Fresh Air Fiend

  "Hong Kong is very Orwellian at the moment," an American said to me, and when I spoke to politicians and diplomats this struck a chord. "People here are conscious that what they say is scrutinized by the Chinese."

  That was undoubtedly true, but an interview, far from being a conversation, is often a monologue and is often self-serving. Interviewing was not to my taste. Anyway, apart from my sitting at the size-14 feet of the king of Tonga in his wooden palace in Nukualofa, when in travel had I ever interviewed anyone? The way to the truth was the humbler route of anonymity, faceless me striking up conversations with strangers. Everyday Hong Kongers were worried, they giggled with apprehension, thinking out loud in a most un-Chinese way.

  The people I spoke to in an interviewing manner could become animated and bare their souls, but after a spell of high spirits they would become self-conscious and say, "Don't use my name." One of the straightest talkers I met in Hong Kong was a reporter for a Cantonese-language newspaper. Seeing him meant traveling to the far end of a mass-transit line, past new middle-class apartment blocks (handsome and roomy by Hong Kong standards), to his office at the paper. He was young, hardly in his mid-thirties—though with the Chinese, you could easily err by fifteen years. He was small and attentive and unusually frank.

  "If I said I had no anxiety about the future, I would be lying. But, for example, I felt no pressure covering the Deng death story, and we mentioned Tiananmen Square. The press in China would never touch that."

  I asked my customary question about press freedom being guaranteed under the Basic Law.

  "The Chinese constitution guarantees the same things—freedom of press, freedom of assembly, all those things. Promises on paper are one thing, practice is another."

  At this point he urged me not to use his name, but that was all right: many other people in Hong Kong had requested the same thing.

  Then he said, "You know, newspapers here have had problems with the British, too."

  It was hypocritical for the British to be warning people of the erosion of press freedom, he said, when in fact the Hong Kong government had prosecuted local journalists. He was not trying to ingratiate himself with the Chinese; he was merely trying to be fair. He told me of a case in which the Hong Kong newspaper Ming Pao had published a detailed story about a scam at a real estate auction. Hong Kong's Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) asked for details of the newspaper's investigation. The paper did not cooperate—indeed, it turned around and published a story about the ICAC's interest, of their asking the paper to reveal its sources. And Ming Pao published the name of the investigator.

  The newspaper was then taken to court by the ICAC for leaking the identity of the official. The newspaper won the case, but the ICAC appealed to a higher court and won. The case—by now it was costing millions of Hong Kong dollars—then went to the Privy Council in London, and Ming Pao won.

  "So you see, even under the so-called democratic law of Hong Kong, under the British, a newspaper is prosecuted for what it writes. But no matter which government is in power, we are still watchdogs. The only question is, do we have the guts to go on doing it?"

  For many years Hong Kong has been one of the best vantage points for China watchers, who are unwelcome in China; a base for Chinese dissidents; and the locus for the dissemination of unbiased news about China. And this place, rife with skepticism, with anti-communism at its core, will soon be a region of China.

  Lee Yee came to Hong Kong in 1970 to run a China-watching magazine, which he called The Seventies. Taking its title from the decade, it is now called The Nineties. Supported by a thousand shareholders and with a circulation of forty thousand (but a readership four times that figure), it is as independent as a magazine can be. Mr. Lee had contributed a tough article on the future of Hong Kong to the "Hong Kong Goes Back" issue of Index on Censorship. Among other things he had said that in Hong Kong "an intellectual can speak his mind on subjects forbidden in China without endangering his personal safety." His forth-rightness made me eager to speak with him.

  I had agreed to meet Lee Yee at the China Club, the center of transitional Hong Kong, which was founded by the entrepreneur David Tang. "Cigar-smoking," "stylish," and "socialite," are the descriptions usually applied to this flamboyant and funny man, who keeps his scholarly side well hidden. Tang is a book collector, an omnivorous reader, and an art connoisseur who has single-handedly created a market for modern Chinese painting. I know him also to be an accomplished pianist, for on another occasion he sight-read the piano transcription of Elgar's Enigma Variations for me at his villa in the New Territories near Sai Kung.

