by Martin Booth
I was not only grateful to have avoided a leopard cat's fate but also glad no-one had witnessed the confrontation. The loss of face would have been mortifying.
There were only two ways to reach the top of the Peak, discounting walking up the Old Peak Road which would test the stamina of a marine. One was by car or bus, the other by the Peak Tram.
Built in 1888, this was the world's steepest funicular railway and it operated on the simplest of systems. A long and well-greased steel cable was wrapped around a massive drum in the engine house at the top. On each end was a tram car. As one travelled down the mountain, so the other rose up it. At the halfway point, the track divided in two so that the cars might pass each other. The only snag was that there were more stations in the lower half of the route than the upper. Consequently, when the lower car stopped at one of the stations, the upper car would halt in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by sub-tropical forest and birdsong.
The tram car was of unique design. Constructed of varnished wood on a steel frame and chassis, the uphill portion was an enclosed cabin. This was where Europeans or wealthy Chinese travelled. Other Chinese passengers, with the exception of baby amahs and their charges, were obliged to ride in the rear half which, although it was roofed, was otherwise open to the elements.
Whenever I could, I chose the rear portion. One just climbed on and sat down. There were no side walls, no restraining ropes, no safety bars. The only thing to hold on to was an armrest. Just before leaving the lower terminus on Garden Road, a tinny bell rang three times, there was a pause and the car edged forwards, running alongside a nullah and the Helena May Institute where, my mother frequently and convincingly but inaccurately remarked, Margot Fonteyn had taken her first ballet lesson. The single track then started to climb more steeply. To request it to stop, one pressed a labelled button; for boarding, one just put one's hand out to hail the brakeman.
All the while, the gradient increased. Above Bowen Road the angle of ascent was at least forty-five degrees. The May Road station, just below the halfway passing place, was at the steepest point. Here, when the car stopped, it yo-yo-ed alarmingly as the long steel cable flexed. Of necessity, it was elastic. This bouncing always set tourists chattering or American sailors chortling with alcohol-fuelled hilarity. Boarding or dismounting was difficult and one had to wait until the car stopped moving. Uphill from the May Road platform was a small signal box in which a man changed the points at the passing place. From here the tram car trundled steadily upwards, entering a cutting and turning a long bend in the middle of what was essentially sub-tropical jungle. This is where it would sometimes stop to accommodate the other car in a lower station. Huge butterflies would flit through the open rear, birds dance and jump in the tree branches. I once saw a small python sliding through the undergrowth, much to the frustration of my fellow amah and coolie passengers who could not disembark and catch it for the pot.
I grew blasé about the Peak Tram, for I took it as commonly as most people might a bus. The view, the harbour a backdrop at the top of the windows, the slopes of the Peak and the buildings apparently leaning backwards at a bizarre angle, were everyday phenomena.
The comments made by the tourists and American sailors were as predictable as sunrise: 'Hey, you guys! You bin on the rides at Coney Island?' At a mid-jungle halt: 'OK! Y'all out 'n' push!' At the elastic stage: 'How many times you reckon this baby's snapped?' To the brakeman leaning on a dead man's handle, who spoke not a word of even pidgin English: 'Ya hold that baby real tight now, y'hear?' On any number of occasions, I was asked if I was the British Ambassador's son, to which I replied haughtily that Britain did not need a Hong Kong embassy because we owned the place.
The Peak Tram being one of Hong Kong's tourist attractions, it was also frequented by celebrities. I rode it with The Ink Spots, a famous black American jazz quartet; the film star Danny Kaye and the English actor Jon Pertwee who later became Dr Who. They never really impressed me: they were just people whose autographs my mother insisted I request. One day in 1954, however, was different. My mother met me after school at the Peak Tram terminus to take me down to the city. I forget why. As we waited for the next tram, a notice declared that Barker Road station was temporarily closed. When the car arrived, we boarded it, sitting in the open coolie section at my request, which was at the front of the car on its descent. My mother did not complain. It was a hot afternoon.
