Sunday, September 30, 2007

Different Women, Different Fates

Like a lot of other teenagers from my generation who came from financially struggling families, my very first income-generating stint right after graduating from secondary school was tutoring. In those days of economic stringency, when newer handed-down clothes were already luxury items for me, a seventeen-year-old, the burden often fell squarely on the first-born child of cash-strapped families to find ways of contributing to the family coffer soonest possible, especially when the supposed breadwinner had never assumed the responsibility of feeding his offspring.

Anyway, even if one’s wish to find a tutoring job were urgent, whether one could quickly land an offer depended a lot on whether one had the right relations. I was fortunate to have a rich aunt (my father’s sister) who befriended a lot of rich tai-tais through mahjong playing, one of whom, through my aunt’s introduction, engaged me to tutor her nine-year old daughter for a monthly fee of HK$100. My mother used my first month’s income (I handed every cent of my income to my mum) to buy me my first ever new winter overcoat at the Dai Yuan department store (大元百貨公司) in Causeway Bay (situated at approximately where the Sogo department store now stands). It was a greenish-brown checkered knee-length woolen coat with fake-fur lining, bronze buckles and a hood and it was British made. I kept it for a long time.

Let’s turn back to my tutoring job. There was one particular episode that has distinctly stuck in my mind. One day when I showed up as usual at 3:00 pm at Mrs. C’s (my employer) residence, which was located at Fung Fai Terrace, Happy Valley (now redeveloped into Celeste Court), I discovered that the household had a TV taboo, which was whenever it showed any movie starring a certain Hong Kong actress (I’m not disclosing the name for obvious reasons), the TV set had to be turned off at once. As I entered the luxury apartment, I heard Mrs. C shout her command grouchily to the servant who was dusting the sofas, “Turn off the TV right now! Who turned it on?” Although I thought it strange at the time, wondering nonetheless what on earth could have made Mrs. C so mad, the matter slipped my mind until towards the end of my assignment, when I learned about the background story from my aunt.

It turned out that Mr. C, who was a very successful businessman, had been keeping the actress as his mistress in a separate residence with his wife’s knowledge. The actress was very famous too and had played the leading lady role in numerous Cantonese movies, opposite actors like 張英, 胡楓. It goes without saying that she was much younger and prettier than Mrs. C. In those days, rich men keeping concubines and mistresses was almost seen as a symbol of status in a male dominant society. There was little choice for the poor wives: they either had to play deaf and dumb or face the harsh reality of divorce, which, other than bringing on ignominy and disgrace, would mean the end of economic security and possibly being alienated from their own children. It was really not a choice for women who had practically no earning capacity. While I sympathized with Mrs. C, it also dawned on me that education of the self, through conventional or unconventional channels, is the sine qua non for females to gain their economic independence.

I guess Hong Kong women are lucky to have become liberated, having come a long way from those dark days of male chauvinism. However, this brings to mind the still lurid situation of many women in Southeast Asia, especially in the Philippines. Last night I happened to be watching a documentary made by CBC on the subject of prostitution in the Philippines, which made me sick to the stomach. Girls as young as twelve to fourteen are forced into prostitution by abject poverty. They are held in captivity in dirty cubicles and are made to “service” as many as fifteen customers a day. There is just no hope for them to be saved from the inhumane scourge of a wicked society that is bent on decimating females. They often die at a young age from AIDS or other diseases. Can such a society be called civilized, or even close?

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Myanmar Near the Tipping Point?

Perhaps it’s no surprise that in the face of long-time political oppression and abject poverty, the Burmese people’s deep-seated anger has finally erupted in the form of street protests led by the monks. Everything happens for a reason. In Myanmar (current name for Burma), decades of gross social and economic inequalities under the rule of a repressive and corrupt military government are very near, if they have not already reached, a tipping point.

The only twist is that, according to Amy Chua’s “World on Fire”, since so-called market-oriented policies were introduced in 1989, reversing three decades of socialist central planning, ethnic Chinese who make up about 5 percent of Myanmar’s population, in collusion with the military generals, have been the impetus in worsening the society’s imbalances.

Here are some excerpts from the book that may help us understand better the background situation and underlying sentiments there:-

“Free markets are supposed to lift all boats, and indeed often do. But this is distinctly not the perception of Burma’s roughly 30 million ethnic Burman majority. In their view, markets and economic liberalization have led to the domination and looting of their country by a relative handful of ‘outsiders’, chiefly ethnic Chinese, in symbiotic alliance with SLORC (State Law and Order Restoration Council)……..”

