“Please be considerate,” says the label on Macau Tatler, “and put the magazine back on the stand after reading.”

Now which is it to be? They want me to be considerate to other people? Or they want me to return this directory of asses so other innocent wretches risk seeing the most sickening hagiography of Florinda Ho (“City’s most stylish scion”) and the most nightmare-inducing photos of “Vegas-style showman” Steve Wynn airbrushed and photoshopped into a grinning, over-tanned, perpetually young cartoon character?  When there are already another four copies of the thing on the shelves? I resolve to do my civic duty to the full and smuggle the publication out of Mix and, as plastic wrappers say, ‘dispose of thoughtfully’.

Yes, Mix. The smoothies, juice and wraps place just a few doors down from the IFC Mall branch of Pacific Coffee, where wild American friend Odell drags me to start the day. He is boycotting our longstanding morning hangout on the grounds that recent rearrangements of the Pacific Coffee furnishings make it much harder for him to commandeer substantial quantities of paper napkins. The tissues are now stored right under the nose of the cashier, who stands ready to rap the knuckles of cheap, thieving scumbags with a heavy spoon.

We will soon be back, I suspect. The ex-Mormon looks up at the unfamiliar and trendy range of products on the board behind the counter and finds himself drawn to an indigo-pink-greenish concoction of blueberry, banana, raspberry sherbet, apple juice and (allegedly) ‘immunity-energy boost’. “I want one,” he tells me, “but I’m damned if I’m going to ask for it.” I know how he feels. It has an embarrassing name, which no self-respecting person could possibly bring himself to utter out loud to a stranger. And, as with all such drinks here, you must choose from Wee, Wow and Woah sizes. Odell overcomes the problem by pointing: “That one – no the one next to it – third one down on the left with the purple lumps.”

“Oh!” says the Nepalese serving girl, “the Dr Feel Good Zen Smoothie!” To which my friend replies with the world’s shortest ever ‘Mm’.

Torn between the Cold Zapper and Liquid Sunshine Power Smoothies, I plump for an espresso.

I find myself mulling over why Macau, with a population of half a million – less than Shatin – has its own edition of this grubby publication. Who puts the tat in Tatler? Lines of smiling, champagne-clutching, Teutonic-looking men in suits with slightly disturbing ribbons and medals round their necks. They probably aren’t storing phials of Heinrich Himmler’s DNA in a cellar somewhere, but they look like they are. Bar landlord Allen Zeman and property developer Cecil Chao attend the birthday party of “youthful looking” Michael Wong (no idea). Burly mainlanders with newly-made money rub shoulders with pouting Canto-bims, Latin Euro-trash and various people presumably sired by casino mogul Stanley Ho. Articles about boutiques, galleries and chefs mingle seamlessly with ads for the same. Has anything more futile ever appeared in print? I would ask who buys it, but the fact that IFC Mall Mix had five copies before one went missing suggests that distributing the magazine is like getting rid of construction waste.

At least it is authentic, professional pretentiousness. My heart sinks when I see an advertorial in today’s Standard puffing up various steak houses around town, illustrated with the usual slabs of shiny meat and bovine-featured chefs. We are told that one place, the imaginatively named Steak House at the InterContinental, offers a choice of 10 ‘gourmet knives’, including Laguiole of France and Kershaw Shun of Japan. And customers may choose from ‘eight exotic sea salts from around the world’, including Hawaiian Alaea, Himalayan pink salt (from which sea?) and French fleur de sel smoked with chardonnay oak chips. And then there’s the grape, balsamic, smoked garlic and other Dr Feel Good Zen mustards. This is fake pretentiousness. They’re pretending to be pretentious to make a fast buck. Does their chardonnay oak smoked salt come in a pepper-type mill, as if freshly ground sodium chloride has more flavour? I bet it does. You won’t find that at Michael Wong’s birthday party.

He proudly announces that, after years of scrabbling around for freelance work, he now has a real job with a real public relations agency. Not just any PR firm, either, but Ogilvy. “The best in the business,” he assures me. He is master of his own flashy cubicle on the 23rd floor of The Center and living in a walk-up apartment in the salubrious surroundings of Mosque Street.

