By Sonia FL Leung
I first arrived at Chungking Mansions in October 1992. I had just turned eighteen and found a job in a souvenir shop at the Star Ferry terminal. The shop was inside the Tsim Sha Tsui (TST) pier for the ferry to Central, which is the central business district of Hong Kong across the harbor. Two years before, I had run away from home and Hong Kong and wandered about in Taiwan. But I had dreams to pursue that required me to restart in Hong Kong. So, I returned.
Located at the harbor end of Nathan Road, in the Hong Kong area of TST, Kowloon, Chungking Mansions appeared gray and abused. A corridor on the ground floor connected the mansions’ five blocks. Together, they became the unfavored children among the manicured, luxury hotels such as the Peninsula and Sheraton. Unfavored, as I was among my fine siblings.
From a tourist guidebook, I learned about the guesthouses in Chunking Mansions. I chose a bigger one on the seventeenth floor, Block D of the mansions, and went to check it out. Once I ascended the few steps off Nathan Road, a pungent smell – Indian curry mixed with Chinese salted fish – attacked my nostrils. The air on the ground floor was heavy and humid, just standing there amid the horde I could feel the moisture clinging to my clothes. It felt thick as I breathed it in, coating the inside of my throat. Small groups consisting of Hong Kong’s ethnic minorities, particularly South Asians and Middle Easterners gathered around chatting, waiting, or conducting business. With my complexion, darker than that of many Chinese, I blended in well. However, this fact made me feel a prickle of something deep inside my abdomen. The ground floor brimmed with shops and clamor. I did not mind the overwhelming noise; I was in search of my voice.
The distance from the entrance to the lift lobby of Block D was about one hundred steps. I counted them because I did not want to get lost. The space in between heaved with men. A slight girl, I had to be brave and brace myself to push my way through the throng. I endeavored to avoid touching anyone, or to be touched along the way.
I decided to stay at that seventeenth-floor-guesthouse for three reasons. Firstly, it was the cheapest I could get in town: HK$45 (around USD$5.80) per night while the fairly inexpensive Imperial Hotel next door was, for example, HK$500. Secondly, no deposit was required. If you paid before noon, you would have a bed for the night. Lastly, no Chinese people were in sight. I felt freer. Chinese people, or at least the ones I knew, were judgmental, including or especially my own family members – I felt like an insect, albeit a small one, in their eyes, like Samsa transformed in Kafka’s The Metamorphosis.
The guesthouse had a large lobby with a reception area up front and a guests’ recreational zone at the back with a beat-up TV and sofa. The place was bustling with life as an incessant stream of guests arrived and departed every day. I became almost invisible. It suited me well as I just wanted to blend in, a translucent drop in a sea of colors.
There were two single rooms and six shared rooms with bunkbeds. One large shared-room was mixed sex, three were men’s, and two were women’s. I selected a lower bunkbed in the most inner women’s room and paid each day around 11 am to keep the same bed, and to make sure that the few belongings I had remained there. Once I forgot to pay on time, and my belongings ended up scattered around the corner next to the rough, wooden reception table.
Behind that table sat a mean-looking lady from the Philippines. In her forties, Marianne had a hysterically high-pitched voice that made every hair on my body stand on end. She wore thick make-up like a mask with a malicious facial expression, which made talking to her a terrifying experience. I often wondered how the true face of Marianne might have looked before she became a maid in Hong Kong.
Maids from the Philippines or Thailand or Vietnam in Hong Kong, which back then was a British Colony, were at the bottom of the social hierarchy. My family had come to Hong Kong from Fujian province in China, so as a girl from the mainland, or a dai luk mui, I understood the unfortunate fate of the domestic workers as I too experienced discrimination as an outsider. Whenever I saw Marianne’s face, I often pondered if I would grow to be like her, putting on so much make-up as a mask of my own. I worried that the mask would become a part of me and I would be unable to recognize myself afterwards.
There was another guesthouse keeper named Jimmy, an African man in his fifties. His voice, deep and dense, sounded like the rumble of distant thunder, matching his slow-moving macho body. He had a way of walking that made him seem almost like a robot, as if his brain was struggling to instruct each foot to take the next step. Marianne and Jimmy were complimentary opposites like concave and convex; they got on well with each other and made a great pair of watchdogs loyally guarding the guesthouse. Nobody there wanted to mess with them by delaying payment.
