Hong Kong- Monsters Among Us

Clearly, my mother had failed to break my spirit. I turned out neither fearful nor timid, and neither dull nor gloomy like my father. On the contrary, I was full of life, tough and sociable, not unlike most teenagers. But just beneath my scarred skin I was living a different life, the life of a child whose soul refused to die, whose soul was still capable of rebirth, and who cherished the arrival of each new day with renewed hopes and dreams. I can understand now that it is in the spirit of innocence that a child can see primordial beauty and truth everywhere: in the animate and inanimate, the living and the dead; to him even a muddy puddle is a magic potion of life from which he can drink deeply and find the inspiration that transforms curses into poems, blood into art, and wounds into love-- all without his knowing how.

Surely, I have had my share of loneliness, along with grief and internal conflicts. Many times, I would hibernate in the dark for hours without knowing why, or freeze by the window, staring at the rainfall until it stopped. I wrote many journals. Most of them were filled with doubt or self-pity of sorts. But being a young teen, I lacked the objectivity to understand my own psychological turmoil. More often than not, I preferred to escape the weight of my thoughts by hanging out with friends, all the better with girls, especially when a girl would let me hold her tightly, kiss her deeply, drown me in her rose petal lips, and consume my desires with the fire of her eyes so that everything would evaporate in our embrace, and I would be reborn and transformed into a gentle soul, a tender and caring lover who whispers sweet secrets next to her ears, writes her poetry, and contemplates her whole being with my paintbrushes-- all for the need of her love, an insatiable need of love that kept me running and searching in every infatuation and in every kiss. But each time she fell into my world, I always turned around and went the other way. Little did she know, my world was a hellhole, no place for an angel. In reality, I had no love for her, at least not the love I knew existed deep within me. For love has always been absent for me since my life began. How can I give her that which I never knew?

In essence, for me the notion of love was just a form of escape from the harsh reality in which I was raised, and all the beauty and charms of my girlfriends were just brief distractions from the shadows in my mother's eyes. For me, the world was an alien planet on which I never felt like I belonged. I was lost at home just as I was lost in the crowd. I found no refuge other than to continue the way I knew how to survive in the dirty water. Thus unbeknownst to myself, I never ceased to swim to the other shore, however slowly. Just as I left those girls waiting by the phone, I distanced myself from a family that didn't love me, and the seductive power of the gang could not make me stay. Although I was raised in the swamp, it is in my nature to seek higher ground, even if I must swim against the current. I was like a migrating bird hurrying onward in the storm. Wherever my journey leads me, I'll be glad to be there, but I never forget to carry on. So soon I wandered off from my neighborhood and found new friends who welcomed me everywhere I went. They cared little if I was rich or if I was poor. As teenagers, all we needed was one another's company. It didn't matter if we happened to be hanging out by the sidewalk, sitting in the cafe, dancing in the disco, or watching a film in a theater; we were happy to be together, or even apart if one of us happened to find a sweetheart. The world was new, and the day always seemed to hold so much time to play. In the spirit of brotherhood, each time we met we emptied our pockets and laid out every dollar and every toy to share. Since a few of them came from well-to-do families, soon I was riding on their dirt bikes in rough hills and playing with a borrowed guitar, rocking away in a band and recording music in rental studios. To celebrate our imaginary stardom, we occasionally lit our cigarettes or cigars with dollar bills, and even a hundred dollar bill once in public, just to show off. Hence, I found myself evolved from the underclass to a new bourgeoisie atop my anthill, and living quite a different life than the kid who used to sleep above a vegetable stand.

