Last Hong Kong Summer

By Kieran James

Set in suburban To Kwa Wan, Kowloon, Hong Kong, in the summer of the political riots, John, Paul, George, and Richard – the four Beatles, as they are known – find themselves caught up in the murder of a family member of a friend, plus a suicide and domestic violence. They begin to learn that schoolyard practical jokes have unforeseen and unpleasant consequences in the adult world outside of the classroom. They also encounter an unlikely middle-aged adversary, their old school’s psychologist, Mr Zhao. As the allegations and counter-allegations of violence threaten to spiral out of everyone’s control, how will the four get out of trouble?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Apr 29, 2022
• ISBN: 9781398410619

Kieran James

Kieran James grew up in Perth, Australia, spent some time in Hong Kong, Singapore and Fiji, and now lives in Paisley, Scotland. He tries to visit Hong Kong every summer but could not make it there in 2020 because of the global coronavirus lockdowns. He hopes that 2019 will not be his Last Hong Kong Summer. He is a regular customer at the China Garden restaurant in Hong Kong’s To Kwa Wan district, where the Blue Girl ager bottles are apparently excellent.

Book preview

About the Author

Kieran James grew up in Perth, Australia, spent some time in Hong Kong, Singapore and Fiji, and now lives in Paisley, Scotland. He tries to visit Hong Kong every summer but could not make it there in 2020 because of the global coronavirus lockdowns. He hopes that 2019 will not be his Last Hong Kong Summer. He is a regular customer at the China Garden restaurant in Hong Kong’s To Kwa Wan district, where the Blue Girl ager bottles are apparently excellent.

Dedication

To my mum and dad. This might be the last major piece of writing I ever give to you. Thanks to my mom for encouraging me in my story-writing endeavours when I was younger, in my last two primary-school years.

Copyright Information ©

Kieran James 2022

The right of Kieran James to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781398410602 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781398410619 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2022

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

1 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5AA

Acknowledgement

A special thanks to the band members of Fear Index, for giving me written permission to use their names as well as the band name.

Chapter 1

"Hey, mate, that’s interesting, look at that," Richard Lau said, as he touched George Wong on the lower arm. He was pointing across the busy Hong Kong Street to an awning over an entrance to a set of stairs which led up to a dental surgery. The surgery had the dentist’s name and the address in Fife Street, written in both Chinese and English.

Yeah, why? asked George.

Fife Street. Fife is in Scotland, just north of Edinburgh, you go across the bridge over the fourth of Firth. My university is in Scotland. They were just 18 years old and had finished their last term of secondary school. After one month more of summer holiday, all of their group of friends would go their separate ways to university, one would go to Scotland, one to England, one to Australia, and one would remain in Hong Kong. There was excitement about the future but there was also anxiety and a touch of sadness that the friends would all go their separate ways. These days were fast coming to an end and they were determined to enjoy their last days together. George and Richard were waiting in Mong Kok in Kowloon to take the number 28M public mini-bus, a few kilometres east to To Kwa Wan where they were due to meet their closest mates, Paul and John, at the McDonald’s.

Oh, I see. A lot of Scottish people were here in the old days. George was only marginally interested; he was planning to stay locally and study at the Baptist University located not too far away in Kowloon Tong. In a way, he was slightly disappointed not to be going to study overseas, but he was free from the anxiety which was plaguing the others. He would stay in Hong Kong, he knew what to expect. It might be a little different from secondary-school, but it was still Hong Kong, the Hong Kong system, the Hong Kong culture. He knew it well. It was all the same.

Richard did not know what would happen to his group, John, Paul, George, and Richard – the Beatles, as it were – and the other people on the margins of the group, Peter, Stuart, and all their girlfriends. They hoped to see each other every summer holidays back in Hong Kong but you never really knew, you could never be sure, no-one knew what the future held. University might change them; they might drift apart. We will see, Richard thought. He tried to keep upbeat, a bit hopeful, a bit cynical, play it cool and then you won’t be disappointed. He might even meet new and more interesting friends; that was a nice thought, even though it made him feel a little bit guilty to be considering leaving all the others behind him or out of the picture. God bless them all, he thought with a silent chuckle. The mini-bus came and George and Richard sat together on the right-hand side just behind the driver. They paid by touching their mini-bus cards on to the reader at the front of the bus and then settled down for the 20-minute journey east to the quieter suburban area of To Kwa Wan around Tam Kung Road. The traffic was heavy, as was typical for late-afternoon. The sky was thick with grey clouds and pollution, and it was hot and humid, most likely 30 degrees or above. A standard Hong Kong summer day, to be sure – it was not something to enjoy but something to endure in typical Hong Kong spirit.

