Kowloon Tong

Rating:
Summary: Highly evocative of Hong Kong I knew
Review: "The horses will go on running. The dancing will continue" Deng Xiao-ping's pledge in Cantonese to Hong Kong.

Paul Theroux's novel takes us to the last days of British rule in Hong Kong, British Crown Colony, as the clock ticks down towards the return of the colony to China in 1996. Theroux is best known as a brilliant travel writer but this novel set in Hong Kong is excellent, matching the best of his travelogues. He appears to be intimately acquainted with the history, politics, contemporary social scene and geography of Hong Kong, and not least, the state of mind of its various peoples as "Chinese takeaway" day approaches. Theroux's biography reveals that he lived in Singapore for 3 years and England for 17 years, but never apparently in Hong Kong. He has been very clever then in capturing the essence of this major peaceful political event through the eyes of two long term "British" residents.

There's "Bunt", a 43 year old bachelor who runs the textile business "Imperial Stitching" he inherited from his father and there's his dear old widowed mum, Betty Mullard, originally from the London suburb of Balham. Bunt is molly coddled at home by his mother who makes his breakfast every day, fusses over him, talks about England and enjoys a day at the "Happy Valley" races. Bunt's daily routine is keeping the business going, visiting his favourite girly bar and staying in touch with friends at his various clubs. He is having an illicit affair with one of his factory workers, Mei-ping, unbeknown to his mother. Life therefore is pretty repetitious and predictable until one day he receives an "offer" for his business which is where the story takes its turn into suspense, deceipt and heavy handedness.

This is a wonderful tale of contemporary politics, clashes of cultures, masters turned servants, sleazy bars, romance, suspense and intrigue set in the exotic east. If you have never visited Hong Kong you will love this novel. I you have, you will love it even more.

Rating:
Summary: A dark, scathing allegory
Review: Amid the hoopla and (often forced) pagentry of the Hong Konghandover, Paul Theroux deserves some credit for this courageouscontemplation of the darker side of the historic change in rule. In this decided politically incorrect view of the handover, the British, particularly in the form of the very Thatcherlike character of Betty Mullard, are portrayed as bitterly turning their backs on the Hong Kong people. Worse still, Chinese officaldom is personified as a greedy, lecherous PLA thug. Such characterizations have earned Theroux the label of racist, but those accusations have to be put alongside the sight of Jiang Zemin and Li Peng, unelected leaders who ordered the tanks to roll in Tiananmen Square, accepting the mantle of Hong Kong sovereignty from the British.
It's clear from the start of the book that Theroux's story has a rather cynical point: That Hong Kong was little more than a commercial plaything for two governments, both with little regard for the people who live there. The novel presents the British as social elitists--looking down on the Chinese who really make Hong Kong the economic engine it is. The Communist Chinese, on the other hand, are political and economic elitists--coldly removing anyone or anything that stands in their path to power. Kowloon Tong is not a travelogue nor a story of personal journey. It's a commentary on the political attitudes that, if you watched the Handover ceremony, were all clearly on view. It is unfortunate that Theroux missed some of the factual and geographical detail that he is otherwise renowned for, because this dampens the affect of the novel. But for its sheer strength of conviction--that the Hong Kong people deserve better then they got from all parties--it deserves to be read.

