HONG KONG WAS HOT

No, not only the weather. Early in September, Hong Kong was supposed to be hot and humid.

Most of all, Hong Kong shows every one how Chinese can and will do if given due opportunity. Growing up on the Mainland, the biggest depression has been to believe that we Chinese as a people may have lost the competence to have a good life, or to get rid the perpetual desperation and the long shadows of poverty we seemed to be doomed in. However, it has been clear to me since my childhood in the Chinese countryside that we may be poor for centuries but we haven't been lazy for a day.

Having said that, I have to admit that personally I had the doubt about my willingness to get up early and march into the hellish heat to perform my job as most of the people in Hong Kong do day in and day out. However, as the second day dawned, things had changed dramatically after I was seated by my breakfast table. Any second thought in my mind was eliminated and I was going to honor all of my business appointments no matter how sticky hot it was outside. There was this Hong Kong mentality that every one has got to take his/her job seriously no matter what. Typhoon, earthquake or Beijing coming down from the North, you name it.

Hong Kong impresses me with its attitude in service. Sure, it is expensive, let me tell you, the most expensive city in the world, unseating Tokyo just as my airplane hit the town. But money can buy service and some of the best services in the world I may add. It is definitely a wonderful feeling to know that things can be done, with satisfaction, in Hong Kong. This is such a sharp contrast to what we have experienced in China where even money could do you no good if you don't have the proper personal connections. It was frustration beyond description.

Yet Hong Kong is not exactly a place where money is worshipped as god and corruption is rampant. I know that most places with a large Chinese population corruption spreads like wild weeds in a raining season. But Hong Kong has achieved something truly remarkable. Two things figured most preeminently in Hong Kong's success, according to Professor Ma Lin, Chancellor of the Show College of the Chinese University of Hong Kong: one is ICAC (Independent Commission Against Corruption) which essentially keeps corruption to a minimum, and the other is massive training of its youth in technical fields, not theoretical study or research as most Chinese universities on the Mainland are still emphasizing. And it is no secret that Hong Kong benefits a great deal for having a backyard as small as Guangdong and as large as China.

I have to confess that I have never been to Singapore. Still I don't care how people look at Hong Kong and Singapore politically: totalitarian or imperfect democracy or even a gingerly colony, whatever you want to belittle those peoples and their governments. I am very impressed by the hardworking nature of the people. Nobody can take away their discipline, their dedication, their sacrifice, and their determination to be the best they can be. They are glorious because they are what they are and what they are doing. If I am still counted as one of them, a Chinese who was born and brought up in a backward part of the continent, I can tell you that I am proud to be one of them any time.

However, Hong Kong, indeed, has its share of shortcomings, not only because I do not get along with anything or anywhere which resembles Disneyland. Hong Kong is an extended shopping mall. There if you are not a boutique owner, you are a boutique shopper. Every building has its basement laid out for shops, shops and shops. In a shop, most of the things are neatly folded for display and only a few things you can touch and buy. People attend to the smallest details to make sure that sales go smoothly. Consumerism runs wild in the garden-like city. And it can be depressing from time to time: where is life? (No. I haven't got the guts to ask where the poetry is.)

And guess what? In the service sector, shop-owners and sales people and taxi drivers do not speak enough English. It was hard for me because everyone expected me to speak Cantonese. When they found out I could not, they were not pleased. It baffled me. Maybe they can speak English and Mandarin Chinese but because they were mad at me for not speaking Cantonese, they pretended they don't hear me. Who knows? But my gut feeling tells me they don't speak enough English, less than I expected anyway. Does this mean that they have pretended that their British rulers did not exist all along?

There is this great effort by the Hong Kong Tourist Association, one of the most successful in the world because of the enthusiasm and participation from its members and citizens alike. The Hotel and Travellers Association displays the first professional smile to you at the airport ... but somehow I came away with the feeling that there seems to be a farmer's mentality. You know what I mean, Chinese in ancient times only care about their family's two acres of land and devote their life to it. Hong Kong people care about their city and do the best they can. But what then? one would like to ask. Even if your apartment complex is built, indeed, like a real garden, living in a garden can get boring sometimes. There is a bigger world beyond the Pacific and beyond the borders up north. On the other hand, who am I to tell people in Hong Kong how to conduct their life? It should really be the other way around: the rest of us have a lot to learn from Hong Kong.