I ask him what account he is working on, and a slightly evil grin spreads across his hairy face. “A special project,” he tells me. “A thoroughly unpopular group of people in Hong Kong have finally worked out that everyone hates their guts, and we’re going to tell them why and see if we can help them out.”

I am intrigued as to who these ostracized folk might be. “Not the Jehovah’s Witnesses?” I ask him as we pass the famous tree to which Mid-Levels residents nail the cult’s irritating missionaries by the ears.

“Nope,” he replies.

“Hmm… It wouldn’t be Civil Servants?  No, no – they’re too insensible to public opinion, and too busy filling in their Air-Conditioning Allowance claim forms.  So it must be… Not the Lan Kwai Fong bar owners whining away about 7-Eleven taking all their business by not ripping off consumers?”

“Nope,” comes the grinning response.

“How about Park N Shop? The supermarket everyone loves to loath?”

“Ah! Well, you’re getting a little bit close there,” declares the antipodean reputation management consultant.

As we approach the bottom of the hill, I look up at his office building. Built by Cheung Kong, part of tycoon Li Ka-shing’s empire. “Oh good grief,” I blurt out, “not the property cartel?”

“Bingo!” He slaps my shoulder. “Yeah, the Real Estate Developers Association has hired us to do what we call a ‘perception audit’.” He notices my slight bemusement. “Hey, the first step is recognizing that you have a problem! You know REDA doesn’t even have a website?”

Ogilvy, he explains, will be conducting a survey among prominent members of the community to find out what they think of the backbone-of-our-economy property industry.

It would be an understatement to say that the property cartel has an image problem. Just yesterday, the Consumer Council proposed ways to counteract the “asymmetry of information” homebuyers face. More and more lateral thinkers are raising their befuddled heads to ask why a minimum wage is such a big deal when it’s the high rents and short leases that cripple many businesses.

“Why are they bothering to pay Ogilvy?” I ask. “Apart from bankers who sell mortgages to finance the pyramid scheme, and bureaucrats who put convenient loopholes in the regulations, everyone in town detests the developers. Everybody thinks they’re total slime. Parasites on the economy. I could tell them that for nothing.”

“Sure!” Grant laughs as heads off down the steps to Queens Road. “But you wouldn’t would you? You’d charge them through the fuckin’ teeth, mate! They can afford it!”

…also great for fresh orange juice!

Many people are suckers for cute puppy dogs; others go to pieces over ice cream; some are nuts about lingerie; while more than a few just can’t resist Barry Manilow. But for me, it’s old medical equipment. All those curving, enameled, shiny devices that once inflicted agonizing but life-saving procedures on victims of frightening ailments in carbolic-scented hospitals of wooden floorboards and starched sheets. Safe in the knowledge that space-age ultrasonic, magnetic resonance, keyhole, bio-engineered, nano-tech appliances of micro-chips and colour monitors await me should I ever need them, I delight in this creepy, early-mid-20th Century hardware with all its clunky dials, shiny glass bottles and thick rubber tubing attached to evil-looking nozzles and needles.

Happily, the Appalachian branch of the Hemlock clan, like many right-thinking people, share this retro-that-dare-not-speak-its-name guilty pleasure, and so before they have to head back home we spend an enjoyable hour or two at the Hong Kong Museum of Medical Science. It is one of the Big Lychee’s little secret gems. The Hong Kong Tourism Board no doubt gives it a cursory nod in its literature, but this is the sort of place they would not expect or want tourists to visit. Not expect, because it assumes an interest in the real past, rather than the fictitious one the travel bureaucracy pushes. And not want, because no landlord makes money when people come here – and the tourism industry is ultimately just a euphemism for the property tycoons.

The museum offers a limited display. It is a pleasant enough old building, where researchers first isolated the bubonic plague bacillus then raging down the hill around Hollywood Road – hence perhaps today’s cluster of coffin shops in the area. Fittingly, it has some SARS souvenirs, including a classic Hong Kong Leisure and Cultural Services museum quiz; I amaze my cousins by getting one correct answer (from a multiple-choice of Chicken, Dog, Civet Cat and Cow) without even seeing the question. The place overdoes the ever-tedious subject of Chinese medicine, which arguably should not even be in an establishment that has ‘science’ in its title. And then it has the horrifying collection of Dead Ringers-style forceps. And a room full of old operating theatre equipment, including a chloroform mask. And a dental surgery, complete with nightmarish leather chair, back from the days when you got gas for extractions and nothing to deaden the pain caused by the slow, loud drill. Heaven.

