<A>Hong Kong Revisited

<A> Hong Kong Revisited

I guess I was never prepared for this trip. I knew I was coming back to Hong Kong in a vague sense, thinking I had seen everything and knew exactly what to expect. Now, as I travelled from the airport, I realised I was back in a place I'd never really left.

12 years ago, when I first came to Hong Kong, it was still a British colony. People felt fear and uncertainty about Hong Kong's return to China, and most wanted to emigrate to safer havens like Vancouver and Sydney. Hong Kong had always been living on borrowed time. In 1992, I was living near the old Kai Tak Airport and could see planes landing and taking off from my living room window. Now, taking the ultra-modern Airport Express from the new airport, I was surprised by the train announcements made in 3 different languages, Cantonese, English and Mandarin. Hong Kong had come of age. It has become a truly international city.

It was also in that small apartment in Prince Edward Road, as I watched the planes take to the sky, that I spent some of my happiest days with a Hong Kong girl I got to know in varsity back in the UK. We did all the tourist things, visited Temple Street with its interesting cheap goods, saw the dolphins at Ocean Park, went to visit the temple at Daiyushan, watched the sun go down the water at Clearwater Bay, and ate dinner at the Peak while the beautiful city continued to hum below us. I never wanted to go home. I was prepared to throw in my lot with this strange but wonderful place called Hong Kong. Alas, things were never meant to be. I had to go home, and soon afterwards we broke up. I vowed I would never set foot in Hong Kong for the next 12 years. Until now.

And now I look out the window of the airport express train, staring at the spanking new apartment buildings, bathed in the warm golden glow of a sub-tropical sun. I can't help but think that I had definitely left a part of me here all those years ago, even though I tried very hard not to think about it. Hong Kong has a way of making itself a home in your heart, even if you think you absolutely hate the loud way people talk, or the incessant traffic, or the cold impoliteness of a major global city. Deep down, Hong Kong never had an identity. People always treated the place as a temporary stop to make money, and go home, wherever that was. With the return to China, suddenly Hong Kong had found the anchor it was missing all this time. People began to realise that this was truly home. There was no need to run anywhere, anymore.

The airport express train reaches Hung Hom station. "Please carry all your baggage with you", said the announcement in dulcet tones. Yes, I thought to myself. That's what I'd been doing all these years - carry my baggage with me. Maybe, just maybe, this time I might finally be able to put all my baggage down.

Part 2

I take no comfort in the fact that my taxi driver thinks he is China's answer to Michael Schumacher. He zips down Central like a mad man possessed. Scraping past open-decked lorries full of vegetables from the New Territories with milimeters to spare, he takes me from Parklane Hotel in Causeway Bay to Cheong Kong Tower in record time; 10 minutes in peak hour traffic. By the time I reached for my wallet to pay him, I was a nervous wreck but glad to be alive.

I'm now back in Hong Kong for a working trip. When I was here the last time, I was an impecunious post-graduate student dreaming of making it big as a successful barrister. Now, 12 years later, I'm no richer and my dreams have long gone. As I sit down at my courtesy workspace next to the floor-to-ceiling window, in the shadow of the mighty Bank of China building, I wonder where those 12 years had gone. I am that green, naive young man again, looking at the glamour and indulgent lifestyles of the rich expatriates, riding in their Rolls Royces and attending the Hongkong Derby at Happy Valley, sipping from golden flutes of Veuve Cliquot while they sweltered in their Sunday best. Only now, instead of British foreigners living out their colonial dreams, it is the nouveau riche Chinese businessmen and women who are conspicuously enjoying the good life. The Rolls Royces are still there, parked outside the Peninsula Hotel like rows of black chariots waiting to go to war. No doubt, many have changed hands after the 1997 handover, the Great Chinese Takeaway I used to call it. Hong Kong remains the world's largest owners of Rolls Royces per capita, and I am sure the tycoons are still doing their daily business on gold-plated toilets and wearing 600 dollar socks. No, I'm not envious and never was. Hong Kong had always been the ultimate dream-weaver, and if you did not have it, all you had to do was work hard and make it.

I stared at the telephone and my mother's words repeated themselves over and over in my mind "She's happy now. Don't bother her. She doesn't want to see you anymore." Part of me wanted to believe that, to let go, but another part of me wondered about that girl who cried the night it was all over. I knew there was no reason to call her again, except to say hello and catch up as old friends might. The Peak is still there, after all these years. Surely it wouldn't mind if two long-separated friends stood there again as we did in 1992, and perhaps I could finally explain to her what really happened.

The phone rang a few times, and a female voice answered. It was her. Immediately, pictures of us together sprang to mind. Once again, we were spending an evening on the water's edge at Clearwater Bay, holding her hand while she slept, partly out of fatigue, partly out of a wish that she would wake up and it would all just be a bad dream. We spoke for a while, and she agreed to meet on my last day in Hong Kong before I left for the airport. She gave me a mobile number that I jotted down hastily, and she hung up. That was it. There was no emotion, no fireworks, no shouting matches. Just a simple conversation and the promise of a meeting. I would call her again to confirm the place and time.

The rest of the week went by like a blur. I hardly remember what I did, although I do remember doing some work. At nights, back in my hotel room, all I kept thinking about was the night when she asked me when I was returning to Hong Kong again. I told her I didn't know, in the tenderest way I could. She understood, and never asked me again. The truth was, I was scared. I didn't know whether I could succeed in such a place as Hong Kong. I was brought up in a different world, with different standards, and different values. I didn't want her to suffer with me if I did not succeed. I didn't tell her that the law firm that had given me the job offer had recently decided to close their Hong Kong office. I felt isolated and frightened. I was too young to think of anything else except go home. The truth was, I was a coward and didn't even have the guts to admit it.

On the last day of my working trip, I bade goodbye to my colleagues in the Hong Kong office, checked in my luggage at the Hong Kong Airport Express station, and wandered off to Tsim Sha Tsui with 4 hours to kill. When I got off the MTR, I took the Peninsula Hotel exit and came up into the open air. Hong Kong was business as usual. I looked up at the grand old dame and thought it would be nice if we could do what we always wanted to do but never did; have tea in there while overlooking the Hong Kong harbour.

I searched for a quiet place to make a phone call, away from the shouting of shopkeepers and giggling Japanese tourists. But no matter how many times I tried, I kept getting a message that the phone number was wrong. Perhaps I'd accidentally written the number wrongly in my haste. I tried different combinations, and twice got through to strangers who slammed the phone down on me unceremoniously. I tried calling the land line on which I had spoken to her when I first got to Hong Kong, but there was no reply. I started to panic, walking up Nathan Road blindly, hoping against hope that perhaps I might bump into her on the streets. I hated the thought that I might disappoint her again, that she might be at the end of her phone, waiting and waiting like she did all those years ago, for a call that never came. In my frustration, I was on the verge of calling the airline to cancel my flight home, when I remembered there was an important meeting the next day back in my office. I slipped into the nearest McCafe, away from the cold, and ordered a cappuccino. Then I found a seat near the window where I could keep watching the streets, watching for that familiar face that I'd never forgotten...

As the plane taxied down the runway, I realised it wasn't so bad after all. She was probably married now with two kids. One day she'd bring them to Ocean Park and she might tell them she once watched the dolphins with a friend a long time ago. And that would be enough for me.

END OF STORY