“Too bad it’s winter. Just a bit too cold for swimming,” John remarked. I hadn’t even noticed that the garden had a pool.
“My head is swimming, John,” I said.
“Why don’t they have the fashion show in summer?” Marcie asked. We were simply chatting while the staff (an amah and two house-boys) brought in our stuff, unpacked and hung it up.
“Hong Kong summers aren’t very pleasant,” John replied. “Humidity is quite uncomfortable.”
“Yeah, over eighty-five percent,” said Barrett, who had done his homework. And was now awake enough to quote from it.
“Yes,” said Mr. Hsiang. “Like August in New York.”
Evidently John was loath to grant that anything in Hong Kong wasn’t “A-okay.”
“Good night. I hope you will enjoy our city.”
“Oh, no question,” I replied with grand diplomacy. “It is a many-splendored thing.”
He left. No doubt enthusiastic at my literary reference.
Marce and I just sat, too far beyond fatigue to go to bed. Houseboy Number One provided wine and orange juice.
“Who owns this pleasure dome?” I asked.
“A landlord. We just rent it by the year. We’ve got a lot of people coming in and out. It’s more convenient if we keep a place.”
“What do we do tomorrow?” I inquired.
“Well, in just about five hours, a car will come to take me to our offices. Then scintillating luncheon with the Moguls of Finance. You could join us. . . .”
“Thanks. I’ll pass.”
“John will be at your disposal. You can see the sights with him. The Tiger Gardens, markets. Maybe you could spend the afternoon out on an island.”
“Just with John?”
She smiled. “I’d like to have him show you Shatin.”
“Yes, the monastery of ten thousand Buddhas. Right?”
“Right,” she said. “But you and I will go to the Lan Tao Island by ourselves and spend the night there in the Polin monastery.”
“Hey. You really know this place.”
“I’ve been here many times,” she said.
“Solo?” I inquired, unable to disguise my jealousy. I wanted this entire trip to be our special property.
“Not just by myself,” she answered, “desperately alone. The sunsets do that to you.”
Good. She was a neophyte to sharing sunsets. I would teach her that.
Tomorrow.
Naturally, I bought a camera.
John transported me next morning to Kowloon, and in the massive Ocean Terminal, I got loads of photographic apparatus at a steal.
“How do they do it, John?” I asked. “The Japanese equipment is cheaper than in Japan. The French perfume is cheaper than in Paris!” (I was buying Marcie some.)
“That is the secret of Hong Kong.” He smiled. “This is a magic city.”
First I had to see the flower markets in their New Year glory. Choy Hung Chuen, exploding with chrysanthemums and fruits and golden paper images. A Technicolor banquet for my newly purchased lens. (And I bought a big bouquet for Marcie.)
Then back to Victoria. The ladder streets. A narrow San Francisco and a spiderlike bazaar. We went to Cat Street, where the vendors in the red-draped booths hawked everything—the wildest potpourri imaginable.
I ate a hundred-year-old egg. (I chewed and swallowed trying to avoid a taste.)
John did explain that actually these eggs take only weeks to make.
“They treat them with arsenic and they cover them with mud.” (This after I had swallowed!)
We passed the herbalists. But I could not be tempted by the seeds or fungi or the dried sea horses.
Then the wineshops selling . . . pickled snakes.
“No, John,” I said, “not pickled snakes.”
“Oh, it is very useful,” he replied, enjoying my dismay at the exotic. “Venom mixed with wine is very popular. It works wonders.”
“For example . . . ?”
“Good for rheumatism. Also as an aphrodisiac.”
Hopefully I needed neither at the moment.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said, “but now I’ve had it for today.”
And then he drove me to the villa.
“If you can get ready in the early morning,” John remarked as we pulled up, “I can show you something interesting. Of sport.”
“Oh, I’m into sports.”
“I’ll pick you up at seven, then, okay? There’s shadowboxing in the Botanical Gardens. Very fascinating.”
“A-okay,” I said.
“Have a lovely evening, Oliver,” he said in parting.
“Thanks.”
“Actually, it’s lovely every evening in Hong Kong,” he added.
“Marcie, it’s a goddamn dream,” I said.
Half an hour later we were on the water. As the sun was sinking. We were riding in a junk to Aberdeen, the “Floating Restaurants.” Illumination everywhere.
“The proverb says a million lights,” Miss Binnendale replied. “We’ve only started, Oliver.” We dined by lantern glow on fish that had been swimming till we chose them. And I tried some wine from—are you watching, CIA?—Red China. It was pretty good.
The setting was so storybook, our text inevitably was banal. Like what the hell she did all day. (I’d been reduced to “Wow” and “Look at that.”)
She had lunched with all the bureaucrats from Finance.
“They’re so freaking English,” Marcie said.
“It is a British colony, you know.”
“But still—these characters’ big dream is that Her Majesty will come to open their new cricket field.”
“No shit. How jolly good. I bet she even does.”
They brought dessert. We then discussed the Great Escape, now merely two days hence.
