Mahjong, Street Walkers And A Mania For Permed Hair - Hong Kong Stories 3

Five years ago I spent a few nights in Hong Kong on my way to and from Australia. I went to a jazz concert, visited some temples and a beautiful synagogue and took the ferry to Macau. I enjoyed my short stay but didn't really engage with the place and left not really having seen the real Hong Kong. This year I decided to revisit and spent a total of six nights there, once more using Hong Kong as my stopover on a visit to Australia. I decided to take a different approach this time, avoiding the well known monuments and attractions and concentrating instead on discovering what remains of the old Hong Kong. 

Calligrapher, Sheung Wan

I have already written that this visit was to a large extent inspired by the iconic photography of Fan Ho and by Sunset Survivors the recent book by Lindsay Varty that  documents some of Hong Kong's disappearing crafts and traditions. I carried out my search for the world of Fan Ho in the streets of Hong Kong in what proved to be a rich and sometimes surprising experience.

Despite the encroachment of modernity, glimpses of old Hong Kong can be seen almost everywhere. This includes groups of people playing mahjong or traditional card games, often for money in narrow alleys, courtyards of tenement buildings or in cafes and teashops.  The arrival of an outsider does not perturb the players and on numerous occasions I was asked if I would like to pull up a chair. I can play a little but did not wish to lose my money so would politely decline. Most gambling is illegal here but for the more serious players there are legal mahjong parlours where vast amounts of money can be won or lost in a single session. 

Whilst gambling is proscribed, prostitution is not. I was surprised to see young women tout for business in the street. They are particularly numerous in the area around Temple Street market but also work in other parts of the city. During the day they stand around looking bored and making half hearted attempts to attract interest before the more serious business of the evening. It is easy for misunderstandings to occur in the streets around the market. Between the massage parlours and brothels (which are illegal) there are other establishments displaying pictures of women in the window. It turns out that these are karaoke bars. The women in the pictures are featured singers and customers can pay to sing a duet with them. Something quite different to the service being sold in the street. The standard of is going is variable but these places are packed with locals almost every night.

Quartering the fish, North Point

Temple Street has a night market largely frequented by tourists these days but for me the neighbourhood markets used by locals are more interesting. Fresh meat and fish are on sale everywhere. And I mean fresh. It is not unusual to see the fish still moving. Several times I saw fish put up strong resistance to getting the chop, jumping and trying to slither away from the fishmonger's knife. However, resistance is futile and always ends in defeat but even then, severed heads can be seen breathing, hearts pumping and sectioned eels wriggling. Whole pigs are delivered to butchers, dumped on the pavement at the entrance to the shop and then hauled in with a huge skewer. They are immediately quartered, sold and probably eaten before the day is out. There are many butchers and competition is fierce. Red metal lamp shades hang over the stalls to enhance the appearance of the meat, enriching the colour, emphasising its freshness and attracting customers. Some vendors sell tiny live frogs. These are also for consumption and I am advised some customers take them home still live and kill them themselves. Hong Kong's markets are not for the feint hearted. I am a vegetarian. 

Food and its consumption is a social activity in Hong Kong. Almost every street has at least one neighbourhood style cafe or restaurant and little groups of fiends or relations can be seen sitting, eating and talking together. Even where people eat alone jokes and comments are shared between table. I stopped in several such places to snack and drink tea but unfortunately couldn't share the jokes not being able to understand Cantonese and the humour can be lost in translation. These little local places are in stark contrast to the skyscrapers and high powered business premises that dominate the skyline here and which represent Hong Kong for so many people. However I have no doubt that the skyscrapers provide many of the restaurants' customers.

Delivering whole pigs to the butcher

Sunday brunch, Tsim Sha Tsui

If I am traveling for more than a few days I like to visit a local barber. I do not care for modern salons and prefer a more traditional service. In London I have used the same Turkish barber shop for a number of years. The service includes a wet shave, hot towel, head and neck massage, threading and other painful activities all in the pursuit of male beauty. It also involves drinking copious amounts of Turkish coffee. I knew that a few, not dissimilar Shanghainese establishments still survive in Hong Kong and so visited the Kiu Kwun Barber Shop on Java Road in North Point. The ground floor has a long row of chairs each of them attended by a septuagenarian barber wearing a white coat and a mask covering mouth and nose. The chairs face long mirrors that enable the customer to see not only the barber but all of the comings and goings around him. A little surprised to see me, the manager asked who I was. Once he understood that not only was I a serious customer but also interested in the shop itself he asked me to come and see the first floor room. I climbed a narrow staircase and emerged to be greeted by the turned heads of a few older women sitting under enormous hair dryers, nursing magazines and looking slightly less than pleased to see me. Like the men, they sat in front of long mirrors encased by tiny colourful tiles that probably date from the 1950s. 