  Speaking of the Hand-over, David Tang had told me that he was an optimist. "I have to be, because if I become pessimistic, I won't act." Anyway, he went on, China, not Britain, was by far the biggest foreign investor in Hong Kong. Out of pride, China would not let Hong Kong perform worse in the next five years than it had in the past five years.

  That was probably true. The Bank of China holds a quarter of all the money on deposit in Hong Kong and continues to invest here at an enormous rate, accounting for a fifth of the trade and a quarter of the cargo. Almost all Hong Kong's food comes from China.

  "Want to check the truth of what you write about Hong Kong after 1997?" Tang said before he left. "Whenever you write a sentence about the Chinese, substitute the word 'Communist' for 'Chinese.' Then reread it. If it still reads well, it's true."

  I had expected Lee Yee to be a firebrand. In his gray suit and tie he looked instead like a paid-up member of that ancient class in China, the scholar gentry. He was a gray-haired soul of about sixty—benign, even a bit phlegmatic, yet friendly.

  He reiterated something he had said in his essay "Stick to the Facts," in Index on Censorship: that the most sensible thing the business community could do is encourage the free flow of ideas; that in the absence of freedom, commerce would falter, as it has done in so many countries. "Freedom of speech is essential to Hong Kong's role as an international financial center. If there is no free flow of information, how can you make decisions? Singapore cannot be a financial center, because there is no press freedom."

  It rankled, he said, that the Joint Declaration had been a document put together by Britain and China, that the Hong Kong people were not consulted. Both China and Britain were afraid of free elections, for when given a chance to vote, the vast majority of Hong Kongers favored pro-democracy candidates rather than China's Pekingese.

  "As for the future, I have two big worries," he said, "corruption and press freedom."

  Another meeting, another ethical debate, but at the margins of my consciousness I was tantalized by decadent music, pretty perfume, and the lisping silk of women's dresses. A combination of vegetarianism and Dr. Gwai's potions had cured my gout, and I was walking again. It is a city of pedestrians. So many people thrown together in such a small area makes Hong Kong a profoundly physical experience, in which one is always in the presence of material goods and money.

  Of the cost of apartments, locals said, "You get nothing for a million U.S." Not just cameras and binoculars (objects so common these days that the duty-free shops at Hong Kong's airport no longer stock them) but designer fashions of every kind dangle before your face, the way the food in Hong Kong restaurants appears in the windows—plump ducklings varnished with sauce like pieces of mahogany, slaughtered hogs still bleeding, pigs' trotters, trays of fish lips, and dishes piled high with chicken feet, or "phoenix feet." Hong Kong prostitutes enjoy the same lexical ambiguity, sometimes called chickens and sometimes phoenixes. Self-employed prostitutes are legal here, under a law known as yet lau, yet feng, "one room, one phoenix."

  Hurrying to an appointment to discuss a political or legal issue in the middle of Kowloon, I would see an announcement by a door, four Chinese characters on a scroll: sun dou bak mui, "New Girl from North," a phoenix just arrived from China. The karaoke bars varied from place to place, ranging from jolly lounges, where customers sang drunkenly and out of tun
e, to brothels, for which "karaoke bar" is a euphemism in Kowloon's Mong Kok and Jordan, areas of sleazy vitality.

  In Jordan one day, I saw Jeremy Irons leaving Lucky Sauna, a gai dao, or "chicken house," known for its cheap rates for buccal coition. He was wearing a green Barbour jacket and makeup, and towered over the hurrying Hong Kongers as he took stock of the district in much the same way I did, making notes.

  The Chinese actress Gong Li and the director Wayne Wang were not far away, for this disreputable spot was a location for the film Chinese Box. I myself had been here just a year ago, working on this same film, and so it was not really an accident that I had run into Jeremy Irons.

  "Party tonight," he said. "Ruben Blades is leaving for the States tomorrow."