Rating:
Summary: kowloon tong
Review: Kowloon Tong By Paul TherouxPublished by Hamish Hamilton Ltd.$29.95Despite the fact that this book was pushed by Whitcoulls as the book to buy for Father's Day along with the Jonah Lomu autobiography, I'll try to reflect that I did actually quite enjoy this novel. Theroux's central character is Englishman Neville Bunt, part-heir of a successful stitching factory in Hong Kong in the final two years before the island reverts back to Chinese rule. As characters go, Bunt is a particularly dislikable one. Although he has lived in the colony his entire life, he has remained uninterested in making any attempt to get to grips with the local culture in that despicable way that only wealthy ex-pats seem to be capable of. His half-dozen or so words of Cantonese all revolve around prostitution; he lives with his mother, and has the social skills of a mute graduate of the Timaru School of Tedious Conversation. After the death of his Chinese business partner, Mr. Cheung, Bunt's tediously predictable life begins to go astray. Enter Mt Hung, representative of the Chinese army and tactless yet efficient business negotiator. Hung makes his case to Bunt quite clear: if he does not sell his business immediately then it shall be acquired through other less friendly means following the handover. Seeing he has few options, and to alleviate his mother's desire for the offered 'million quid', Bunt begins to go along with Hung's offer. Despite this, other things begin to go astray; Hung at first invades Bunt's private life. Then things turn nastier...On the other side of things, the book did have its bad points. All the characters are extremely stereotypically. Bunt is boring, predictable and is nothing outside of the worst ex-pat; his mother is a domineering archetype who flutters away on the horses and ignores the handover completely. Mr. Hung meanwhile, is a one-dimensional character. Theroux portrays him as a ruthless toll of the PLA, determined to eliminate anyone or thing that stands in the way of 'the great Chinese Takeaway'. Although these points are a downfall, they also somehow add to the book - it does point out that Hong Kong has been about one thing and one thing only: money. The Chinese are simply replacing the British, who always looked down at the people of Hong Kong who were the workers who made the island the economic power it is today. Kowloon Tong is a reasonable read, some of you may enjoy, and others may not. Theroux has often been labeled a racist and, although it is not obvious in this novel, he has defiantly not gone out to remove the suspicion. Some reviews I have read loathed this book and many of their criticisms are well based. Hmm..what can I say but check it out.

Rating:
Summary: A good novel overall
Review: Let's all admit it and have done. Theroux is a misanthropist. No class, person or nationality meets his standard for humanity and he is unashamed to write what he thinks. Most of the Chinese, all of English, and even the lone American in Kowloon Tong are portrayed so as to reveal their failings in the harshest light. I cannot agree with those who read racism into such a book. Such critics seem to be blind to the overall intent of the work, and seem to be muddling the perspective of the characters with the author's own feelings. Bunt Mullard is certainly a racist. Can one accuse Theroux of being one for having created him?

This book is another example of Theroux's very fine writing skills. He has a Salingeresque ability to describe people concisely while avoiding stereotypes. His main character's failure to act heroicly, or even humanely, is, I believe, central to his theme. There is no happy ending here, just the slipping away of the sordid but comfortable present into an uncertain future. I went back and read the book a second time after a few weeks and found that it pleased more than the first time through. What Theroux does with images of food and eating throughout the novel is masterful.

I was disappointed to learn from other reader-reviews that Theroux's portrayal of Hong Kong doesn't ring true to those who are intimate with the place. This would certainly have bothered me had I known it. However, being in a happy state of ignorance, I was still able to enjoy Kowloon Tong, and plan to read more by this author in the near future.

Rating:
Summary: One of Several Essential Books on Hong Kong for Visitors
Review: Paul Theroux's Kowloon Tong (meaning nine-dragon pond, a district in Hong Kong) is a novel of Hong Kong on the verge of the 1997 handover. Written against the historical backdrop of handing a free Chinese city back to a totalitarian Chinese state, Kowloon Tong is far less glittering from the inevitably rip-roaring story for the global media, it is a piece of cobbled (opportunistic, maybe) fiction.

Neville "Bunt" Mullard was born and raised in Hong Kong, went to the posh Queen's College, and inherited the almost-monopolizing Imperial Stitching Company, which manufactured badges sewn on breast pockets of sports-jackets from his late father and his partner Henry Chuck. At 40, Bunt was not married, devoid of friends, frequented bars and brothels, but felt the pressure of his dead brother, dead father, and the late avuncular Chuck hovering near him at work.

A pathetic mama's boy, Bunt lived a life that synchronized with his mother's, so confining and dull. She knew so much (too much) about his life, his daily routine and his where about that he deliberately contrived to create secrets (the topless bar and an affair with an employee Mei-Ping) and manipulated his mother's mood.

As the British prepared to hand over Hong Kong to the Chinese motherland, the much-talked-about upheaval did not concern the Mullards, who lived nonchalantly at the Peak (a rich-and-famous, on-top-of-the-city neighbor which afforded panoramic view of the city and was away from, say, 95% of the colonial population). They executed their social fares with the small band of Brits at the Cricket Club, the English tea ritual at the Hong Kong club, outings to horse races by taxi, and lived as if the city and majority of its inhabitants (meaning the Chinese) didn't exist. The Cantonese was such grating noise that was remotely similar to any human speech. The Chinese food made them retch.