I was shown around by Gao Tak Tin who arrived in Hong Kong in 1959 and initially lived in a squatter village. He began learning the trade at the age of 14 and practised on a watermelon so as not to hurt his customers and has now been a barber for almost 60 years. Mister Gao has seen many changes in style including at one time a mania for permed hair. Mercifully that style is long passed. Kiu Kwan is the largest remaining Shanghainese barber shop in Hong Kong and has 14 employees, not one of them below the age of 70. When the business finally closes a piece of history will be lost. I had a haircut and shave for just 70 dollars. That's about £7. Quite a bit more than my London barber charges.

Mister Gao Tak Tin in the Kiu Kwan barber shop

Gao's style of barbering may be dying out in Hong Kong but other traditions linger on. The villain hitters are a group of elderly women who practice a form of sorcery under the Canal Road flyover between Causeway Bay and Wan Chai. As well as attracting people like me who want to observe and photograph them they continue to receive many local visitors who believe in their powers. They attempt to place a curse on the individual of one's choice by beating a paper effigy with a shoe whilst chanting about breaking their arms and legs. The ceremony ends with the burning of a paper tiger and the tossing of wooden dice to see if the spell has worked. Not wanting to cause trouble for anyone I elected instead to have any curses placed on me removed. I was invited to write my name of a piece of paper before bowing and waving three incense sticks three times at a small shrine. I then sat perfectly still whilst burning paper was circled three times around my head before the villain hitter declared me curse free and lucky. Throughout the whole process people were passing by, getting on and off buses and generally going about their business completely disinterested.

Still on the subject of effigies, I made a visit to Au-Yeung Ping Chi's shop. He hand makes paper representations (effigies) of the favourite items of  deceased relatives that are then burned at their funerals in order to ensure they have everything they need in the next life. In the past families requested effigies of favourite pets, food, drink, mahjong sets, radios and other every day items. Au-Yeung says that today people ask for more luxurious goods including smartphones, designer clothes, luxury cars, palatial homes and the latest IT equipment. Looking around his shop I saw examples of several of the items as well as an aquarium complete with paper fish, made to order for someone whose passion had been collecting them. The hand made effigy business is now threatened by the import of mass produced items from China. This particular shop will close when the owner retires as he is not married and has no children.

Villain hitter, Canal Road

Au-Yeung Ping Chi at work in his effigy shop

About 16% of Hong Kong's population are 65 or older. They have a visible presence in the streets. streets - working, shopping, sitting with friends or looking after small children. I have already written about the elderly people who collect discarded cardboard in the streets and then sell it for recycling.  In North Point I noticed an elderly woman sitting beside her collection of cardboard,  almost certainly waiting for a dealer to come and take it from her. She seemed tired and bored. Despite this and the nature of her work she was smartly turned out in a patterned blue/ purple jacket and I couldn't resist a candid shot of her. As I clicked she looked up from her place in front of the fly posted walls and saw me. I smiled and to my delight she smiled back and waved. I went across to her but without a language in common we couldn't speak. She took my hand for a moment, indicated that it was OK to take her portrait and broke into a stunning smile.

Many of the older people I met were still working. Some, like Mister Yung who has a small stall in the jade market, explain that they don't need to work these days but do like to have "something to do" with a chance to socialise and pass the time. This was something I came across several times, often at the end of more harrowing stories about the past. People spoke freely about having survived the Japanese occupation of Shanghai in the Second World War only to have to flee China after the revolution. Not all the stories had happy endings and more than one included relatives having been shot or sent to re-education camps following failed attempts at escape. In some cases there was also a nostalgia for the 1980's and 1990's coupled with concern for the future.

