Lost on Planet China: One Man's Attempt to Understand the World's Most Mystifying Nation (25 page)

And there are perfumeries in Hong Kong, thousands of them. Hong Kong spends more than any place on earth on perfume. As a result, the city does smell better than the cities to the north—admittedly, a low bar—but here, too, the air remained foul despite the coastal locale. Indeed, the air pollution in Hong Kong had become such a deterrent that for the first time companies were having difficulty filling their expat slots from overseas.

Still, Hong Kong is nice, really nice. You should go. You’ll like it. True, if you are an investment banker on Wall Street, you’ll likely feel as if you’d never left home. But if you are just a traveler in China, Hong Kong feels like a holiday. I spent most of my vacation from China in the labyrinth of streets and alleys in Kowloon, a neighborhood that is invariably described as bustling—
bustling Kowloon!
—but it didn’t bustle. Compared to what I’d seen before, it seemed languorous, sedate, calm. Kowloon, I reflected, is
easy,
and nothing is easy in China. So I wandered contentedly through the city, saw the sights, and ended my evenings in a convivial pub, where I exchanged China stories with English teachers who had popped into Hong Kong for a quick visa run and a dose of bangers and hash, before returning to their schools in Guangdong Province. And then I steeled myself for a return north.

Fortunately, for a couple of weeks at least, I wouldn’t be traveling alone. This was because I had a friend. Yes, it’s true. Not only was Jack my friend, Jack was my Republican friend. And not only was he a Republican, he was a professional Republican—party hack, I believe, is the colloquial job description. We’d met on the first day of high school when I had just moved to the suburbs of Washington, D.C., from Canada, and while much of my new surroundings were familiar, there were, evidently, some things that were different in the United States. Our English teacher had asked us to chat with whoever was sitting beside us for a few minutes and then introduce that person to the rest of the class.

“I want you to tell everyone that I’m a born-again Christian,” Jack informed me.

Huh?

What was this, a born-again Christian? When I thought of born-again Christians, I thought of Oral Roberts and Jimmy Swaggert and Jimmy Bakker, moronic televangelists and florid scammers blathering and emoting on the American television channels. These were not the sort of people that Canadians typically associated with. True, there were Christians in Canada, but they were quiet Christians. They’re Canadian.

So perhaps Jack spoke in jest. It was a setup, I thought, something to make me look silly on the first day of high school, and so I refused to mention that Jack was a born-again Christian. When it was Jack’s turn to introduce me, he said, “This is Maarten. He’s from Canada. That’s why he talks funny. But even though he talks weird, he’s a really great guy. Maarten, stand up and take a bow. Let’s all give him a great big hand.”

I was fifteen, and fifteen-year-olds generally don’t want to stand up and take a bow on the first day of high school. Jack, however, was different. He didn’t care what anyone thought of him, and everyone liked him as a result. He’d somehow transcended the clique-iness of high school, and the jocks, nerds, cheerleaders, the AP kids, and the Introduction to Cosmetology students all gravitated to Jack, ultimately bestowing upon him the coveted award Best Car in the yearbook salutations. This for a 1977 two-toned brown Maverick, dubbed The Mav, because this was the eighties.

Like me, Jack was a political geek. Before we were old enough to drive, we’d ride the school bus and discuss House congressional races. When I hung out at his house, we watched
The McLaughlin Report.
On the day Republicans lost control of the Senate in 1986, Jack took a black-tipped felt pen to his chucks and covered his shoes with black ink.

“Because it’s a day of mourning,” he explained to our American history teacher.

In the years that followed, Jack became a political operative, managing campaigns around the country. We overlapped for a while in Sacramento, where he was able to procure for me an invitation to the inauguration of Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor of the state of California. If there is a finer moment in history to witness, I cannot imagine it. More recently, he moved on to Florida to manage a campaign and said he’d come to China if he lost. He lost. It had been a bad year for Republicans.

I took the train to meet him at the Hong Kong airport.

“That was a long flight,” Jack said, looking around and stepping into the arrivals hall. “And I need a cigarette.”

Political operative is one of the last professions in America where it is acceptable to smoke. Writing is possibly the other. Except in California. People there feel sorry for heroin addicts but save their loathing for smokers. With the kids I’d had to quit anyway, and once I’d convinced myself that it was okay to chew Nicorette for three years, quitting became easy.

“I’m still doped up from the vaccines,” Jack noted.

“I’ll bet. You made sure to get your shot for elephantitis, right?”

“Elephantitis? You didn’t say anything about elephantitis.”

“Did I forget that? Where we’re going, elephantitis is as prevalent as the common cold. Most men carry their balls in a wheelbarrow.”

“Shut up. You did not say anything about elephantitis.”

“I thought I did. But there’s nothing that can be done about it now. Just try not to…well, never mind.”

“What? Try not to what?”

“Breathe. It’s an airborne virus. Very contagious. But you know what? Don’t worry about it.”

“I’m starting to regret this trip already.”

After a week or so, I suddenly found myself eager to return to the mainland. While Hong Kong had been a welcome respite, it was but an interlude to my larger trip.

“This feels like Sydney or San Francisco,” Jack had noted earlier as we walked past the bars in Lan Kwaifung—the pub district—where Westerners in suits and rugby shirts downed their pints.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “Isn’t it great?”

“I was hoping for something…different.”

“Different is over there,” I said, pointing to the north and the Chinese border. “Very different. But first I thought we’d have a look at Macau.”

“And what are we going to do in Macau?” Jack asked.

“We’re going to gamble.”

