How to hang on to your husband in Hong Kong (You dim sum, you lose some)

My friend’s husband of 30 years has just left her for a prostitute the same age as their daughter. He’s taken a lump sum out of the joint account to pay off the pimp so they can live happily ever after. It’s so romantic; it makes me want to punch him in the face. (It’s OK, she doesn’t mind me writing about it) Apparently it’s the real deal, they love each other and will do whatever it takes to be together including binning off the wife and kids and 30 years of shared history. 

Yeah, yeah, of course nobody knows what really goes on in a marriage but she must have been doing something right all this time - so why now? 

Hong Kong is where marriages go to die. I’ve heard this a hundred times. Existing problems? Maybe, but they're dropping like flies. Apparently there’s a church hall in Kowloon where cast-off, expat women (of a certain age) meet once a week for tea and sympathy. They are shell-shocked and tearful. As if weeping over lost youth and hot flushes weren’t enough, they are now faced with the utter perfidiousness of their other halves in this new and already difficult phase of life. 

Get married, have kids, experience life’s rich tapestry, laugh, cry, grow old together then BAM! A night out with the lads in Lan Kwai Fong and hubby’s seen the light! It dawns on him that he is actually a god because he is surrounded by nubile young women who totes adore him. They laugh at his jokes and squeeze his big, strong muscles, all the while eyeing up his wristwatch and suit, scanning for brands. He can’t believe his luck. Why put up with a wife with crow’s feet and a thickening waist when he can have his pick of any one of these gorgeous, sexy girls? 

Is it possible that an otherwise intelligent man who has advanced his career by making careful and balanced decisions can actually believe these laydeez fancy him for his silver-fox looks? Can he be that stoopid? I don’t believe it. It’s a basic and cynical trade off. Wherever there is economic imbalance in the world, there are deals to be had. Just as I don’t blame the wife for growing old, I don’t blame the new piece either. She is just trying to improve her lot. There’s exploitation on both sides. He gets a hot, young girl to feel up and she gets a new frock, a holiday and sparkly things. Hopefully, a baby will seal the deal; golden handcuffs?

Young, poorly-educated women from relatively poor South-East Asian countries pour into Hong Kong every day looking for work as maids and nannies. They find themselves in grand homes looking after children, cooking and cleaning. Occasionally they must look around and think, ‘I want some of this. Let me think of a strategy.’ And the strategy is not that complicated – throw a few sultry looks at the Mister, appeal to his vanity. Job done! I know another lady whose husband ran off with the maid and now he won't even speak to her or their child. "So full of artless jealously is guilt, it spills itself in fearing to be spilt." That's Shakespeare, that is.

Of course, this is not just a Hong Kong thing.  Pretty much anywhere in South East Asia you see these improbable couples – RWOWM (relatively wealthy old white man) and PYAG (poor young Asian girl). She’s petite, gorgeous and 20 and he’s a red-faced, fat and balding granddad with ear and nose hair. Excuse my typecasting and please forgive me if you are a PYAG who is genuinely in love with a RWOWM, warts ‘n’ all. Good luck to you both!

I'm going to give the men a break here. When I lived in West Africa, the situation was same, same but different. The beaches were crawling with divorced nans in their sixties hand-in-hand with 20-year old body-builders. The dream was to sell up in Wolverhampton and use the money to buy a beach bar. Two years later they’re on an ITV documentary moaning about how they lost everything, betrayed by their young lovers who, surprise, surprise turned out to be serial gigolos.

How deluded are these people? What kind of opinion must you have of yourself to think a virile young stud could possibly be turned on by your too, too sullied flesh? No, it’s a straight trade. Bang for buck.

I had an Austrian boyfriend once and after a few weeks it bothered me that he never got my jokes and it bothered him that I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. It didn’t last long. We were both in our early twenties so how do you deal with the communication problem as well as the cultural and age differences? 