The tram set off. Barker Road station approached. It was thronged with people. A bright light switched on as we drew near. The car stopped in the station. Someone appeared briefly with a clapper board. Another called, 'Action!' A man in a light-coloured suit detached himself from the crowd, walked down the platform and entered the cabin. The tram set off. The powerful light switched off. My mother put her hand on mine. It was quivering.
'That's Clark Gable!' she whispered.
And it was. He was shooting a film called Soldier of Fortune.
She scrabbled in my school bag, took out an exercise book, tore a page from it, fumbled in her handbag for a pen, then said the obvious.
'Martin, get his autograph.'
'You get his autograph.'
'I can't,' she fumed. 'I'm a grown up. You get it.'
'You tore a page out of my exercise book,' I complained. 'I'll get into trouble for that.'
'I'll square it with your teacher. Now get his autograph.'
'I don't want it.'
'He's one of the biggest film stars in the world.'
I remained unmoved. She grabbed my arm.
'Get his bloody autograph,' she threatened sotto voce, her lips tight. 'If you don't. . .'
'What if I do?' I parried. It seemed I might as well take advantage of the situation.
The Peak Tram reached May Road station and bounced on its cable for a minute. Clark Gable stood up, disembarked and walked off into a crowd of film people. The tram carried on down the mountain.
'Just for that,' my mother said peevishly, 'we're not going to Tkachenko's.' A thought then occurred to her. 'Maybe we'll be in the background as he got on.'
When it was released, we went to the cinema several times to see the film. We did not feature in it.
Apart from the vehicular ferry, and the walla-walla boats which were expensive, the only way to reach Hong Kong island from the mainland of Kowloon was by the Star Ferry, universally known as 'the ferry', which plied, every fifteen minutes for eighteen hours a day, across the mile-wide harbour from Tsim Sha Tsui to Central District, as the heart of Hong Kong's business world was called. As on the Peak Tram, the passengers were segregated, the wealthy and well-to-do – Chinese and European – travelling on the enclosed top deck, the rabble of coolies, amahs and others on the bottom – open to the elements – with their poles, boxes, bales and large, circular baskets of complaining chickens. To cross the harbour on the upper deck cost ten cents one way: the lower cost five.
I looked forward to taking the ferry. The craft would have to weave between warships at anchor, with Chinese women in rocking sampans painting the hulls or collecting the garbage. Cargo ships under a harbour pilot's control slid by like mobile cliffs of black metal, eager faces at open portholes. The ferry had to give way to sail and oar so it was common for it to slow to a crawl or change course mid-harbour to allow passage to an ocean-going junk in full sail heading for the open sea. On one occasion, the ferry on which I was riding had to stop for a massive junk flying the Communist Chinese flag and armed with two small cannon mounted on her stern. It really was a case of the eighteenth meeting the twentieth century.
Whilst the ferries themselves were perfectly safe, I had my doubts about the ferry piers. Constructed of a wooden deck on wooden piles, they creaked and swayed dizzily as a vessel came alongside. The piles screeched, the deck planking moaned like lost souls and everyone waiting to board swayed unsteadily. What was more toe-curling was the fact that there were gaps between the planks. Twice, I accidentally dropped my pocket money down them, only to see the coins hit the wa
ter below and sink without trace. Not that I would have accepted them back, for the harbour was notoriously dirty – the Kowloon sewers emptied into it – and, one day, pushing through a crowd of Chinese peering down through the cracks between the planks, I saw a dead coolie floating under the pier. He was face down, bare to the waist, his arms rising and falling with the rhythm of the wavelets. In the centre of his back, halfway down his spine, was a hole, washed clean of blood by the sea. I could see his vertebrae. Schools of small fish hovered around him. A small crab rode on his shoulder. According to the Radio Hong Kong news that evening, he had been murdered with a baling hook.
My mother and I frequently rode the bottom deck.
'Let's rough it,' she would say, approaching the coolie turnstile. 'See how the other half live.'
We boarded the ferry, the gangplank moving to and fro as the vessel rocked on the waves. There were few seats on the lower deck and, invariably, these were occupied by amahs who ran for them the minute they stepped on the deck. A running amah, dressed in her white jacket and black trousers, looked for all the world like an intoxicated penguin.
