Seymour Totti’s Foreign Policy

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I was sorry to discover that the the Red Lips bar in Kowloon is, like the staff it became famous for, now in it’s twilight years. I was chatting with the mama-san the other evening. She told me that she had worked there for fifteen years and that in three more years, when the bar closes down, she would retire.

I almost choked on my beer. The Red Lips is almost certainly the oldest bar in Hong Kong and, whilst it may be true that I hadn’t been there myself for donkey’s years, I was sad indeed to hear of it’s impending closure. I have some very fond memories of the place.

The bar’s beginnings are uncertain. The story that most people like to believe is that it started life as a taxi-dance bar sometime before the Japanese invasion of 1941. Another theory is that it was started by an American serviceman, at the end of the Korean war, to give retired ladies of the night jobs as hostesses.

One thing is for certain, when I first went there in the mid-eighties the girls had all been around for at least that long. But they were excellent hostesses and they had no shame in telling you what services they could offer if only … I don’t know if any customers did engage in sexual shenanigans, I wouldn’t be surprised. For my part I was still too young and hadn’t discovered the pleasures of the MILF. Though perhaps they did help to turn my head.

Back when I was a full-time resident we would take newcomers there. Young chaps fresh out from the west keen to explore the mysterious delights of the exotic far east. We showed them a dark, smoky room with faded wallpaper full of sixty-year old bargirls. But the beer was cheap and the girlie drinks, cold tea poured from an old whiskey bottle, were a steal at HK$44.

For that our favourite gal, Josephine, with an impish glint in her eye would sidle up to our victim and whisper Shakesperean sonnets and vast tracts from Macbeth or Richard III into his ear. Josephine loved Shakespeare and could give you a soliloquy from almost anything at the drop of a hat.

The other gals each had an arsenal of ribald tales and mischievous ideas to entertain guests with. They may have been old but they were great fun to drink with.

The bar changed owners some years ago. The old gals retired and the place was redecorated. A stage put in and the regulation Filipina dancing girls installed. That was when I stopped going.

I hadn’t planned to go in the other evening but I was walking past and a wave of nostalgia came over me. I just had to go in and take a peek. It still retains it’s dingy, back alley charm and the girls were friendly. Glad to have a customer to talk to I think. But they had no idea they were sitting in a piece of Hong Kong history and what was once one of the most unique bars in Asia if not the world.

The World of Suzie Wong