Flower Lounge (6) -- See Hings

Fan Tong — the all purpose Common Room — is a menagerie of See Hings from various hidden paths of life. It’s a fascinating place to spend the day, even weeks, people watching, though three years would be a bit tedious.

Polygamist has Guo Gai to a proper jail the day after he enquired. Someone must have dropped his file under the table. Didn’t get a chance to say goodbye or thank him for saving me from a vulnerable moment, though he might have found that odd. Marlboro is my new mentor. The morning after we shared a bed with Flaky, he told me the young man’s bizarre dermatology is a common symptom of overindulging in ice, aka methyl-amphetamine to multi-syllable folks who don’t do drugs or take public transport.

After breakfast, he hands me a news clipping of my verdict, expecting me to get excited over my own misfortune. If Jesus were crucified today, I suspect the apostles would line up to show him video clips of the crucifixion as soon as he emerged from his three-day death with gaping wounds.

My case, summed up in a few hundred words, is a long distance from the headline. Most See Hings, Marlboro included, comb through the tabloids, sometimes repeatedly to pass the excess time they’ve been awarded for having sinned. The brief account is surprisingly positive, even sympathetic for a Hong Kong journal. The reporter must have been new to the business. He even quotes the judge’s contradictory remarks about us being victims rather than villains, but does not question why well-behaving victims are sentenced to jail. It ends with a sensational description of Satu turning into a ‘tear person’ upon hearing the verdict.

‘Wow, not many errors.’ I comment lightheartedly as I hand it back to him.

‘You can keep it.’

‘It’s okay. Thanks very much. I don’t need it.’ He seems surprised.

I’m not a mainstream media follower, and have not bothered to keep a media file on the fiasco. Not because they bring back terrible memories. To me, it’s an insipid case of simple bad luck which I’ve been trying to endure with detachment. The spattering of news reports, circulated by PR colleagues at the time, were mostly cut and paste from ICAC press releases — yawn inducing, full of glaring inaccuracies and fabricated details designed to mislead. They are not worth the trouble of reading, not to say saving.

During the trial, young journalists showed up in the courtroom occasionally for an air-con break. They looked terminally indifferent to the tiring theatrics of wigged players debating twenty-first century disputes in nineteenth century language, smugly inserting Latin words every now and then to impress a largely empty gallery. Within minutes, an overworked and underpaid agent of the free press would snooze, drool, and snore. A notebook or cellphone would drop, causing the judge to raise his eyes and frown. Those not good at power-napping would typically stay for only five to ten minutes, just long enough to recover from the sun and traffic fumes. They would then bow their exit, walk backward for a few steps like dynastic eunuchs. The ICAC will keep them informed of the progress with press releases written in a readily publishable format, complete with interpretation hints. In modern journalism, observation and literary skills are secondary to proficiency in cut-and-paste, and toeing the editorial line.

Many See Hings are regulars. They know the system, the routine, some of the inmates, and many of the guards. When marshalled past each other in the courtyard or sitting interminably at Fingerprint Room without knowing why — something that happens a lot to prisoners — they often yell out to each other.

‘Hay! You again? Dew Lay Lo Mo! You just fucking got out!’

A big smile in return.

‘What the fuck for this time?’ Glad to note that even seasoned See Hings ask the same preambular question.

An emphatic shrug would be a common reply. Announcing one’s crime across the room would amount to a self-infringement of privacy. In addition, some convicts actually don’t know, or care, why they’re here. Those who break laws for a living expect periodic imprisonment. Only a matter of time. Part of the job. Official reasons are mere technicality, almost irrelevant. If one parks illegally everyday, the exact time and location on the eventual ticket is not important even if it contains inaccurate details. That’s the spirit.

‘How long?’

A few fingers go up. Their owner giggles, nearly blushing. It’s prudent to display modesty when a career record has been broken.

‘Hoooly fuck!’

Is that commiseration? Admiration? Compliment? Or just a polite response?

The Common Room reminds me of corporate conferences.