After heading out to distant Lantau and surviving the Ngong Ping 360 Death Plunge Cable Car Massacre Ride, two Hemlock cousins and I find ourselves following a herd of international travellers into the famous Ngong Ping

To our surprise, we discover nothing less than an amazing cultural themed village, architecturally designed and landscaped to reflect the cultural and spiritual integrity of the Ngong Ping area. No-one actually lives here. The ever-revolving population comprises 25% Mainland women in frilly mini-skirts and high heels, 25% Mainland women’s boyfriends, 25% older and younger Mainlanders in family groups, 20% other Asians and Westerners constantly asking strangers to take photographs of themselves with their companions, and 5% lowly Hongkongers who, having seen their home town prostituted out to foreigners, are forced into embarrassingly coloured T-shirts and reduced to toiling as shop assistants and cleaners.

Through the incense-haze between the rows of resin statues and PVC-framed wall hangings in the Walking With Buddha Themed Gifts Shop, I see an assistant shyly mumble something to a gruff, chain-smoking Beijing-accented man thinking of buying a small short-cut to Nirvana in the form of several fake jade Gautama bead bracelets. I am taken by the ‘third eye’ dot on her forehead. But then, as I draw near, I notice it is slightly off-centre on her shiny brow. Then I see a rash of similar red spots on one cheek, and it occurs to me that she is simply suffering a rather severe case of acne, if not tertiary-stage shingles.

Perhaps the most inauthentic thing about the whole place is the number of 7-Elevens and Starbucks: there is only one of each, whereas any real Hong Kong street would have a multitude. Canned quasi-Buddhist, nasty New Age-type music comes out of loudspeakers as we proceed past the stores along the route officially known as Walking With Buddha. Halfway along is a Bodhi Tree Experience, with trunk and branches of moulded concrete and leaves of shaped wood-like material carrying contemplative messages. Next comes the Monkey’s Tale Theatre Themed Attraction, supposedly drawn from ancient lore but no doubt carefully Disneyfied out of all recognition so as not to distress passers-by with any significance or meaning. A touch of genuine Hong Kong intrudes as we pick our way through metal barriers and the dusty din of stone saws to find that, as with so many roads in the Big Lychee, the Path to Wisdom is currently being widened and resurfaced.

Up close, the Big Buddha itself is what you would expect after years of catching glimpses of the metal giant through the haze from aircraft and Macau ferries. You have to climb hundreds of steps. It’s large. It’s crowded. A special Buddhist snack voucher deal comprehensible only to Mainlanders goes down well among the target audience. There are Canadians, Malaysians, Yugoslavians and whatever all pleading with you to take a photo of them with their friends. The occasional pilgrim drops to her knees – they are invariably women – and prostrates herself in awe of the Lord Sidartha. Devotees are outnumbered by (largely Southeast Asian) Muslims who could be blowing up this idolatry but instead eat its ice cream with the same serene smile as the statue itself.

Through the clamour of snapping cameras and chattering kids comes a scream, piercing for a few seconds, then suddenly muffled. Someone, tragically, has mysteriously fallen over the edge of the podium into the dense undergrowth of a ravine far below down the steep hillside. Someone wanting his picture taken alongside his bearded backpacking buddies, tragically, thought a member of the Appalachian branch of the Hemlock clan would be receptive, for the twentieth time in under two hours, to a request for such a favour. It was the same someone I overheard earlier pronouncing ‘Ngong’ as ‘nong’, so they had it coming. Maybe they will have better luck in their next life.