When I went to see Child 44 at the cinema in Hong Kong, there were several RWOWM/PYAG couples in there. This is a film about a disgraced member of the Russian military police investigating a series of child murders in Stalin-era Soviet Union – so not exactly easy viewing. I watched as the men leant over and started explaining in Pidgin English what was going on during every scene. The girls appeared to be bored out of their skulls; they nodded politely and surreptitiously checked their phones. As we filed out into the mall, traumatized by the final scenes, three of the PYAGs darted into Kate Spade to look at the dresses. They had done his thing, now it was time to do theirs. Quid pro quo.

I’m not young anymore and to be honest the thought of entertaining a 20-year- old stud muffin and-explaining-things-to-him exhausts me. I’d rather watch the telly. I bought a pair of shoes the other day and my daughter asked me if I was shopping for comfort now. I thought about it long and hard and said yes. I yam what I yam.  

In the changing room at Flex this morning I thoroughly enjoyed a conversation between two beanpoles in their 20s. One tells the other, ‘my therapist says I need something else in my life because I don’t drink or smoke or go to clubs, all I ever do is go to yoga and Pilates. I need something edgy.’
‘So what are you going to do then?’
‘Oh, I’ve signed up for spin class. It’s insane!’

Jeez, I wouldn’t trade my blubber for a life like that. It’s the price I’ve paid for some rollicking good nights out over he years with the husband who I am leaving all on his own in Hong Kong for a year while I go back to sort out some family stuff. But it's OK because we have a rock solid marriage, don’t we Babe?

DON’T WE BABE?!

So, how do you hang on to your husband in Hong Kong? I don’t know, I lulled you in with this title. Short of standing outside the 7/11 in LKF with a pitchfork shouting: 'Get orf my man' there's nothing you can do. I guess you just have to make sure you pick a good ‘un in the first place and hope for the best!

The Visitors

My 80-year-old dad called me at four in the morning to let me know he’d booked flights for him and mum to come and visit me in Hong Kong in six months time. Two weeks before they were due to arrive, mum had a fall and needed a wheelchair. Did they cancel? No, they did not. Nothing was going to stop them from making this trip.

   I waited at Exit B in the Arrivals hall for two hours before eventually finding them in the middle of the concourse like a couple of Paddington Bears with their handwritten parcel labels on their suitcases. How they got past me, I do not know and neither do they. They weren’t in bad shape considering they’d left their sleepy Somerset village more than 24 hours before, arriving via Dubai. Their main gripe was that it was too cold on the airplane: “We asked them three times to turn off the air-conditioning!”

  Mum does not like the cold, or the hot for that matter. She doesn’t like spicy food, or bland food. She is a big fan of salt and Tetley tea.

 “This is going to be interesting,” Mick said a day before the visit as we went to collect a wheelchair from the Red Cross at a hospital in Chai Wan.

 Navigating Hong Kong with a wheelchair is no easy task. This is a hilly city with a lot of steps. On the plus side, my biceps and calves are looking pretty toned now, and I discovered a whole new world of elevators. Also, I have to admit, I was loving the preferential treatment that came with the wheelchair.

  At Ocean Park, we were whisked to the front of every line with the special ‘wheelchair plus three helpers’ Golden Ticket they gave us. They even stopped the cable car while mum got on. Dad, Mick and I cast our eyes to the floor in mortification as we trooped past hundreds of people to the front of the line – but we weren’t so mortified that we didn’t take full advantage of the situation at every opportunity.

  Apparently my dad loves penguins, I never knew that, so he was in his element in the South Pole Attraction. Obviously the Antarctic conditions were not acceptable to mother who waited outside with her little battery-operated fan. “Does it really need to be that cold in there?” Mum, they’re penguins!

  The wheelchair also came in pretty handy at Disneyland; The Peninsula Lobby (no queuing for Afternoon Tea); the (sold-out-except-for-wheelchairs) show at The Cultural Centre; Wong Tai Sin Temple and The Peak Tram. (However, I have had to promise Mick that I will never make him visit Madame Tussaud’s ever again. Ever.)