These days, it’s fashionable to ‘lock away’ executives for corporate reviews and strategy brainstorming, usually on an island resort in Greece, or Thailand, or Morocco, depending on the Chairman’s preference, or whether a major deal has recently been struck with a scenic country. During coffee breaks, men — very few women if the company is French — dressed in virtually identical outfits, gather in small groups to gossip, boast unverifiable contributions, claim credits, drop names, suggest the next big move as if privy to it, share hindsights, and roll eyes to demonstrate independent thinking.

That’s exactly what the scene before me at LCK looks like right now.

The body language is also similar — expansive gestures hide the man underneath; scanning eyes seek out contacts, opportunities, friends and competitors, as the mouth talks through a corner. Smiles are measured, uncommitted, smeared with latent messages. Senior members nod absentmindedly. The young and ambitious whisper urgently.

Though prison uniforms are even more regimented than corporate suits, convicts come in a richer variety of size, shape and appearance, wearing a broader range of facial expressions.

See Hings mill past in perpetual circulation; I absorb them into my daydreams, judging, imagining, philosophising, fantasising, making notes to mark time and amuse myself. In just a few days, I have nearly filled an entire notebook.

I assign them stations and roles in gangland.

Those two I noted on my first day are General Manager material, reporting directly to a Godfather in sunglasses somewhere. They stand out from the crowd, radiating prominence.

That smiley little guy over there, flicking a sharp tongue across jagged teeth, is probably a court jester. I’ll bet you can smack him over his greasy head and he’d laugh and thank you if you’re more powerful. Otherwise, he would torture you to a slow death, giggling all the way.

Now, this one gliding past in oversized slippers is obviously a snake. His glassy eyeballs and seashell ears spook me. He’s hissing hypnotically to a silvery old man who looks like a professor of art history. The professor nods inattentively, not trusting the serpent, yet giving him his time, probably devising a plan to domesticate him for other use, or eat him for dinner.

There must be a colourful tale behind each of them, though ‘colourful’ seems a stupid attempt to romanticise poverty. Poverty? Are they necessarily poor? What’s contemporary indigence like in Hong Kong, where those fallen into destitution suffer from obesity and junk food indigestion rather than hunger? LCK Fan Tong is a most inspiring setting for idle reverie, while fellow criminals prepare dinner in a hidden kitchen.

Starvation poverty has long been superseded by the public housing conundrum, a background shared by many guards and inmates. I have plenty of praise for Hong Kong’s public housing policy, but everything has a dark side, or a bright side darkened by time. Such is life.

Starvation poverty is like a leg-hold trap. If caught, it hurts like hell. The victims struggle with all they have, whatever it takes. Cut that careless leg off if necessary. The alternative is death. Public-housing poverty, on the other hand, is numbing, not threatening. In fact, it doesn’t even resemble poverty, and is well above global poverty line.

Contemporary urban deprivation is a social blackhole. Time and events have collapsed. Nothing breaks free from its enormous gravity, not even light. Looking out from it, the world looks warped beyond comprehension — a parallel reality. Unlike leg-hold traps, blackholers don’t feel existentially threatened as they shrink under relentless compression, becoming smaller, denser, until no more, yet without losing weight. More negligible mass is added to the bottomless sink, fuelling its insatiable gravity. There’s no escape. There’s nowhere to escape to.

Nearly half of Hong Kong live in public housing.

The earliest resettlement shelters, hastily and contemptuously built in the 1950s and 60s, were ratholes which make LCK look five-star. Yet the occupants were spirited and optimistic. Not long ago, they had been resettled from matchbox slums perched on slippery slopes. The roof over their heads was now ‘permanent’, made of weather proof reinforced concrete. The force of nature had been removed from the equation. There were even shared toilets with flushing mechanisms, one on each floor, how about that? But this was just temporary. Everything was merely a transition to a better tomorrow. They will move out one day if they worked hard, of course, perhaps to a mansion with a double garage on the Peak, guarded by a big fat hairy steak-fed dog. If not themselves, well, maybe their children, or grandchildren. With that ‘one day’ firmly in mind, even hardship had a sweet aftertaste.

