5
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SIX o’clock that evening I was sitting giddily on a wall beside the harbor. The sun was finally sinking, thank God. It had nearly done for me. I never wanted to see the bloody thing again.
Later I was to learn that I was in Kowloon, more precisely, looking out towards Stonecutters Island. A crowded street market adjoined the harbor where I sat. Farther along a mass of huge junks was crammed into the embrace of a mole. Between me and Hong Kong Island itself lay a massive white liner with slender twin funnels in primrose yellow—hope for survival? Desultorily I tried to feel cool as the hawkers slopped about running their barrows homeward, clack-clack-clack in plastic sandals. A few pai dogs were scavenging in the lessening light. They looked as furtive as I felt. I’d settle for a grubby cabbage leaf; the dogs could have the bits of raw gristle in the puddles. I’d never seen open drains before. I’d decided to wait when I saw the crowded vegetable stalls thinning, the fruit barrows pulling out. Nothing leaves rubbish—edible if grotty—
like a market. At least I’d be able to wash the grime from any wholesome bits. There was a water standpipe twenty yards off; hawkers had been using it. And I had my eye on a scatter of overripe oranges strewn about. I felt weird, practically off my head. My worst fear was that I was dulled, too stupefied to be worried.
Then an even worse thing happened.
As those small green-canvassed lorries loaded up and the iron-rimmed hand barrows wheeled off, other people appeared.
“No,” I groaned, aghast.
Before my horrified eyes they moved deliberately into the space, collected the rubbish and set up house. I stared, appalled. In less than a minute, practically before my stupid brain could take it in, the street was a mobile town and empty of calories. Packing cases were tilted end-on. Strips of canvas and a stick became a dwelling for crouching people. An old woman crawled into a tent made of two box lids and a cardboard door.
Some brought lanterns, transforming the hectic thoroughfare into a Caravaggio scene of golden light and shadows. It happened all in a few moments, and I was still starving.
Enviously but mystified I watched a skeletal man in shorts and singlet begin scraping the kiklings from discarded oranges into a can and carefully spreading the peel on the pavement. Little children ran to queue noisily at the standpipe. They carried yokes from which battered tins dangled, and nattered laughingly as they filled their containers.
Hong Kong’s water carriers, average age about six.
Even now I don’t know if I was hallucinating, but I saw one of the most sordid events of my life. Threadbare children grouped round a gutter. Dully I watched. They dipped a string in a filthy syrup tin and lowered the string through the grid. They lay in the gutter, peering down and calling excitedly. Then they pulled the string up slowly. It was coated with dangling cockroaches. They scraped them off into a jar. Four or five repeats and the jar was heaving, full. They took it away in triumph. I hate to think what… I turned away, nauseous. Poverty kills civilization even faster than it kills love.
Dejected and weary, I rose to scavenge elsewhere. Strangers, it seemed, got no change out of Hong Kong.
When I’d finally tottered into Kowloon, that vibrant nucleus of the densest aggregation of mankind on this earth, I’d been down but not quite out. The spectacle was exhilarating. Even in my worn condition I had felt the excitement that Hong Kong has.
It is hilly, color, brilliance, hectic.
It’s an irregular peninsula sticking out southwards from China’s Kwangtung Province, with Kowloon at the tip and a number of islands scattered offshore. The main island, but not the biggest, is Hong Kong proper, the nearerness of which creates the most magnificent deep-water harbor. Victoria —which everybody calls Central District—holds Hong Kong Island’s main population, but townships abound. The areas away from Kowloon and the island are the New Territories. At first I’d no idea of direction and roamed the pavements, desperate simply to stay alive among cavalry-charge traffic maddening itself by incessant hooters.
The tall close buildings cast a little shade, the sun closing perilously on the meridian. I noticed a Chinese habit, elderly thin gentlemen robed in long blackish priestly garments walking with small leather note-cases held to shield their bald heads. But such casual pedestrians were rare. It was a shambles of haste: thinlegged porters in shorts and singlets hurrying past in their indefatigable trotwalk carrying boxes five times too heavy, heat and more heat from that head-splitting sunshine, bright noise, shouts, lots of laughter, and all adazzle. Imagine a zillion cars, lorries, handcarts, markets seemingly rioting in a fast-forward scrum, fumes from screaming engines, a world at maximum revs in crowded streets lined by shops whose very adverts climbed in vertical slabs up to a transparent heaven. Above, balconies hung with signs, washing, straggly green fronds. Here below, hawkers were everywhere. In ten yards you could have bought watches, any leather item you’d ever heard of, crockery, a complete outfit, cameras, from pavement sellers crammed along the curb. Sun-scrawny individuals rivaled giant multiple stores by selling from bicycles. The shops were open, counters unglassed and no doors. I’d never seen so many different sorts of vegetables, fruits, spices, jewelry, clothes. I found I couldn’t even tell what some shops were selling, so tangled and scrunged their arrangements. And they went up onto the next floor, and the next after that, business hurtling skyward.
My natural wit returned sluggishly when I began to notice grand hotels. I decided to raise my game and remembered good old garrulous Goodman’s card, which I found in my top pocket. His office (“General & Art Import/ Export”) was in Princes Building, wherever that was. I tried it on at the Peninsula Hotel but got rebuffed at the three-glass double doors by an army of pale-blue liveried bellboys, and left between the two giant Dogs of Fo which gape forever at the fountains. The Shangrila was as bad, though if I’d been resident I’d have been delighted to know they gave the elbow to scruffs like me, if you follow. I got as far as glimpsing the Carrara-marble staircase of the Regent and scented the living orchids before I was out wandering in that oven sun. Hopeless.
By afternoon I was dead on my feet. I’d seen a small hotel in Nathan Road calling itself the Golden Shamrock. I badly needed a telephone, but I’d no money. If only I could con a call out of some desk clerk to Del Goodman, I might be able to… what? I didn’t know. All I knew was that Macao now seemed farther off than ever. By then I’d blundered into a shopping arcade where I drank in the cooled air for an hour among the glittering counters. It was there that a vast illuminated wall display mapped the entire colony for me. I used its computerized cursor to highlight Princes Building, then, heart sunk, the Macao Ferry Terminus. Both were across the harbor, on Hong Kong Island itself. They might as well be on the moon.
