrid, top sirloin from the US, etc. Apart from restaurants, the supermarkets, street markets, pastry shops, and wine distributors clearly cater to a worldly and discriminating customer base. Certainly I have would no problem indulging my love of Spanish and South African wines were it not for my attempt to keep within a reasonable budget.

But of course, the real pleasure of Hong Kong dining is the opportunity to become familiar with the range, subtlety, and exquisiteness of Chinese cuisine. At the outset one should acknowledge that there is actually no such thing as Chinese cuisine in any real sense. To speak of Chinese cuisine is the same as speaking of European cuisine. It is simply too varied and complex to be characterized as one whole. The leading regional varieties such as Cantonese, Shanghainese, Sichuan, Hunan, Shandong, Fuijian, and Zeiyang are each separate cuisines in their own right with their own unique culinary traditions and sensibilities. While all these regional varieties are on offer in Hong Kong, Cantonese predominates, not surprisingly. Compared to other regional cuisines of China, Cantonese dishes are lighter and less spicy. The emphasis is on freshness and many of the dishes are steamed inside bamboo baskets. Dim sum delicacies are served in small dishes and washed down with ample quantities of tea. This sort of dining experience is called yum cha (飲茶 literally “drinking tea”) but I find that some of the local beer is just as good an accompaniment. Dim sum dishes include dozens of varieties of dumplings, wontons, rolls, balls, and buns made from every sort of meat, poultry, fish, and vegetable. Some Shanghainese dumplings are filled with soup along with meat or fish (I still haven’t figured out how it is even possible to make these). In South China there seems to be more of a preference for rice, pork, chicken and seafood while in the north one find more beef and duck specialties. In all cases, there is great emphasis on presentation and the best chefs learn quickly to develop an eye for detail and beauty. Tea is also a critical part of every meal and comes in dozens of varieties. I am not normally a tea drinker, but I have developed a liking for the jasmine and chrysanthemum varieties and find that they go nicely with a big meal as a digestive.

Since arriving in Hong Kong, I have been able to eat like a king. I have been spoiled, corrupted, and now wallow in my own decadence—at least as far as food is concerned. Many of the Fulbright meetings hosted at the various universities begin with a dim sum lunch that seems like a banquet. Dishes are selected for us and brought out continuously during the meal where they are set upon a glass lazy Susan in the middle of the table. Round tables are the norm here and nowadays on the rare occasions when I am at a western restaurant and seated with a group at an elongated rectangular table it feels strange and uncomfortable. Apart from Fulbright occasions, I have been able to dine regularly with my friends Xiaonan and Michael, who I have known for many years since my graduate student days in London. Xiaonan is from Beijing and Michael is from Guangzhou. They have lived in Hong Kong for a few years now and know their way around quite well. Sometimes they take me to their favorite Chinese restaurants, which often specialize in non-Cantonese regional cuisines and are popular with mainlanders. These are always off the beaten path and virtually unknown to westerners. I am usually the only gweilo in the place and the menus are all in Chinese. The wait staff does not speak English and all the ordering is done by my two friends. Thus I am able to enjoy another dimension of Hong Kong dining to which even some long-time expat residents are not exposed.

Apart from variety, Cantonese cuisine is distinguished by an almost obsessive insistence on freshness. Vegetables are always fresh and are steamed to keep in the flavor, texture, and vitamins. But the most astonishing use of fresh ingredients is in seafood. Most restaurants have a fish tank from which live meal ingredients can be drawn, but this is nothing unusual and by itself would hardly be remarkable. What is amazing, however, is the size of the tanks and the variety of the offerings. One of my favorite spots is the famous Hung Kee Seafood Restaurant located in Sai Kung, a pleasant seaside community on the eastern side of the New Territories. I occasionally eat there with friends from my dive club after our boat returns in the evening. Hung Kee is a local tourist attraction even for people who don’t dine there. It is like a trip to the aquarium and dinner, in the same place and at the same time. Indeed, if something swims or crawls in the ocean, Hung Kee has at least a dozen of them each in their own special tank. On my last visit, one tank held a grouper that must have weighed at least a hundred pounds. As an avid diver, I consider myself reasonably well educated in marine biology, for a layman, but there are many types of species in the Hung Kee tanks that I have never seen (or tasted), although it must be said that there are fewer of these with each return visit. Patrons stand in front of dozens of tanks large and small and point to the creatures swimming, slithering, or scuttling obliviously inside, all the while a waiter dutifully writes down the names of the condemned. Step two is to review the selections and decide the way that each is to be cooked. Step three is to sit at one’s table and drink beer until the dishes are brought out. The wait is never long, but impatient and fidgety children are kept distracted by the horseshoe crabs that the management allows to crawl around on the ground in front of the tanks. It’s an amazing experience.