Back then, nearly everyone was poor. Mr. Li Ka Shing was broke. Though I grew up in relatively comfortable Mid-Levels, me and my sister had to help assemble plastic flowers during summer holidays, a popular piecemeal home industry to supplement household income. Leaf by leaf, cent by cent, everyone contributed to Hong Kong’s growing GDP. To work hard was honourable, fashionable, admirable. Work harder, and tomorrow will be better. Work much harder, tomorrow will be much better. The correlation was plain, simple, reassuring, like primary school math, like religion. Application will speed up the arrival of that one day.

Looking up the social ladder, they saw only a few colonials massaging their beer bellies with eyes closed. Plenty of vacancies and opportunities. Hong Kong was a greyhound track. Driven by instincts, young people raced after ‘one day’ — the mechanical rabbit was always nearly within reach. Even losers got a good workout chasing dreams.

Gradually, thanks to their hard work, public flats became air-conditioned sanctuaries with private bathrooms. Toilet bowls are fitted with two sized buttons — big one for big dumps, small one for minor discharges. Kitchens are cramped by food processors and microwaves and pasta machines. Living rooms are taken up by giant flat-screen televisions capable of 3D illusions. Their homes are connected to community centres, gyms, squash and tennis courts with clear markings, shopping malls, sushi bars, foot massage parlours, parking lots. Outdoor greenery is guaranteed by statutory plot ratio and contract specifications.

But the invisible boundary has turned impermeable, confining the tenants and their kids to cheap rent and vibrant gangs. One day had fallen into the black hole, compressed into an unidentifiable dream, infinitely dense. The Hare-son Hare — that elusive mechanical bait — has vanished.

There are real rabbits around, meaty and dead, strewn all over the track. Eat it!

Decades of breathless work ethic has resulted in an excess of material success which Hong Kong is too busy to digest, yet too insecure to step back and ruminate before moving forward. The government is single-mindedly lost in a twentieth century laissez-faire maze, clinging to the decomposing corpse of capitalism in a cul-de-sac, doesn’t know how to let go.

It may stink a little now, but don’t let go. It once worked. Keep repeating the same thing, and the results maybe better one day. We vowed not to change for fifty years, remember?

Meanwhile, as Hong Kong moulders away in stagnant prosperity, the rest of the world moves on at a dazzling speed.

Perpetual growth is a capitalistic chimera no more achievable than everlasting life. At some point, a community reaches its limitations. To move on, it must digest, rethink, and seek rebirth.

The aphorism ‘Wealth doesn’t last three generations’ is based on experience, not ill wish. After a critical cluster of monster parents have stocked up enough to last another five wasteful generations, there’s not much left for laggers and new comers. The pie has been divided, claimed, eaten. Leftovers have been stowed in the freezer, locked up. Upper rungs on the social ladder are fully occupied. The incumbents, guaranteed by law, bequeath privileged positions to their heirs regardless of merit. Their kids are born successful. Traditional inheritance rights combined with Chinese saving habits have turned affluent kids into vegetables, and the not-yet-haves into grassroots.

Property prices define Hong Kong; everything else is a consequence. These days, even property tycoons acknowledge that real-estates are unaffordable, yet selling ridiculously well. Paradoxically, Hong Kong has one of the higher private ownership rates in the world. Where’s the money from? No, not outsiders, not according to facts and statistics. It’s the monster daddies.

In the distant past, when I was a young man, the price of commodities reflected the earning power of my peers. Nowadays, a bright and ‘successful’ young man, making twice as much as his buddies, does not qualify for subsidised housing because he makes too much. Yet he can’t afford a toilet-size flat in the commercial market dominated by his dumb classmates’ daddies. He can’t match the previous generation’s purchasing power. The market isn’t fair. It doesn’t adjust for balance — never has, never will, except for brief transition periods. But recognising this economic reality is being disloyal to capitalistic beliefs, sacrilegious in Hong Kong.