Lady in blue, North Point

The smile of a generous heart 

Mister Yung, stallholder in the Jade Market 

My time in Hong Kong passed too quickly. I left wanting to continue my search for the old city and for the disappeared world of Fan Ho. As I wrote at the beginning of this post, there are glimpses of that world everywhere, not just in the alleys and side streets but also in the faces of the Sunday strollers in Sai Ying Pun, the antique hunters and street artists of Sheung Wan and the shoppers in the markets of North Point and Mong Kok. Did I feel as if I'd seen the real Hong Kong? Oh yes, but I left with a desire to see still more and hoping that despite rapid change it will still be possible to find it on my next visit.

As ever, I can't resist including a little more...

Sunday strollers, Sai Ying Pun

Saturday ballet students, Sai Ying Pun

Quarrel between friends, Sai Ying Pun

Sense of humour, North Point

Walking the dogs, Sai Ying Pun

You might also like Looking for the old City - Hong Kong Stories 2 or Street Art and Selfies - Hong Kong Stories 1

You can see more pictures of Hong Kong  here.

I would like to note my thanks to Eric Wan who was tireless in tracking down people and places for me in Hong Kong and to Emily Gilman of Ampersand who made many of the practical arrangements including securing Eric's excellent services! Thanks both.

Looking for the old city - Hong Kong Stories 2.

A few years ago I became familiar with the work of Fan Ho - a photographic genius who recorded the Hong Kong of the 1950's and 60s. His black and white images of hawkers, shoppers and children at play captured the every day life of a world now largely disappeared. And more than this, his way of capturing light and shade not only adds atmosphere to his pictures but also transports the viewer back 60 years to the streets of old Hong Kong. I recently visited Hong Kong for a few days en route to Australia. Hong Kong today is almost unrecognisable from the place that Fan Ho knew but I set out to look for echoes of his time and the remnants of his world that linger on amongst the skyscrapers, shopping malls and highways.

The lady in the purple suit

I have written before about the chance encounters of wandering the streets of a city. Whilst walking through the Sham Shui Po neighbourhood after having visited the excellent Mei Ho Heritage House museum I noticed an elderly woman gathering discarded pieces of cardboard from outside shops and loading them onto a small cart. This is a common site in Hong Kong. Many people, particularly the elderly, do this as a source of additional income, receiving payment from dealers according to the weight of the cardboard collected. This lady stood out - slim, straight backed and elegant in a traditional Chinese suit made from purple material. Something about her demeanour made me want to know more about her and if possible to photograph her. I wasn't certain that she would agree to being photographed as a number of older people I'd encountered earlier had been happy to chat but not to pose.

After taking a few candid shots, I was able to have a conversation with her through my excellent guide, Eric Wan. She told us that she was born in mainland China 85 years ago and came to Hong Kong in 1960. She has lived through tremendous historical events and spoke a little about surviving the revolutionary years in China saying "we ate just a few spoonfuls of rice a day". Happily she is comfortable now. She said that she has enough to live on and collects cardboard to stop herself from being bored and not because she needs the money. She covers only a few local streets in her search and takes breaks to sit and chat with her friends. Although she held a cigarette whilst talking to us  she wouldn't let me have a close up of her smoking saying that it is a bad habit and that she didn't want to encourage others. 

Although she was happy to be photographed, the lady in purple was a little surprised that I was interested in her. I had a similar response from a very elegant woman who turned out to be the manager of the dried noodle store outside which the older woman was sitting. Perhaps in her 40's I noticed that she too had a very upright stance, wore a black lace blouse underneath her work overall and wore make up to work. At first she misunderstood my request for a picture, thinking I wanted to photograph the dried goods. When realising it was her I wanted to photograph she became a little shy and laughed but soon agreed and let me take several shots. She then spent some time looking at the  results whilst her employees teased her about them.

Elegance in the noodle store

Chan Lok Choi, bamboo cage maker

Chan Lok Choi has been making bamboo bird cages since he was 13. Now in his 70's he has a shop in Yuen Po Street where he makes and sells the only hand made cages in the bird market. He can be seen working outside the shop, bending the bamboo into place, carving letters or patterns on to it and finally adding paint to finish. It takes him several months to complete a single cage. None of his children wish to learn the trade and although he would be happy to take an apprentice from outside the family it seems that no-one is interested.   

