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To the unaccustomed traveler, Hong Kong can seem a harsh place, with a cacophony of noises, smells and sights to assault the senses. Immediately the aircraft doors open, the distinct smell of seawater surrounding Kai Tak airport, tainted with an exotic fragrance from the famous harbour, would seep into every olfactory fibre. It is different today, as Kai Tak has given way to a new international airport built on a large artificial island, formed by levelling Chek Lap Kok and Lam Chau islands and reclaiming over nine square kilometres of the adjacent seabed. It opened in 1998 and is connected to the north side of Lantau Island. But the blanket of heat and humidity which hits a fraction of a second after the aircraft doors open still bears witness to the fact that one has arrived. Signboards in English and Chinese welcome the long-haul traveler to the luggage carousel. Countless faces of relatives and friends, anxious to catch the first glimpse of their loved ones as they come out through the arrivals gate, block every exit as one trundles suitcases and belongings on trolleys. Decibels rise. The distinctive intonations of the Cantonese dialect flood one’s auditory canals, registering that you are in a foreign land. There is a sense of urgency. Though tired and jet-lagged, one feels the pace of life in Hong Kong, and the energy that keeps the colony so alive.
Within minutes of leaving the airport, you are among the crowds of pedestrians who line the streets, moving quickly and purposefully to their destinations. Traffic is everywhere, its volume staggering and its noise deafening. Their journeys are incredibly smooth despite the altercations between irate drivers as they cut into one another’s space. Luxury automobiles and the occasional pink Rolls Royce may be seen amongst the red taxis and private Toyotas that fill the narrow streets.
One of the first things I noticed when I came to London was how slowly people moved in crowds. They would leave spaces everywhere. Hong Kong crowds move, and move quickly. Every available space is taken; there is no such thing as personal space. Well, not much anyway. To this day I can still lose my husband in a crowd as I weave my way through the maze, but he has learnt a skill or two to negotiate the situation. It took me a while to adapt to London; initially I was frustrated and impatient by the slow pace of life.
There is a Chinese proverb: ‘what enters the eye shall never leave the heart’.
On my first visit to Great Britain I saw sheep for the first time, strange woolly animals grazing on pastures of verdant green on the gentle slopes of an English countryside. I have a romantic affinity for sheep, although I know very little about them and have no real desire to learn more either. My mother told me that when I was an infant my grandmother had given away one of my toys to a friend; a black sheep that had cost them the equivalent of almost a month’s wages. Perhaps that is why I love calling out ‘sheep!’ whenever I spot them as we drive around the British Isles.
I also saw deer and squirrels and visited the iconic, regal, historic landmarks which to a foreign visitor make Britain what she is. The chimes of Big Ben on the River Thames embankment; the majesty of Westminster Abbey; the whispering gallery of St Paul’s Cathedral; the glory of Hampton Court Palace; the poignancy of the White Cliffs of Dover. The majestic pomp and ceremony, the Changing of the Guard, the Edinburgh Military Tattoo, the Last Night of the Proms. I remember getting completely lost as I came out of Leicester Square tube station and stopped a tall, burly English policeman to asked for directions to Leicester Square, clutching a pristine A-Z ‘bible’ in my hand. It was my first British cinematic experience, in a massive, carpeted auditorium with soft, comfortable, allocated seats. But I could not understand why there was such a long programme before the film began. I had thought I was going to see the latest Pink Panther release at the Odeon, filmed partly in Hong Kong, but ended up with a 40 -minute supporting film about skateboarding. It was so foreign to me that I thought I had absent-mindedly purchased the wrong ticket! Luckily, in those days there was only one screen, but it was massive. It was also possible to stay in the cinema all day, and watch the film again and again.
Travelling on a National Express coach bus, along open motorways and stopping at service stations, was a novelty I enjoyed immensely, and I went on numerous day excursions from London as well as long -distance journeys to other major UK cities. On the way back from one excursion, the coach stopped in an idyllic country village and the guide popped out to buy something from a farm, extolling the virtues of fresh produce. It is stuck in my mind because half the coach was standing directly under a rain cloud and the other in sunshine. I had never really appreciated clouds as discrete entities before, although of course they had to be!
Shopping the British way was completely new to me too. When a friend recommended I go to John Lewis for a raincoat, I thought she was talking about an acquaintance she knew, or a contact she had. It never occurred to me that it would be the name of a chain of stores. Likewise, I was very unfamiliar with the British tendency to use public houses (pubs) as landmarks when giving directions or suggesting a place to meet. I had no idea what ‘The Standard’ or ‘The Queen’s Head’ could possibly be; they are even used as landmarks when giving driving directions, though they are often not well illustrated on a road map and completely useless if one does not know the area. Bargaining and bartering, so familiar and well-loved in Chinese transactions, were frowned upon, yet I did it all the time when I was shopping in London. I happily went into a department store, studied the merchandise on offer, chose the item and then asked what discount the salesperson could offer me. Often they obliged, after speaking with their manager.