“Meanwhile, just below the surface, anti-Chinese hostility seethes among the Burman majority. As hatred of SLORC intensifies, hatred for the Chinese intensifies as well, not without justification: Crony capitalistic relationships between SLORC generals and Chinese entrepreneurs, not to mention arms sales from China, have been critical in propping up Burma’s reviled ruling junta. But in the current reign of fear, there is no avenue for venting resentment, whether against SLORC, the rich Chinese, or the market-oriented policies that have allowed both of these groups to make hundreds of millions while indigenous Burmans become an increasingly subjugated underclass in their own country……”

“It is an understatement to say that, in terms of financial and human capital, the vast majority of indigenous Burmans, roughly 69 percent of the population, cannot compete with the country’s 5 percent Chinese minority. Three-quarters of the Burmans live in extreme rural poverty, typically engaging in paddy production or subsistence farming…….”

“….as ethnic Chinese developers in the nineties snapped up all the prime real estate in Mandalay – making fast fortunes as property values doubled and tripled in the chaotic new markets – indigenous Burmese Mandalayans were pushed further and further away from their native homes. (In 1990, SLORC had already forcibly relocated dissidents and Mandalayan monks.)………”

“Today, ethnic Chinese Burmese own nearly all of Mandalay’s shops, hotels, restaurants, and prime commercial and residential real estate. The same is more or less true in Rangoon……”

Let’s just keep our fingers crossed that the monks’ peaceful marches will not lead to violent clamp down by the rulers, yet again. It might be time for the Chinese living in Myanmar to do some soul-searching and hopefully such incidents might help them realize that happiness built upon others’ pain cannot last long.

Sunday, September 23, 2007

Tea Time!

If Hong Kong people were asked what aspect of English culture had affected their personal lives most from the colonial days, I guess varied answers would pop up, depending on their own experiences. My own answer would be, apart from the English language which I love, the uniquely English habit to enjoy afternoon tea, which I had learned at a very tender age, although not directly from the English but from a distant uncle (a second cousin of my father’s) and aunt.

When I was a small kid, my mother used to take me and my two siblings to family gatherings on some weekends at the home of this uncle and aunt who lived in a spacious flat on Robinson Road with their adopted teenage son and a servant. The usual program would be: the grown-ups would play mahjong in the living room while the kids would watch self-made mock movies created by our cousin in a bedroom.

This uncle had been educated in England and worked as a lawyer in a well-known law firm in Central. He liked to wear the Chinese-style “cheong-sam” when he went to the office. As he had a lanky physique, it worked perfectly for him. When he was home though, he would opt for the more comfortable Chinese-style front-buttoned top and pants. His wife, my aunt, liked to wear “cheong-sam” even at home and was always softspoken and gracious. The furniture in their home was mostly made of red wood, and the walls were decorated with Chinese calligraphy and paintings.

My younger sister and brother and I always loved such gatherings, as we had the chance to play with our cousin who was obsessed with making mock movies and who never failed to surprise us with his new creations. Another reason was that this was the only household we knew then who served English-style afternoon tea.

Each time we were there, at four o’clock sharp, Ah Yuk (the servant) would call the kids to the dining room, where the table would be set for tea, complete with an English silver teapot, fine china tea cups and saucers, dessert plates, a jug of milk, a bowl of sugar, a big tin of English assorted biscuits and a plate of egg tarts and cakes. The adults would stop their mahjong playing and join us. While they would be busy chatting away, we, the kids, would raid the tin of biscuits with gusto. When competition became keen over one favorite sort, it would usually be resolved by way of “stone, paper, scissors”.

Those occasional treats for us ceased when I became a teenager. As Hong Kong’s economy was starting to improve, western-style restaurants sprang up everywhere. There was one in Wanchai, on the street (天樂里) that connected Leighton Road to Hennessy Road (on which Central-bound trams from Happy Valley run), that became my favorite in my high school years, although it was only on special occasions that I was taken there to have afternoon tea. It had nice western décor with dark blue carpets and upholstery (I can’t remember the name of the restaurant) and served an afternoon tea set that included English tea and waffles with butter and syrup.

These afternoon tea experiences left an indelible imprint on my memory. Throughout my adult life, nothing delights me more than the simple pleasure of having a nice cup of black tea with milk and sugar and some pastries in a lazy afternoon on weekends and holidays. Even the world-wide craze for Starbucks coffee and their fanciful drinks hasn’t been able to change this afternoon tea habit of mine!

Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Storm Looming

Recommended reading:

U.S. Banks Brace for Storm Surge as Dollar and Credit System Reel
By Mike Whitney (Counterpunch)

An excerpt:-

"A more powerful tsunami is about to descend on the United States where many of the banks have been engaged in the same practices and are using the same business model as Northern Rock. Investors are no longer buying CDOs, MBSs, or anything else related to real estate. No one wants them, whether they’re subprime or not. That means that US banks will soon undergo the same type of economic gale that is battering the U.K right now. The only difference is that the U.S. economy is already listing from the downturn in housing and an increasingly jittery stock market. That’s why Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson rushed off to England yesterday to see if he could figure out a way to keep the contagion from spreading."

It must be pretty serious business if the U.K. bank run could incite the U.S. Treasury Secretary to take the trip there!