Keeping birds as pets is a long established tradition in Hong Kong and until fairly recently it was possible to see older Chinese men taking their caged birds "for a walk". This would involve taking them to parks, hanging the cage from trees and listening to their song or sitting with friends to talk, read the newspaper or play mahjong. Although a few older men carry on this tradition, the avian flu of 2012 has largely curtailed the tradition as birds are now banned from public transport.

I was able to meet and photograph Mr Chan due to his being included in a wonderful book Sunset Survivors a book produced by writer Lindsay Varty and photographer Gary Jones which records the people keeping Hong Kong's traditional industries alive. I told him that after seeing his picture in the book I was keen to meet him. He was happy to hear this and told me that he has copies of the book for sale.

Leung Lo Yik - one of the last letter writers of Hong Kong

Leung Lo Yik, also known as Chen Yau, came to Hong Kong from Vietnam in 1972. On arrival he secured work as a barman but in Vietnam he had worked as an accountant. He is highly educated and fluent in English, French and Chinese and after some time a customer suggested he could obtain work as a letter writer. Today he can be seen siting in the Jade Market where he still uses his 1970's typewriter to write letters or to complete forms and applications for his few remaining customers. Again I was able to find him due to the Sunset Survivors book. He had no customers at the time of my visit and seemed preoccupied if not a little depressed as he sat in his corner of the market, wearing a mesh vest and thin trousers in order to cope with the heat and humidity. His once lucrative business has diminished due to the development of technology and also by the much improved literacy rates in Hong Kong. In the 1950's and 60's as little as 60% of the population were competent in reading and writing. Today that rate is steady at 99%.

As already mentioned some older people were reluctant to be photographed. I watched one group of elderly people playing cards in the courtyard of their block of flats. They were happy to talk, asked about where I was from and what I was doing in Hong Kong and joked about winning and losing at the game. It would have been a wonderful shot of them gathered around the small table but unfortunately they declined. Gambling is illegal outside of strictly controlled licensed venues and although they played for just a few coins they were concerned about photographs potentially being used as "evidence".

Other elderly people were happy to be photographed including Mister Yeung who was born in Macao and opened his small tailoring shop in the Sheung Wan neighbourhood more than 50 years ago.  He repairs clothes and makes cheongsam (a traditional Chinese dress) to order. He said that the rent is now vey high but although business is not as good as it once was he has enough work to live from. he learned his trades an apprentice when he was paid just $20 Hong Kong per month. That's about £2 today and even back then it was a very small amount. Mister Yeung was happy to be photographed sitting outside his shop beside an example of his work.

Earlier in the day I met Mister Law. He is 70 years of age and sells gardening items in an underpass in Sham Shui Po.  He smiled and nodded and I stopped to buy some lotus buds from him. I was taken with his kind expression and pink fan decorated with Chinese calligraphy.

Mr Yeung, tailor of Sheung Wan

Mr Law, gardening materials vendor

King Yip printers

Shortly after meeting Mister Yeung in Sheung Wan, I had the pleasure of visiting the King Yip printing company in Tai Ping Wan street. This business was originally established in different premises in 1954 by the father of the current owner. He arrived in Hong Kong from Guangdong Province and learned the trade as an apprentice to a master printer. Unfortunately his employer had to let him go due to a downturn in business but provided him with an excellent reference, setting out the reasons for terminating his contract and saying he would happily re-employ him should the situation improve. This letter together with various other documents charting the development of the business, is proudly shown to visitors who are interested and a demonstration of hand set printing can be given if booked in advance. Sadly this is another art that has been overtaken by new technology but the King Yip company has cleverly adapted and generates income by welcoming tourist groups, school groups and people interested in the process of hand printing.

Craftsman at work, King Yip Company

My interest in the older, long established businesses almost inevitably means that I met many older people, but Hong Kong's streets also teem with the younger generation. Just as anywhere else in the world, they can be seen engaging with technology, fashion and art. Below are some examples of this whilst the final picture returns to the old Hong Kong with a small boy standing in the doorway of a tenement block waiting for someone to return or something to be delivered. I took this picture not far from the Yau Ma Tai vegetable market. I hope to explore that area in depth on my way home from Australia when I will again be in Hong Kong, looking for echoes of Fan Ho's city.