My first visit to Great Britain in the summer of 1978 was a real eye-opener. I had a fantasy that all English people lived in mansions or dwellings like those depicted in Mary Poppins’ Cherry Tree Lane, or in villages and country cottages with thatched roofs, gardens and picket fences; that the streets were cobbled but paved with gold; that iconic landmarks and greenery were everywhere, and that everyone spoke like the Queen or members of the Royal Family. I remember thinking how polite everyone was when I was travelling around the country, reserved but helpful, and so patiently queuing. And what avid readers they were too. Folk sitting or even standing on trains, their faces almost shoved into newspapers, magazines and paperback books so engrossed they did not make eye contact or conversation with fellow passengers. I was surprised they did not miss their stop!
It was something of a revelation to me that most did their own housework and cleaning. In Hong Kong, expatriates lived a privileged existence, in spacious well-maintained accommodation, with their children’s school fees paid, and often with a generous package of extras such as air travel back home once a year and private health insurance. Many of my school friends had amahs and sometimes cooks and gardeners. Perhaps that was why when I was in the Brownies in primary school, the housekeeping badge was not the most popular, but the one I felt most comfortable with, even though it involved polishing shoes, polishing brass and making a bed.
The pervasive culture of living off credit was also very alien to me. Whilst I understood the need for mortgages, I couldn’t get over how much pressure there was for ordinary people, even young adults, to take out bank loans and other credit in order to purchase something which was not necessary and which they couldn’t afford. Within a few months of my introduction to this great country we were in the ‘winter of discontent’, not only because we had blizzards and deep snow, another first for me, but also a succession of damaging public sector strikes which the Labour government seemed unable to contain.
There are no records from my maternal grandmother’s family, as they were destroyed by the Communists during the Great Leap Forward. My paternal side lays claim to Irish, Burmese, Portuguese, Dutch, Scottish and Indian ancestry. A distant relative traced it back to an Irish ancestor who was the mayor of Galway on the west coast of Ireland, and to the last man to be mauled to death by a lion in Mombasa. The animal is stuffed and is now an exhibit in the museum there.
Father was not yet out of his teens when I was born. He came to Hong Kong from Burma, following in the footsteps of his mentor and godfather, who had been posted as the British Council representative in the colony. The military coup in 1962 isolated his homeland from the outside world, and he was unable to go back to see his family. He never spoke about his childhood or family, but on occasions tried to recreate Burmese foods like the street dish mohinga, an aromatic rice vermicelli with a fish-based broth topped with boiled eggs and fritters, or khow suey, yellow rice noodles covered in a spice masala with a liberal sprinkle of freshly-squeezed lemon juice. In later years a great-aunt sent me her brother’s account of the family’s escape from Rangoon when the Japanese bombers arrived in 1941:
We were not only bombed but also machine -gunned, and whilst helping people off the streets around the Port, my brother saw a bullet pass through his short sleeve. A doctor’s house in 51st Street received a direct hit and the houses nearby soon caught fire, so 52nd Street was evacuated to the nearest police station. My wife and children, age 5 and 2, had to walk more than 100 yards through the machine gun fire, and in the crowded confusion… were lost.
Each day I was trying to work my way the two miles home from my office, dodging the bombers, crossing the dead strewn all over the streets and not knowing whether I would find my family alive or dead.
It mentions my Irish great-grandfather and a number of his sons and families; my father was amongst the party which escaped from Rangoon into Calcutta, only to witness the Great Famine:
During our stay in Calcutta we were bombed by the Japanese many times and, here too, as there were no air raid shelters, thousands were killed. We also witnessed the Great Famine that struck India and this was something I shall never forget. Shortly afterwards there was the Great Killing, the fight between the Hindus and the Moslems. We were wisely advised not to interfere in any atrocities we might see and many times had to stand helpless as people were cut to pieces before our eyes. This finally determined my wife to return to Burma, our homeland, as soon as we could.
My father was a toddler then. I cannot begin to imagine what it must have been like. He never spoke of it when I was growing up, apart from the casual comment about witnessing the cruelty of the Japanese during the war – he saw them force someone to drink gallons of water, only to then stamp on their stomach. He claimed not to remember any of the Burmese language, rarely mentioned his family and not a word about the mother who abandoned him.
My father went in search of his childhood over forty years after he left Burma. Perhaps because of this, he was also fond of searching for ‘old Hong Kong’. He took delight in sharing with me ‘Love is a Many Splendored Thing,’ a 1955 romance with William Holden as an American reporter falling in love with the beautiful Eurasian doctor Han Suyin, played by Jennifer Jones. Part of it was filmed in Hong Kong, which was very unusual for its time. The Foreign Correspondents’ Club in Conduit Road was used as the location for the hospital, but it was demolished in the late 1960s. Hong Kong’s many iconic and historic landmarks have been lost over the years, as the colony gave way to waves of land reclamation. My father searched for years, yearning to see and own a copy of the 1955 film ‘Soldier of Fortune’, with Clark Gable and Susan Hayward. It was about the rescue of an American prisoner in China, but was filled with many evocative street and waterfront scenes of the island.