 The highlight (of exasperation) of the tour for me was partaking of Chinese tea at the Lock Cha teahouse in Hong Kong Park. (Be careful not to accidentally order the Fuyuanchang pu-er tea at $38,000!) Dad and I caught each other’s eye and looked at mum as she took her first slurp of Lapsang Souchong… “Ewwwww! This tea tastes like smoky bacon!!” And apparently the moon cake is like a ‘chocolate pork pie.’ You can take the girl out of Somerset.

 We went on the Big Bus, The Star Ferry, we visited Stanley, the Ladies Market, The Flower Market, The Jade Market, Nan Lian Gardens, Repulse Bay, Lamma and mum and dad saw panda bears at Ocean Park and the real Mickey Mouse for the first time in their lives.

 I think they had the holiday of a lifetime and I know dad will be recounting his adventures to everybody down at his golf club.

 Mick and I took the wheelchair back to the Red Cross on Saturday but the office was closed. He had to stand on my back and pass the wheelchair through the one-foot gap above the door because we didn’t want to have to come back and the hospital refused to take responsibility for it ‘til Monday. I dread to think what we would have looked like on the CCTV. “Managing Director of global research company breaks into Red Cross office,” I can almost see the headlines now. As we walked away, we were both thinking the same thing - after pushing it around for two weeks, we would miss the wheelchair… and its occupant!

The Hot Seat

We’ve lived in this apartment for 18 months now and I’ve only just discovered a switch on the toilet that heats the seat. It’s a Toto toilet - I’ve never had one before so I wasn’t aware of its true potential and anyway, who reads toilet instructions? Actually, I’ve always found it slightly irritating because it has a mind of its own – the seat lifts up and down willy nilly whether there’s anyone near it or not. I like the 30 ltr or 60 ltr flush option though, and the self-cleaning wand is fun to watch if totally ineffectual. I have no strong feelings about the ‘massage’ or ‘oscillating’ modes – other than mild amusement - but now that I have found the hot seat I’m really feeling the love - especially when I forget its there and get a lovely, warm surprise every time I pay a visit.

When we lived in Mumbai, there was a shower head attached to the wall next to the loo, which I found very refreshing. The water pressure was high and I vowed to have one of these in my ‘forever’ home – however far in the dim and distant future that might be.

Other people would keep all these ideas on their Pinterest boards but I’m not that organized and anyway, I don’t need to ‘cos its all in my head. If you were to have a rummage around in there, you’d find, amongst all the cotton wool and images of Leonardo diCaprio (my secret love), a ‘file’ marked: Stuff for the Future Dream Home. This ‘file’ contains pictures of a free standing copper bath; an Inglenook Fireplace; an Aga; The Farrow and Ball colour chart; a shower head on a wall next to a toilet (with excellent water pressure) and now, a new entry…. ta dah…a heated toilet seat.

Am I getting a bit carried away here? Heated toilet seats and adjacent high-pressure shower heads? Where will my aspirations end? A man standing outside the door offering me a hot towel and a mint as I come out? (Preferably ‘Wolf of Wall Street’ era Leo)?! Today in the supermarket I was confronted with a wall of a thousand different brands of toilet paper and I chose a scented one. Goodness me! More than half of all Indian households don’t even have a toilet and here am I sitting on my hot seat like Lady Muck with loo roll that smells of roses. Aren’t we all lucky? – We were born in the right place at the right time. Because that’s all it is: luck- that’s the only reason any of this is available to us.

And as expats, we are luckier than most because we get to see how other people live. We can experience their world for a bit, hopefully broadening our own horizons at the same time. We can take away the things that we like, ideas and friendships as well as the odd stick of furniture. From India I take as my souvenir the friendly, open and generous people I met there everyday; I take south Indian cuisine – especially dosas with chutney and sambhar. And, of course, the shower head next to the loo idea.  From Hong Kong I take super efficiency, respect for culture, tradition and family and definitely the hot toilet seat (oh, and perhaps a Mah Jong set and a couple of Foo dogs) I might never have known about many or all of these things had I never left England.