In Man’s Last Song, a book I finished before coming to jail, I compare excessive inheritance in a capitalistic system to the inequity of a feudal society. The modern version is in fact more robust, more difficult to rebel against, therefore more unjust and cynical.

Poor bastards are now called grassroots, a green and refreshing metaphor which suggests that their underfoot station is part of nature’s design. Willing to think, travel, and work overtime won’t improve their situations anymore. Being aware only makes life more unbearable, poisoning it with a bitter sense of injustice. When a bright young man with money-deficient parents looks ahead, the future is static and dark, shrouded in despair. Meanwhile, his stupid and lazy classmate brags about his new smart phone. He decides to get one too, by hook or by crook. When fate turns the wrong way, as it often does, he ends up here, and becomes my See Hing.

Prison is a cage where grassroots are locked away, watched by other grassroots, so people above them may enjoy social harmony and economic freedom undisturbed. Sunshine.

My mental free-fall into Hong Kong’s socio-economic blackhole is interrupted by a young man in his mid-twenties.

‘Hi, I’m Joe.’

Another Joe?

Earlier, a shoplifter called Joe came over to chat. If I had a son, I don’t think I would name him Joe.

He extends his hand. I shake it. Haven’t seen anyone shake hands around here. I bet we look really weird.

I saw him reading John Man’s semi-fiction Genghis Khan earlier. Though it’s always a pleasure to meet book readers of any kind, I wonder why he’s picked me for conversation.

That Guardian Angel thing is about to say something. I stop it cold.

Shut up! I can handle this myself. Scat! Go whisper about me into God’s ear.

‘I read about your case in the paper,’ Joe II explains. Apparently, press coverage, albeit in the appendix of tabloids, has turned me into a minor celebrity inside this uneventful enclosure. Young people like celebrities, I suppose, even inconsequential, unentertaining, and reluctant ones.

Joe II has a strong and intelligent face savagely marred by pockmarks. I wish I had my camera.

So, Joe, what’re you in for, buddy?

His story is somewhat baffling, like real life.

He’s a computer technician living in a remote corner of rural New Territories — a corner so remote by Hong Kong standards as to be shunted by mainstream gangsters. Buses only run every fifteen minutes, and taxis are painted green. Having noticed a market vacuum, Joe and associates formed their own protection racket as a sideline venture, becoming start-up Triads. One day, after beating up some illegal squatters who refused to pay, he grabbed the wrong backpack when getting away in a hurry. Soon he realised the mixup, and ran back for his own. The cops were waiting.

Hmm. Returning to the crime scene for his backpack is pretty reckless, if not outright stupid, isn’t it?

He must have read my mind. ‘It was shit luck. The guy had the same fucking backpack. Double shit luck that the cops were so fucking fast. They’re bored out of their minds, you see. Triple shit fucking luck that my ID was in the bag. They’d have come to me anyway.’ Carrying his own ID card in the backpack when committing a crime? An amateur after all.

After chatting me up, eloquent and friendly Joe II moseys on to befriend other inmates. Listening to him telling stories, I’m impressed by his knowledge of Hong Kong and the small world beyond, not something which can be taken for granted in his generation. He seems a natural leader among younger inmates. He’s fluent in colloquial English, and doesn’t exclude foreign inmates in his fraternising excursions.

Solicitor Derek once told me prisons are full of idiots. He’s partly right. There’s no shortage of strange characters here. I’ve got one sitting opposite me. But there are quite a few young men displaying human qualities which have become rare in more comfortable circles.

It’s a pity that Joe II has ended up on the murky side of things. On the other hand, would it not be equally ‘a pity’ if such a lively young person joins the Government Treasury as certified accountant, carrying a lifetime mortgage on his back until retirement? I don’t have an answer.

