Flower Lounge (18) -- Flower Lounge Book Club

Prisons are penitentiaries run by the Correctional Services Department to lock up law breakers. The name of the responsible department suggests an intention to reeducate and correct, not just administer punitive measures. While incarceration is relatively straight forward, correction is not, especially when the root causes of criminality remain unresolved. Furthermore, the guards — the frontline ‘re-educators’ — are often unqualified for the task. In real life, most prisoners just sit out their crimes behind bars with grievances rather than penitence. Some may use the opportunity to review what they did wrong to have been caught in the first place, and widen professional networks with like-minded colleagues. Concerns regarding imprisonment being a rite of passage for juvenile inmates are not unfounded.

That said, prison is also a good place to read, think, and write. Many famous persons would not have produced their magnum opuses had they not been jailed.

Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his open letter against racism in Birmingham jail in April 1963. The Negro Is Your Brother arguably sowed the seed of King’s ‘public execution’, and America’s eventual repackaging of its traditionally racist narratives.

Nelson Mandela spent twenty-seven years behind bars and accumulated a rich archive of memorable material for his subsequent best seller. But he was nowhere near as prolific as the flatulence-obsessed Marquis de Sade who wrote nearly fifty novels and plays when incarcerated for being really really weird in sexual matters.

Without imprisonment, Marco Polo probably wouldn’t have had the leisure and patience of sitting down with Rustichello da Pisa to compose The Travels.

Self-declared genius Oscar Wilde was thrown into a 19th century English Flower Lounge for having violated the official sex order of the day. In there, he ran into Jesus, and wrote De Profundis which the author no doubt found profoundly moving.

True genius Su Dong Po of Sung Dynasty got himself jailed for some of his brilliantly critical poems. Before his detractors managed to cut his head off, he got himself out of it with the goodbye-world poems he sent to his brother. The Emperor, a secret fan of his, screened all his letters from jail. His Majesty was greatly moved by Su’s last words, and ordered his release. By comparison, the equally brilliant Li Bai of Tang Dynasty was fearless when drunk, quietly cooperative when locked up sober.

Prison is not necessarily a literary desert. In the dorms, dining hall, and workshop, reading and writing were a more common sight than in school campuses, though the primary reading material came from local tabloids. All newspapers were permitted, provided that someone subscribed and paid for them. Contents which could be used by in-house bookies — such as horse racing and football results — were removed. Political news and commentaries were unrestricted. Most inmates were far too street-smart to take them seriously anyway. Triads called themselves Gu Wark Zai — smart guys. There was a degree of truth in that presumptuous claim. Comparing to corporate eunuchs, gangsters were much less gullible when it comes to the mainstream media.

The so-called ‘library’ in tiny Tong Fuk wasn’t a room where we could hide among books and be self-righteous about being silent, but it did host an impressive collection. Every week, a list of titles was circulated for orders. Librarian See Hings would deliver them to the workshop within a few days, as last week’s borrowed books were returned. Few libraries in the world provided a comparably personal service. The virtual library was well stocked. Besides popular local titles, one could find a wide range of Chinese classics, works of Western big names such as Steinbeck and Hesse, and other writings in history, philosophy, spirituality and literature. Many if not most of these books had been left behind by past inmates. It made me wonder what odd individuals had spent time behind these bars in front of me.

Though I had always enjoyed reading and writing, I didn’t have much time for fictions before retirement. I did write private commentaries and observations once in a while to amuse myself, but the only outlets of my interest in creative writing were Board Meeting Papers. When reading John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men in Tong Fuk, I wondered how I had missed that great story for so long, considering I had read The Grapes of Wrath long ago and liked it a lot. I was busy, I suppose.

Another unexpected discovery was Master Nan Huai Jin.

My curiosity in the Chinese classics had deepened after retirement. I kept discovering in them relevant answers to timeless questions still troubling the modern world. But deciphering the arcane texts was not always easy.

I had heard of Master Nan before, but never read him. I had the wrong impression (don’t know where I got it from, but ignorance needs no reference) that he was a preacher in Tantric Buddhism, something which I had mistaken to be a religion.

My deep-seated suspicion of anything religious stemmed from years of experience with brain-laundering religionists during my formative years. All the schools I attended in Hong Kong, from kindergarten to the end of secondary school, were Protestant or Catholic. It wasn’t because I came from a devout family. Quite the contrary, my father prohibited me to adopt any religion before the self-determining age of eighteen. That sensible policy saved me from desperate baptism when I was in Grade Five, panicked by the blistering thoughts of Hell fire which my Bible teacher guaranteed to be inevitable unless I submitted then and there.

History had created a peculiar situation in Hong Kong. More than half of the schools were Christian; and nearly all brandname private schools with history and prestige were ecclesiastical subsidiaries. The education system was (still is) dominated by religious institutions, as if Hong Kong were a theocracy. These privileged schools did not openly oppose the pillars of Chinese civilisation — Daoism, Buddhism, Confucianism, for example — but intentionally or unintentionally gave young and impressionable minds the impression that nearly all things Chinese were old fashioned and backward. Many of my childhood schoolmates, having been guided to equate ignorance in Chinese culture to being ‘progressively Western’, competed to boast how lousy their Chinese was.