I’ve had quite a few different homes – mostly high up in the clouds - in three different countries over the past few years and I have seen some amazing things from the windows of each of them. Kites with enormous wingspans swooping through the air; hundreds of people gathering for prayer below; mass dog fights and huge container vessels silently gliding by. Some of it awesome, some of it awful, but all of it very different to the grass verge I used to see every morning when I opened the curtains before we moved overseas.

OK, so I don’t have a permanent home and I can’t plant bulbs or put up wallpaper and as a home bird that hurts. However, I have collected, over the years, a few choice items like the massive cabinet from Kolkata and the doorframe from Jodhpur that I had made in to a mirror. I can now add to the collection a beautiful vibrant cerise rug, which has been taunting me from the window of Lane Crawford all month. To be honest, it looks old and worn but for me that is the appeal. A Swedish friend described it as ‘bedagad skönhet’ when I showed her – which is a good thing. Now the Lane Crawford rug lives with the Kolkata cabinet and the Jodhpur doorframe, one day to be introduced to the old Grandfather clock who currently lives in storage. Not only do most of the pieces have their own history, they are now a part of mine.

I don’t think I’ll ever regret my days as an expat even though I have missed my friends and family and a permanent home to keep my stuff. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve tried to look for things, like the secateurs for example – did I have them in India? Are they in storage, lost in transit or at the bottom of the ocean? Anyway, not being able to find stuff is a small price to pay. There’s plenty of time to settle down in one place in the future and to be honest, once I’ve got my Cole and Son wallpaper up and painted the kitchen Wimborne White (Farrow and Ball No. 239) I’ll be twiddling my thumbs anyway.

No, much better to keep on trucking, collecting memories, experience and unusual and beautiful things to surround myself with for the few good years before they put me in a care home. It’s all about the journey, not the destination after all and hopefully, in the future, one of my great-great grandchildren will be polishing the Kolkata cabinet or vaccing the ‘bedagad skönhet’ rug and might pause to wonder about the batty old woman who lugged all this stuff home and her long-suffering husband who let it to happen.

Shanghai Surprise!

Caveat Emptor! Let the buyer beware. Here’s a cautionary tale for all you shoppers. A couple of weeks ago my old pal Julia came to visit me in Hong Kong. We are both big fans of the retail experience and were looking forward to a trip to Beijing and Shanghai with our husbands. They love a bit of military history and we love a bit of shopping - so everyone’s happy!

On Day One we set off for Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City – a deeply moving experience. It was brass monkeys out there (-10) but on the plus side, a perfect opportunity to buy a hat. It was so cold I thought my head was going to explode.

Day Two: The Great Wall of China. What can I say? It was totes amaze-balls. It reminded me of The Wall on Game of Thrones; just imagine having to patrol it in these arctic conditions. It would have been unthinkable, even 20 years ago, but now you can toboggan down to a Burger King at the bottom. Yes, I was awestruck but I couldn’t resist a fridge magnet and a Whopper.  So far, a hat and a magnet – I needed to up my souvenir-hunting game.

Mick had some work to do the next day so he stayed at the hotel. Meanwhile Julia and Paul had a nice, romantic day by themselves while I went out shopping. Don’t get me wrong, I like a bit of culture but I also like to explore a place and its people through its shops. I like to think I’m more eclectic than materialistic; I’d rather bring something home from my travels than shop in Ikea. Anyway, I found myself in a sort of art gallery admiring some Chinese calligraphy paintings. Although I didn’t understand what they meant, I kind of got lost in the beauty of the brush strokes. They were obviously painted by well-known artists, as some of them were priceless. I went back to the hotel empty-handed but with the seed of an idea. I wanted to find a beautiful calligraphy painting by an up-and-coming artist; for up- and-coming, read affordable.

