ASIA NEWS

Hong Kong was low comedy; forty-eight hours of fantastic filth. I woke up Sunday afternoon in my friend Joe’s flat on Hollywood Road. He had got back together with girlfriend Dewi the night before; her friend Venus was sprawled out on his sofa, looking more hungover than anyone I have ever seen. At around three we set off on a little double date.


Joe tucks in

Joe took us to a dim sum joint down the street. It ran a bizarre special offer: half price food all weekend. Because of course, no one ever wants to eat out on the weekend, so you have to cut prices. These days I pretty much refuse to eat in Chinese restaurants unless I have a Cantonese person to order for me, so having Venus there was a total result (Dewi is Indonesian – close but no cigar.) After a lengthy consultation with the waitress, we got stuck into a banquet of steamed leaves, prawn parcels and god-knows-what: divine.

Venus is an eccentric girl with a limited grasp of English. We made slow, leisurely small talk, both amused by our hangovers, and not too concerned when the thread of conversation was intermittently lost. I asked her where she worked - she replied, excellently, “In an office,” before adding, “it’s small potatoes.” I was just about able to communicate that I worked in the London office of Joe’s company.

The food and conversation were just fine, but by the end of the meal I was in a little trouble. By this point I was operating firmly on British Businessman Time, a time zone inhabited by those who travel around a third of the globe eastwards and then stay up all night drinking. The heat of the restaurant and the clatter of the plates were playing on my nerves, and I needed to get out. I picked up the bill (less than £12 for four) and we hit the street in search of a fruit juice stand.


Dewi buys some juice

I had about two hours to kill before I needed to head off to catch my return flight to Singapore, so we visited the Mann Mo Temple on Hollywood Road. Mann Mo is a Taoist temple dedicated jointly to the gods of literature and war.

There are two types of Taoism, broadly speaking: Daojiao, or religious Taoism; and Daojia, or philosophical Taoism. Adherents of the former have gods and temples and prayers and ancestor worship; the whole nine yards. It’s basically the standard Chinese folk religion. Adherents of the latter don’t go in for any of the supernatural stuff, but just read Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu and silently contemplate the Tao all day. I’m a Daojia Taoist, but I was interested to see what my Daojiao brothers and sisters get up to.



I must admit I like their style. The temple was cool and dark inside, which calmed my nerves. Coils of incense hung from the ceiling, and visitors burnt incense sticks in front of the shrines. People also struck a large iron bell with a wooden stick – as Venus showed me, first three times gently, then three times hard. I was in no condition to start asking what all this represented, so I just made a donation and soaked it in.

At one point I lost sight of her, and then found her again, praying on her knees in front of a shrine near the door, presumably for some deity to cure her hangover.

Joe and Dewi got bored and went to wait outside, but I stayed in there for forty or so minutes, listening to bells and staring at the statues until my nerves were totally gone. I floated onto the plane on Hong Kong Airport, as cool as a cucumber.


Venus checks out her Chinese Zodiac sign