How much money will deranged anthropomorphs pay to see their noisy and unhygienic mutts alive again?  Eager to find the answer, I enlisted the help over the weekend of peculiar acquaintance A-Hing, the famous Mid-Levels Dog Poisoner, and took possession of a ridiculous-looking mutant canine.  It is incarcerated, as I write, in the storage room at the back of my apartment in Perpetual Opulence Mansions.  And, to my delight, the owners have already offered a reward for the repulsive-looking creature through an ad in the South China Morning Post.  (Do they have any idea of that organ’s pitiful circulation figures?  This is a matter of life and death.  How extremely fortunate for them that this particular dognapper happens to be one of the few people who read it.)

LOST: GREY MINI-SCHNAUZER (MALE)

REWARD: HK$5,000

LAST SEEN: THE PEAK, WEARING BLUE COLLAR

Five thousand dollars is a laughable opening bid.  I will contact these absurd people and pass them a photograph of the brute with a copy of today’s paper, so they can see it is still alive, and my trusty 9mm Browning to its ugly, misshapen head.  I will demand 50 thousand, plus expenses for Purina Pooch Chunks and a gratuity to the Filipino elves, who are guarding the hideous monstrosity and making sure it doesn’t remove its blindfold.  Call the police, and the loyal domestic servants have aso adobo for supper faster than you can say ‘woof woof’.  Try haggling, and the next message will include the beast’s left ear and a final demand for 100 thousand in used twenties.  That will buy A-Hing a lot of carbofuran, and Hong Kong’s residential neighbourhoods some long overdue peace and cleanliness.

Tue, 14 June

I wake to the sound of knives being sharpened.  In the kitchen, the Filipino elves have reported for duty early.  As one yanks the duct tape from our captive’s muzzle so it can eat what may be its last meal, the other lays out an evil meat cleaver, heads of garlic and bottles of soy sauce, vinegar and oil.  “Adobong aso,” she declares.  “You were wrong yesterday.”  I quash this impertinence and presumptuousness quickly and firmly, by informing her that the cur stays alive for the time being.  A-Hing is in contact with the Halsteads of the Peak, who are pleading for the life of their unsightly hound on the grounds that it is ‘a part of the family’.  A part of the family who’s worth a mere 5,000 bucks!  How much would their grandmother go for?

Wed, 15 Jun

Gliding down the Mid-Levels Escalator through the Soho pretentious-restaurant district, I mull over this morning’s message from A-Hing, the legendary Dog Strangler of Bowen Road.  The Peak anthropomorphs say they need more time to get the money together.  He has given them a deadline of midnight, tomorrow.  I see wild American friend Odell emerging from his hovel, and he joins me on the smooth descent into the central business district.  “I saw something really weird last night,” he tells me.  “A couple of Filipino women walking a dog with a black cloth bag over its head.”  I shrug, peer down at Fetish Fashion to see if any of their restraining devices would fit a mini schnauzer, and remind him that there are a lot of strange people around.  He agrees.  “They were very good, though,” he remarks.  “When the dog wanted to do its business, they unfolded a copy of the South China Morning Post on the sidewalk.”  I should hope so, too.  “Kevin Sinclair’s column,” he adds.  I nod coolly.

Thurs, 16 Jun

I start the day by giving the two Filipino elves their hostage management instructions.  “First, stop addressing it as ‘Manlapaz’ or any other cutie-pie designation.  It is essential not to form any emotional bond with the internee.  Refer to it simply as ‘the dog’.  Second,” I point to a gallon of lemon-scented bleach and a scrubbing brush, “it’s stinking this storage room to high heaven – let’s give it a good wash before we get rid of it tonight.”  Which is how, by the time I leave Perpetual Opulence Mansions this morning, I find myself in possession of a canine so startlingly blond that it appears not to be of this world.  But it smells nice.

Fri, 17 Jun

The object of the exercise is to research the extent to which animal-lovers will make the sort of sacrifice that sane people would consider making only for humans – and maybe not all of them, even.  So it was with little hesitation that I tested our clients on the Peak and postponed last night’s mutt-for-money trade to a more congenial hour this morning.  The plan is simple.  At the appointed hour, A-Hing will tether the canine to a lamp post outside the Fancy Rich Property Agents on Caine Road and stand by.  An anthropomorph will then drop the cash – used, in small denominations, in children’s school bags – in a kids’ play area not far away and depart.  Two elves waiting nearby will confirm the contents to A-Hing by walkie-talkie and meld into the crowds on the Mid-Levels Escalator, struggling under the weight of the packs as far as a Filipino money changer-cum-launderer in Central.  A-Hing will call the Halsteads with the dog’s location and vanish.