“Perfect. I’m unemployed. I’m in China. It only makes sense.”

A day trip from Hong Kong to Macau will cost you three pages on your passport, all without leaving the country. At the ferry terminal in Kowloon, it’s stamp stamp stamp as you go through Customs, Immigration, and Passport Control. They are one country, China, Hong Kong, and Macau, a renowned den of vice on the western side of the Pearl River delta. But they’re not really.

I had looked at my map, discovered that Macau lay sixty miles away, and yet my guidebook assured me that it was a mere hour away by boat. I wondered how, exactly, we were going to get there in an hour. By jet hydrofoil, it turned out. It was Stanley Ho, who for decades controlled the gambling monopoly in Macau, who had brought the hydrofoils, reducing a five-hour journey to just one. Four times married with seventeen children, Stanley Ho was the man-about-town in Macau. Before his monopoly was broken, his gambling earnings had accounted for 70 percent of the city’s income.

As we received our ferry tickets, I discovered that Jack, inexplicably, had been upgraded to the deluxe deck upstairs.

“How does this always happen to you?” I asked. “Is it because you are a Republican, a defender of privilege, and you are thus accorded deference and upgrades to Deluxe?”

“Maybe they think I’m a high roller and they’re putting me in the whale section. Or they could tell that I was unemployed and they felt sorry for me.”

We roared through the haze of Victoria Harbor, past cargo ships of every variation, past fishing boats rolling in the swell, past the last Chinese junk to remain floating in Hong Kong, then curved around the headlands of Lantau and flew past the Pearl River Delta and across the open waters of the South China Sea. It did not seem possible that one could travel so fast over water. Upon arriving in Macau, we again stood in long lines waiting to go through Passport Control.

“You’re sure we’re still in the same country?” Jack asked.

“Yes.”

“Maybe they should let the people here know.”

Outside the ferry terminal, we were greeted by the familiar fellows offering tours, gypsy cabs, or currency exchange services
at no cost to you. Absolutely free.

“So where to now?” Jack asked.

“The old town,” I said as we hopped into a taxi.

Once the oldest European colony in China, Macau had been administered by Portugal until 1999 but was in reality ruled by the triads such as 14k and Soi Fung. Like the mafia, triads earned their bread through money laundering, drugs, extortion, and contract murders—in other words, the usual mob fare. Except the triads are known, even among the global gangster community, as being exceptionally violent. Car bombs were a staple of life in Macau during much of the 1990s. Indeed, the violence had escalated to such a degree that the police chief referred to the mobsters as “professional killers who don’t miss their targets.” This was actually meant to entice tourists; mobsters never miss. Trust us. So come to Macau. Have a good time.

In the old town, I felt like I could be anywhere in the colonial world of the tropics. There were stately mansions lining the narrow, curving streets and inviting porticos through which we walked past shops specializing in spices. The city radiates nostalgia. It’s an urban ode to the days when fleets from the Mediterranean ruled the world. Portuguese is still a living language in Macau, and many of its inhabitants are mixed race, something rarely seen elsewhere in China. We headed for the Protestant Cemetery, a serene enclave with chirping parrots. I am not a cemetery man myself. After all, it wasn’t that long ago that I stopped holding my breath whenever I drove past one. But if I had to choose a favorite cemetery it would be the Protestant Cemetery in Macau. This is because the finest writer in the English language is Patrick O’Brian, the author of
Master and Commander
and the nineteen books that followed chronicling the naval adventures of Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin during the Napoleonic Era. Those books are like crack for me, and whenever I read them—and I have read them thrice—I depart this world for the HMS
Surprise
and a world of intrigue and adventure. Indeed, I am such a fan that my youngest son’s middle name is Aubrey. It’s a great thing being a parent, to have these little people to mold. They are canvases upon which to bestow your own whims and ambitions.
You carry the name of Jack Aubrey, Post-Captain of the HMS
Surprise, I tell my one-year-old.
Do you think Jack Aubrey refused his peas and scorned his applesauce?

In the spirit of O’Brian, the cemetery held the remains of many sailors who had succumbed to the trials and tribulations of the colonial era, and their headstones were suitably evocative.

The Fort is reached

The sails are furled

Life’s voyage now is over

By faith his bright chart

He has reached that world

Where storms are felt no more

Erected as a token of respect by his messmates

It could have been penned by Jack Aubrey himself.

We then walked past the remains of the Church of St. Paul, which had been constructed in 1602 only to burn down more than 200 years later, leaving behind a haunting baroque facade, and wandered down cobblestone streets full of antiques shops to the Church of St. Dominic, where Jack popped in for a prayer, because he was now a Papist.

“You ready now?” I asked when he emerged.

“Hey, I’m a Catholic. It’s bingo that keeps the Vatican afloat.”

Lovely as Macau is, we had come to gamble, to toy with financial ruin. I had only gambled twice in my life. Once, when I was stuck in Reno due to a snowstorm that had closed the road over the Sierras, where I had intended to ski, I had stayed up the entire night and better part of a day playing blackjack. And I’d won, quite possibly because I was (if my children are reading this, proceed to next page) (I mean it, Lukas) profoundly stoned at the time. A decade later, flush with our savings for a down payment on our home, I’d stopped in Las Vegas after driving cross-country. This time I lost. And I kept losing, possibly because I was sober as a judge, until finally I had to stammer back from the table with the grim realization that sometimes you don’t win it back, and the best thing to do, the only thing to do, is to walk away. I’d decided that the neurons buzzing in my head were way too fond of gambling, so I never did it again. Until now.