The pimple on China’s back

Hong Kong’s identity as an international financial centre is so overpowering that many other facets of its cultural identity tend to get smothered by it. But Hong Kong isn’t just about money; this “pimple on China’s backside” — as Chairman Mao Zedong once dismissively termed it — can be seen through many colourful prisms. And perhaps one of the most colourful of them all is popular literature.

In its time, Hong Kong’s confluence of East and West served as a magnet for some of the more creative writers in the 19th and 20th century. Rudyard Kipling, who noted that “everyone in Hong Kong smells of money”, wrote in 1889 that the city was “so much alive, so built, so lighted, and so bloatedly rich to all outward appearance, that I wanted to know how these things came about.”

Describing himself as a “poor person from Calcutta”, Kipling attached himself to a taipan — the head of an English trading firm — and sought to learn how Hong Kong became so opulent. He learnt of how companies are floated, but confesses that he can’t understand the wealth creation process. He travelled by tramway to the Victoria Peak, was borne aloft on a “sedan car”, which reminded him of the  “Bombay-side tonjon — the kind we use at Mahabaleshwar”. Other interactions too served to keep India on his mind. He writes: “The funny thing in the midst of all this wealth, is to hear the curious deference that is paid to Calcutta.”

W  Somerset Maugham too lived in Hong Kong for a while and made it the setting for some of his novels and short stories. But often, Maugham’s stories also mirrored the lives of those whom he met on his travels, and so he was frequently served with lawsuits or worse, threats. For instance, his classic The Painted Veil, written in 1925, was originally set in Hong Kong. It is here that Kitty Fane, who has come over to join her bacteriologist husband Walter, succumbs to the attentions of an older, suave, married British official. But after threats of legal action, Maugham changed the setting to the fictional Tching-Yen. (However, the first edition, which is something of a collector’s item, still situates the story in Hong Kong.)

Han Suyin’s A Many Splendored Thing, a remarkable story of a love affair between an Eurasian woman and an English journalist, is not only set in Hong Kong, but explores the ‘dual parentage’ identity of the city, which mirrors that of the protagonist. The vivid descriptions of Hong Kong — places, sights, sounds and activities — makes for a priceless documentary record of the city at a moment in time.

Hong Kong is also associated in a peripheral way with another literary master: PG Wodehouse. The son of a British civil servant serving in Hong Kong, Wodehouse lived a few years in the city before being despatched to reside with his aunts in the UK. He later worked in the London branch of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation. But there’s no evidence in any of his writing to suggest that his formative years in Hong Kong served as any literary inspiration.