GUANGDONG WAS TORN APART

My American friend told me that the reason that people in Guangdong are so rude is that they are under severe depression of the weather. But I had a hard time to buy his theory.

The real emotional trial for me started with the train ride from Kowloon to Guangzhou. Starting from Shenzhen every inch of the land along the railroad was torn apart for development. This garden and that garden are planned here and there, and the half-erected buildings look like sinking ships in the rain. Sure, I admit that I worship land, and land is my god. But people seeking a good life do not have to destroy the land. But they do, here in America and there in Guangdong. Damn it, I know the land is theirs. But the open wounds bleed and hurt my eyes and my heart. The red color of the bare land reminded me of nothing but open wounds and bleeding heart.

I have heard so many times, not only from Beijing's official news but from business travellers on the train, in the airplane and on the streets of Hong Kong and Guangzhou, there are too many, way too many construction projects in China, especially along the coast. The emphasis is comfort, often it means spending tomorrow on today. And the most glaring misdirection of the Chinese way of development reflects in its deficient emphasis on production and manufacturing and quality upgrading in its existing products. Billions upon billions of investment went into construction, construction of homes, offices, monuments and tombs and tombstones, constructions which contribute nothing but hamper everything of the overall development.

But who can blame people in seeking a better life? "If life is not better in America, you guys and gals would have returned to China long ago with or without your damn green card," so I was told.

Guangzhou was rude because people take their frustration out to others and each other. My friend went to a bank to change money, signed the traveller's cheques in front of the teller but she still held it up to the light and declared with arrogance that the fifteen signatures were not consistent, trying to give the foreigner a hard time though largely unnecessary. The man was going to spend those money on Guangzhou, a city which was turned upside down with a frenzy of constructions and horrible traffic and zero manner, for crying out loud.

It was a mistake to take the train because the train station customs officials are the worst of the kind, the ones who were given a little power but did not know the proper way to exercise it. They ask silly questions, especially when dealing with their own citizens, finding whatever excuse to make life miserable for their fellow countrymen. They asked everything but my grandma's name (that was a stroke of good luck, because I really do not know her name). They spent ten minutes with me while two hundred people waited in the 100 degree weather. Next window a guy coming back from Australia was reduced to tears because his father was dying in his sickbed and in a great hurry he forgot to get something from the Chinese Consulate back in Melborne or whatever city. A bad mistake, but still to make a grown man cry really takes a knack or some genuine cruelty.

The customs people made the beggars, mommies and their children, outside the train station much less annoying to me though they followed me everywhere trying to slow me down by hanging on to my suitcase and briefcase like parasites. But that was their way of life after enduring police's beatings and other harassment.

People in Guangzhou loved to brag about their newly acquired wealth but in the most part they just get started. I have nothing against people getting rich so long as they do it with hardwork and dedication, legally I may add.

I had my fingers crossed thinking about leaving Guangzhou Train Station for Hong Kong. Sure enough, the guy singled me out because he claimed that I had no official permission to return to America. I told him that I had never heard about any permit in such a capacity and I have a green card. He gave me this dirty look as if how dare you even speak up to me. So his supervisor came, they examined this and that, pretended to take my passport away. The ploy was to make me panic so that I would open my wallet and hand out some dollar bills, perhaps. But I did not budge and I was not going to bribe those bastards. No way, not in a million years. Fifteen minutes later, I had my passport back by a man who had a very disgusted/disappointed long face. So long, Guangzhou.

However, those aren't the worst incidents at all. I heard from the man who sat next to me on the airplane, a Hong Kong citizen who was born somewhere around the Mediterranean Sea, that once at the Shenzhen Train Station Customs, one official threw a man's documents out of the window and the poor Chinaman had to endure the grand embarrassment to pick up the broken pieces of his travel documents from under others' feet. "It was terribly rude. You can be firm in denying the man's entrance or departure, you can even detain him if he breaks the law. But doing that to a man in front of hundreds is simply cruel and disgusting." Guess what? I agree with that man, a high nose making comments on Chinese.

