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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780702256820 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Queensland Press |
| Publication date: | 10/01/2004 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 280 |
| File size: | 818 KB |
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Travels with My Angst
By Phil Brown
University of Queensland Press
Copyright © 2004 Phil BrownAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7022-5682-0
CHAPTER 1
THE MAN IN THE DUNG-COLOURED SUIT
'You lie?' the tailor asked, thrusting another swatch of cloth at me.
'No, I no bloody like,' I said, half under my breath.
'What you say?' he asked.
'Oh, nothing,' I said. 'I'm sure it's very nice but just not quite what I'm looking for.'
A tartan suit was out of the question.
'Maybe disee one?'
The tailor was flipping through the swatches now, like a card sharp shuffling his deck. But I had gone beyond the moment when I could make a clear decision about anything. In fact I was becoming increasingly confused and in the cramped, frigid conditions a sense of panic was gaining momentum. Despite the icy air-conditioning my palms were sweaty and my blood sugar was in free fall.
'Look, I think I come back later,' I said, sensing that the moment was now ripe for escape because someone else had gingerly entered the joint.
'Okay, okay,' the tailor replied, shoving a business card into my hand as he pushed me out the door. With the same breath he was offering the newcomer a Seven-Up lemonade and shoving cloth under his nose. I had wasted too much of his precious time, obviously, and was now to be dispensed with.
'Ja, danke,' I heard the other poor sucker say as he was handed his poisoned chalice of bubbly sugar water. I had escaped into the muggy, monsoonal street.
Later, back in the living room at my uncle and aunt's compact apartment in teeming, smoggy mid-Kowloon, I regaled them with tales of my shopping day. There were, I explained over jasmine tea and sweet Chinese wafer biscuits, small triumphs (I had managed to buy a lime green Lacoste shirt and some impossibly white Adidas runners) but also abject failures, like my complete inability to settle on a tailor to make the suit I had promised myself. Shopping in Hong Kong can be pretty hard going in mid-summer when the heat and humidity conspire against you.
'I thought I might not even make it home,' I said, between sips, like some SAS soldier just back from a covert operation. At one stage I had felt trapped like a rat in a maze of shopping arcades. I had become disoriented after entering the waterside Ocean Terminal shopping centre, near the famous Star Ferry. The Ocean Terminal ultimately leads into several other centres flanked on one side by the harbour and on the other by busy Canton Road. Navigating the glittering neon shopping lanes where no daylight penetrates I had eventually become quite lost and feared for my sanity. In my confusion I began shopping compulsively, gathering a swag of plastic bags and a bad case of buyer's remorse at the same time.
I asked a security guard for directions and he helpfully frog-marched me to an escalator and sent me back out on to Canton Road with the simple admonition: 'You can go.' Oh yes, it was great to be back in friendly old Hong Kong.
This particular trip in the mid 1980s was my first journey back to the then British colony where I had grown up. I have made countless visits since, though the colony tag has now been shrugged off for the less romantic title of Special Administration Region of China. I spent my first few days rediscovering childhood haunts around Kowloon where we had lived throughout the 1960s. I took my teenage cousin David with me one day on this journey of rediscovery. There was Kowloon Junior School which once loomed so large in my mind but now seemed minute. And there was the house in Devon Road, Kowloon Tong, where we used to perch in a tree overhanging the street to spit on people passing by. It was now surrounded by businesses and a plethora of what they call in Hong Kong, very euphemistically, 'honeymoon hotels'. Some might call them knocking shops.
And there too was the Kowloon Cricket Club where we formed a colony within a colony and spent summer days swimming and feasting on spicy samosas. It was all fascinating stuff for me. David, however, spent the tour stifling yawns.
The sightseeing over, I was in need of some recreation and for me that meant some serious retail therapy. I was a young, single bloke with a purchasing habit and a credit card at the ready and I wanted to go out and have some shallow, meaningless retail experiences with total strangers.
As well as the impulse buying which gives the shopaholic the real jollies, there was that specific item on my list: the tailor-made suit. This led me, stumbling, into any number of tailor shops where I had so far failed utterly to do a deal, much to the chagrin of the tailors involved. Going out of a shop in Hong Kong without buying something is very bad form in a place where 'face' is all important. But I just couldn't commit. Buying clothes off the rack is one thing but getting a suit made is something else altogether. It's like starting a new relationship. You don't want to rush into it because with any luck you'll be spending quite a bit of time together and this relationship should fit you and you alone.
If you're looking to start such a relationship, Tsim Sha Tsui, the district that covers the southern tip of Kowloon Peninsula, is the place to go. Here in streets where jostling is a way of life, you can max out your credit card in the space of a hundred metres. But the shopkeepers can be brutal, even to the battle-hardened shopper. Those who sell electrical goods in small shops crammed with the latest in Japanese technology are particularly fierce and will discard you like so much rubbish if you haven't purchased something within thirty seconds of entering their store. Street corners here are hogged by touts selling 'copy watches'. They shadow you like secret agents through the crowded streets and lanes, even though you've sworn that you already have a watch and don't need another, even if it is a very convincing fake Rolex.
