Low Cost Motels in Hong Kong

[HONG KONG, 1995] Two years before Hong Kong reverts to mainland Chinese control, a visitor to this city is pushed to make comparisons between the two places and wonder about the future of the former British colony to-be. Outdoor markets and stalls in Hong Kong are little different than their counterparts in China, but housing, budget motels in particular, provide a more complex case. There are no budget motels or hotels in China owing in large part to the activities of the Public Security Bureau (PSB) but the places offered to foreigners would be considered budget in most other countries even if this isn't reflected in the prices. 1997 will be the year when Hong Kong becomes part of China once again, and for the visitor at least it is unlikely that a place to spend the night in Hong Kong will be affected by the mainland administration.

We've stayed at budget motels in Europe, Thailand, Korea, and Japan, but Hong Kong budget motels are the most unique. In Kowloon they are housed inside of large once-white buildings that look as if they were relocated American ghetto housing. These buildings aren't in a bad part of town, quite the opposite. Many of these flea-bitten places are located in the most popular outdoor, upscale shopping street in Hong Kong, Nathan Road. Using our guidebook as a reference, my wife, Karen, called a couple of places from the airport. A man at one hotel told her she could get a room with a private bath for HK$180 (~US$25). He told her not to talk to anyone downstairs (the hotel was on the 13th floor) about where she was going or she would have to pay more because they would follow her up. She didn't really understand, but repeated back what she wanted and the price which he confirmed a second time before she hung up the phone.

When we got off a bus that we had taken from the airport, we were instantly assaulted by numerous individual Sri Lankan men saying things like "Chungking Mansion", and "do you need a place to stay?" We ignored them or simply said "No, we've already got a place," and continued on walking in search of a slum building that had a slightly better reputation than Chungking Mansion. These salesmen were persistent, and my temper soon began to boil because we were carrying lots of baggage and wearing our jackets because they didn't fit in our bags and it seemed the best way to carry them despite the burning rays of the sun and the thickness of the humidity in the air. To one particularly persistent man I said, "no", and he repeated his question undaunted so I said "leave me alone." When he repeated his question a third time, I yelled "Get the fuck away from me. You goddamn asshole!" That did the trick, but within a minute another Sri Lankan man started to do the same thing and looked as if he was going to follow us up the elevator, so remembering what the man had told Karen on the telephone, I told her to go on the elevator without me. Anywhere we've been where someone is trying to get our business, they always assume that I will make the decision so I could anticipate that this man was going to follow me rather than Karen. And so he waited for me to get on the elevator rather than follow Karen, but soon left me alone.

When I got to the 13th floor, Karen was talking to a Chinese woman at a desk in the hallway right outside of the elevator. I asked the woman if I could see the room and after seeing it I asked her again how much it was. She told me "HK$250." I went back to Karen and asked her if the man on the telephone had not said it would be HK$180 which she affirmed. When I related to the woman that a man had told us a different price, she began spewing out a monologue how this was impossible and would not listen to what I had to say. I finally gave up talking to her but she kept spewing until we got back on the elevator.

We looked for another "hotel" that our guidebook had "recommended" in this same building and another Sri Lankan man showed us a room. I said I wanted to pay HK$180 and he spoke to another Sri Lankan. Then he returned to us and said that we had to go to another floor where the cheaper rooms were located. After taking us there and showing us the room, I asked the man how much it would cost. He told me, "HK$250." We left, but his voice stung in my ear for some time.

We went to another slum building further up the road where after two additional attempts we finally accepted a room for HK$270. I guess our lesson was that principles cost.

Air Con Heaven

I've noticed that Hong Kong Chinese are very adept at walking in crowded places without bumping into strangers even if they seem to be rather impolite in other situations. On a hot, hazy day, crowds maneuver expertly around large ubiquitous sidewalk puddles. My movements weren't so deft so I not only walked in the puddles, but had drops of water hit my head and shoulders numerous times. Coming from a place where the need for an air conditioner is about as rare as the sight of snow on the ground in Hawaii, I worried where the puddle-forming moist droplets were coming from until I realized they were formed by the air conditioners of the tall apartment/condominium buildings. In a part of the world where hygiene leaves much to be desired, I never felt completely confident in the truth of my deduction.