That evening we met as usual in the business lounge (free booze) to compare our days. Julia had been to the Silk Market AND the Pearl Market and had come back laden with gorgeous purchases which she exhorted me to look at and ‘feel the quality.’ She was like Aladdin with her pile of swag and I still only had a hat (which we don’t count) and a one-dollar magnet.

The next morning we caught the train to Shanghai and I was more determined than ever to find the perfect calligraphy painting as a souvenir of the trip. It was my mission now.

We had one night in Shanghai and ended up going clubbing – by mistake. We thought we were going to a bar in the city’s tallest tower but it happened to be Ladies’ Night and the booze was free so we ended up staying ‘til all hours. I think what happened the next day, happened because I was not firing on all cylinders.

It was pouring with rain on the last day of our hols. Julia and Paul suggested a walking tour of Shanghai and - threw me a bone - we would be passing through popular tourist shopping area Yu Yuan Gardens. Yippee!

When we arrived, dripping wet, we stopped for refreshments at the delightful Huxinting floating teahouse. After a hot cup of god-knows-what with a flower in it, and a couple of ancient pickled quails eggs, Julia and I left the boys to dry out and natter about the Qings and the Mings or whatever, while we had a quick dash around the shops.

There was a crap department store selling tat and I was beginning to give up hope when an old tout sidled up to us with the ubiquitous ‘copy handbags, copy watches’ laminated card. Despite Julia’s protestations, the tout steered us towards a lift and, because we had almost given up the will to live by this stage, we followed her…into a labyrinthine shopping paradise.

The lady in the shop pounced on us, shoving pearls and silk under our noses but I only had eyes for a framed calligraphy painting on the wall. With a practiced nonchalance, I asked it’s meaning (something about hearts and mountains?) and enquired about the artist and finally, did the deal. Within seconds, she was taking it out of its frame and rolling it up to pop it in a cardboard tube. I watched her carefully because it occurred to me that I would be gutted if I got it home to find the tube was empty. At that moment her assistant pointed to another painting on the wall to ask if I liked it. My head was turned for no more than a second. No, I was happy with this painting, thanks very much. With that, she wrapped the tube in a plastic bag and ostentatiously tied a double knot in it before presenting it to me. I gave her the cash and did not ask for a receipt because I am a stupid tourist and she saw me coming a mile off. So long, sucker! (She must have thought).

Out in the street, I carried my prize as the old tout followed us. I laughed and joked with her and said I did not want a copy watch or handbag because I had no money left. As she spoke no English, she looked at me exasperated, and pointed to my plastic bag but I made no effort to understand her. After half a mile or so, she gave up, but reached into her pocket and gave me a card. I thought it was her card and popped it in my bag.

I carried my prize all the way back to Hong Kong, careful not to crush it. When I got home I opened the tube and…you guessed it… EMPTY! The air, as you can imagine, turned blue. I suddenly remembered the card. The old tout must have seen ‘the tube switch’ and was trying to tell me I’d been stung. I don’t know why, perhaps she’d seen it once too often and was having an epiphany. When I didn’t listen, she gave me the shop’s card, knowing that when I eventually found out, I would have some recourse.

So I made the phone call to Lisa’s Art Gallery, Yu Yuan Gardens, 25 Jiuxiao Chang Road, Shanghai. Lisa was very surprised to hear from me and wondered how I’d got her details. She didn’t recall who I was at first until I threatened her with ‘Trip Advisor’ and suddenly it all came flooding back. She said she had ‘accidentally forgotten’ to put the painting in the tube and of course, she would courier it to me ASAP.

Reader, here is my happy ending; My beautiful calligraphy painting arrived this morning. I’m going to frame it and hang it on the wall. I’m still not exactly sure what it says – something about hearts and mountains or whatever - but every time I look at it, it will make me smile.... because I know (in my heart) that I can move mountains.

(Picture to follow when back from the framers. In the mean time, enjoy Julia's photo of the pickled eggs)