By now I am sure that I have managed to disgust and enrage any vegetarians that may be reading this. Alas, unlike Indian or Thai cuisine, the culinary sensibilities of the Chinese are not kind to vegetarians. Most dishes are a mix of meat and vegetables and even the strictly vegetable dishes are often prepared in chicken broth or fish oil. My vegetarian friends here all eat well, but it takes some effort and caution. Many of them shop in the local markets and cook at home. While it is easy to eat out all the time, one shouldn’t pass up a trip to the food markets of Hong Kong, if only as a spectator. My favorite “wet markets,” as they are called, are the ones in Tai Po and Shau Kei Wan. These are covered warehouses with hundreds of stalls selling every kind of food imaginable. Fruits and vegetables are extremely cheap and there is a seemingly endless variety. The butcher stalls are lesson in anatomy and apparently there is no part of a pig or chicken that cannot end up on someone’s dinner plate. The buckets of chicken feet, in particular, make me think of some “Far Side” cartoon whose punch line I can’t remember. Many of the seafood stalls have aerated buckets of water filled with live fish, clams, lobsters, crabs, octopi, squid, cuttlefish, shrimp, turtles, and eels. If you wait long enough you will invariably see one of them climb or jump out and make a break for it before the stall owner grabs it from the floor and tosses it back in with its more apathetic brethren. Above and behind the buckets are tables laid out with trays of ice containing fish and freshly cut fish parts. Some of the sliced up eel pieces and octopus tentacles still squirm around while the gills and hearts of the decapitated and disemboweled fish still pulsate. Customers can even take away plastic bags filled with water and live fish back to their homes or to their favorite restaurants. In the US, some restaurants without a liquor license allow patrons to bring their own wine, but this is even better. I wonder if there is a fish gutting fee added to the bill instead of corkage; it seems only fair.

Facade of St. Paul's Cathedral, Macau; completed in 1602

Macau

It has been exactly a month since my last blog entry; normally a sign that I have been busy, distracted, and on the road a lot. In that time I’ve become a regular passenger on the ferries that go back and forth across the Pearl River Delta. My first trip into mainland China began on Nov 16th when I took the ferry from the China Terminal in Hong Kong to Zhuhai just north of Macau. I went there with my Fulbright colleagues to attend a conference and to give a presentation at the United International College. UIC is something of an experiment; it is an undergraduate college founded four years ago as a joint enterprise between my host institution, the Hong Kong Baptist University, and the Beijing Normal University. It aspires to nothing less than becoming the first liberal arts college inside the PRC. The faculty and staff are dedicated to this mission but they face serious challenges. These range from fundraising (a concern of private colleges everywhere) to dealing with the PRC Ministry of Education and its demand that the curriculum conform to the Communist Party’s political ideology. I will be back there in the spring as a visiting lecturer and I’m eager to see how they meet these obstacles. If they overcome them, and if their example takes root in China, it will indeed be an extraordinary milestone in the history of higher education.

A week after my first visit I returned to Zhuhai to meet with UIC administrators and to give another presentation to the faculty. Afterward, I left the campus and was driven to the border crossing at Gong Bei where I cleared passport control and crossed into Macau. It is interesting that even though Hong Kong and Macau are now part of the PRC the process of moving back and forth between these two places and the mainland still feels like crossing an international border. Foreigners can visit these two “Special Administrative Regions” without getting a China visa but once there they must get such a visa to cross into the mainland. Visitors go through passport control and customs each way. This reality (inconvenience, more accurately) underscores the point that status as an SAR is not merely symbolism but has actually allowed Hong Kong and Macau (the former especially) to retain a substantial measure of autonomy and distinctiveness in East Asia apart from the mainland. For me, however, it has meant a lot of visas (and fees) and passport stamps for someone who has technically been within the borders of the same country for nearly three months.