A plethora of aggressive optometrists also populate this part of town. They ply their trade in white coats, looking like scientists taking a break from work on the Manhattan Project. They guard the doors of their shops ominously, looking out for prospective victims. One look at their shop windows, even a sideways glance, can be detected by these inscrutable types. Do so and you will be deemed a customer, whisked inside and fitted with a new pair of spectacles in a matter of minutes. Never mind that you don't even need glasses.
As for tailors, their bedside manner is usually a little more polished but they are equally demanding and ubiquitous. You don't need to go looking for a tailor in Tsim Sha Tsui. Sooner or later one will find you. At any time of night or day, unannounced, someone will surreptitiously sidle up to you on a pedestrian crossing and invite you — sometimes out of the side of the mouth — to attend, say, Raja's Salon or perhaps Fuk U Tailor which is, incredibly, just nearby. Or the encounter may begin when you have foolishly stopped to look in a shop window.
'Excusing me sir, may I take the trouble to inviting you into my shop?'
'Please, accept this card and allow us to make you a suit with two pair of trousers for almost nothing.'
Some are more blunt. 'You want suit?' or 'You come my shop. Make good suit.' or 'You need suit.' On this trip I had been accosted in the most oblique manner by one tailor's tout (at least I imagine that's what he was) who smiled at my approach, held out a flyer, wobbled his noggin the way subcontinentals do, and said: 'You are a lucky, lucky, lucky, man.' I passed him by and left him nodding in my wake. To this day I still don't why I was so lucky.
In one small street which runs east off Nathan Road (I seem to have blocked its name from my memory), the tailors gather together in a sort of microcosmic Hong Kong version of London's Saville Row, with just a bit too much neon for comfort. Here a bevy of friendly tailors force you to run a veritable gauntlet. You can ignore them of course, cross the road and run hundreds of metres but still you will find yourself confronted by a well-dressed gentleman — occasionally wearing a turban — who will suggest, most politely, that a visit to his shop should not be put off any longer.
You will be lured with promises of air-conditioning and cold drinks, as well as impossible bargains. On one occasion a friend of mine claims he was offered an introduction to a tailor's daughter as part of the deal but found that she wasn't anywhere to be seen. He was trapped amidst the rolls of worsted and wool and measured to within an inch of his life.
My Uncle Cyril, an old Hong Kong hand who had nothing against Indian tailors, had lived in Shanghai as a small boy and insisted however that though the Indians were okay, Shanghai tailors were the pick of the crop in the local rag trade.
'That tailor I went to today — the one who wanted to make me a tartan suit — he was a Shanghai tailor,' I told him.
'Which tailor is that?' he asked.
'He's called Shanghai Tailor,' I said.
'Bleeding obvious,' Cyril said. 'Well, he's probably alright then. Why don't you just get him to make you a bloody suit and put yourself out of your misery.'
After breakfast the following day I decided to head back downtown to get this suit thing out of the way once and for all. Shanghai Tailor was located in Tsim Sha Tsui East, a part of Chimsey (as a friend calls it) which didn't even exist when I was a boy. It was added later thanks to the wonders of reclamation. Kowloon is always undergoing cosmetic surgery but, instead of having bits cut off, is constantly having them added. Consequently there is more of it now, though less harbour. Some say reclamation will one day turn Hong Kong's famous harbour into a mere creek which you'll be hard pressed to row a boat down, let alone park a cargo ship. Knock a mountain down somewhere, tip it into the water and you have a new suburb. Tsim Sha Tsui East filled in the area beyond the waterfront that had once run along the eastern side of busy Chatham Road.
I caught a taxi there. It was bracingly cool in the cab as usual. Taxis in Hong Kong are even colder than tailors' shops. I stepped out into the soupy air and made my way past the shopping plazas to the imaginatively named Shanghai Tailor.
The shop was empty of customers but I could see the tailor inside. He was sitting on a small stool shovelling an endless string of noodles into his face, watching a Cantonese soap opera on the television set high on a stand in the corner. Cantonese soap operas are popular TV fare in Honkers, along with traditional Chinese opera, which deals with basically the same stuff, except with gongs and singing added.
'Jo san,' I said, coming through the door, showing off my flair with the lingo.
'Eh?' he grunted, looking up but continuing to slurp his noodles. They often do this in Hong Kong: knowing very well what you've said, they pretend not to have understood because the inflection or tone may not be 100 per cent accurate.
'Joh san,' I repeated, slower and more emphatically.
'Oh,' he said. 'Good moorling.' He had obviously decided my Cantonese was so poor that we best communicate in English.
'You remember me?' I asked, slipping into Hong Kong English. 'I come you shop yesserday.'