One night upon arriving at the entrance of Chungking Mansions after work around 11 pm, I realized that my block, Block D, was out of electricity again. It happened once every month or two because the illicit guesthouses mushroomed inside the mansions, which were originally designed for residential purposes only. I went through a seedy back door, got to the staircase and started walking up to my seventeenth-floor guesthouse. Faint yellow lights from outside crept through the small, portholes along the way as I climbed.
My parents had an arranged marriage. Father fell fervently in love with Mother at first sight but his love was never reciprocated. They both came from reputable families in their hometowns, where divorce was rare, seen as an un-filial, shameful event. They did not dare bring disgrace to their families and my father would never let my mother go, anyhow. Their unhappy marriage took a turn for the worse when they immigrated to Hong Kong as they both lost their prestigious jobs and became factory workers. My parents and four of us – an elder sister, an elder brother, a younger sister, and me – ended up living in a subdivided hut in a slum. Sometimes, my parents directed their antagonism against me. Maybe it was because I was darker-skinned and hyper-sensitive. I got on their nerves. And when your parents disliked you, your siblings alienated you. So, I grew up as an unfavored child. Even when I studied hard and came top at the top of the class, still no attention would be granted to me by my parents, and my brother and sisters would not befriend me. I was a shadow at home.
When I was thirteen, a youth center coach discovered me. He told me that I was a very talented table-tennis player, and that he could get me on to the official Hong Kong Junior Table Tennis Team. For a whole year, he became a doting father to me, kept me by his side, and trained me hard. He also drove me to enter table-tennis tournaments, quite a few of which I won. He often praised me and gave me gifts.
Then one late afternoon, during our usual practice time, he took me to his home and broke me.
As I recalled this memory while I climbed the stairs within Chung King Mansions, suddenly the foot that I raised to put forward caught the edge of the step above, and I almost tripped over. Holding onto the wall, I steadied myself. Ever since that incident, my reactions to situations had gone to extremes in strange, unpredictable ways. I did not care if I was in a perilous situation, like I was in now, ascending alone a dark staircase that was an infamous place for criminal activities such as drug trades or sex deals. But I would become frantic with worry and stress in a busy public place. If anyone accidentally brushed against the bare skin of my arm, I was ready to scream.
Luckily, I reached my floor safely that night and many of the other blackout nights.
*
About two months into my stay at the guesthouse, I had made three girlfriends. One was Kate, who was English. She had been there for a while and worked as an English tutor at a small private language institute nearby. Kate was timid, tall, and proper. A tiny mole nestled on the right corner of her lips. It was visible only because her skin was so pearly white. If I had her skin, my parents might think more of me. They might consider that I was born superior, a pearl to them, rather than my dark skin that made me look like a peasant’s daughter. I stood out from my finer, whiter-skinned brother and sisters. They belonged to my parents who, back in the mainland, were “the educated ones,” who only worked indoors and enjoyed higher social status.
Another friend I made was Julie, an Australian. She was sporty and chirpy. We often walked down Nathan Road which took us from TST, at the southern part of Kowloon to Sham Shui Po, in the northwest. When we reached Sham Shui Po, we could eat more because food was cheaper. We talked and laughed louder as people were not so uptight and pretentious like the ones in TST in the day time. During those outings, I could become a jolly visitor, just like Julie. At times, though, I did find traces of shadow in her eyes when she was smiling. Maybe that was what brought us together – perhaps we were both striving to revive the blithe and carefree girls inside ourselves. We wanted to feel that it was ok to be our true selves again.
The third friend I made there was Park, from South Korea. She was stoutly built and square-faced. The peculiar opacity of Park’s dark eyes attested to her private nature. It was very unusual for a Korean to travel unaccompanied, let alone a young woman like Park. But then she could have said the same thing about me. Park kept to herself most of the time. Though, at times when our eyes met, I nodded and smiled to her. She subtly did the same to me. Then she started to bid me goodnight before she climbed up to her bunk and I made sure to greet her when she came down the next morning. Sometimes when I came back from work, I found sachets of Korean rice crackers or candies next to my pillow. More often, we talked with all kinds of wild gestures to facilitate our communication in English. We also helped one another to connect with the others. The mutual acceptance, respect, and bond that I developed with Park were things I always longed to have with my sisters.