I arrived in Macau to attend an international symposium on Jesuit education held at the Ricci Institute. The institute is named for the 16th-century Italian Jesuit who came to Macau, founded the Jesuit China mission, and then traveled to Beijing to present himself to Emperor Wanli of the Ming dynasty. Ricci was the first European to enter the Forbidden City and remains a strong symbol of cross cultural contact between eastern and western civilizations. The symposium was enjoyable and some of the papers were interesting but many of us in the audience had to wear headphones for simultaneous translation of presentations given in Chinese. These translations were often fragmentary and confusing and my relatively childlike attention span was tested to its limits.

Although I timed my visit to coincide with the Jesuit education symposium, the real reason for this trip was to see Macau and to spend some time with my college roommate and his family. My friend Matt was my roommate for three of the four years I was at Georgetown. When we graduated he was commissioned into the Marine Corps while I went into the Navy. We lost touch over the years but recently reconnected. For the last couple of years he has lived in Macau with his wife and young daughter and works there as the finance director at the Venetian Hotel and Casino. He was generous enough to put me up in a very posh suite at the Venetian for the two days I was in Macau and then he and his wife treated me to an insider’s tour of this fascinating place. As a visitor, it was impossible for me to do Macau justice within the forty-eight hours I was there and I am already looking forward to many return visits.

Macau, like Hong Kong, is very much a cultural hybrid, but one with a much longer and more notorious history. The Portuguese were the first westerners to establish a permanent presence in China (note to Italians: Marco Polo’s brief visit in the thirteenth century hardly counts—no disrespect). The Portuguese took over Macau in 1557 and set up a colony and trading station there after they were ejected from the Chinese mainland. Thus the European presence in Macau (and China) predates that in Hong Kong by nearly two centuries. Portuguese traders, missionaries, and sailors set up shop in the tiny colony and built it up in their image. Macau soon joined Mombasa, Hormuz, Goa, and Batavia as the last link in the great Lusitanian merchant empire of the sixteenth century. The narrow streets and sunny praças of old Macau were marked by stately Iberian government offices, elaborate Baroque churches and convents, and luxurious villas with the requisite wrought iron grills, blue tile work, pastel stucco walls, and red clay tile roofs. In particular, the façade of St. Paul’s Jesuit church (the rest of the structure burned down) is a masterpiece of Mediterranean splendor, but there are many other examples as well. Macau, it seems, has done a better job than Hong Kong of preserving its architectural heritage. This likely owes to the fact that its economy never thrived to the same degree nor did the desire for innovation and improvement ever take root here as it did in HK. There was simply not the same energy or money to clear away the old and make room for the new. In any event, many older buildings escaped the wrecking ball and the city has kept much of its distinctive old world style and charm.

Artistic expression in Macau is not limited to architecture. In its heyday it was a rich enclave of Lusophone culture and religious ferment. Luis vas de Camões is said to have lived there and written part of the great Portuguese epic Os Lusiadas (The Lusiads) while residing in the balmy colonial outpost, though there is no actual evidence that this is really true. Even now, the street signs and storefronts are still in Portuguese as well as Cantonese, although these days very few Macau residents can actually speak the former.

As in other Iberian colonies, the religious profile of Macau bore the firm stamp of Roman Catholicism. Yet in the beginning the Church’s most fervent fishers of men were not of one mind about how best to cast their nets. The Jesuits believed that the doctrines of the church were not incompatible with traditional Confucian values of filial piety, divine right of Chinese emperors, and some Chinese folk religious practices. The Dominicans took a harder line and declared these practices idolatrous and considered any accommodation by Catholics to be heresy. In the early eighteenth century Pope Clement XI sided with the Dominicans and the resulting enforcement of stricter ideology led to a substantial diminishing of missionary success in China. Of course, Macau remained firmly Catholic.