As the ferry set sail for the mile-long crossing, a mist of spume blew across the deck. Amahs carrying babies on their backs in cotton slings faced into the wind to protect their infants. Coolies removed the lengths of cloth they customarily wore like grubby cravats and rubbed their glistening muscles with them. My mother closed her eyes and let the spray cool her face. I, heedful of a bi-lingual notice on the bulkhead, watched out for pickpockets.
Another notice bluntly stated, No Spitting. The 'other half' had a habit of spitting to clear their throats of phlegm or catarrh. They also blew their noses by thumbing one nostril shut and then, leaning forward over the gutter, blowing hard. Consequently, it was commonplace to see gobs of pale green snot lying by the side of the road alongside cracked melon seed shells and chewed wedges of sugar cane. The concept of a handkerchief was alien to the Chinese. It seemed utterly ridiculous to them to blow one's nose then put the contents in one's pocket. Whilst spitting and hawking were disgusting habits, I had to agree with their logic and tried blowing my own nose in a similar fashion, yet I never mastered the knack. The snot came out all right but it dribbled as slime down to my lips and chin instead of flying free.
Once, I tried to get my father to see how the common man travelled on the ferry but he steadfastly refused. I asked why.
'If God had intended me to be a coolie,' he replied tersely, 'he'd've given me a bamboo pole.'
'But God doesn't give the coolies poles. They buy them.'
'It's a metaphor,' my father replied.
'What's a metaphor?' I answered.
'Do shut up, Martin,' was my father's response. 'Remember, it's better to keep your mouth closed and be thought a fool than open your mouth and prove it.'
I shut up, boarded the top deck and moved the seat back over so we were facing forwards. The seating was designed so that whichever way the ferry was going, one could face the direction of travel.
Several weeks later, I informed a guest at one of my parents' cocktail parties that a coolie's pole was called a metaphor. He kindly put me right and I vowed henceforth not to trust my father's sketchy knowledge of matters Oriental.
Although there was both the local and BBC World Service radio, and the cinema, I tended to make my own entertainment. My imagination was sharp and I had the whole of the Peak on which to ramble. As long as I kept clear of steep drops, rock faces and slippery surfaces, I was safe. No-one would molest me or accost me unless it was to pass the time of day. One of the constables who did duty in the police post took to engaging me in conversation. He was keen to learn English in order, I presumed, to get a red number flash on his shoulder, which indicated he was reasonably fluent in it. Everyone else I met would greet me, from the coolies carrying massive sacks suspended from their poles to the briefcase-toting taipans walking down in the damp morning mist to the Peak Tram.
One elderly European, always dressed in a grey suit with a gold watch chain, would be carried to the Peak Tram in a sedan chair, probably the last to be used in Hong Kong. It was a curious-looking contraption, a sort of mockery of an ecclesiastical throne made out of dark varnished rattan. If it was raining, the rattan was encased in a black custom-made canvas cover. The square roof, rather like those found on small shrines, was curled at the corners. Supported on two long bamboo poles, the chair was carried by two coolies. They had to walk in step to prevent their passenger rocking from side to side. At each step, the rattan creaked rhythmically, the occupant moving slightly up and down as the poles bent. Arriving at the Peak Tram terminus, the coolies knelt on the road, the rear coolie first, and lowered the poles. Their passenger stepped out and, without a word to the two men who had just transported him, walked off to catch the tram. He would, however, greet everyone else who was not Chinese, including me, with a gruff, almost begrudging, good morning. The Chinese he ignored as if they were made of vapour.
This I considered the height of ill manners and was of a mind to address the man on the subject, but he carried a gold-topped cane and I knew, from experience at home, what that could do to my buttocks or the backs of my thighs. And, on the other hand, the coolies seemed inured to his rudeness. Once, I followed them to see if I could have a ride and find out where they spent their day, but they disappeared through an imposing gate which was closed behind them. They were not for hire.