'Oh, yeseee, yesee,' he said. 'Come my shop yesserday.' He reached down, opened a small fridge and handed me a freezing bottle of Coca-Cola.
'You lie Coke?' he asked. 'You wan suit?'
'Yes, maybe wan suit,' I said.
'I makeee goo suit,' he said. 'Velly goo suit. What you lie? You look here.'
He sat me down in an old wooden chair and started plying me with magazines full of pictures of impossibly suave European models. They were all kitted out in bags o' fruit by Armani and a string of other top designers. I gather he was intending to turn me into a fashion plate, which would be a challenge.
'You lie, you show, I make,' he said, extolling the three pillars of his tailoring practice with confidence. 'I makee suit many people. Many many people.' He picked up a small leather-bound guestbook and showed me pages and pages of names — people I assume he had kitted out in the past. He ran his fingers down the columns with gravity, as though these were names to be reckoned with. He paused at one recent entry.
'You see, I make suit for Eedee Pin,' he said, repeating it. 'Eedee Pin.' The name written there was Eddy Penn, who gave his home city as New York next to his moniker. In the comment column next to his details he had written, 'Best tailor in the world', which sounded like a very big call. With all due respect I had, of course, never heard of the man.
'See,' the tailor insisted, mispronouncing the name again several times until I got it. 'Eedee Pin.'
'Eedee Pin,' I repeated knowingly, studying the entry as if it was some rare hieroglyph. That seemed to please him, though it was all Greek to me. Eedee Pin or Eddy Penn? Never heard of him. But whoever he was, perhaps the mysterious Mr Penn had convinced him he was a movie star or some sort of VIP and had got a discount on those grounds. Maybe he was a VIP and I had just never heard of him. More likely his apparent fame was the result of some sort of misunderstanding of the type which occurs daily in Hong Kong.
Anyway, after I had successfully feigned being impressed, he made me write my own name down. He studied it for a minute then proudly mispronounced it.
'Missa Blown, Blisbun. Velly goo one. Austlalia. Yes, velly goo one.' He held his thumb up, then grabbed the swatches he had assailed me with just the day before and we began the excruciating task of going through them again. After 15 fruitless minutes of this he seemed to have an idea that excited him.
'You Missa Blown, mebbe like blown suit?' He suggested, impressed with his brainwave.
'Oh, I don't know about brown,' I said, shaking my head. I'd heard of The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit but The Man in The Dung-Coloured Suit? No, I didn't think so. I mean, colour is very important in any piece of clothing. I'd had instances in the past where I had bought an item in the full throes of shopaholism and later, racked with remorse, tossed it into the Lifeline bin. I was once talked into a maroon suit in Bangkok by a very persuasive Indian tailor. He stitched in psychedelic paisley lining too, which must say something about the state of my mind at the time. But this tailor seemed convinced brown was a great colour. He had a whole swatch of brown material to back up his enthusiasm for the hue. He started flicking through it centimetres from my nose in some sort of attempt to dazzle me.
'Yes, it's all in the wrist action,' I said sarcastically.
'What you say? You no lie?' He was starting to get stroppy again and so was I. It was getting to the point where I wanted to get this sorted and get out. Of course, this is always the time when a shopper can make mistakes.
'I suppose some of them aren't too bad,' I muttered as I regarded some of the brownish samples.
'Thissa one velly goo one. Make for Eedee Pin,' he said showing me an unattractive dun-hued material. I really must meet this Eedee Pin character one day, I thought. Just to see how bad he looks in his suit. (Eedee, I mean Eddy, if you're out there, give me a call.)
After a while my resistance was whittled away. Brown wasn't so bad, I figured. Perhaps it would soon become the new black? Or was that grey? Whatever. I didn't want to spend another day haunting the streets of Kowloon, hunting for the perfect tailor, so I succumbed and gave the nod to a brown polyester/wool hybrid. The tailor excitedly began measuring me while I watched the current soap opera on telly. It looked interesting. There was a woman on the screen beating a fat Chinese bloke with a rolled-up newspaper while some other folk looked on laughing.
Meanwhile the measuring continued and numbers were scribbled down maniacally with a stubby pencil. That done we agreed I would come back in two days for a fitting. Relieved that I had finally ordered a suit I wandered off into the wilds of Tsim Sha Tsui to do some more damage to my credit card. I stopped in at The Peninsula Hotel for lunch. Those who know Kowloon will know that the Peninsula is the local version of the Ritz.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Travels with My Angst by Phil Brown. Copyright © 2004 Phil Brown. Excerpted by permission of University of Queensland Press.
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Table of Contents
Contents
The Man in The Dung-Coloured Suit,A Trek Too Far,
Is there a Doctor on the Island?,
Curse of the Abominable Snowboard,
Around Loch Ness ... By Taxi,
The Mongkok Duck Mystery,
Munro Madness,
Hanging Ten in Hong Kong,
The Club Med Catastrophe,
My Brother Is Artist,
Hamilton Island Horror,