To their credit, the Portuguese were probably the least racist of any European colonizers. As the years passed, the overwhelmingly male Portuguese minority readily intermixed with the Cantonese majority and produced a mestiço community called “Macanese.” Some of these people still exist in Macau and preserve their own unique customs and traditions. Macanese cuisine, in particular, blends the best of Portuguese and Cantonese flavors and the ubiquity of great restaurants, markets, and pastelarias along the streets and alleyways of Macau easily matches anything offered by Hong Kong. Overall, the blending of cultures is both extraordinary and seemingly effortless. Indeed to walk through old Macau is to have one foot in Canton and the other in Lisbon or Porto.

Yet the recent history of Macau was not always as pleasant or tranquil as the local culture would suggest. By the beginning of the twentieth century, Macau was a soporific little backwater weakly controlled by the Portuguese and overshadowed in every way by Hong Kong, its newer and more energetic colonial neighbor to the East. The treaty ports of Shanghai, Tsingtao, Tientsin, and Canton also drew more international commercial and political attention than Europe’s first Chinese colony did. It would be safe to say that by then Macau was about as important in Chinese affairs as Portugal was in European ones. But the colony did gain some unwanted attention in the Second World War when Japan invaded China in 1937 and then in 1941 took over Hong Kong and the other international settlements of the Allied European powers. At the insistence of the Germans, the Japanese respected Portugal’s neutrality and kept their hands off Macau for the duration of the war. The result was that the colony became a sort of shabby Switzerland of the East. Its eleven square miles filled with refugees from HK and the mainland, leading to tension between residents and the desperate newcomers.

After the establishment of the PRC in 1949, China allowed the Portuguese to keep Macau. But the colonial government remained so weak, corrupt, and inefficient and the tiny enclave so dependent on the mainland that it was clear that Beijing was really charge, if indirectly (a very different situation than in Hong Kong). Portuguese sovereignty over Macau was a joke and during the Cultural Revolution the red guards repeatedly overran the colony, something that never happened in HK. When the dictator Salazar’s Estado Novo was overthrown in Portugal in 1974, the new thinking in Lisbon shifted away from holding on at all costs to the nation’s anachronistic overseas possessions. Instead Portugal sought to divest itself of these embarrassing reminders of its weakness and of how far the country had fallen from the glory of its distant past. The new leadership in Lisbon offered to give back the colony to China but the PRC would not take it. Macau had by then become a barely governed cesspool of gambling, prostitution, and organized crime—a sewer grating into which these vices could drain from the surrounding area. Lisbon didn’t want it, but Beijing seemed happy to have the Portuguese flag flying over it indefinitely. Finally in the 1980s, when the handover of Hong Kong was negotiated, the Chinese arranged to take Macau back as well. In December 1999, an appropriately smaller and less lavish handover ceremony took place in Macau as the oldest European colony in East Asia (442 years) reverted to the motherland. Unlike Hong Kong, however, this gesture was less meaningful since the PRC had more or less controlled Macau for decades.

It is easy for the visitor to enjoy Macau, but working in the territory is often a different story. My friend Matt was able to share many insights with me about doing business there and gave me a rare glimpse into the netherworld of the gambling industry in Macau. While he describes Hong Kong as a combination of the best qualities of East and West, Macau reflects the worst blending of these two cultures. Hong Kong has thrived because it is a product of its colonizers’ Protestant work ethic and Anglo-Saxon insistence on the rule of law imposed upon a largely law-abiding and entrepreneurial Chinese culture. In Macau, on the other hand, centuries of the Mediterranean “mañana” attitude toward efficiency and work along with a tolerance for corrupt administration enabled the Chinese penchant for nepotism and organized crime to flourish.

As Macau’s importance as a trading center slipped into irreversible decline, the government tried to make up for the loss of wealth by legalizing gambling. The result revolutionized the local economy and turned many of its residents in the casino and hotel businesses into millionaires. The weak government and corrupt police, combined with the PRC’s permissive view toward what went on there, made it the ideal place for high-stakes gambling and its sister activities of prostitution and loan-sharking. When the Portuguese were in charge, the entire Macau gambling concession belonged to one man: Stanley Ho, a Hong Kong billionaire entrepreneur (now 89 years old and languishing in an HK hospital). Mr. Ho may have had the gaming monopoly but in order for it actually to function a lot of people further down also had to get their piece of the action. For starters, the Macau government took a 35% cut of all gambling profits. It still does.