Although I was abused both physically and emotionally, thus far I knew nothing truly evil, and I hadn’t learned the real meaning of hell on earth until I discovered a deep, dark underworld in my last summer vacation from school. In which my own abusive mother failed in comparison with the real cruelty of those who would profit from the systematic torture and abuse of young girls, as I found out when I landed a summer job in a brothel through our neighborhood gang connection. There, I would escort call girls to hotels and inns by taxi, and ensure that these girls wouldn’t get hurt by their customers or run off on their own accord; more importantly, it was my job to make sure that they got paid, and weren’t get ripped off by either the customers or the hotel staff. I thought it was an easy, high-paying job and a thrilling adventure. I was rather surprised when I first met these girls in a dingy apartment, for most of them appeared to be only sixteen or seventeen, and none appeared to be more than a few years older than I. When the madam introduced me to these girls, some welcomed me on board with smiles, some with sideways glances, and others never even bothered to make eye contact. It was only within minutes that the phone began to ring and the madam picked up the phone. As she spoke and listened, she looked about and then pointed her finger to the girl she picked, and signaled her for the job. So I began my first assignment in earnest, and stepped out of the door with a beautiful girl. Halfway down the stairway, I saw a cab was already there waiting. Quickly, we hopped in and the driver drove us a few blocks away. We arrived at a small hotel and the girl went in without the slightest hesitation, so I paid the driver, went inside, and sat in the lobby. A short while later she came out and confirmed that she had collected the money, so we called for another taxi and returned to the brothel. The moment we walked into the door, the madam smiled and the girl handed over at once every dollar and cent, including tips. Only then did she rejoin the other girls resting on the sofa, or playing poker and chitchatting, while waiting for another call.

On any given night, I went in and out six to ten times to herd these girls between the brothel, the taxi, and the hotel; everything worked systematically like a machine, with hardly any surprises, and there was never a need for me to make any decisions, other than one time when a customer failed to pay and I had to call for bouncers to come to the hotel and rough him up in his room. By all means the job was a breeze. Although I was a kid, they treated me as equal to the two other bouncers, and no one ever complained or undermined my performance in any way. I was in charge of these girls like a shepherd guarding its master's sheep. But there was never any trouble because they were docile like house kittens. Nevertheless, I often felt uneasy with their frequent and excessive laughter, which was just as often as their devastated teary sobs. Since these girls never spoke of anything serious, or mentioned anything about their prior lives, I had no idea why they behaved so strangely compared to the girls I knew in school. I supposed that I was just too naive to relate to their circumstances. Nonetheless, they quickly became my friends because I was a pleasant kid who would sing silly songs and tell them stories from books I read, and played with them like a little brother. So at times they would tease me or gang up on me, pretending to rip off my clothes. Surely I enjoyed their company, and not once did I disrespect them in any way, much less take advantage of the situation, even though they were expected to follow my directions.

Once or twice, I wondered why and how these girls got there. From bits and pieces, I learned that their stories were more or less the same. Many of these girls were sold to the brothel by their boyfriends. The usual story was that he would threaten to hurt her and her family, or lie about his arrest by the police and say he was in dire need of the probation money. He would plead for the girl to work for the brothel for a period of a few weeks to a few months. If she agreed to help him and work for his rescue, the brothel would divide her earnings with the hotel and the boyfriend. And if he managed to sell her to the brothel for a lump sum, the likelihood was that he would take the money and be gone thereafter. In any case, these girls were selling their bodies without ever receiving one cent, other than room and board. Their only hope left was to fulfill their contracted time. Sadly, everyone except these girls knew that the underlying reality was quite different.

I held the job at the brothel for a little over a month, until it came crumbling down unexpectedly. One evening, while I was out with this girl, I received a call warning me not to return to the brothel but to stay in the hotel with her. We knew that something had happened. Nonetheless, the granted night off was welcome news. So happily, we quickly settled into a room. We threw ourselves on the bed like two little children without adult supervision. It didn’t take long for me to start to notice burn marks on her arms and thighs. She explained that it was because she once tried to run away. When they caught her, she was gang-raped and burned with cigarettes as punishment. Although her testimony was no news to me, as I had heard terrible things from bouncers working in the brothel, I was saddened because in the little time I worked there, she had become my friend, and I felt helpless because of the monstrous power of the Triad. Perhaps we both felt a faint sense of hopelessness. As the silence grew, we put our arms around each other and lay cuddling in the dark. For a moment, I wanted to kiss her, but I resisted the idea. She must have felt exhausted because she fell asleep quickly.