Of course I also agree with that man that there are worse bastards in Harbin. "In Harbin they don't give a damn to the color of your skin or the height of your nose. I have been around the world but Harbin is the only place where the customs guy open my suitcase and stick both of his hands in from two ends and toss my stuff up in the air like tossing a salad." (I hope that this episode shows my friends from Guangzhou and Guangdong that I am not totally or only negative about their hometown.)

XI'AN DISPLAYED A SMILE

So after Guangzhou, I was naturally amazed when taxi drivers in Xi'an exchanged greetings and pleasantries with me. "Thank you and have a wonderful stay" seemed so pleasing when I was paying my fares. Even the hotel reception desk was every bit as friendly as those in Hong Kong.

Sure you can say that I arrived amidst the Fifth Annual Festival of Ancient Civilization in Xi'an, a city which shamelessly capitalizing on its antiquity, like an old man demanding respect because of his advanced age. But it was OK with me. As a matter of fact, it made me happy to see the display of the long bragged and long absent mannerism in the heartland of the Central Kingdom.

Xi'an is still dusty, and the new airport in Xianyang needs more work and care than advertising. But being pleasant to guests and eventually to each other is long over-due and also a wonderful start. There is something in life which is related to economy but money can never buy.

Sometimes I don't see anything wrong about being content with a little. The small development, especially in tourism and agriculture, around the Xi'an area has brought a lot of smiling faces and energy into people's small gestures and daily expressions. You can see that they have ways to go but they are surely heading in the right direction.

Getting rich without humor is the same miserable as being poor.

Oh I must report that across the street from my hotel was the headquarters of the Provincial Armed Police. And there are guards on every floor of our hotel who have nothing to do but to open doors and be nice to people. Nice is a good manner. So I encountered no solicitation from any prostitute nor did the hotel suggest any female companion for me, a single traveller. There was a massage saloon which gave me a call and I went in just to check it out. It was serious acupuncture, very relaxing and fairly inexpensive, 80 Yuan for a whole hour. The face-saving part is that you don't have to take your clothes off. No shoes, no service (just kidding).

HOME WAS A BOWL OF YELLOW EARTH

Nothing exemplifies being content with a little like my folks at home. Before hitting town, I was heavily wrapped with the memory of those desperate days when a dollar in many cases turned brothers or even parents and their children against each other. I have heard that some folks from Taiwan went home after forty some years of painful separation, their beloved blatantly demanded gold chains and rings, the color of the world definitely faded at those moments for those folks.

As a courtesy, I tried to hand out some money to my nephews and nieces whom I was seeing for the first time in my life. But my brother tried to stop me from doing so. Although I ended up handing out hundreds and the major chunks to my brothers and sisters-in-law, the small gestures brought different and definitely warm feelings to me. Feeling the absence of desperation is like emerging into the sunlight from a dark cave.

Too bad, my father who brought us up as a single parent through some of the most devastating times of human history could not wait to see the time of relaxation. The only consolation to me is that they haven't flattened his grave. The land has become more and more precious along the Wei River Valley, the so-called Eight Hundred Li Qinchuan.

The old shanty houses of clay and logs are forever gone, newly erected are houses built with bricks from the foundation up with the front laid out as shops and the back as living quarters. Our village has about twenty thousand residents. It is a town rather than a village. Small businesses are flourishing there and folks have a great deal to be busy with daily. It was not long ago that selling anything but blood to make a buck was severely suppressed. O I was so happy to see that gone also are those vicious faces carrying out policies they themselves did not even understand.

Most Chinese are industrious people. Provided with opportunities, not many will starve to death as millions did in the early 1960s. People I met are not complaining about the disparity between the coastal cities and their village. They are going forward with what they have and glad to be allowed the opportunity.

My eyes become moist only when the airplane took off and when the yellow of the land became distant. No. I did not cry while burning paper money at my father's grave. Yes, I had been away for almost ten years and my old man passed away at age 58 six months after I left. I was happy that everyone is doing better, and better will be the only way they are heading, I hope.

October, 1994