As in Havana and Las Vegas, the gambling economy in Macau was first built up and its rules enforced by clever and well-organized gangsters, here called Triads. Once a date was set for the departure of the Portuguese, the Triads fought amongst each other viciously for greater control over the territory before the PRC was due to come in and rain on their parade (which it didn’t, it turns out). After the handover, Stanley Ho lost his monopoly and very quickly the major Las Vegas casinos moved in to fill the vacuum and bankroll future development. Nowadays in Macau one can visit the Sands, Venetian, Hard Rock, and MGM Grand along with the older iconic Casino Lisboa—a smaller, seedy, smoke-filled den that harkens to the less sanitized gambling culture of old Macau. It would be impossible to make room in tiny Macau for all the new developments so they are making new land instead. Many of the new casinos, hotels, racetracks, and golf courses, as well as the international airport have been built through land reclamation. In fact, so much of Macau’s dry surface these days is reclaimed land that the old islands of Coloane and Taipa are now one large land mass linked by a new area called the Cotai Strip upon which glitzy hotels and casinos shoot up like weeds in an untended garden.

On my first day in Macau I was given a tour of the Venetian by my friend. The building is an architectural wonder and much larger than the one in Las Vegas. I’m told that it is the third largest building in the world (the first is the new Beijing airport and the second is the Boeing plant in Everett, WA). Appropriately enough, the Venetian is like a city within a building. There are 9000 employees, 3000 rooms, hundreds of shops, and casino space that takes up the combined area of more than thirteen American football fields. The signature feature is an interior re-creation of the canals of Venice that wind around the building. The whole thing is really overwhelming. I stayed for two days and had a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner with Matt and his family in one of the complex’s best restaurants.

What I really enjoyed was learning from Matt about the inner workings of Macau gambling. First he took me around the main casino floor, a massive space shared by four gaming areas: the Red Dragon, the Phoenix, the Imperial, and the Golden Fish. Of all of these, the Red Dragon is always the most crowded since the red décor and the dragon pattern in the carpet are considered most auspicious by Chinese gamblers. The gambling itself is very much like Las Vegas, Atlantic City, or dozens of Indian reservations except that here the loan sharks stand directly behind the players at the tables (no joke; talk about pressure). Like many activities in Macau, loan-sharking is controlled by the Triads and while gambling debts are not legally enforceable (in other words you can’t get a court to order repayment of such a debt) these lenders usually have no trouble getting their money back.

Next we went into the “Paiza Club,” a place that would have certainly been off-limits to me had my friend not ushered me in. This is the inner sanctum: a VIP area for high-stakes betting. Opening bets are in the thousands (US$) and winnings and losses can be in the millions. Matt tells me that on average US$ 90 million circulates through this one area every week. Almost all of the high-stakes players are mainland Chinese and they are intense gamblers. There are no alcoholic beverages or sexy cocktail waitresses (i.e. no distractions) and many of the players try to sleep on the couches in the lounge instead of going up to their rooms so that they can keep as close as possible to a 24-hour gambling cycle. Sometimes the security officers have to wake them up and send them away (just like the Port Authority bus terminal in New York, except without the $90 million). Apparently more of the Venetian’s revenue comes from this small private suite of gambling parlors than from the rest of the hotel’s entertainment, restaurant, and casino activity combined.

Matt tells me that the Chinese are reckless gamblers and nothing that I have seen would lead me to think otherwise. But they don’t go in for blackjack or poker; instead they favor baccarat and other games that require almost no skill and are based primarily on luck. Enormous sums of money are laid down with very poor odds, all on the fleeting hope of good fortune. Matt describes the Chinese weakness for gambling like that of the Irish for alcohol. A stereotype perhaps, but the evidence is all around. Room occupancy in the Venetian is often at 100% capacity and the overwhelming majority of visitors there and at the other casinos in Macau are from the mainland. The high rollers are generally from China’s new money set in construction and manufacturing that have profited from the country’s unparalleled economic boom. A generation ago these people would have been holding up Mao’s little red book and denouncing capitalist imperialism. Now they roll up in limos to the casinos of Macau and throw down unreal amounts of money on the most ill-advised games of chance. Truly, it staggers the mind. While the US stimulus package may be helping to pay for bonuses at Goldman Sachs and keeping dying car companies on life-support, apparently much of the PRC’s stimulus money is ending up on the baccarat tables of Macau. Which is worse?