  Irons's suite at the Peninsula Hotel faced the harbor, Hong Kong Island, and the Peak, dotted with long strings of lights that gave its upper slopes the look of a ski resort. The Peninsula's guests are mainly Japanese, who stay for the nostalgic reason that the Japanese commandant was quartered there after the siege, rape, and occupation of Hong Kong, which began the day Pearl Harbor was attacked.

  In contrast to the parts he plays ("mainly weirdos" he says), Irons is an affable person, with the English actor's knack for doing funny accents, clever in conversation, and musical. After Ruben Blades had sung several boleros, Irons took the guitar and sang "St. Louis Woman." Sushi and smoked salmon were passed around, and champagne, and then coffee. Following Dr. Gwai's diet, I had a banana, offered by Irons's wife, the actress Sinead Cusack.

  "Hong Kong is a superb place," Irons said. Sinead agreed. So did the rest of the cast. They had been there a month, and they had a month more of shooting.

  But their Hong Kong was not my Hong Kong. They were shooting in brothels and atmospheric apartments. In this intensely social place of tit shows and racetracks, noodle shops, five-star hotels, Rolls-Royces, superstition, the streets aromatic with Chinese herbs and joss sticks, I spent most of my time debating issues of law and morality with policy wonks and passionate dissidents.

  "I've got to go," I said. "I've got an early interview tomorrow."

  "What are you doing in Hong Kong?"

  "Playing a journalist."

  "Me too," he said. "As you know."

  The next morning, while Irons was doing a love scene with Gong Li, I was meeting her namesake, the defiant Martin Lee, whose father, Li Yinwo, had been a general in the Nationalist army. In The Fall of Hong Kong, Mark Roberti writes that although Martin Lee was born in Hong Kong, in 1938, while his mother was on vacation, his father, the "intensely patriotic General Lee, did not want his son to be British and prohibited his wife from registering the birth." Another interesting fact about Martin Lee's father: "Li disliked the Communists because they rejected the family as the basic unit of society." This is perhaps the reason Martin Lee has the reputation for being a family man. He is known to be stubborn, incorruptible, and insistent that the people of Hong Kong be guaranteed justice in a Chinese court.

  Fearless and—uncharacteristic for a Chinese—confrontational, Lee has the intense and solemn gaze of a Jesuit. This demeanor changes completely when he laughs, which is often. His chosen path could lead to martyrdom, though when I asked him about this, he said, "I don't think it's likely that I will be thrown into prison, because I am known. But what of the people who are not known? The possibility is there."

  Mr. Lee, who has recently been to Washington, where he met with President Clinton and several members of Congress, had just returned from a triumphant speaking tour of European capitals. It is a measure of the respect people have for his courage that he is usually greeted like a senior statesman. While on European tour he had continued to write and publish articles. In one, he summed up the Hong Kong situation, saying that the Joint Declaration "promised that Hong Kong's people would have their own elected legislature, an executive accountable to that legislature, an independent judiciary, and a 'high degree of autonomy.' Over a decade later this agreement is in tatters."

  Because he is articulate and open-minded, hospitable to journalists, kindly and charismatic and highly intelligent, he is welcome everywhere. When C. H. Tung criticized Lee for "badmouthing Hong Kong," it was Tung who was put on the defensive for this crude remark, for it is well known that Martin Lee's concerns are for the rights of Hong Kong citizens.

  In his law office in Admiralty, he explained to me how, by refusing to define such terms as "acts of state" or the key provisions of the Basic Law, China would be able to manipulate human rights. "There's a big hole in the common law now," he said. Theoretically, China had agreed to the articles in the Basic Law that ensured an independent judiciary. But while it was expressly stated in Article 82, for example, that "judges from other common law jurisdictions" would sit on the highest court, the Court of Final Appeal, there was no sign that China intended to abide by this. Indeed, as July 1 approaches, there is no court of final adjudication for the people of Hong Kong, who know that in China justice is swift, and a frequent punishment for wrongdoing is a bullet in the neck. Executions, sometimes five or ten at a time, often take place in provincial sports stadiums. The more pessimistic Hong Kongers wonder whether the race course at Happy Valley, with its vast TV screens, will serve this function in years to come.