The old air-conditioner mounted on the window was babbling in the heat of the night. The air in the room was thick and barely stirred. From outside the windows, the hotel neon sign was flashing a red and blue colored dim light onto her face. Although we had been working together for a few weeks, only now could I see that she was only sixteen years old. She was the wild one, animated and talkative, always jumping between emotional extremes, and often crying and laughing at the same time. Only now she was quiet and motionless lying next to me, breathing evenly in her sleep and sinking into the darkness with all her nightmares. As she lay peacefully in her dreams, I began to feel overwhelmed by her angelic, child-like beauty. A strange feeling began to creep up in me. I had a desire to love her, a desire that was mixed with both adoration and pity. Whatever it was, I felt its weight in my heart. Slowly, I turned away from her and lied down on my back. I gently ran my hand across her bare arm that was resting on my chest; she moved a little and mumbled in her sleep. I was wide awake now, and my head began to spin, echoing with voices I had heard in the brothel, conversations that I shrugged off without paying any hint of attention. Yes, I was too proud to let them get to me, I refused to know even what everyone else knew: these girls were sex slaves, and they all knew that these girls would be completely wasted physically and emotionally in no time. As prostitutes controlled by the mob, they were as disposable as stray dogs in a butcher shop. They had been isolated from their friends and families. They had neither the money nor the esteem to break away from their vicious circumstances. Their hopes for freedom were in fact futile. For as long as these girls could generate even a few dollars, the mob would never relinquish their control over them as human merchandise. And if they attempted to escape, chances were that the escapee would be quickly captured by an extensive network of mobsters. Then she would be subjected to various degrees of torture, which depended on if it was her first attempt, second attempt, or so on. For repeat offenders, the ultimate punishment was the extreme horror of introducing an overlie infection without any medical treatments; then they would be sold to the ghetto in the Kowloon-shen (a Triad-ruled walled city where police had no authority, as designed in the opium war treaty a hundred years earlier) and locked up as sex slaves forever.

After hours of twisting and turning next to her all night, I finally fell asleep just before dawn. Not until noon the next day did we awake, bathing in the sun, to the ringing phone. Then we were told to regroup at a certain address. We arrived at the madam’s house within the hour. Her large and sunny luxury home may well have been the most beautiful mansion I had ever seen at the time. Along with many of his men, the seldom seen boss was also there. He laughed about the event the night before, and how we were tipped off by the district police just minutes before the sweep carried out by police headquarters. After a while, he turned his attention to me. Discreetly, he pulled me aside, leaned forward toward me, lowered his voice, and quietly asked if I had fucked the girl. I was at once alarmed because I sensed the seriousness in the tone of his voice. “No.” I answered. He was seemingly unconvinced. “Did you fuck her?” He looked me sharply into my eyes and asked again. “No,” I answered more firmly. Then suddenly he raised his voice and shouted: “Now, did you fuck her?” I could see that everyone in the room turned their attention to us. “No!” I yelled back presumptuously. Then he sighed and quietly said, “Damn! If you had fucked her, then we wouldn’t have to pay her boyfriend anymore.” Even then I understood exactly what the boss was saying, for it is common knowledge that when a gang member has sex with a girl, it is called “branding.” The term implies his ownership of the girl, not unlike livestock. All mob members, friends, and foes, without exception, commonly recognize this as a legitimate claim. Any dispute over such a claim often led to gang wars. So from the mob boss’ point of view, it was nothing personal, just business. He was quick to sense a chance to make money, and perfectly ready to muscle the girl over to maximize his profit. Although I was too young to have developed moral principles, my heart knew that this wasn’t right. Looking back, I realize how close I was to evil, real evil, in the form of a living monster who devours the flesh and souls of trusting children. This experienced haunted me all my life.

Flower Child, Self Portrait, oil on board, 11x14 in

1-- I Remember China >>

2-- The Family In Hong Kong >>

3-- The Street of Hong Kong >>

4-- Monsters Among Us >>

5-- The Wind of Change >>