Statue of Bruce Lee on the "Avenue of the Stars"
Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon

♫ Everybody was Kung Fu fight-ing ♫

Chinese people rarely say “no.” Of course, they often mean “no” but merely prefer not to say it. I have asked around as to why this is and the closest thing I can get to a clear explanation is that “no”—as a concept and a word—is simply too blunt and confrontational to be culturally acceptable. Chinese society is deeply rooted in Confucian values and philosophy which emphasize the preservation of social harmony. This is achieved through proper moral conduct by the individual and respect for one’s place and duties within various social hierarchies (family, community, school, workplace, etc.). One logical outcome of the promotion of social harmony is that affirmative or seemingly affirmative replies to a request can have a wide variety of meanings. When one hears “yes,” one has to decode from tone and context whether it really means “yes,” “maybe,” “no,” or “hell no!” A colleague of mine explained that the most tried and true ways of saying no without actually saying no include “I will give your excellent suggestion the most serious consideration and get back to you” or “I think it would be best if you did [something other than what you have expressed a desire to do].” This is not meant to be disingenuous but is merely an acceptable way of communicating that you can neither have nor do what you want, but in a respectful manner that saves face for both parties. Of course, this subtlety is not readily obvious to the less-than-delicate sensibilities of most Americans and can be extremely frustrating until one figures it out.

Cultural differences notwithstanding, communication is generally not difficult in Hong Kong. English is widely spoken and it is easy to get by without knowing any Cantonese. In the old days under British administration, English was the sole language of government and most schools used it as the primary medium of instruction. Immediately after the handover, there was a push to promote Chinese (Cantonese, specifically) and schools shifted to that language. But people soon realized that not instructing children in English was putting them at a considerable disadvantage given Hong Kong’s international profile. It soon became clear that Hong Kong people would not be well served in international competition by embracing linguistic provincialism, especially since at that same time mainland China was aggressively promoting English instruction to make their educated citizens as marketable and competitive as possible. Nowadays the linguistic profile of Hong Kong involves three languages: English, Cantonese, and Mandarin. The last of these is actually called “Putonghua” here in China. Apparently Deng Xiaoping did not like the word “Mandarin” since it connoted elitism and class consciousness—neither of which had any place in a true people’s republic—so he ordered the change. Officials in Beijing want Hong Kong people to learn Putonghua since everyone is now part of the one China, but in keeping with their overall approach to the territory they are not pushy about it. In general, Hong Kong people speak English when they need to but prefer Cantonese. There is no longer any stigma of inferiority in speaking their own language (unlike in the colonial days) and Cantonese dominates while English is an indispensable second language. In fact, the latter remains the lingua Franca (or lingua Anglia, more accurately) in law, business, and diplomacy.

Yet not everybody speaks English. In certain parts of Hong Kong it is unusual to hear a word of English spoken or to see signs in anything other than Chinese characters. When one crosses Victoria Harbor from Hong Kong Island to the Kowloon Peninsula it seems like a transition from an international hub into the real China; and moving further into the New Territories even more so. In Sha Tin, where I live, it does feel like a foreign country. I am usually the only gweilo in the market or on the bus and I regularly encounter people who cannot speak a word of English. At times this can be frustrating, but in general I quite like the immersion in Chinese society and am happy to live where I do instead of in some expat oasis on HK Island or Lantau.

The only solution to the language situation for a gweilo like me is to try to get a handle on Cantonese. In the first month I was here I enrolled in a special Cantonese class offered by my university for visiting faculty. I was excited about learning a new language and hopeful that I could add Cantonese alongside Hindi and Swahili on the list of languages in which I can just barely communicate. Yet on the first day of class it started to sink in just how impossibly difficult this language is. Cantonese has nine tones across which any one word has nine completely different meanings. Most words have only one syllable and are not complicated—except, of course, for those damned tones. My problem is that I never know what I am actually saying, even if I get the word right. Because many words have such different tonal meanings, Cantonese is a language in which it is virtually impossible for the novice not to embarrass himself or give grave offense. On average, if I remember a word I still have only a one-in-nine chance of saying exactly what I intend and an eight-in-nine chance of saying something else. And because Cantonese uses Chinese characters (which we are not learning) even if by some miracle I am able to become conversant on the most rudimentary level, I will still be hopelessly illiterate.