“John Hsiang is cute,” I said, “and he’s a stimulating guide. But I won’t climb up Victoria till I can hold your hand on top.”
“I’ll tell you what. I’ll meet you there tomorrow just to watch the sunset.”
“Great.”
“At five o’clock,” she added, “at the peakest of the Peak.”
“A toast to us with Commie wine,” I said.
We kissed and floated.
How to fill the day till twilight on the top of Mount Victoria?
Well, first the shadowboxing. John knew every move. The sheer restraint of strength was just amazing. He then suggested that we see the jade collection at the Tiger Gardens and have dim sum lunch. I said okay, as long as there’s no snakes.
Fifty-seven Kodacolor pictures later, we were drinking tea.
“What does Marcie do today?” I asked. I tried to make it easier on John, who, after all, was an executive, not normally a tour guide.
“She’s meeting with administrators for the factories,” he said.
“Do Binnendale’s own factories?”
“Not really ‘own.’ We simply have exclusive contracts. It’s the vital factor in our operation. What we call the Hong Kong edge.”
“What sort of edge?”
“The people. Or as you say it in the States, the people-power. U.S. workers get per day more than a Hong Kong man receives per week. Others even less . . .”
“What others?”
“Youngsters don’t expect a grown-up’s wage. They’re very happy just with half. The end result’s a lovely garment, f.o.b. New York, at a fraction of American or European price.”
“I see. That’s cool.”
John seemed pleased that I had grasped the intricacies of the Hong Kong “edge.” Frankly, people-power wasn’t mentioned in the tourist office blurbs, so I was glad to learn.
“For example,” John continued, “when two men want a single job, they can agree to split the wage. This way they both get work.”
“No shit,” I said.
“No shit.” He smiled, appreciating my American vernacular.
“But that means each one works full time and gets half pay,” I said.
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“They don’t complain,” said Mr. Hsiang as he picked up the check. “Now, shall we take a drive into the country?”
“Hey, John, I’d like to see a factory. Would that be possible?”
“With thirty thousand in Hong Kong, it’s very possible. They range from fairly big to family size. What would you like?”
“Well, how about a mini-tour of Marcie’s?”
“A-okay with me,” he said.
The first stop was a Kowloon neighborhood you’d never find on any Hong Kong postcard. Crowded. Dingy. Almost sunless. We had to honk our way through mobs of people clogging up the street.
“Station Number One,” said John after we’d parked inside a courtyard. “Making shirts.”
We walked inside.
And suddenly I found myself back in the nineteenth century. In Fall River, Massachusetts.
It was a sweatshop.
There is no other goddamn word. It was a sweatshop.
Cramped and dark and stuffy.
Crouched over sewing machines were several dozen women working feverishly.
All was silent save for clicks and hums that signaled productivity.
Just exactly as it was in Amos Barrett’s factories.
A supervisor scurried up to welcome John and me, the Occidental visitor. And then we toured. There was so much to see. The sights were maximal although the space was minimal.
The supervisor chattered in Chinese. John told me he was proud of how efficiently his ladies could produce the goods.
“The shirts they make here are terrific,” John remarked.
He stopped and pointed to a female figure feeding shirt sleeves swiftly to the jaws of a machine.
“Look. Fantastic double-needle stitching. Highest quality. You just don’t get that in the States these days.”
I looked.
Sadly, John had picked a poor example. Not of workmanship, but of the worker.
“How old is this little girl?” I asked.
The moppet sewed on deftly, paying us no heed. If anything, she picked her pace up slightly.
“She fourteen,” the supervisor said.
He evidently knew some English.
“John, that’s utter bullshit,” I said quietly. “This kid is ten at most.”
“Fourteen,” the supervisor parroted. And John concurred.
“Oliver, that is the legal minimum.”
“I’m not disputing law, I’m simply saying this girl’s ten years old!”
“She has card,” the supervisor said. He had a working knowledge of the tongue.
“Let’s see,” I said. Politely. Though I didn’t add a “please.” John was impassive as the supervisor asked the little kid for her ID. She looked in panic. Christ, if only I could reassure her that it wasn’t a bust.
“Here, sir.”
The boss waved a card at me. It had no picture.
“John,” I said, “it has no photograph.”
“A picture’s not required if you’re under seventeen,” he said.
“I see,” I said.
They looked as if they wanted me to move on by.
“In other words,” I then continued, “this kid’s got an older sister’s card.”
“Fourteen!” the supervisor shouted once again. He gave the little girl her card back. Much relieved, she turned and started working even faster than before. But now taking furtive glances at me. Shit, suppose she hurts herself?
“Tell her to stay loose,” I said to John.
He told her something in Chinese and she worked on, no longer glancing at me.
“Tea, please,” said the supervisor, and he bowed us toward the cubicle that was his office.
John could see I hadn’t bought the number.
“Look,” he said, “she does a fourteen-year-old’s job.”
“And gets how much? You said they pay the ‘youngsters’ half.”
“Oliver,” said John, unruffled, “she takes home ten dollars every day.”