Scenes of Tsim Sha Tsui

The most popular image of Hong Kong is that of boats gliding in the foreground of Victoria Harbor with the modern skyline of Hong Kong Island in the background. Such pictures never convey the feeling of a refreshing cool breeze that passes through the humid, sticky air. A more thorough view of Hong Kong might add a walk down Nathan Road which looks much like any other shop-filled street yet the sun fearing Chinese women of Hong Kong have a unique fashion ideal characterized by short revealing skirts over slim, toneless bodies. Taking detour from Nathan Road you will venture upon the jade market which is widely popular amongst the Orientals but not the Occidentals in this colony. Here you can view large stones being prepared for cutting and smaller slabs having round holes of jade punched out of them before further cutting and polishing. There are numerous shops selling finished jade and people negotiating prices with vendors as they examine merchandise on the sidewalk in front of stores as well as inside these shops. Your walk innocently leads you to a food market the sort of which is common in East Asia. Sanitation is not a top priority here. A truck blocks your way in a narrow alley of the market area. As it begins to move forward, a couple of sacks lining the road are slowly revealed with the bloodied pieces of fish guts and gills left their by fish vendors. Just around a corner there are two different kinds of live chickens crammed into baskets and cages. Two women work on butchering some freshly slaughtered, de-feathered chickens a few feet away. A couple more chickens lay dead next to them on the blackened cement curb awaiting their turn. You might also walk past a couple of shops with a couple of dozen dried, pressed whole ducks hanging from the shop windows. Live turtles also seem to be a popular item here.

Your next stop might be a place called Mong Kok, site of a colorful bird market. Small, intricate wooden cages filled with singing birds line the alleyway. There are also a few tables here and there covered with bags of crickets. Suddenly a man riding a bicycle passes you and stops. He has several pigskins flopped over the front and rear of his bicycle. They are actually a little more than pigskins, but quite less than the whole pig carcass. The meat and bones seem to have been stripped somehow from the body.

A few more yards and you have reached Mong Kok's open-air "night market". The market stalls begin to open as early as 2:00 p.m. and it seems to be the most inexpensive place for shopping that you might also see Western tourists (the air-conditioned malls of Hong Kong Island and Nathan Road's boutiques seemed to be the more typical haven for the Western tourist). Our travel guidebook had warned that of all Asian people, Hong Kong vendors had the worst reputation, but we didn't fully appreciate this until I tried to negotiate with a t-shirt vendor. Many of the retail people we had dealt with seemed put-off at the idea of having to speak with Westerners, but at least several that we dealt with used a modicum of courtesy. Karen had seen a t-shirt she liked at a few different vendor stalls, but the price seemed to be the exact same at each stall. Having learned that street vendor prices are often negotiable in this part of the world, I asked the t-shirt vendor if she would sell another t-shirt for less than the price written on a piece of paper attached to it. She asked me, "How much will you buy it for?" I offered HK$35 (the original price was HK$59). The vendor then said something like, "Okay, I'll give you $50..." and something else in Cantonese. I didn't think I understood her well and she repeated "okay" more than once and even put her hand in her pocket to take out some money as she walked away from me toward the opposite side of her small stall. I wasn't sure if she was telling me "no" in a rude manner or if I was just missing her point so I began to take money out of my pocket. Then a couple of other ladies who shared the stall space with this lady told me in a calm manner that the vendor wasn't willing to sell the t-shirt to me. I realized the vendor who kept talking all the while was being extremely rude and got angry. I walked away from her stall and then decided to make a different offer to the vendor at a stall next to this woman's so that I could show her the t-shirt could be bought and that she had lost business due to her harsh, rude behavior. This time I asked the vendor if I could buy the shirt for HK$50 and he agreed. Then I took the shirt out of its bag after I made a loud "psssst" to the first vendor and smiled as I showed her the t-shirt. She looked upset and a little bewildered, but probably didn't realize that all she had to tell me was that my initial offering price was too low and present a counter-offer to encourage me to buy her merchandise.

Transportation Costs in Hong Kong

Karen and I both agreed that Hong Kong has the best public transportation of any city we've been to in the world. The subway systems in Paris and Tokyo are the best, but the combination of subway and the busses in Hong Kong is beyond compare. The system is cheap, clean, efficient, and comfortable to use. The subway trains in Hong Kong are designed so that when all the cars are joined together to make the train, it is as if you are riding in one long car because there is no door or narrowing of the space which separates cars. The quality of the public transportation in Hong Kong is easy to assess by looking at the variety of people utilizing it. Everyone seems to use - even rely on it - seven days a week.

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For those Hong Kong residents who insist on driving, the traffic lights have an added feature. They turn from red to yellow before turning green as well as from green to yellow before turning red.