 Modern communication

Art and the selfie, Sheung Wan

Waiting, Yau Ma Tai.

You can see more pictures from Hong Kong here.

There is a short video explaining why Lindsay Varty produced her book Sunset Survivors.

Street art and selfies - Hong Kong Stories 1.

Graffiti was once considered to be vandalism. Re-invented as street art, this now respectable genre has brought international recognition for its leading practitioners and cities such as London, Paris and New York now commission work for their streets. Hong Kong also makes use of high quality street art to revitalise neighbourhoods and to attract visitors. This includes a specific programme known as HK Walls that promotes and encourages locally based artists and brings their work to new and wider audiences.

Hong Kong's best known street art is located on the corner of Graham and Hollywood roads and was commissioned by the lifestyle store, GOD (Goods of Desire). Locally based artist Alex Croft was responsible for the piece which represents the Walled City, a huge, informal housing structure that was once home to 33,000 people, over 1,000 businesses and covered 6.4 acres. Demolished in 1994, it was immortalised in the photographers Ian Lambot and Greg Girard's book, City of Darkness. The Walled City was perhaps the most well known example of the tong lau - tenement buildings, usually with commercial use at ground floor level and residential units above. An official tong lau included shared bathrooms and kitchens with rent, electricity and water charges paid on a monthly basis. Once widespread, many of these structures were demolished in the 1960's making way for more luxurious, private developments. Others collapsed due to poor construction and or maintenance, including a fifty years old five story tong lau that collapsed in 2010 killing four people. Today only a handful of these buildings remain.

But back to the street art. I recently visited Graham Street on a weekday morning and found dozens of tourists and locals taking selfies and then immediately posting them to social media. There were also small groups of young women, elegantly dressed taking turns to pose for a series of shots, sharing hats and other accessories and taking it in turns to photograph each other. This is followed by much checking and discussion of the shots before choosing which ones to share on social media.They had clearly spent time preparing for this as they went through a series of poses that would fit the pages of a fashion magazine. The lives of these young women and the tourists could not be more different to those of the former inhabitants of the Walled City and I wondered how many of them understand the significance of the work and what it relates to.

Elegant as these women were, my favourite selfie-takers were a small family group consisting of two parents and two little boys. The father held a selfie stick as they posed for a group photo. Mum smiled. Dad looked serious - trying to make sure they had a good picture. The older boy raised a hand of greeting at the camera whilst the younger one seemed a little agitated, perhaps bored and ready to move on. I had noticed the boys a few minutes earlier when their parents positioned them against the wall for another picture. Two young people stood a step away from them, one engrossed with the art the other ready to leave having taken her selfie, her sole purpose for being there. Perhaps art, like  most things, means different things to different people.

Picture Post 25 - The Ohel Leah Synagogue and the Jews of Hong Kong

The Ohel Leah synagogue in Hong Kong is one of the island's most beautiful heritage buildings. I managed a quick peak on a recent stopover in Hong Kong, gaining access after a searching discussion with non-Jewish guards that would have put security at Ben Gurion airport into the shade! Still, safe is good and a few minutes of questions was more than made up for by the stunning interior of this building which was completed in 1902 and funded by the great Bahgdadi Jewish family - the Sassoons who also made their mark in Shanghai.

The Ohel Leah synagogue

Jews first came to Hong Kong after the island was ceded to the British after the Opium Wars of 1839-42. The British free trade policy attracted merchants from across the world including Jewish traders from Iraq and India. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, the community had developed enough to need a permanent synagogue. Most of the Hong Kong Jews were Sephardim and the Sassoons, being the equivalent of Sephardi royalty stepped forward to purchase a piece of land above the city on Robinson Road for this purpose. They presented both the land and the building to the Hong Kong Jewish community,  naming the  synagogue after Leah Gubbay, the mother of the three Sassoons who funded it.

The synagogue was designed by architects Leigh and Orange in baroque style. The original design featured a red brick exterior with white detailing and an internal layout in the Sephardi style. Just three years after the synagogue opened, in 1905, another great Baghdadi dynasty - the Kadoorie family, funded the building of a Jewish Recreation Club on the synagogue grounds. The club had a large hall, restaurant, bar, library and billiards room as well as tennis courts and a view over the harbour. It is hard to picture how idyllic this setting must have been back then due to the blocks of flats that tower over the synagogue and which restrict the views from the site. But this is still an impressive building which is loved and cherished by its community and which more than holds its own with the ubiquitous tower blocks that are now its neighbours.