My Cantonese class is very international. Our group of students includes three Americans, an Irishman, a German, an Indian, an Italian, a Czech, an Australian, and two mainland Putonghua speakers (for whom Cantonese is almost as difficult as it is for westerners). Our instructor has the patience of Job, the skill of whoever the woman was that taught Helen Keller, and a wonderful sense of humor—the last of which is much appreciated. My experience of struggling with a tonal language like Cantonese has given me a heightened degree of empathy for immigrants to the US who strive to learn English (another notoriously difficult language). I do not hold out great hope that I will learn more than what is commonly referred to as “survival (or “taxi cab”) Cantonese.” Actually, I am managing to pick up a few words and phrases just in my everyday routine. I learned how to shout out my stop on the bus only after the driver blew past my house a few times. In the market, I have found that a command of numbers and a few choice words can really bring down the price. Finally, for what it’s worth, I’ve also learned my Chinese name; it is 大衛 (pronounced “Daai Wai”). Are you impressed?

Last week I was asked eagerly by a colleague if I intended to participate in the upcoming university talent show. I waffled a bit and then, in appropriate Chinese fashion, said I would get back to her (see, I’m learning). Later that day, I received a mass email message advertising the talent show and encouraging all who could sing, dance, play an instrument or do kung fu to sign up. That’s right, kung fu. In the US that last pitch in a talent show announcement would be a lame attempt to be clever or funny; here it is not. Martial arts are a big deal in Hong Kong—not surprising, really. The chair of my department is a martial arts expert and schools here offer a wide range of courses at every level and in various types. Many people of all ages are really into it. I am not. The best I could offer the talent show is a few verses of the 1974 chart topper “Kung Fu Fighting.” ♫ Everybody was kung fu fight-ing; ♫ those cats were fast as light-ning. ♫ In fact it was a little bit fright-ning, ♫ but they fought with expert timing… Since I can’t sing, though, maybe even that might be asking too much from me. In any event, I’ll leave the talent to the locals.

The fascination with kung fu, if not the skill, is something to which even we gweilo can lay claim. In the late 1960s and early 70s kung fu became an international sensation. Much of this owed to the peerless fame of Hong Kong legend Bruce Lee. The martial arts film star elevated what had been a staple of Hong Kong cinema for decades into a worldwide phenomenon. Films like “Fist of Fury” (1971) and “Enter the Dragon” (1973) have become classics in the genre and helped inspire the American TV series “Kung Fu” starring the recently departed David Carradine. Bruce Lee was the consummate master of his craft, whether it was martial arts or filmmaking, and he remains the source of enormous pride among the people of Hong Kong. Adding in no small measure to his legend is that he died suddenly at the age of 32. Forever young like James Dean, Marilyn Monroe and other cultural icons cut down in their prime, Bruce Lee went out at the height of his fame and physical prowess. Expert timing, indeed. In the years since his death Bruce Lee has remained easily the most famous Hong Kong resident ever. His pride in the Chinese culture and philosophy that was the foundation for his martial arts success has made him beloved by Chinese in the mainland as well as in Hong Kong. In 2005 an eight-foot-tall bronze statue of Bruce Lee was unveiled on Hong Kong’s “Avenue of the Stars” along the waterfront in Tsim Sha Tsui. After numerous requests to the government to honor the star had fallen flat, the Bruce Lee Club turned to private donors and the money came pouring in from fans across the world. The statue shows the master in his classic kung fu pose from “Fist of Fury” with his back to the harbor and a view of the city skyline behind him. Quite impressive, really. However, as with the Venus de Milo or Mona Lisa, one can rarely get a clear view of him through the gaggle of local and international tourists crowded around taking pictures.

Hong Kong high rise apartment blocks (look closely)