Fast Food Culture Invades East Asia

We boarded a Kowloon Motor Bus in Tsuen Wan with a group of all Chinese passengers, many of whom were high school students returning to their homes. Some of the passengers were carrying on conversations in Cantonese and a song came on over the loudspeaker. It was "Surfing USA" by the Beach Boys.

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While eating a meal on Victoria Peak, we saw a young woman, perhaps eighteen-years old, with three young men about the same age. She was wearing a sweatshirt with red printing that in the style of the commercial slogan "Enjoy Coke" read "Enjoy Cock."

Wan Chai

I went to a district on Hong Kong Island known as Wan Chai with a small group of Filipino expatriates. We poked our heads in several bars and saw female entertainers dancing on stages with one-piece aerobic-like outfits and pearl stockings. These would more appropriately be called hostess bars than strip joints because instead of stripping down, the mama sans encourage customers around the stage to have one of the dancers sit with them. Then she asks you to buy the dancer/hostess a drink without asking you what drink you would like to buy her and, of course, without telling you what the surprise drink will cost. We went into one bar where there were Thai and Filipina dancers when this scenario unfolded. The bar tab was kept in a glass cup so when most of us said we would buy a drink for the women sitting next to us a special tab for each drink was added to the cup. Our beers were HK$59 (just under US$8) so I figured they wouldn't be charging us too much for the women's drinks after all we could probably buy fifteen beers at the store for this price. When I looked at one of the tabs, I found out that we were being charged HK$110 for each hostess's drink, and I told the mama san I didn't want the drink after all because it was too much. She acted upset and showed me the price posted on a wall, but got over it when one of my Filipino companions succumbed to her pressure to pay for the woman's drink. The drink was about two-ounces of who-knows-what, but I'm pretty certain it wasn't anything stronger than beer and it was gone in less than five minutes. The mama san didn't ask the men immediately after the glass was empty to buy the hostesses another drink because she wanted a bond of sorts to build up between the hostess and the customers first. By the time the mama san began pressuring the men to purchase a second drink everyone realized that it was time to leave. Only later did the guys tell me they realized they were being ripped off, but they felt obliged to pay for the drink to save face (nakakahiya in Filipino).

There is of course other entertainment for men in Hong Kong. One night, while leaving our run-down hotel just off Nathan Road, we were joined in the elevator by a Filipina who was dressed nicely in an ultra short skirt with lots of makeup on her face and some form of inexpensive brief case. She certainly wasn't going out to do maid work or work in a shop. In any event it is unlikely that she could afford the expense of a real Hong Kong night-life on a Saturday unless she was a hostess of some sort rather than a patron. The income disparity between Hong Kong Chinese and female Filipino expatriates is that big.

On an average Sunday afternoon, it looks as though the 100,000 Filipinas working in Hong Kong have all descended on Statue Square, the center of Hong Kong. The vast majority of these women don't work in clubs like those of Wan Chai, but in homes of families with young children working as domestic servants. They obtain two year contracts in the Philippines that cost them as much as three months of the salary they earn in Hong Kong. Initially these domestics communicate with their Hong Kong Chinese employers in English. The domestics care for the children of young working couples, learn to make the family's favorite meals, and eventually to converse in Cantonese, some better than others.

It's lonely for Filipinas working as domestic servants in Hong Kong since there isn't a significant population of Filipino men and some look to other women for companionship, even intimacy. Filipino sailors have a unique name amongst some of these women we spoke with, "never mind." Sailors have a reputation for having brief sexual encounters with women in port and then leaving them, so these women we spoke with said that when a Filipino begins talking to them and they learn that he is a sailor, they say "never mind" and walk away. Indian men are said by some of these same women to prey on Filipinas, and we saw several couples consisting of one of these domestics and an Indian man as we walked the streets of Hong Kong. In one store we heard a Filipina employee refer to her older Hong Kong Chinese employer, perhaps twenty years her senior, as "daddy." In Visayan (a Filipino dialect), "daddy" is an affectionate term for a husband.

These domestics, or maids, are frequently college graduates who make more money in these unskilled jobs in Hong Kong , than they would using their degrees in the Philippines.