No sooner do I meet the famed pooch poisoner outside Perpetual Opulence Mansions than potential disaster strikes.  A black mongrel – the sort that goes well with black bean sauce and garlic – trots up to our hound and leaps on it from behind, sodomizing it with gusto and causing its blindfold to slip off, thus revealing our whereabouts.  As A-Hing lifts the assailant by its hind legs and delivers a fatal karate blow to its kidney, I drag our captive down the street.  I hand the beast back to him on a walkway over Caine Road and stand back to survey the scene.  A-Hing approaches the lamp post, ignores the ‘Wet Painting’ sign, and starts to fiddle with the leash.  At a crucial moment, the schnauzer spots its reflection in the mirrored wall of the property agency and – evidently neither recognizing nor liking the bleached and raped creature it sees – tears free and attacks itself, spitting, snarling and barking.  A-Hing, late middle-aged and not as nimble as he could be, fumbles on all-fours.  The hideous hound jumps aside with a yelp.  A red Toyota pulls up, a passenger gets out and the driver flicks on the ‘For Hire’ sign.  Before the door swings shut, our hostage sprints over and leaps in.  As the vehicle pulls away, A-Hing staggers into the road, hails another cab and tumbles in, shouting “Follow that taxi!”   Meanwhile, a group of pasty-faced, traumatized Westerners – two adults, two children – come running along the sidewalk struggling to catch up with taxi number-one under the weight of heavy Hello Kitty backpacks and screeching “Benji!  Benji!”  I glance at my watch.  It is time for work…

A lazy afternoon in the pub with wild American friend Odell.  Kevin the Australian barman personally delivers two beers.  “On the house,” he announces.  This is a first in the history of the pub outside of Christmas and Chinese New Year.  Kevin looks a bit embarrassed.  “Prices are going up,” he admits.  “By quite a lot.”  It transpires that the evil bloodsucking scumbag bastard landlord is raising the rent in a few months, and the future of this venerable watering hole is in doubt.  Club 64, the haunt of bohemians and pro-democrats, was driven out of the area by a rent hike a couple of months back.  Tai Cheung Bakery, nearby egg tart purveyors to the gentry, suffered the same fate a few weeks ago.  “Dublin Jack’s closing.” Kevin informs us.  “The landlord wants 280,000 bucks a month – that’s 10,000 a day just for the rent.  Can’t be done.  It’ll be another skin-whitening products place.”  He glances out of the door at a group of Mainland tourists strolling past, and his eyes glare.  He steps forward towards the entrance.  “Will you people fuck off!” he shouts at them.  The cluster of middle-aged, nylon-clad matrons and their chain-smoking, ill-coiffeured husbands look up in alarm at the bulky, red-faced foreigner shaking his finger at them.  Kevin marches out onto the street.  “Fuck off and take your fucking cosmetics stores with you!” he screams, as they hurriedly move on to the next delightful sight Hong Kong has to offer.

Mon, 6 June 2005

Today it is 27 degrees Celsius, or around 80 Fahrenheit – pleasantly warm by Hong Kong’s torrid summer standards.  That’s outdoors.  In the gwailo’s lair on the top floor of S-Meg Tower, it is chilly.  So much so, that at mid-morning I switch on my little electric heater to counteract the air-conditioning.  The heater came from a branch of Fortress electronics, owned by Li Ka-shing.  The electricity to run both it and the building’s air conditioning comes from HK Electric, owned by Li Ka-shing.  The vitamin C pills Ms Fang the fur-clad hunter-killer secretary hopes will relieve her sniffle come from Watson’s Your Personal Store, owned by Li Ka-shing.  Today’s newspapers’ vacuous comments about cutting power consumption come from Environment and Transport Secretary Sarah Liao, a member of the Hong Kong Government, which is owned by…