An exuberant group of about half a dozen black-workers — illegal migrant workers from the mainland — appeared at the adjacent table, invigorating our section with the vibes of a good harvest. Once caught, migrant workers get about fifteen months semi-automatically to protect local labourers who don’t want these jobs. Computers would be far more efficient and consistent than wigged humans in judging these cases. Most of them have sturdy muscles which Hong Kong needs, but resents. Not all are here to labour, of course. Some sneak in to do a quick job, but are not quick enough to sneak back out. They also end up here in LCK.

Among them is a teenage looking kid with thick glasses. He must have been at least twenty-one to be here though. All morning, through the corners of my very eyes, I see him translating the newspaper into English. Something’s very insane. I finally ask Marlboro if he knows what the boy’s in for. Marlboro’s a mystery. He doesn’t go around to gossip, but seems fully informed about what’s going on, and who’s who in this room, at least those who have kind of made it to the newspapers.

‘You don’t know?’

Well, I wouldn’t have asked if I did, would I?

I must seem a contradiction to him: An educated person who doesn’t know anything, or read the newspaper, demonstrating no interest even in his own news.

According to Marlboro, the kid was caught ghostwriting in last year’s high-school public exam, and became a minor celebrity through arrest.

‘That’s all? An exam? You don’t go to jail for that do you?’

‘Yes you do. Ask him,’ he rolls his eyes in the boy’s direction. ‘Especially mainlanders.’

‘I see.’

So, reportedly, the heavily bespectacled kid accepted an assignment to write an exam in Hong Kong for a couple of grand, something which I suspect many smart and adventurous youngsters would find hugely gratifying for the ego in addition to a free trip to Hong Kong. What social harm has been caused by his irresponsible action? Is there a remote possibility that the dummy whom he impersonated would end up in university, and continue to commission ghostwriters for the endless tests awaiting him in the years ahead? Is there any chance that he would finish medical school without a brain, becoming a terrible doctor, causing countless innocent deaths? Life entails far too many exams to delegate to phantoms.

The young man probably thought too lightly about his illegitimate employment. Youthful eyes are blind to consequences. Fine, what he did deserves punishment. But ten months…oh well, this will teach him the erratic nature of justice, something I’ve just learned belatedly at my age.

Perhaps his peasant mates have never seen foreigners within touching distance before, and seem particularly intrigued whenever one shows up. They pester the boy to interpret. Why’s he in jail? Where’s he from? Does he have kids? Boys? Girls? Does he eat Chinese food at home? Can he handle eating rice everyday?

He obliges with a fatalistic grimace. His strongly accented but proper English is impressive, much better than his average peers in Hong Kong. Perhaps that’s why he was hired.

The appearance of a jolly Peruvian absolutely electrifies his table.

Señor Amigo parades his gunshot wound on his chest to collect likes and wows. It’s an enthralling scar indeed, featuring three-dimensional folds and ridges stemming from a meaty depression just below the collar bone — presumably the entry point of the bullet. It resembles a cosmic constellation. To the black-workers, Amigo’s arrival is more thrilling than a caravan of acrobats showing up at their sleepy village one morning unexpected. They swarm the young man, prodding him to find out more, six questions at a time.

Ask him. Ask him. How was he shot? Why? Did it hurt? Did the bullet go through? Got stuck? Did it burn? Did the wound smoke? Did someone remove it with pliers?

To my surprise, the kid’s conversational Spanish is muy bueno! My brief attempt to learn Spanish eons ago had given me enough background to be genuinely impressed.

I like the young stranger without knowing him, so am probably being overly sympathetic. But focusing on the bright side, he’ll have plenty of time to think and write in the months ahead, and be inoculated with cynicism. That’s maturity. He’s been shown the essence of Rule of Law a la Hong Kong. Marlboro says the employer and his stupid son were not charged. I find that incredible, but won’t bother to verify. The older I get, the more I believe that everyone will have to face the consequence of his action sooner or later, one way or the other.

