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Change of No Consequence

Jenni Meili Lau for The Washington Post

Street-side tailor Chow Loi-fung, 72, has used a treadle-operated Singer sewing machine on the same Hong Kong corner for 20 years.

HONG KONG

In Chow Loi-fung's limited universe, which is the intersection of a steep hillside staircase and a narrow commercial street in a neighborhood called Sheung Wan, the more things change, the more they remain the same.

Chow, 72, is a street-side tailor, and as he sits with his bags of thread, his needles and his old, black, treadle-operated Singer sewing machine, he muses about four decades of change he has witnessed here: more high-rises, more business activity, the hollowing out of the community as friends and neighbors left for new homes overseas.

"When I first came over, life was really hard because I was a street hawker," said Chow, who like most others of his generation came to Hong Kong from southern China just after World War II when Mao Zedong's Communists were consolidating their grip on China. "I wasn't licensed. I suffered a lot of prejudice from the British. I was arrested more times than I can remember. But even though life [here] was really hard at first, life has gotten better and better."

For Chow, as for all of Hong Kong's 6.4 million residents, one of the most dramatic political changes in a lifetime is set to occur in less than 70 days, when the British Union Jack comes down for the last time and this thriving, prosperous colony returns to the control of Communist-run China. For some, these final weeks are a time of uncertainty and anxiety -- concerns over whether individual freedoms will be constricted, whether the press will fall under censorship and whether open political debate will be proscribed.

Jenni Meili Lau for The Washington Post

Chu Shun-sang sells traditional medicines and is unconcerned about Chinese rule.

"What is there to worry about? Nothing is going to change for me," he said. "As long as my health remains intact, I'll stay right here."

The tailor gives voice to a common sentiment in what might be called the Real Hong Kong, the city that thrives and throbs far removed from the newsrooms and boardrooms where weighty issues of economic policy, democracy and human rights are debated and discussed. This other Hong Kong is a city of alleyways and byways, markets and street stalls; it is a noisy, crowded, congested place where people ride in minibuses, not taxis or limousines, and where the usual daily fare is not shark's fin soup.

In this Hong Kong, an immigrant city of strivers and scrapers and survivors, any anxiety about the future runs to more basic concerns: Will the economy stay strong? Will employment be affected? Will the children be able to attend a decent school and have the same opportunities as the previous generation?

For many of these working-class Hong Kongers, the departure of the British and the colony's return to China amount to little more than a blip on the radar screen of daily life, a change from one set of foreign rulers to another -- although the newcomers from the north, being Chinese, are in many ways more familiar. "As a Chinese, I welcome it," Chow said of the coming transition.

The British, once they are gone, will be remembered as the gweilo or "white devils" who came, imposed their benign form of dictatorship and took the best houses, but largely left the locals alone to make money. The Chinese Communists are viewed more suspiciously -- especially among a huge slice of the population that came here to escape communism's economic hardship. With China now in the midst of a vast economic transformation, there is some pride in knowing that this Chinese city will finally be run by Chinese. But mostly there is hope that the new rulers will simply leave Hong Kongers alone to carry on with their lives.

"I think life under British rule has been -- well, there haven't been any negative effects on me," said Tam Hing, 48, who sells joss sticks outside the Goddess of Mercy Buddhist temple from the same stall where her grandmother worked before her. Tam said she has had little contact with British or other foreigners, except for the few tourists who happen by her stall. Her view of British rule is measured simply by how she has been able to provide for her family. "The quality of life has been improving here in small steps."

Tam has heard all about China's vow to abolish the elected legislature and the plans of the new chief executive, Tung Chee-hwa, to curtail some civil liberties. But she is largely unmoved. "I don't believe it will have too much effect on me individually, so I'm not too concerned about it," she said. "How can 1997 affect me? I'll just carry on as normal. It won't affect my daily routine."

China and its backers in the colony have often justified actions that critics here say threaten the territory's traditional freedoms and way of life by relying on the notion that most Hong Kong people want only to be left alone to make money. Tung has said the territory suffers from an overdose of politics, and he has pledged to try to reduce the political noise level.

An apparent public apathy has many academics and democracy advocates here concerned that Tung might succeed. "This is unfortunate," said Joseph Cheng, a political scientist at City University of Hong Kong. "The public has been very apathetic to these things." In one recent survey on attitudes toward proposed restrictions on public demonstrations, he said, 20 percent of respondents suggested they would accept empowering the police to ban protests, and fully one-half had no opinion. "People believe, first, that these things have already been decided," Cheng said. "Second, they think stability and prosperity are most important."

Despite the seeming resignation, one view that emerges from interviews with a large cross section of working-class Hong Kongers -- and particularly from those who fled China to escape what they saw as repression and economic deprivation -- is a sense of unease, even cynicism, as the transition nears.

"Most things here will change for the negative," said Hong Tee-ping, a butcher who came here illegally from Guangzhou 20 years ago by swimming several hours across the border with some snacks and a change of clothes strapped to his back. He now runs a stall in the Cochrane Street marketplace, where he stands surrounded by pink slabs of pork.

"I came down because life was really hard in Guangzhou during the Mao era," he said, wiping his hands on a bloodied apron. "It was hard to make a living."

He now describes himself as part of that politically unconcerned class. "I don't really pay attention to politics," he said. "I mind my own business and get on with what I do, just let things roll."

The teeming neighborhood of Mong Kok lies at the heart of the Kowloon Peninsula. Its name in Cantonese means "busy point," and it is a noisy, congested hub of outdoor markets and small shops, glitzy new department stores and small street-side stalls. Much has changed here over the years, residents say, but much of life has remained the same.

And if some Mong Kok residents largely brush off the biggest change of all, the coming of China on July 1, it is because they also see that China is transforming itself. "China has a lot of positive things about it," said Lam Tuk-gong, 50, a Hong Kong native who sells jewelry from a small street stall. "I think some of that will rub off on Hong Kong."

At the Chung Tai Chinese medicine shop, workers laugh off concerns about the handover while dishing out traditional herbs to waiting customers. "The only thing that would worry me is if I didn't have any money and couldn't make a living," said Chu Shun-sang, 58, the longest-serving of the shop's workers. "I don't have much. If I had a lot of material things, I'd have more to worry about."

His co-worker, Leung Sau-rung, 40, pointed to the jars of herbs and leaves and medicines, and said, "This kind of tradition has been going on for over 1,000 years. We won't change anything about it just because of 1997."

© Copyright 1997 The Washington Post Company