I loved Park, Julie, and Kate, but when we were all in the same room, it sometimes felt like the bunkbeds, the ceiling, and walls were closing in on me. There was no window. I crawled into my lower bunkbed and curled in there like a little trapped mouse.
Later, I met three guys: Takeshi from Japan, Ricky from England, and Marcus, a German. Takeshi was a tousle-haired, boyish good-looking young man with soulful eyes. He had a mild stutter. I liked listening to him. He was like an elder brother I yearned for – so tender and caring. Ricky was ruggedly handsome with a head of shoulder length hair that parted in the middle. He often let the strands of his front hair drape down like curtains covering up most of his face. On the rare occasions when he was standing so close to me that I could feel his warmth, my heart trampolined. Takeshi and Ricky were in their early twenties. Marcus was in his thirties. He was tall, broad and muscular. Combined with his stern facial expression, he looked intimidating. I kept a distance from him. But when I did hear him speak, his voice was surprisingly sonorous and sincere. It softened his appearance and shortened the distance between us. For some reason, he seemed to want so hard to lose himself that he took drugs regularly.
Ricky and Marcus had been boarding in this guesthouse for a few months already when I arrived. Their respective lower bunkbeds were wrapped vehemently with indigo sheets as if it was their most sacred and inviolable property. They existed in their own wonderland. But whenever I needed to speak to Marianne, one of them would appear next to me. And when one of them emerged, Marianne suddenly noticed. She looked up from her seat and listened. When she replied, her pitch lowered. It worked like magic every time. Maybe Marianne was in love with them.
*
One night, it was Park’s birthday and my gang decided to celebrate with her. Ricky revealed a secret back staircase from the seventeenth floor to the rooftop of Chungking Mansions. We waited until after midnight when Jimmy, the night watcher, retreated to his chamber behind the reception table. Marcus brought a bottle of whisky and two bottles of wine. Takeshi took sake. Park carried some Korean rice wine in paper packs. Julie, Kate, Ricky, and I contributed beers.
When we reached the end of the back staircase, Ricky pushed open a wrought-iron gate. We got out and found a rooftop patio. It was surrounded by walls that were below my waist. The walls were broad, maybe about 30 cm or 12 inches wide. I walked forward, stopped at the front wall and found flat overhanging eaves that prevented me from seeing Nathan Road right below. Looking out, I saw Peking Road extended exuberantly ahead, the playful neon lights mixed with bar-hoppers, party-goers, and insomniacs conveying the effervescent nightlife of Hong Kong.
The late night air felt cool, though a sense of humidity that was mixed with the anxieties of the city clung to one’s skin. The heavens stood high, grand, nonchalant. The stars immersed themselves in the striking Hong Kong skyline. The open space stood in sharp contrast to the low-ceilinged, congested guesthouse a floor below. I stared into the wondrous void above and felt my muscles relaxing, letting go of my existential fear and concerns. I realized there was this bigger world out here where I belonged. The atmosphere vibrated with my heartbeat – full of vitality. The lightly salted breeze from Victoria Harbour embraced me and my gang.
We sat on the floor in the middle of the roofed yard, forming a circle around the drinks. Marcus held up his lighter, lit it in front of Park, and asked her to make a wish. Park lowered her head, put her palms together in a prayer pose, and did so. We clapped and sang Happy Birthday. Her eyes shone, her face glowed. She winked at me before the light went out. I put my arm around her shoulders, and she tilted her head to meet mine. We sat connected and contented.
We grabbed our drinks and chattered away. At some point, I gave my left inner thigh a quick pinch to make sure that I was not dreaming – that I was on top of something for a change. TST, the most glamorous district in the Kowloon peninsula existed below my feet. From Da Tai, which literally means “a big rice paddy,” the prefecture where I was born, to Nanan, the hometown of my parents, to Hong Kong, then to Taiwan, and now the top of TST – I felt opportunities lay everywhere, and I would not just survive, but thrive.