Because they are foreign workers, they are sometimes subject to abuses. One Filipina, who work a typical six-day work week, described to us how she had to fight to maintain the few vacation days, Sundays included, that her contract had stipulated. She would extend her trip to the market to provide goods for her boss as a way to turn the chore into a work break, and would secretively do other things to resist the demands made upon her by her employers. All this to finance her children's education back home in the Philippines. Others send money home to their parents or siblings, invest in personal property, or purchase electronic equipment like televisions, VCRs, and stereos but rarely do they invest in their own futures.

Cellular Experiences in the Land of the Would-be Mandarins

The popularity of cellular phones in Hong Kong was illustrated to me by the scene we came upon while walking home from a night market in Kowloon one night where in front of a restaurant there were about six different men talking on cellular phones. On the way to the airport in Beijing, Karen looked across the road at a taxi cab where both the driver and the passenger sitting in the seat next to him were speaking on different cellular phones. Karen wondered if they could be speaking to each other.

The popularity cellular phones in Hong Kong and China, like that of beepers in America, may have grown from the quality of phones in China, the lack of privacy in both overcrowded areas, and the difficulty finding a phone in Hong Kong that is available, but cellular phones have long since stopped being merely a device with an important utility because now they are an important symbol of social status. On the Hong Kong subway which is the quietest place for crowds of Chinese people the relative silence is typically broken by the sound of a cellular phone ringing. We were in a crowded, long-term bus in the lower Chang Jiang (Yangzi River) with mostly poor Chinese men and one obviously richer man who was talking very loud on his cellular phone as if to make sure that everyone else on the bus new he was someone wealthy enough to not only have someone that had a phone at the other end, but could afford to have a cellular phone himself. In Beijing at the Holiday Inn, the most upscale Holiday Inn we have ever seen, a man let his cellular phone ring and ring. When he finally picked it up it didn't look like he was really talking to anyone, but pretending instead to be using the phone because he was holding it up to his ear and looking at it but not talking for quite some time. At a fairly quiet restaurant in Hong Kong, a loud obnoxious man began screaming into his cellular phone as if he was the only one in the restaurant. He eventually left the restaurant, apparently due to poor reception, but when he returned he made no effort to apologize to the others in the restaurant.

Two Shopping Clerks in Hong Kong & China

Within the space of a few moments, an attractive young woman working as a clerk in a souvenir shop in Hong Kong spoke perfect English to us, Mandarin to a tourist from Taiwan, and Cantonese to her boss. She told us she could speak Japanese as well - she had spent five years studying that language - which she used when dealing with Japanese customers. We spoke with another shop clerk in a Beijing antique shop who also spoke perfect English and said that she had a college degree in business. Both of these women were intelligent, obviously possessed the necessary language skills to deal with foreigners, were very adept at the business of selling, and aspired to open up their own shops, but lacked the capital to do so. Even in the West their access to capital would not be so free flowing because they were both very young, but they were aspiring.

We had a brief conversation with the Hong Kong clerk about relationships. Something led to her saying that women were the bosses in a Chinese relationship between men and women and asked her boss, a woman, to support her view which she did. I disagreed and said that I thought the man is the boss until he gets older when the woman becomes the boss. She tactfully amended her earlier statement as if to avoid disagreement, a typical East Asian attribute, by saying that once a woman marries a man she becomes the boss. Then she totally changed direction by asking my wife if I ever beat her. "No," was the answer (-what if I had and she had told her yes!?). Then she asked if American beat their wives. "No." Then we side-stepped to say that it does happen but we believed it was rare and was socially unacceptable. When she heard this, she deemed American men to be "gentlemen," and then casually asked Karen to find her an American husband.

On our first full day in Hong Kong, we went to a place called Sham Shui Po where we had learned CD-ROMs were available for a portion of the price in the copyright-protected U.S. because these were pirated copies. Sure enough, upon entering a store I noticed that the CDs looked a little bit unusual. The paper inserts inside the cases were only colored copies of the originals. I noticed on particular CD-ROM which I already owned was selling for about a tenth of the price I had paid; prices in general were from HK$4-HK$80 US$5.20-US$10.40) for CDs that would go for anywhere from $30-$300 and up in the U.S. I decided to purchase a couple and see how they worked because we knew a Hong Kong resident who had already purchased several CDs and said the pirated copies were usually flawless (I later found this to be the case with some exceptions). After I paid for a few CD-ROMs, I was told that I could not get the CDs immediately so I told the cashier that I wasn't about to leave the store without the product or my money even if I had a receipt. He explained in a quiet voice that the "jewel cases" in the store were empty because the CDs were copies and the police might raid the store at any minute. So I would have to wait ten minutes for the CDs to arrive. I agreed to wait and began wondering how I would explain to the police that I was knowingly participating in a crime, but wanted my money back if the CDs never showed up. After a short while another man came into the store with a small pouch which he opened up to hand to the cashier. It was four orders, including my own.