Public entertainment was limited, not through any law but because most people were too busy earning a living. Yet every Chinese New Year, temporary stages were erected on waste ground around Hong Kong for the presentation of Chinese operas.
The stages were marvels of Oriental ingenuity. Made of thousands of bamboo poles lashed together with strips of the same material, they could be a hundred feet wide, forty deep, fully roofed with canvas or atap panels and equipped with electric lights. The audience remained in the open, unprotected from the elements. Rather like the theatre in Shakespeare's day, the clientele talked, drank, ate (even cooked) during the performance, which could last six hours. The actors dressed in flamboyant classical Chinese costumes in primary colours and wore heavy, stylized make-up. They sang in very high-pitched voices, their movements exaggerated and carefully choreographed.
I enjoyed these spectacles, but not for too long. The falsetto singing prompted a headache in fifteen minutes and a migraine in thirty. What six hours would do beggared even my imagination. What I really enjoyed were the fights. Swords, pikestaffs and other weapons of bodily pain and torture were flashed and swung, the combatants whirling and ducking, thrusting and slicing while all the time the orchestra was going frantic, cymbals clashing as swords met, gongs booming when the main protagonists struck each other a mortal blow. It was controlled mayhem and I loved it.
Bedlam could also be experienced, admittedly for a shorter period, at my favourite entertainment venue, The China Fleet Club in Wanchai, an infamous area of tenements, cheap hotels, tattoo parlours, Triad gangsters, bars and bordellos. It was the land of Suzie Wong.
Close to the naval dockyard, The China Fleet Club was a social club established, as the title page of its programme proudly stated, with funds contributed by the men of the lower deck – to whom this club belongs. It was operated by Royal Navy sailors for their comrades and incorporated several bars, a restaurant, sleeping accommodation, a barber's shop, billiards room and a cinema. As the offspring of a parent attached to the armed forces, albeit as a civilian worker, I was permitted to go to the club cinema for Saturday matinees.
The main feature seldom interested me. What I went for were the cartoon preliminaries, and one in particular – Tom and Jerry. I was not alone. Sailors, many of them hung-over from a night on the Wanchai tiles, crammed into the seats, jostling, arm-punching and ribbing each other. As soon as the lights went down, the National Anthem was played. They all stood up. It ended. They sat down and the noise and kerfuffle began again. The screen came alive with the Pathé news. For this, the aud
ience fell silent. Newsreels showed the colonial uprisings Britain was facing – Cyprus, Kenya, Malaya – soldiers fighting, struggling through jungle, advancing through rubber plantations or sun-baked rocky hills, dying. The screen went black. For a minute or two, the memory of the pictures of war kept the peace. Then someone would shout out.
'Where's Fred?'
Other voices would join in.
'Give us Fred!'
'We want Fred! We want Fred!'
Feet would start to stamp, hands clap and mouths hoot like owls or bay like wolves.
If the screen lit up with a Donald Duck or Woody the Woodpecker cartoon, all hell would break loose. The floor would vibrate as if an army were marching over it, the air thick with whistles and indignation. If, however, the cartoon was Tom and Jerry, the sailors would fall silent until the captions gave the name of the producer, then they all yelled 'Good old Fred!' in unison. The producer's name was Fred Quimby. Throughout the cartoon, guttural, masculine, lower-deck mess laughter greeted every twist in the tale.
About noon, after the matinée ended, I sometimes strolled through Wanchai, passing the bars with their bamboo bead curtains, young women standing in the doorways with bottles of Coke, smoking Lucky Strikes. Once or twice, I tried to enter one of these bars but was rebuffed by the girls at the door, never mind the barmen within. Either they were brusque and ordered me out, sometimes all but manhandling me to the door, or they accepted my presence, asking me if I wanted jig-a-jig, which sent everyone but myself into paroxysms of hilarity. I thought it all a bit of a liberty. I meant no harm, only wanted a drink and a bit of conversation but found myself either an outcast or the butt of incomprehensible humour. What was more, they all touched my hair. I gave them luck. Yet they would not so much as sell me a Green Spot. It was some years before I understood how the young women in the beaded curtain doorways of Wanchai made their living.