How my tiny brain escaped the whirlpool of God’s washing-machine is a long horror story. When it fortuitously survived rigorous cerebral scrubbing and wringing, and bounced back around when puberty hit, I had become a fundamentalist atheist reflexively suspicious of all things religious. It was not until late middle age when I realised that Daoism and Buddhism are unquestionably atheistic. They promote enlightenment through meditation, contemplation, and personal verification rather than praying to an anthropomorphic and monopolistic one-and-only-true-god. The teachings of Kong Zi (Confucius), also perplexingly classified as a religion in Hong Kong, is even more thoroughly secular. The mundane sage explicitly stayed clear of mysticism, albeit with emphatic respect.

Anyway, thanks to Tong Fuk, I discovered Master Nan through What Does the Diamond Sutra Say. I would not have attempted a book with that title had I not been jailed out of my mind. He had a wonderful way of presenting arcane concepts in simple words, and showing the relevance of ancient wisdom in today’s troubled humanity. I have since read more than a dozen books by him. To me, his most impressive prediction, made in the 1980s, is that insanity (he specifically included mass insanity) will replace cancer as mankind’s number one health hazard in the twenty-first century. That is obviously happening, though insanity doesn’t have a clearcut threshold. Plus when the deranged are in the majority, the perception and definition of mental illness will twist and shift accordingly.

After the Diamond Sutra, I read Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha, hoping to recruit the perspective of someone from afar. It was cute and titillating, a comforting read, but not quite as inspiring as I had hoped.

Overhearing a few young See Hings discussing meditation prompted me to borrow The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by Sogyal Rinpoche. It was my first serious encounter with the basics of meditation. Soon after Tong Fuk, I joined a meditation workshop by coincidence, and have been practising daily ever since. Sogyal Rinpoche’s renowned reference guide gives a useful trick in ‘facing down’ silly thoughts during meditation. Once a stray thought has been recognised (recognition is the first step), it will go away, or be pushed aside relatively easily. Stare at its departure, watch that space, and look out for the next arrival. Anticipating the appearance of the next intruding distraction single-mindedly turns out to be a remarkable way to focus on, uh, nothing.

In my reading notes for the Tibetan book is a quote from Voltaire: ‘Anyway, being born twice is no more surprising than being born once.’ Once pointed out, it seems pretty obvious. Amazingly, such an insightful deduction is blithely dismissed by many who believe that the indescribably limited human ‘science’ is the one and only key to resolving the infinite mystery of existence. Disproportionate human arrogance is perhaps the biggest hurdle for science to make the next big step forward. Science has been going round in circles for nearly a century — a lost particle in a circular accelerator, searching for the end of the tunnel. Like it or not, the culmination of physics, whatever it means, will lead to metaphysics.

I loathed history as a school subject but love good historical nonfictions. When reading Adam Hochschild’s King Leopold’s Ghost in the din of the dining hall, the sickening hypocrisy and unconvincing blindness of King Leopold’s contemporary society struck me as being more creepy and revolting than the barbarism of the famously ‘philanthropic’ King. Modern societies appear to have changed for the better, at least in principle. Have the minds and hearts really changed? Or just better disguised? A recommendable book in any case. I would have reread it if I had a longer sentence.

Not all library books were good reads, of course.

John Hung was a high profile businessman jailed in 2009 due to a corruption case involving the Royal Hong Kong Jockey Club, of which he was an honorary voting member. His autobiographical Master of None was the first prison book I read. I seldom read autobiographies, but was curious about the experience of another Hong Kong person imprisoned in his late middle-age.

Mr. Hung’s maternal grandfather was the Senior Chinese Unofficial Member of the Hong Kong Legislative Council. Though Chinese and unofficial, he was nevertheless senior, and officially appointed by His Excellency the Governor. Reading his grandpa’s title out loud may give a feel for Hung’s background. To my disappointment, the book contains very little of the author’s personal experience in jail. It turns out to be an overly detailed account of the author’s career path which, according to himself, led to nothing much except a strong sense of entitlement. The book name could be a display of humility, or a brag of unearned privileges.

The first half of a small Chinese booklet 反寸世界 by Sir David Tang, grandson of Sir Tang Siu Kin, is quite amusing. Coming from a Chinese family with multiple British titles, the author was born with a silver spittoon under his chin to collect dribbles. To his credit, unlike Mr. Hung, Sir David grew up to be a master of something. Besides a renowned connoisseur in expensive cigars and restaurants, he also founded brandname shop Shanghai Tang.

I enjoyed his sarcastic portrayal of people displaying photos of themselves (and fifty others) standing stiffly in group photos with visiting royalties or low-grade celebrities. But after the acerbic critique, he goes on to show, example after example, how his photos with movie stars and royalties are personal, a different class altogether. Look, in this photographic insertion, he has his arms around big Hollywood stars in front of his yacht, everyone donning designer tank-tops, high fashion flip-flops clamped between manicured toes. But that was nothing. He also had Prince Charles’ cell phone number — beat that. Imagine: ‘Hey, Charles, David. I’m in London. Got time for happy hour?’

Charles has since been promoted to King Charles III, six years after David left this planet. He’s probably in the regal company of Henry VIII somewhere up there or down below, chortling over His ex-Majesty’s morbid insight into relationships.

Filled three notebooks made with future technology

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