  Martin Lee is also gloomy on this point. He told me, "When you see clear provisions of the Basic Law and the Joint Declaration being violated, how can you guarantee any of the other clauses will not be violated?"

  Speaking of the non-elected Provisional Legislature, Mr. Lee said, "How would Americans like an appointed Congress, with the promise of elections some time in the future?"

  "Britain adopted a policy of appeasement," he said. He calls the United States' policy on China "single-faceted—just trade." People in Hong Kong who demanded the rule of law were regarded by American businessmen and diplomats as "just a nuisance." As for China's concerns with rights and freedoms, "There is only one right in China—the right to be fed. It's the sort of right all dogs and cats enjoy."

  Governor Patten has voiced his concerns about these issues, and in a celebrated policy address late last year he emphasized that Britain will continue to monitor human rights in Hong Kong. This is a noble sentiment, but given Britain's indifference to Hong Kong's aspirations in the past, it offers meager reassurance. Anyway, Patten will go. The foreign businessmen are free to go. And many wealthy Hong Kong businessmen have foreign passports and a ticket out. But Martin Lee, in identifying himself with the humblest and most vulnerable people, seemed to me to be the conscience of Hong Kong; the man to watch, the man to listen to. His nature is uncompromising, and so there was little of the politician in him, but quite a lot of the moralist.

  "What are your fears?" I asked him.

  "My fear is the loss of freedom generally, and loss of the rule of law."

  The great news was that Martin Lee had no plans for relaxing his vigil. Since arriving in Hong Kong, I had heard him praised and abused—mostly praised; but it is not admirable in traditional Chinese society to stick your neck out. For some dim folk he was an embarrassment, a bit of a nuisance, yet just the sort of person they would flock to were they not so terrified of the coming commissar culture. In the end, Martin Lee will be hailed as a hero, though it may take the equivalent of the twenty-seven years it took Nelson Mandela to achieve his goal—and for all those years you hardly heard a good word about him from any of the businessmen or politicians who are presently kissing Mandela's bum.

  "I'm hoping for the best," Martin Lee told me as we parted.

  He was the single most impressive person I met in Hong Kong, and the one I intend to listen to whenever something significant happens.

  Nothing will change for fifty years was China's cry. It was meant to build morale among the Hong Kong businessmen. In that it has succeeded to a certain extent.

  But now, months before the Hand-over, there is uneasiness and quite a lot of change. It is not just the new flag, and the disappearing trash barrels that
had colonial emblems on them, replaced by plum-colored bins showing the Special Administrative Region bauhinia, by now a familiar logo; and the rubbed-out word "Royal" that once appeared in so many club names has vanished even from police station façades. There is a self-consciousness about speaking the familiar Cantonese, and a definite apprehension about the official language of China, Mandarin or Putonghua, which few people in Hong Kong speak or understand. Residence requirements are changing, and so are the details of work permits. A vast number of Filipinos, mostly women doing menial jobs, are anxious; on Sundays in Statue Square they squat in their thousands and chatter, making the whole of Hong Kong Central sound like a rookery. And though China had said there would be only two thousand, there will now be four thousand soldiers based at Stanley, as soon as the last of the British Gurkhas leave.

  At Hong Kong University most of the political science lecturers have left. The Chinese do not recognize political science as a subject, and the department will probably close. Other lecturers are worried about their retirement fund. What if it is taxed? What if restrictions are placed on its remittance to another country?

  The Chinese have their own notion of world history, which was why I had sought out a history lecturer at the university. I was lucky in finding Jonathan Grant, an American about my own age, who had been in Hong Kong teaching history for twenty years. His special field was postwar Hong Kong history, and so he could recite a whole litany of colonial wickedness and hypocrisy. He knew the Chinese, too.