Marcus got up. He gave us a Nazi salute and marched the Hitler march. I was shocked. The fact that he was German and did that made the whole thing look creepy. But I said nothing. Julie sprang to her feet and joined the march. Others, including me, laughed – a brief, mirthless chuckle. Since I was a child, I had felt lost and alone. After the sexual assault, my emotional world shut down as I sentenced myself to solitary confinement. I told no one about the incident, including my family. Keeping it all to myself, I built a jail and locked myself in. Now, for the first time, I felt that my strength was returning to me, and that it was possible for me to push the door open and step out. I did want to get out. I wanted to belong. Like someone who had languished in a dark, cold, damp prison cell for so long and was frail but desperate to break free, I was going to reach for the hand that was offered without asking questions. But I felt Marcus’s marching was offensive and that I should have told him so. The weak-me was afraid to voice my disagreement, fearing that I might be alienated. It would not be for many more years that I found my voice and strength to break the silence.
Takeshi started to hum a beautiful Japanese folk song. His voice was softly mellifluous. A sense of serenity seeped through my skin traveling all the way into my heart. Others were also mesmerized by his melancholy melody as we quieted down and listened. The song faded. Worries dispersed with it. It was like when I finished reading a Greek tragedy and felt that my life was not so unbearable. The air became crisp and calm. It was a delicious moment of surprise sensation that felt like the moment the tip of your tongue touches an ice cube or a slice of lime and its effect ripples through your entire body.
Ricky picked up the beat afterwards. He began by cracking a few light jokes about his old life back in London, stealing cars to get his father’s attention. He spoke as if the events did not belong to him, and as if he tried to keep himself away from that other self – the self that seemed at once intimate and alien to him. Then he went on to tackle some edgier issues, such as the similarities and differences between the English, Scottish, Welsh, and Northern Irish. It was my introduction to the United Kingdom. I realized that those four kinds of British people did not really speak to each other in the guesthouse where I was staying. Most Hong Kong people came from Guangdong province, versus, we, the Fujianese who mostly speak Hokkien, are ngoi saang jan, “people from other provinces,” the outsiders. We learn Cantonese and try to fit in. But our accent almost always betrays us and attracts inquisitive or worse, denigrating looks. I turned to Kate and smiled sadly. She put her arm around me and gently rocked me from side to side.
Realizing that I had people to turn to and was no longer the lonely fourteen-year-old I once was generated joyous rapture in me. Such rapture propelled me to stand up and walk toward the short wall in the front yard. There was a brick balustrade. I took off my shoes and climbed on top of the wall. Its surface was gravelly with small rocks that stabbed at the soles of my feet. I managed to steady myself and rose. Spreading my arms, I took a few baby steps forward and quivered like a fledgling. Park and Kate came over and stayed close to me.
The fourteen-year-old me felt suicidal after the sexual assault. The rooftop of my secondary school building was quite high up as our school was built on top of a hill. Many times, I tried to figure out a way to reach that rooftop. It would be good to eradicate the screams in my head by one jump. But then I heard a song that begins as follows.
“Don’t ask me where I come from
My hometown is far away
Why do you wander
Wander afar
…”
It was The Olive Tree – a folksong sung by Taiwanese singer Chyi Yu and its lyrics came from a poem by Taiwanese poet/writer San Mao. The song called out to me. It gave me permission to depart, to wander, to live. Hence, I decided to run away to Taiwan in hopes of reinventing myself.
A gust of wind came. I swayed and cried. The rest of my gang ran over. Kate seized my forearm while Park grabbed at my leg. Julie, Takeshi, Marcus, and Ricky stayed close by. My body recovered its equilibrium. Knowing that my friends were there and cared for me buoyed up my spirits. I stood back up, taller and steadier than before. And I gave my gang a grin. They returned it with broad smiles. Taking a gleeful glance at the glimmering road ahead, I drew a deep breath, turned to them and jumped. I landed on the yard and in the outstretched arms of Park. Others joined and encircled me. I felt like a lustrous, unscarred pearl protected by the shell of my friends.
Later, we sat atop the short wall and looked out at the harbour. I closed my eyes and imagined the dawn that would come – the sky resembled a prism with all the colors blended perfectly into each other, the sun peeking out of the horizon and its brilliant rays shined brightly, the glistening reflection of the sun on the ocean. My heart swelled with awe and excitement.
Sonia FL Leung is a Hong Kong-based writer. She recently completed her first book, a memoir titled That Olive Tree in Our Dreams, and is exploring publication opportunities. She holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from the City University of Hong Kong.