Seymour Totti’s Foreign Policy

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Tracking down this classic Hong Kong novel, even in Hong Kong, was something of a chore. I finally picked a copy up at the Star Ferry pier. Not the one where Robert Lomax first met Suzie, a recreation of the original Central pier which is now in what would have been the middle of the harbour back in the 1950s when the book was written.

In the twenty years since I first read it Hong Kong has changed dramatically. It would be unrecognisable to Lomax and Suzie. There are still pockets of old Hong Kong but they are few and far between and diminishing every year. Squeezed out by soulless steel and glass that the HK government likes to call urban renewal.

That said, characters that populated Richard Mason’s novel are still very familiar. Their names, complexions and the range of languages they speak have changed but their business in Wanchai is flourishing.

The book has won considerable acclaim, not for the love story between a British painter and a prostitute, but for the authors keen observation of a place that was about to transform itself from a small trading post into the vibrant commercial hub that it is today. And of the hypocracy and rascism that was characteristic of of the era.

What makes the book special for me is the richness and depth of Mason’s characters, not just of Lomax and Suzie who have been widely recognised, but of the entire cast. In particular the other girls that worked the bar of the Nam Kok Hotel.

In the years since I first read this book I have spent more than my fair share of time in the company of their sisters in the real world. Reading it again I realise just how beautifully delineated their characters are:

“I could not help liking old Lily Lou. She reminded me of an old theatre pro, who had grown up in a narrow professional world, took pride in the old fashioned thoroughness of her technique, and looked down on on the present-day youngsters for skimping their job. She remembered her own training at a smart brothel in Shanghai - oh, in those days you’d got to know how to please a man, you’d got to take trouble and time. It had been a real vocation; none of these modern girls would have lasted a minute. “They’ve got no mystery dear,” she would whisper huskily, confidentially, patting my hand. “And that’s what a man likes - mystery.” And she would smile her carefully enigmatic smile that, despite the old whore’s shabbiness and over-rouged cheeks, could still just pass for mystery in the low diffused light of the bar.”

Into all the girls the author breathes a life so convincing that, in most of them, I can see the faces of counterparts that I have actually met. Rather than stocking the bar with one dimensional background characters he has crafted, with a great deal of affection, each individual person. It is this empathy, the warts and all humanity, that brings the bar of the Nam Kok hotel to life.

Only Suzie herself remains elusive, the one character you reach for but can’t quite grasp. Mason always maintained that Suzie was not based on any particular girl but was a composite of several. And while she has her own very human frailties she remains the dream-girl. The mystery that still draws men to places like Hong Kong in search of a Suzie of their own.

*The cover shown is the 1994 edition published by Pegasus Books featuring Nancy Kwan who played Suzie in the 1960 Paramount movie

Read also: Wanchai
Read also: The Red Lips bar

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The night markets in and around Temple Street in Kowloon are very popular with tourists. I caught this enterprising gentleman setting up his stall this afternoon, obviously in anticipation of doing good business and providing some people with happy memories of their stay in Hong Kong.

Read also: Wanchai
Read also: Going for the ball
Read also: The Red Lips bar

The spirit of Sappho lives on in Japan. Click for more

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A court in Athens has ruled that Lesbians can still be gay. Residents of the island of Lesbos had been trying to get the word lesbian, when used as a term for gay people, banned saying it was an insult to their identity. But a court in the Greek capital disagreed. So did Vassilis Chirdaris, lawyer for the Gay and Lesbian Union of Greece who said; “This is a good decision for lesbians everywhere.”

The islands name was given to gay women in recognition of the female poet Sappho, who wrote love poems about both women and men around 600 BC.

Lesbos is a popular gathering place for gay women from around the world particularly the village of Eressos where the poet is said to have been born. I think the residents of Lesbos should loosen up a bit and say thanks for tourist dollars.

Video: The disease of lesbianism
Website review: Shaved Japanese pussy movies

China: Florence Fong

Philippines: Edmilyn and Carla

Japan: Rumiko

Thailand: Uan

India: Asha Kumara

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It’s been a bit quiet round here lately, I haven’t seen anything particularly amusing in the news and I’ve been up to my bollocks in work. I mean regular work, the nasty stuff that gets the bills paid. This work just pays for beer and hookers and I’ve been celibate for 48 hours chaps!!!!

Anyway, I know how much you all love shaved pussies so here is a little round-up of sweet edible cunts from around Asia. Don’t dribble on your keyboard.