Tue, 7 Jun 2005

Many parts of Hong Kong are at a standstill this morning as residents cower indoors in fear of the troops of deranged, mutant, B-virus-infected monkeys swarming through the streets, mutilating and devouring everything in their path.  Meanwhile, on the placid, simian-free Mid-Levels Escalator, Hong Kong’s curious-minded and intelligent middle class bombards me with questions about Dublin Jack’s, the gwailo haunt whose premises are apparently worth 280,000 dollars a month.  “It’s an Irish pub,” I explain as we pass over the place.  “That means the staff say ‘bless you madam, may all your sons be bishops’, as they serve customers potatoes, baked beans and boiled mutton.  Mostly, people go there to read books by Edna O’Brien and drink Guinness.”  This brings knowing nods.  For generations before the invention of Viagra, working-class Chinese men throughout Britain’s Asian empire swore by the magically restorative powers of the syrupy black beer.

But that’s all of little interest to my neighbours.  The rent – that’s the thing.  The owner of the building can eject this seedy establishment and its obese, alcoholic Western clientele and ask for over a quarter of a million per calendar month!  A quarter of a million for doing what?  Absolutely nothing whatsoever!  From the street below us, we hear Hibernian-accented howls of anguish – “May the curse of Mary Malone and her nine blind illegitimate children pursue you over the hills of damnation, so far that the sweet Lord Jesus himself can’t see you from heaven!”  Like a pack of rabid macaques in heat, Hong Kong’s landlords are back on the rampage.  By contrast, the absentee English gentry who evicted the sons of Erin from their smallholdings in the 19th Century were amateurs.  Systematically, by the square foot, they gouge every shred of wealth out of a profitable bar and and toss the hollow corporate husk aside before moving on to the next victim foolish enough to sign a tenancy agreement.  My fellow commuters and I marvel at their good fortune.  So much easy money, and nothing to do to earn it, unless you find it hard to struggle with your conscience about rousing the undying hatred of failed entrepreneurs.  Which, wiping the saliva from our chins, we don’t.

After giving Ms Leung a furious tongue lashing for everyone’s amusement, our visionary Chairman and Chief Executive insists that I accompany him on a courtesy visit to an obscure Government department that wants to be noticed by influential members of the business community.  As Parker the chauffeur expertly steers the huge Mercedes through the streets of Central, I watch the reaction of passing pedestrians as they glance in to see who we are.  They shrug off the sight of yet another famous billionaire tycoon, but show mild interest in the gwailo sitting beside him in the ‘number-two’ seat behind the driver.

As we pull up to our destination, I notice that the car park outside the building is overflowing with white Toyota saloons with bored-looking minions polishing the ‘Asia’s World City’ decals and ‘AM’ licence plates.  After being checked in by the team of smiling receptionists, we stroll down a long corridor, avoiding three women painstakingly mopping the sparkling linoleum.  The elevator attendant greets us and takes up to the 13th floor.  Two friendly flunkies escort us down another long corridor with more mop-wielding cleaners, past a typing pool full of women knitting or looking at their mobile phones, and then past a conference room in which three people are napping or reading horse racing magazines.  At the end, we pass a secretary and her assistant and enter a thickly carpeted office.  A smart-looking, middle-aged Westerner rises from his desk and greets the Big Boss warmly by name.  “Welcome to the Government Efficiency Unit,” he declares.

I tell Ms Fang the hunter-killer secretary that I’ll be back in 30 minutes at the most.  A ten-minute stroll from S-Meg Tower later, I am lying on my back on the seat in the high-tech but evil-smelling surroundings of the dental chamber, a bright light shining into my face, and Dr Au-Yeung pressing herself against me as she peers into my mouth.  Come on woman, just hand over the antibiotics and let me out of here.  But no – she pokes around my incisors with a spike.  “Hmmm,” she murmurs.  Suddenly, without warning, she pins me down by the shoulders and her assistant deftly manacles my hands at my sides and tightens four strong nylon straps across my legs, waist and chest.  “Clean-up!” she announces, stuffing buds of surface anaesthetic under my upper and lower lips and loading up her special coward-size syringe.  After numbing everything from my nose to my neck, she brutally subjects me to subgingival curettage – medical jargon for ‘extremely unpleasant scraping under the gums as punishment for not flossing five times a day as I have previously instructed you’.