During the Second World War, the island was occupied by the Japanese. Many local Jews were interned in prisoner of war camps and the recreation club was totally destroyed. The synagogue was requisitioned by the Japanese but suffered little damage and the Torah scrolls were smuggled out and safely hidden until the end of the War. In 1949, the Kadoorie family again financed the building of a new Recreation Club on the site of its predecessor. The community expanded in the following decade as many Jewish families that had formerly resided in mainland China fled to Hong Kong. This was the beginning of the island's economic transformation and the area around the synagogue became an extremely desirable location with many houses and blocks of flats being built. The scale of building in the area resulted in the weakening of the granite retaining wall between the synagogue and Robinson Road to the extent that by 1980 the Hong Kong government required the Jewish community to stabilise the entire length of the wall. This was eventually funded through the sale of part of the site and the consequent loss of the Recreation Club. Two tower blocks were built on the sold land and the developer stabilised the retaining wall, assuring the future of the synagogue.

Work to restore the building took place in 1997 and 1998, including restoration of the stained glass windows, shutters, doors and carved benches. New tiered seating was added to the women's gallery as well as better lighting and air conditioning, whilst the bimah was moved to improve acoustics. The success of the restoration was marked by UNESCO selecting the synagogue for the Outstanding Project Award for Cultural Heritage Conservation in the Asia-Pacific region in 2000. The synagogue remains at the centre of the Hong Kong Jewish community with over 200 families registered as members. As well as religious services, community members are able to use the Jewish day school, a kosher supermarket, meat and dairy restaurants, indoor swimming pool and meeting rooms in the Community Centre built into the adjoining high rise. 

The Ohel Leah synagogue is an oasis of calm in one of the most densely populated places on earth. The   cream coloured exterior and the contrasting green of the grounds give visitors an idea of what this part of Hong Kong was like at the beginning of the twentieth century before the advent of the ubiquitous high rise blocks that dominate the landscape here. The Sassoon family left their mark on many of the world's great cities but their contribution here in Hong Kong is something very special and one which serves a still thriving community. The highlight of my short stay in Hong Kong, this is a much recommended place to visit, but remember to bring your passport for the guards or better still, call ahead to make an appointment to make sure of seeing inside.

Nate Wong - Jazz in Hong Kong

Whenever I travel I try to find some live jazz to go and enjoy. Last week, I had just one night in Hong Kong on my way to Australia and luckily it coincided with an appearance of the Nate Wong Trio at the Fringe Club in Hong Kong's Soho. 

The Hong Kong born drummer teamed up with Teriver Cheung on guitar and a keyboard player whose name I unfortunately missed. (Sorry!), to lead us through a number of jazz standards including Ellington's Take the A Train, Sunny made famous by Bobby Hebb and the Johnny Rivers' penned Bring it on Home, as well as some of his own own compositions. These classics gave Wong a chance to demonstrate his versatility on the drums with some great solos and good interplay with his colleagues. Teriver Cheung was also excellent with his understated approach on guitar.

The gig was billed as the worldwide launch of Wong's new jazz trio and was attended by a range of Hong Kong arty types, friends, fans and family and the occasional traveler - like me. The trio also performed some of Wong's own compositions which included pieces he performed on the melodica, which I can best describe as a keyboard with a  mouthpiece and which gave a bluesy feel to the evening. My own favourite of the evening was his rendition of the Nat King Cole classic - A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square. Lovely. All of the pieces were well received by an enthusiastic audience.

Nate told the audience that he had only just flown in from the States, that the trio had only met each other a few hours before the gig and that there had been no chance to rehearse. If that's the case then I would advise readers to go along to his next gig at the Fringe on April 26th when he will be joined by veteran Hong Kong jazzer Ted Lo on keyboards and Ecuadorian guitarist Daniel Toledo. Hong Kong jazz fans should not miss this opportunity to see a rising star perform in his home town. 

The Fringe is a great venue where a variety of arts programmes take place. It is also a lovely heritage building dating from 1913, restored in recent years and the recipient of an important award for its sensitive restoration. Oh…and there's a good cafe too!