When a Mr. Hung, who spoke perfect English with an American accent, on behalf of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (soon to station in Hong Kong), offered 9 million to purchase the building of Imperial Stitching, the Mullards' world of insouciance was jolted. Through a series of minatory gestures that might have attributed to the missing employee Ah Fu and janitor Woo, for the first time in their life the Mullards learned the truth of the colony's prospect-smiling but threatening and know-it-all Chinese officials behind a system of bribes and disloyalty.

I have to applause to Theroux's keen eye on the geographical and cultural details of Hong Kong that are usually accessible to those who live in the city, the natives. His effort in nailing down the Hong Kong Chinese to the root is admirable and formidable-the inveterate trait to look after family, to not to say the thing that was no the heart, to say "I don't know" when you knew, to not to show feelings and emotion and (this is my favorite) to mob the exit on arrival in any transportation mean as if it was a panicky evacuation under an emergency. That's Hong Kong, in addition to all the incessant noise-the clanking of trams, the beeping of cell phones, and the ubiquitous charivari of Cantonese conversations that sounded like a hair-pulling argument, serenaded the city.

The book also deftly captures Hong Konger's despondency of the uncertain future. For over 100 years, under the British governance, Hong Kong stood as the only Chinese society that lived an ideal never experienced and realized at any time in the history of any Chinese society. The colony, which practiced capitalism, provided a stable home for refugees from turbulent events of Chinese history such as the Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward. Inhabitants of Hong Kong were those who fled the Communists in 1949 and their descendants. Thus in the proximity of 1997, a taut atmosphere hovered over the colony as everyone tried to secure an escape route, which usually manifested in the form of a foreign passport, a green card, a relative in Canada, or a marriage of convenience. Theroux has astutely seen to this political tension in his novel.

What infuriates me about this book and thus makes it a cobbled piece of fiction is the puerile plot. Theroux portrayed the Hong Kong Chinese women as some of the most naïve and gullible and stupidest species of the human. Women were constantly abased, manipulated, used, and sexually abused. As a native of Hong Kong, I could vouch that the chance of an affair between a foreigner and a factory worker is infinitesimal. The affair itself was stuck in a deadlock and the characters that involved in the affair were one-dimensional. Betty Mullard's ruler-ver-subject attitude toward the Hong Kongers was also snobbish and obnoxious. If the Chinese were really so out-of-focus and were like riddles to her, why couldn't she at least try to know the Chinese people? It was true the British were rulers and the Chinese the subjects, but what infuriates me is the arrogance on her part, not knowing she was in Hong Kong, where the majority was the Chinese people.

It occurred to me toward the end that the stitching company and its fate might have served as a symbolism of Hong Kong but I prefer not to give away. The ending was disappointing and ambivalent. It is a cobbled piece of fiction that astutely delves in the significance of the historical backdrop but sacrifices the backbone of the story. Readers will learn more about the culture of Hong Kong but disappoint at the story. 2.5 stars.

Rating:
Summary: Riding the Iron Rice Bowl
Review: Theroux's early travel writing places him firmly alongside Lewis and Newby; his middle period novels only a little below Greene. This novel, however, makes 'Nobel House' seem well-researched and insightful.

The plot of Kowloon Tong is loose and although the novel is thankfully short, Theroux seems to anticipate his reader's ennui with the whole concept well before the middle of the book. It is the sort of thing you would expect of someone who'd paid a fortnight's vist to the Territory to stay with friends who didn't go out much.

The characterisation of both the English and Chinese is wholely unbelievable and the energy and 'vividness' of Hong Kong which has always been unconnected with ownership of the place is totally lacking.

Clearly a piece of opportunism on the part of his publisher, which Theroux should be ashamed of himself for going along with.

