If you want to experience racism and a healthy dose of microaggression, then Hong Kong is just the place for you. Black, brown or white and at some point, over the course of a few days, you’ll have something to report. Naturally, if you are Chinese, you can knock yourself out.
Mind you, regarding white people, who can blame them? We (the British) handed this veritable jewel in the South China Sea back to its Chinese overlords in 1997, and now have the temerity to harang President Xi over democracy in Hong Kong. We ran the place for 156 years, never established a democracy and left them to the mercy of China and the whims of the Chinese Communist Party in 1997. And, boy, are they going to town lately. Within living memory, we did not allow Chinese people to purchase properties on the coveted and exclusive Peak on Hong Kong Island.
We built this incredible place, a regional economic powerhouse, an entrepôt almost beyond compare and one of the most vibrant cities in the world. But we did that on the backs of Chinese labour, Chinese ingenuity and the Chinese love of money and material goods. In just over twenty years of coming here I have seen gigantic skyscrapers built in little over a year. Compare that with the six years I watched a small multi-storey car park on which construction began prior to my arrival, and had not finished six years later in a major city in the UK when I departed.
Most people would report the Hong Kongers to be smiling and helpful people. And, overall, they are. Especially if you move in the same circles as me: higher education institutions and high-rise bars. But move from the main drags and, for example, into the New Territories and it can be a very different story.
Black people barely exist in Hong Kong, they are very much disliked and the only place you will see gatherings of black people – invariably men – is in and around the seedy but very centrally located Chung King Mansions. This is an incredible place full of stalls selling all manner of tat on the ground floor below a block of very reasonably priced (with good reason) apartments.
Scattered around the upper reaches are some small and very cheap Indian restaurants, which are fun to visit. You are taken on a walk past places with such conglomerations of wiring that entering ‘Duke of Edinburgh mode’ is almost impossible to resist. I took my 16-year-old son on a tour once; he could not wait to get out and was gobsmacked that his old dad even knew of the existence of such places.
South Asians are more prominent on the streets around Chung King Mansions and in other strategic places but are to be avoided at all costs as they are always selling ‘copy watch’. A friend once took one up on an offer, but ended up parting with a great deal of money for a watch that had 32 days in the month. A very dear Mauritian friend was with me in Hong Kong, and I found him near the Star Ferry terminal holding a piece of paper and asking for directions. He was being completely ignored and could not work out why. I pointed to the copy watch sellers who he seemed to be mimicking perfectly. The penny dropped and he was not best pleased.
In the New Territories my wife and I and a colleague and I have been refused entry to empty restaurants, on the basis that they were ‘too full’. One central restaurant, notorious for not admitting westerners when they were busy, blatantly prioritising local Chinese let me in one Saturday night. I was accompanied by a Chinese colleague who was Canadian, spoke not a word of Chinese and was not remotely interested in her Chinese heritage.
One of the best incidents was with a mixed group in a high-rise restaurant when one of the Chinese ladies, rather an immature sort who spent the whole dinner sulking and looking at her phone, jabbered away in Cantonese to the waiter. I could see him looking around the table and got the distinct impression that she was referring to us in disparaging terms.
Unknown to me – and to our Chinese friend – one of our party a veritable English Rose who had kept her powder dry, was fluent in Cantonese. She had lived here her whole life. She addressed the waiter and the faces of the waiter and our friend became a picture of astonishment and despair. They had clearly been caught with their Cantonese pants down.
While I may move amongst the more cosmopolitan Hong Kongers, I often stay in areas where there are no westerners; they’re cheaper. I generally get on well here, and soon get known in the small shops where I pick up a beer before bedtime. But on my visit this week, I stayed in a new area in a chain hotel buried away up several back streets and a long walk from the train.
I got a typical reaction on entering the hotel foyer; the wee man behind the concierge desk was on his feet like a shot, approaching me at great speed and clearly intent on blocking my progress. The message was clear, without words (he spoke no English): “are you in the right place, perhaps I can help you find where you ought to be?” Disbelievingly, he allowed me to proceed to the reception desk, keeping his beady eye on me all the while until I entered the lift to go to my room.
Sure enough, in three days I didn’t spot a single gweilo (Cantonese for ‘white devil’) in the hotel which was huge and packed. The wee man and I ended up on nodding acquaintance as I made my way in and out of the hotel. They mean absolutely nothing by it, but also have no idea how it looks to those at the receiving end.
Speaking of ‘gweilos’, this is a term of abuse used among the locals to refer to us, white people. It is considered offensive and, at a friend’s wedding (he was white marrying a local girl) the registrar was overheard referring to ‘the gweilo’. He was lucky to leave with all his teeth.
There is now a beer in Hong Kong called Gweilo Beer. Remarkably, it is brewed by some westerners which just goes to show that we have a sense of humour.
Unless I am prevented from dining in a restaurant due to my colour, I tend to let the rest of the casual racism and microaggressions run off my back. After all, I adhere to Scottish comedian Leo Kearse’s definition of a microaggression as being an aggression that is so small you “shouldnae gae a fuck aboot it”.
Which all leads me to my latest entrepreneurial idea, which is to start a microbrewery in Manchester, where there is a substantial Chinese population and even a small China Town (how microaggressive is that!). I plan to name this new beer ‘Chinky’. I don’t envisage any problems with that…do you?
John Macnab is a nom de plume.
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Didn’t Bunter give 5 million HK Chinese the right to settle here?
Not sure about the Mancunian beer, how about, “Golden Rain” or “ChIPA”?
If people are racist abroad frankly it’s none of our business and if we need to visit then we should know in advance what to expect and not be surprised or outraged.