Review: Inside Asha Kumara
Review: Momo Sengen - Japanese shaved pussy movies
Review: Little Brown Fucking Machines
More pics: China Shaved

Gratuitous porn, nothing to do with the story. Click to see her shaved Chinese pussy

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If the earth didn’t actually move for them at least the car in which they were humping did. In fact it rolled off the edge of a cliff.

According to Today News Lin Gu, 25, and Lee Shin, 29 had driven to the edge of a hill in XinDian, Taiwan to engage in a spot of clandestine nookie. Unfortunately they forgot the hand-brake. As their passions intensified the car bounced clean over the edge and down a 150 foot cliff face into the valley below.

Amazingly they survived. They managed to scramble back up to the road where, battered, bruised and covered in mud, Lee asked Gu to keep walking while she sought help at a nearby house. Homeowner Chen Chenggang said Lee pleaded with him not to reveal how the accident happened as her husband “would definitely sue for divorce”.

Tak ka tan: A bit like Pringles with legs

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Her lacquered fingers delicately pulled the wings away from the body, the legs were similarly dispatched. The torso she popped deftly between ruby red lips. “Arroy” she said. I raised my eyebrows, cockroaches taste good huh? “Not a cockloach!” she replied as she slipped off her stool to go and get me another beer.

Thai cuisine is famous all over the world and restaurants catering to lovers of the countries gastronomic delights flourish everywhere from Sydney to Seattle. But if you’ve had the pleasure of sitting at the beer bars in say, Nana Plaza, for any length of time you may have noticed that some of the things that the girls put into their mouths bare little resemblance to the things you see on Thai menus in the western world.

The other evening, while propping up the bar at Playskool, I issued a five-hundred baht note (about US$15) to two delightful ladies and commissioned them to return with snacks. This is what they brought:

Som tam

Ferocious: som tam

The Tourist Authority of Thailand likes to claim that fried rice is the national dish but considering Thai cuisine is famous for being spicy a plate of kao pad seems a bit pedestrian for a national dish. Tom yam goong is the hot, sour prawn soup that all Thai restaurants have on the menu but for the average Thai that’s a luxury dish.

Som tam on the other hand is cheap and available everywhere. Every neighbourhood has it som tam lady and if you ever need to catch up on local gossip go talk to her. The som tam lady knows everything.

It is made from grated/julienned green papaya which is mixed in a mortar with tomato, fish sauce, sugar, lime juice and a fiendish amount of chilli.

It is often garnished with freshwater crab but I refuse that. Eating crab from a polluted river that has been stored in a plastic jar through the heat of a Bangkok day is too much like asking for trouble.

Ka nom jin
Noodles, again with a very spicy sauce. The recipes for this are many and have been handed down through the generations. This one had prawns, string beans and plenty of chilli but it disappeared over the other side of the bar somewhere, I only got to sample a tiny fork-full

Neur bing/Moo bing

Making kaoneow bing

Neur is beef and moo is pork. These were strips of the respective meats dried, cut into strips and barbecued. The strips are about the length of a finger but a bit thinner and are tough and chewy.

Kao neow/Kao neow bing
Kao neow is sticky rice. The rice grains are soaked overnight and then steamed in a rattan basket. This produces a congealed, chewy mass of rice which you can break off, roll into balls and dunk in the sauce of your som tam. Kao neow bing sees the rice being flattened out and rolled into discs about four inches in diameter. These are coated with something yellow and a bit cheesy flavoured and barbecued.

Jing leed

Jing leed: nutty

This is a cricket, wok fried lightly salted and eaten whole. It is quite crunchy and has a delicious nutty flavour. It is about one to one-and-a-half inches long.

Tak ka tan
The common grasshopper and one of the most popular of the insect dishes. This little critter used to devastate crops. When the farmers discovered they were edible they got their own back. These days they are even farmed. Wok fried and lightly salted they taste a bit like Pringles with legs.

Maeng Da
The giant water beetle has quite a bitter taste. It can be eaten whole but I think it is best minced and mixed with chillies, shallots and spring onions and eaten with kao neow. They can also be used to flavour curries.

I didn’t get to try the silk worm larvae or whole load of other interesting things this time around. The dishes are all popular in Issan the north-eastern region of Thailand which borders Laos and Cambodia. This is where most of the girls that work the bars, as well as taxi drivers, construction workers, cleaners etc come from. And they all go down exceedingly well with a bottle or five of cold BeerLao.