Rating:
Summary: One of Several Essential Books on Hong Kong for Visitors
Review: This Hong Kong classic is both a great read and a great help for Westerners planning to live in, or visit Hong Kong. I first read it when I lived there in the late 90's, even began reading it on the Star Ferry when it came out in early 1997. Bunt is an old "Hong Kong Belonger", British, lives atop Victoria Peak ("the" address to have), has a factory in the district of Kowloon Tong, and has a pretty easy life thanks to the protection of British rule and law in a region better known for dictatorships. But all that is coming to an end, with Britain handing over Hong Kong to China. The Chinese military bureaucrat Hung arrives to force Bunt to sell the Chinese Army his business - the Red Army wants to start making some cash, and Bunt is bewildered and soft due to his life in the colony and can't cope well. The harshness of Hunt and the fuddy-duddyness of Bunt are well-drawn depictions of actual Hong Kong types. The ending is very Hong Kong. Also very Hong Kong are the myriads of other types depicted here - Chinese, British, American. The Chinese bigot yelling "Gweilo!" Bunt's horrible mother yelling "Chinky-Chonk!" The American trying to buy a new nationality to avoid paying US taxes. Many of the anecdotes and scenes perfectly capture the harsh underbelly of the place which has its origins in the tragic influx of all those millions of Chinese refugees fleeing China to the safety of then-British Hong Kong and the huge insecurities that created. This is a book to read both before you go AND after you've lived there for a year, many of the subtler aspects of the book will be revealed to you. One thing the book the makes no concessions to is the important concept in Chinese culture of "Face" - there is nothing more importatnat than NOT losing face in China, so warts-and-all books like this are not appreciated. But the book is written for any readers who like a good read to contain accuracy of description rather than a tourist bureau spin account. The book was banned in the People's Republic for just this reason (minor shades of Tiannamen Square!) There are also several in-house jokes which will become apparent after you've been in Hong Kong awhile - for example the placing of a factory in the district of Kowloon Tong, a subtle comment on how awful that residential district was to live in - locally reffered to as "exclusive" (this is "face" at work again), it sat under the final landing path of the international airport which was next door!

If you're going to Hong Kong, also consider reading the other *Hong Kong classics* most expats have on their shelves: Jan Morris's *Hong Kong* has loads of information on Hong Kong up to 1997, including an important account of the tragic influx of all those millions of Chinese refugees fleeing China for Hong Kong, how that situation vastly overcrowded the place and made for a pressure-cooker atmosphere, and how even today it is embarressing for Hong Kong Chinese to talk about (again, it causes loss of "face"). Great info on the British days, too, and evocative descriptions of the wonderful hill-hiking Hong Kong has to offer (don't miss Plover Cove!).

Bo Yang's *The Ugly Chinaman and the Crisis in Chinese Culture* is a fascinating account by a Taiwanese journalist of the stultifying effect many aspects of Chinese culture has had on the Chinese - especially the worship of the past during imperial times that led to the near-death of critical thinking. The author relates this legacy to many of the unpleasant "underbelly" - side of things in day-today Hong Kong
life - the rude crowds, bad public behaviour, spitting, etc. Though that may sound harsh, it actually helped me to appreciate things Chinese better knowing the tragic origin of these things. I appreciated more the great aspects of China - the poetry of Li Po, the classic novels Story of the Stone, etc - because of Bo Yang's book. Sadly, Bo's book is also banned in China proper.

Timothy Mo's novel *The Monkey King* is a great account of an eccentric Hong Kong Chinese family - I felt I met these people again and again while living there.

National Geographic's video *Hong Kong* is a must see portrait of the real Hong Kong - not some tourist bureau fantasy but a remarkable look into the millions of refugees who escaped to Hong Kong after the Chinese revolution.

The film *China Box*, by a local Hong Kong boy who made it to the West, is essential for potential expats - watch it for the *depiction* of the city, which is perfectly rendered. The story is a little so-so, but if you're going to live there, watch the visuals. This is what Hong Kong looks like. The depiction of the young Chinses refugee (played by Gong Li) being ridiculed for her bad accent buy older, "more established" refugees is harrowingly accurate.

Lastly, check out Austin Coate's classic, *Myself A Mandarin*, a memoir of a colonial judge in the 1950's trying to sort out the culture clashes between British Law and Chinese sensibilities.

If you're going to live in Hong Kong, ALL these books are even more illuminating read a second time after you've lived there a year.