Hours of jaw-shuddering abrasion and scouring later, I am unshackled.  As her assistant mops the blood up off the floor, Dr Au-Yeung hands me a bottle of antiseptic mouthwash.  “This is very powerful,” she tells me.  “Don’t use it for more than three days, or it will discolour your teeth and do really strange things to your taste buds.”  Despite apparently not having a mouth, I manage to grunt.  She passes me a bag of pills.  “If the wash doesn’t work, use these antibiotics.  But if you drink alcohol within a month of taking these,” she stresses, wagging her finger, “you will die instantly.”

Sun, 10 Apr 2005

Another Sunday afternoon in a Wanchai disco dungeon with wild American friend Odell.  Amidst the gloomy boom-boom of the dance music, the usual, sad-looking middle-aged obese gwailo sexual predators rub shoulders and other body parts with lithe young Southeast Asian women.  I direct my ex-Mormon friend’s attention towards a girl making simpering eyes at him from across the bar.  She has a nice-but-dim look, with straight black hair parted down the middle and a plain T-shirt and trousers.  “Oh, her,” he groans.  It emerges that she is a Thai hooker – though far less gross-looking than most of them – and he once paid her a sum of money in exchange for an hour of her company in a nearby short-time hotel.  But nothing happened because his wife Mee phoned him at a crucial moment and summoned him home.  “So this girl kind of thinks she owes me one,” he explains.  I am tempted to approach the harlot and suggest that she simply refund him her fee and therefore clear this debt.  Much as I like Odell, I would gladly pay millions not to have sex with him.  But apparently that’s not how it works.  After a tetchy call from his spouse at home, he agrees with me that it is time to leave.  So, around 8.00pm, we are sharing a taxi back to Mid-Levels civilization.  Soon after the cab accelerates away from the Sodom and Gomorrah that is Lockhart Road, I can’t help but notice that the strumpet in question is sitting between us in the back seat, smiling enigmatically while Odell drunkenly rants away about nothing in particular, seemingly oblivious to her presence.  I leap from the vehicle at some traffic lights in Central, like a World War II pilot bailing out of a burning plane hurtling towards certain destruction.  This could have a nasty ending.  I will read about it in the newspaper tomorrow.

Wed, 13 Apr 2005
The day gets off to a bad start with a phone call from one of the Filipino elves, informing me that she can’t come to Perpetual Opulence Mansions today because she has a kick-boxing class.  The other elf, she adds, is back in Cebu suing someone over a land dispute.  “A thousand apologies,” I solemnly tell her, “if you find that doing my washing and ironing cuts into your day and distracts you from martial arts training and real estate supervision.”

“Donald Tsang is mentally diseased,” I inform the buxom civil servant.  “The average family in Hong Kong lives in a 400 square foot apartment.  Where the hell are they supposed to put three kids?”  She puts down her chopsticks and looks away, lost in thought.  Stupid lateral-thinking gwailo decimates visionary Government policy for breakfast.  She was born in a 200 square foot public housing unit, she starts.  “Yes, yes,” I interrupt.  “Eight to a room, shared toilets and kitchen, school on the roof, everyone assembling plastic flowers all night, scholarship to Hong Kong U – the great Fragrant Harbour success story.  Well done.  Heard it before.”  She nods.  “It’s OK for us,” I go on.  “We’re single and get lost in our 1,000 square foot Mid-Levels flats.  Mr and Mrs average middle class have less than half that space for themselves, her shoes, his DVDs, a five-year-old who needs somewhere to do his homework.  Where do two more brats go?  In the cupboard under the kitchen sink?  No!  There’s an Indonesian girl who sleeps there.”

Winky sighs and picks up the newspaper, with its exciting news about Hong Kong’s sole Olympic gold medal winner and queen of windsurfing.  “At least San San is having a baby,” she says.  I look at my peanuts floating in the porridge as the awful, revolting truth dawns on me.  Someone had sex with San San.  I push the bowl aside.