‘You’re such a big fan, one day you’ll meet Julie Andrews’, a friend said when I was about 14. I scoffed at her off-the-cuff, schoolgirl prediction. How could an insignificant, undeserving nobody like me, who had never set foot away from this small colony in the South China Sea ever possibly be in the same vicinity as an international superstar like Julie Andrews? She inhabited a different stratosphere; it was an unreachable, impossible fantasy I did not dare allow myself to dream.
Early in 1978, a senior executive from the HK Tourist Association confided in my father that he had made the necessary arrangements for a Hollywood team to film in Hong Kong. The whole thing was proving more challenging because of the Chinese New Year holidays. There was an additional complication as the director’s wife had made a last-minute request to join her husband for a few days. She was due to arrive imminently. I was not yet 18. My little world, up till then so focused on revision for the A Level mock examinations, went into a spiral of dizzy disbelief. I don’t think I revised much after that, and barely did the mock exams or myself justice, though I am not sure my teachers realised at the time.
The movie they were shooting was ‘The Revenge of the Pink Panther.’ The director was Blake Edwards; his wife was none other than Julie Andrews. This was quite literally my opportunity of a lifetime. I was determined to seize it with both hands, but part of me was also aware that in trying to realise my dream the whole experience might end in a crushing blow. What if Julie Andrews was nothing like the screen persona I had come to love and admire so much? The idiom ‘be careful what you wish for’ was certainly lurking in the background. But no matter, it was crunch time and I vowed if she did prove to be a disappointment, I would throw out my growing collection of fan memorabilia.
Immediately I wrote a brief ‘welcome to Hong Kong’ letter and sent it by post. She would be staying at the luxurious Peninsula Hotel in Tsim Sha Tsui on Kowloon side, close to the famous shopping areas and ocean liners. The Peninsula, known as The Pen, built in the 1920s as the ultimate hotel in the Far East, was known for its elegance, luxury, restaurants and fleet of Rolls Royce Silver Spurs. I had never set foot in a hotel before, and wouldn’t have been the least bit surprised if the doormen in their crisp uniforms had turfed me out.
With my school examinations taking up much of the week, I only had the weekend in which to attempt to make contact. I thought it best to go in search of the film crew. Laden with heavy folders of fan memorabilia (newspaper cuttings mainly), I took myself off the Excelsior Hotel in Causeway Bay, where most of the cast and crew were staying. I sat nonchalantly in the lobby, trying to blend in with the hotel guests whilst eyeing the lift doors for a celebrity I might recognise. Eventually I summoned the courage to go up to reception to ask if the film crew were about. Luckily, just as I did so I spotted some of the cast – Robert Webber, Robert Loggia and Burt Kwouk – who must have felt sorry for me, because they gave me a copy of the filming schedule for the day. The main location was at an unfamiliar and remote stretch by the waterfront, miles away somewhere in Kowloon. I had no idea how to get there, and certainly couldn’t afford the taxi fare. I telephoned my father at work, and he gave me directions by public transport.
It seemed to take forever to get there. I arrived to see some of the filming at a distance, and in conversation with some of the crew I learned that Julie had been and gone. I knew my parents would be expecting me to revise that evening and the next day, so reluctantly I went home. But when I returned, the flat was quiet and pretty empty. That meant it was not yet time to give up.
On a whim, I decided to telephone the hotel. I had no idea what I was going to say, but I was determined to try. Thumbing through the pages of our telephone directory, I dialled the number for the Peninsula hotel and was surprised to be put through to the suite. Blake Edwards answered. He told me Julie was out, but due back for tea. I thanked him and wished the film well. So close, and yet so far!
An hour later my parents had still not returned home. What did I have to lose? I phoned again, but the second time was not so easy. Who was I and why was I calling? ‘Oh, it’s okay… I spoke to Mr Edwards earlier, and he told me his wife would be back later for tea’, I said. Such audacity! I wasn’t sure how it went down. I was put on hold. Seconds later a woman answered. I was expecting their secretary, and asked to speak with Mrs Edwards.
‘Speaking’ came the reply. And then I heard her – I heard Julie Andrews, speaking to me on the phone! I blabbered something like, ‘oh… Julie Andrews…’ and went completely silent.
Julie asked if I was the young lady who had written to her at the hotel. She had responded, and her letter was on its way. She apologized for not being able to meet with me, that I must have just missed her on location and that she was flying home the next day. She was gracious, warm and friendly and we ended up chatting for almost twenty minutes. I was hooked for life.