“Oh, fine,” I said, and added, “Hong Kong dollars. That’s a dollar-eighty, U.S. bucks, correct?”
The supervisor handed me a shirt.
“He wants you to inspect the workmanship,” said John.
“It’s fine,” I said. “That ‘double stitching’ stuff is really class (whatever that may be). In fact, I own a few of these myself.”
You see, the shirts they made here bore the label Mr. B. And guys, it seems, are wearing them this year in sweater combinations.
As I sipped my tea, I wondered if a million miles away in old New York, Miss Elvy Nash knew how they made those fine-as-wine creations she was pushing.
“Let’s go,” I said to John.
I needed air.
I changed the conversation to the weather.
“It must be pretty brutal in the summer months,” I said.
“Very humid,” John replied.
We had run this gamut, so I knew the right riposte.
“Just like New York in August, huh?”
“About,” he said.
“Does it . . . slow the ladies any?”
“Beg your pardon?”
“I didn’t notice air-conditioning back there,” I said.
He looked at me.
“This is Asia, Oliver,” he said, “not California.”
And on we drove.
“Is your apartment air-conditioned?” I inquired.
John Hsiang looked at me again.
“Oliver,” he calmly said, “here in the Orient the worker lives with different expectations.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“But don’t you think that even here in Asia, John, the average worker’s expectation is to have enough to eat?”
He didn’t answer.
“So,” I then continued, “you agree a dollar-eighty’s not enough to live on, right?”
I knew his thoughts had long ago karate-chopped me dead.
“People work much harder here,” he stated very righteously. “Our ladies don’t read magazines in beauty parlors.”
I sensed that John was conjuring up his private image of my mother lazing underneath a dryer.
“For example,” he then added. “The young girl you saw. Her whole family works there. And her mother does some extra sewing for us in the evening.”
“At her house?”
“Yes,” John replied.
“Oh,” I said. “What labor law calls ‘homework,’ right?”
“Right.”
I waited for a sec.
“Johnny, you’re a B-School graduate,” I said. “You should recall why ‘homework’ is illegal in the States.”
He smiled. “You don’t know Hong Kong law.”
“Come on, you fucking hypocrite!”
He slammed the brakes and skidded to a stop.
“I don’t have to take abuse,” he said.
“You’re right,” I answered, and I opened up the door. But damn, before I stormed away I had to make him hear the answer.
“Homework is illegal,” I said softly, “ ’cause it gets around the union wage. Guys who have to work like that get paid whatever the employer cares to give them. Which is generally zilch.”
John Hsiang glared at me.
“Oration over, Mr. Liberal?” he inquired.
“Yes.”
“Then listen for a change and learn the local facts of life. They don’t join unions here ’cause people want to split their pay and people want their kids to work and people want the chance to take some pieces home. You dig?”
I wouldn’t answer.
“And for your goddamn lawyer information,” John concluded, “there is no minimum wage in Hong Kong Colony. Now go to hell!”
He gunned away before I could inform him I already was there.
Chapter Thirty-five
The explanations for the things we do in life are many and complex. Supposedly mature adults should live by logic, listen to their reason. Think things out before they act.
But then they maybe never heard what Dr. London told me once. Long after everything was over.
Freud—yes, Freud himself—once said that for the little things in life we should, of course, react according to our reason.
But for really big decisions, we should heed what our unconscious tells us.
Marcie Binnendale was standing eighteen hundred feet above the Hong Kong harbor. It was twilight. And the candles of the city were beginning to be lit.
The wind was cold. It blew the hair across her forehead in the manner I had often found so beautiful.
“Hi, friend,” she said. “Look down at all those lights. We can see everything from here.”
I didn’t answer.
“Want me to indicate the points of interest?”
“I saw enough this afternoon. With Johnny.”
“Oh,” she said.
Then gradually she noticed I had not returned her smile of welcome. I was looking up at her, wondering was this the woman I had almost . . . loved?
“Something wrong?” she asked.
“Everything,” I answered.
“For instance?”
I said it quietly.
“You’ve got little children working in your sweatshops.”
Marcie hesitated for a moment.
“Everybody does it.”
“Marcie, that is no excuse.”
“Look who’s talking,” Marcie answered calmly. “Mr. Barrett of the Massachusetts textile fortune!”
I was prepared for this.
“That’s not the point.”
“Like hell! They took advantage of a situation just the way the industry is doing here.”
“A hundred years ago,” I said, “I wasn’t there to say it made me sick.”
“You’re pretty sanctimonious,” she said. “Just who picked you to change the world?”
“Look, Marcie, I can’t change it. But I sure as hell don’t have to join it.”
Then she shook her head.
“Oliver, this bleeding liberal number’s just a pretext.”
I looked at her and didn’t answer.
“You want to end it. And you’re looking for a good excuse.”
I could’ve said I’d found a goddamn good one.
“Come on,” she said, “you’re lying to yourself. If I gave everything to charity and went to teach in Appalachia, you’d find some other reason.”