Wed, 23 Mar 2005
An email from cousin John Quincy Hemlock in deepest, darkest Appalachia.  America’s school shooting season has opened, he laments.  Nine people killed in and around a high school in Red Lake, Minnesota by a 15 year old who, as usual, then killed himself.  Also as usual, he was a ‘misfit’.  Looking through the media coverage, I see a nation wringing its hands in helplessness at the inevitably of it all and its inability to put a gun in a case and lock it.  But no-one wants to face the fact that misfits are compulsory in rural high schools in the US.  The Hemlocks’ Monongahela hamlet aside, these are neighbourhoods of losers that all-but enforce a strict hierarchy onto their teenage students.  At the top are the jocks on the football team.  They have huge biceps and acne on their necks from taking steroids.  Beside them are the beautiful girls on the cheerleaders’ squad.  Beauty in these parts meaning vast amounts of blond hair, perfect white teeth and big breasts.  Next down are the wannabe jocks and cheerleaders who struggle hard to be accepted by the elite and whose parents will sue the school board if it helps.  Then there are the academic types, grudgingly respected despite their strange ideas about evolution. They will go to college and not come back.  Then there are eccentrics – geeks or budding craftsmen – tolerated for their usefulness.  And on the fifth day, God made some kids that weren’t good at sport and weren’t very bright.  Fat girls and ugly boys, who everyone looks down on.  Shunned, they wear black, listen to songs sung by men in mascara, haunt deathly regions of the Internet and loathe everyone back.  And sometimes they snap, in little communities where anyone with the brains to know how a gun cabinet works left for the city long ago.  It’s just nature, small-town-style.

It is not the fault of my backwoods cousins that they think these sterile, hackneyed or contrived features of the city are worth seeing. After all, the Hong Kong Tourism Board is recommending this stuff on its website – surely such a body knows what visitors would like to see.

At best, the HKTB suggested itinerary is a large-scale version of the English menus some restaurants offer ‘foreigners’ who walk in; the assumption that white people want sweet and sour pork and fried rice is self-fulfilling because the menu doesn’t let them choose anything else. Bureaucrats at the Tourism Board push a replica Hong Kong at tourists because previous generations of visitors seemed happy enough with the real thing when it existed (before, incidentally, the HKTB did). Tourists want ethnic-looking sailing ships, bargain shopping and grinning chefs swinging hand-made noodles because the HKTB has told them that’s what they will get.

It’s a short step to re-inventing bits of Hong Kong in line with these falsely raised expectations, so – largely unnoticed by locals – parts of Des Voeux and Hollywood Roads have become Chinese Authentics Clusters under the labels Dried Seafood Street and Antiques Street, and fake-looking Chinese gateways of the sort found in minor Chinatowns in Europe or America now sit in unlikely parts of town, in line with what the HKTB imagines the tourists imagine Hong Kong should look like.

This pair of visitors, however, will see all that in passing. They will have to do the Peak, the clothes and electronic mini-cities of Mongkok, and – as an important dinner date awaits – Lantau. And a tram ride. But they will also get Octopus Card topping-up demonstrations at 7-Eleven, a few slices of squid/mayo/corn pizza, multiple rides on the Mid-Levels Escalator, the inspection of frogs in cages at the street market, and a chance to take part in this year’s Worst Restaurant in Soho Survey. If they have a shopping experience in glittering Central it is as likely to be with a Filipino elf in World-Wide House as anything else. It’s funny how places are not what you expected.

The vague plan for an influx of Hemlocks into the Mainland during the coming week runs up against a snag: visas will cost US$170 apiece (or something absurd) and getting them will tie up passports for several days when a Macau trip is likely. We mull over this. If my suspicions are correct, it goes back to some sort of dispute over the treatment US consular officials mete out to Chinese students applying to study stateside. We conclude that it is the sort of reciprocal, face-saving, innocent-penalizing BS you read about all the time but don’t often encounter. We also consider the trade imbalance between the two countries, Chinese protectionism against Western companies, the incarceration of yet another overseas citizen on trumped-up charges relating to commodities information, and the treatment of people protesting against tainted milk and collapsing schools… And we conclude: “fuck ‘em.” Let the waiters, shop assistants and masseuses of Shenzhen starve.