Before we left Hong Kong for China, we went back to Sham Shui Po where there was a larger group of stores that were open which hadn't been open at the time of our earlier visit. There were about a dozen stores that shared the space of a large basement of a building. Most of the vendors wee selling pirated CD ROMs though a couple were selling computer hardware instead. There was still a threat of a police raid in the air because none of the jewel cases had the CDs in them - you either received the CD after paying the cashier or were given a receipt and told to come back after a few minutes. The stores were doing a thriving business with Chinese customers and some foreigners as well. Most of the vendors had similar titles though some had a little better selection than others, some had more MPEG American movies or Chinese pornos (which cost anywhere from HK$150-HK$250 [US$19-32] depending upon whether or not they were MPEG videos or not). The competition between the vendors was minimal. I noticed one vendor who was selling CDs for HK$70 (US$9) that others were selling for HK$80 (US$10). Most if not all of the vendors were young Hong Kong Chinese in their late 'teens or early twenties, but I couldn't tell if this was indicative of a younger, cavalier attitude or if the people working at these stores were just protective covers for those who were really making the money off the pirated CDs. A few weeks later, this pirated CD mall was raided by police and closed, but this had happened before and it was expected that the stores would reopen before long.

Ironically, just as we were about to leave Hong Kong, I read a newspapers article about a private CD industry watch dog group. This international group's representatives just across the border in China had decided to cease activities in Guangzhou which consisted primarily of monitoring the manufacture of pirated copyright materials. This decision to pull out was made after numerous death threats to their personnel. Within a few weeks I read another newspaper article about the testimonial in a Deputy Trade Representative's report that China had made little progress in curtailing the activity of CD pirating in that country. Around this same time there had been reports that the U.S. was moving to allow China into the prestigious international trade forum, the World Trade Organization (WTO), but concerns over trade problems such as copyright piracy have pressured those in favor of letting China join the organization into waiting.

Writing on the Wall

FOREIGN GRAFFITI IN HONG KONG:

"Get some water! I should think it's South America here."

[with an arrow pointing to the above remark] "Are you kidding! You've probably never been to mainland China. You practically have to swim to get to the bathroom."

The Clock Ticks to 1997

A woman employee at a guesthouse confided in us about how her elderly Chinese employers had changed since they decided they would leave Hong Kong just before it reverts to the mainland's control. They have stopped putting their money in the bank and instead put it in their separate rooms. The elderly lady is said to keep her special stash in a purse which she takes with her on trips across the narrow hallway to the toilet.

RHHK Police Looking for Jobs

Of all Hong Kong residents, I couldn't help but feel sorry for the Royal Hong Kong Police. What will they do in 1997? How likely is it that the mainland government will allow the current police who has no allegiance to the mainland government or the way it likes business to be done to remain as it is? Even if the police personnel are allowed to keep their jobs, is it likely that they will continue to be paid the same under the mainland Chinese as they are under the British Administration? Not likely. Then I saw three policemen of some sort haranguing a street vendor at a ferry pier probably because he was selling food illegally. I was observing the scene when I heard a young female English voice from behind me exclaim: "It's an abuse of authority!" I turned around to see a young Chinese woman as she smiled, thinking that she had said it for my benefit. I hadn't formed an opinion about what I was seeing until she spoke up and made me reflect upon the enthusiasm a friend of mine has for unfettered commerce. He has often said that street vendors like the one I saw being harassed should be encouraged not discouraged because they are making an effort at survival so they are less of a drain on state resources, and are really no harm to anyone. I agree, it was an abuse of authority.

Lasting Impression

There is much discussion, and for good reason, about the success of overseas Chinese both in Southeast Asia and in America, but a visit to China and/or Hong Kong helps to provide some elucidation on this issue. In these countries the enormous population densely concentrated in urban areas or in impoverished countryside areas naturally produces severely aggressive behavior in the inhabitants. The will to persevere and strive for something better under then worst conditions can only flourish when given the opportunity in places like Hong Kong, Singapore, and the relatively docile region of Southeast Asia yet the culture that breeds this aggressive nature also breeds resentment in visitors to China, Hong Kong, and amongst the natives of Southeast Asia where this aggressiveness is seen as a threat as well as an annoyance.