The wretched man across the aisle is still staring at the floor today. His table-mate, an old guy, offers him a drag of his cigarette butt. He draws deeply without exhaling or loosening his gaze. The old man probably smells fingers sizzling, and gestures him urgently to throw it out the window. He gets up, walks over to the window, flicks whatever’s left of the butt out onto the basketball court below, then resumes monitoring the surface movement of planet Earth.

Not all black-workers are mainlanders.

One morning, a Caucasian giant enters, wearing pants many sizes too small. He settles at the table behind us, then gets up after a few minutes to prevent blood clots. We make friendly eye contact when he walks past. Finally, he stops by: ‘You speak English?’ He sounds Eastern European.

‘Yes, want to sit?’

‘No thanks. I prefer standing.’ He rocks gently. Doctors would probably advise against sitting in those tight pants. The contrived smile on his melancholic mouth belies his discomfort.

Born and raised in Poland, he immigrated to the States years ago. He has a small partnership in Hong Kong selling Chinese prefab huts to India, helping to give Indian urban slums a Mediterranean look. He overstayed his visitor visa by more than a year, and here he is.

‘The stupid thing is I could have renewed my tourist visa easily. A day trip to Macau and back would have done it.’ He widens his smile with effort. How could any judge not believe someone who looks like an emoji for honesty? ‘But I was busy and didn’t think it a big deal, so didn’t bother.’

Is that all?

I glance at his Prisoner’s ID. It says ‘Breach of Condition of Stay,’ nothing else.

Not long ago, a friend discovered at a police road-block that his driving license had expired five years ago. A one-year lapse of the visa doesn’t seem so unthinkable. Anyway, for that, he got thrown into a jail designed for smaller people.

Marlboro and I end up being cellmates for a few nights.

In the privacy of our barred en suite, he’s haltingly more talkative, revealing bits and pieces about himself. In a deep drowsy monotone, he sounds like a dying soldier in a war trench, one leg freshly missing, oozing blood infused with morphine. Perhaps it’s his voice, or the setting, his mostly ordinary tales of poverty are deeply moving.

He was a chauffeur, living in government housing with Mum who had fallen terminally ill. He quit his job to take care of her, and depended on welfare for survival. Having only each other in this world is easy to imagine, but difficult to empathise without personal experience.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, Mum died soon after. Meanwhile, he had assumed that his welfare status had been shared between government departments — which sounds commonsensical enough — and neglected to formally inform the Housing Department about it. Also possible that he couldn’t bring himself to formalise his rockbottom status on a piece of bureaucratic paper, hence the omission? No matter, because of that, he lost the right to inherit the flat, and got removed to a temporary shelter.

‘Why?’

‘Don’t know. That’s the rule.’ I suppose rules are rules.

He started smuggling cigarettes part-time, as many in his situation do. ‘I knew getting caught would only be a matter of time,’ he gives a c’est la vie shrug, no bitterness. But he gets slightly worked up when relaying the judge’s personal reprimand. ‘You should know that breaking the law for merely five hundred dollars is dumb,’ the wigged man told him, wagging a finger.

‘I wanted to ask him what amount would make it intelligent. Five thousand? Five million? Five hundred bucks are a lot to me!’

‘You didn’t!’

‘Of course not, or I’d be in for much longer. They hate bad manners, everyone knows. Always look sad and stupid in court, mouth shut and head down.’ Come to think of it, John and I probably looked far too smart-arse, even arrogant in body language at times. Perhaps we deserve this after all.

‘They make such a big deal about cigarette smuggling, but won’t go ahead and ban it,’ I say sympathetically in his moral defence.

‘Government would lose a lot of money in that case,’ he explains with reason, not sarcasm. How weird.

‘I know many who evade tax legally with professional advice. They won’t break the law for five hundred bucks though. That’s for sure,’ I mumble, wondering if he gets my point.

‘Yeah, the judge said it’s stupid.’

* * *

Next episode Transfer to be uploaded by 27 July 2025

Short story Beyong Reasonable Doubt is partly inspired by my See Hings