Iron Maiden is playing in Guangzhou soon, are we going? George asked. They were all heavy metal music fans, metalheads, that is, John, Paul, George and Richard were; their girlfriends were only very marginally interested or not interested at all. Heavy metal was an unusual taste for Hong Kong Chinese; it made them stand out, it gave their group identity, they revelled in it; they didn’t want to fit in with the Hong Kong regular crowd. They couldn’t get into Canto Pop or K-Pop or J-Pop; once you are interested in heavy metal, it was a lifestyle and a culture, it sucked you in, you went in deeper, it affected (and reflected) your attitude towards a lot of things. It was not corporate but nor was it really anti-corporate, at the level of the big bands; it was Western and it was non-Chinese or generally perceived in Hong Kong society to be non-Chinese. Nobody understood it here and nobody seemed to really want to. It wasn’t pop.

Richard didn’t answer for a while. He was gazing at the view outside the windows.

Maybe, when is it?

Six weeks from now, I think we need to get tickets.

I will let you know; it depends on what I’m doing then.

I’ll be in HK, of course. I don’t know where you’ll be. Any departure date fixed yet?

The term starts on 16 September so probably around the end of August, I’ll be going over. Richard was going to study at Dundee University, on the River Tay, in the East of Scotland.

John, Paul, George and Richard – the four Beatles, even though they thought the Beatles sucked – had been best mates for the last four years of secondary school and, in George and Richard’s case, since the first year of secondary-school. Things had been uniform and consistent, now major change was coming up. The dynamics of the relationships were going to change, had already begun to change, the old loyalties couldn’t remain intact or unchanged forever, people moved on, people moved to different universities, different countries. Lives took different paths. It was kind of sad, Richard thought, but they were young, the future was theirs. He would find new mates if he had to. But they were a good group, he liked them, their bonds of loyalty had stood the test of time. So far, four years of secondary-school, it felt like half a lifetime.

Let me know then soon, OK, about the concert, George said, and Richard nodded his assent.

Richard saw the Hong Kong crowds out the window – every usual category of Hong Kong life was out there represented; there were many children but not in school uniforms as it was now school holiday. This was the world he knew, and he was often cynical and sarcastic about it, that sarcasm had become an accepted part of his style and personality; everyone responded to it in his or her own way. It made life more interesting for him and for others, especially in the school setting of routine, rules, conformity, boredom, crowded corridors, repressed frustration, teenage smells and noise and energy, his everyday world (for now). George usually had the tactic of responding to his sarcasm by a kind of intellectual rejoinder which cancelled out the sarcasm or magnified it, depending on the context and the hearer’s own perspective. George was a bit drier, more subtle in his humour, you had to dig a bit deeper and pay more attention to understand what was there. He would miss his best mate. They were a team, a double-act, survivors in a tough school, typical Hong Kong Chinese in most ways except for the fact that they were metalheads. Secondary-school was interesting like that – image mattered and you had to be cool and have an identity but most people tended to look beyond the image, to look at the real person, whether you were genuine or not, honest or not, friendly or not, supportive or not. People who projected a false image or who were perceived to have poor character beneath the image were generally despised. He liked that about his secondary-school culture. He wondered whether the corporate world was like that too but he didn’t have high hopes for it and neither did the others. He was sarcastic but it was a technique to make life more interesting.

One reason that he was attracted to heavy metal was that it was less idealistic and overtly political than punk music and punk culture. He wondered whether the West really had more freedom. He thought that human beings will always want to control others and, if they have more so-called freedoms in the society, those people in power will just find more subtle and tricky ways to exercise control. They will have control and freedom operating ‘peacefully’ side by side. The system will develop its own new equilibrium. However, having said that (or having thought that), he still wouldn’t object to a little bit more freedom. A few smashed windows or smashed egos usually results in everyone being a little bit more humble afterwards; it was like a law of life. Society at least had a few built-in inner laws which couldn’t be denied or cast to one side! It was nice to have an inner law which worked in one’s favour, for a change…as an ordinary person, Richard thought. Bugger the rich, what had they ever done for him? Li Ka-Shing’s son sits on the board of directors while he, Richard Lau, sits on the front row seat of the Mong Kok mini-bus. In the shadow of Bruce Lee, he thought, smiling to himself – another remote legend, now deemed suitable for public consumption and for money-making. But, at least, he helped to put Hong Kong on the map back in the day. And he was interesting. He was a character. He had a white wife – and a girlfriend or two. He could operate effectively in two cultures, the East and the West…not a bad effort. A role-model perhaps? But I don’t think I want to die young, like Bruce or Brandon, Richard thought.

Chapter 2

They exited the mini-bus on Ma Tau Chung Road, not too far from the McDonald’s which is just past the intersection of Tam Kung Road and San Shan Road if you approach it from the south. To Kwa Wan is a quieter (by Hong Kong standards) working and middle-class, suburban neighbourhood which is a nice break from the more crowded and showier Mong Kok. Richard and George enjoyed coming down here to see their friends. It involved getting out of Mong Kok and the environment and atmosphere were different enough that you could feel recharged and reinvigorated. Outside of peak lunch and dinner times you could usually get a choice of tables at cafes and pubs, and it would be quiet enough to be able to hear yourself talk. By Hong Kong standards, it could almost be called tranquillity, relaxed even. Richard noticed the changing demographics of To Kwa Wan – more young Indonesian maids, now all in hijabs, whereas in the past it hadn’t been quite so uniform; Pakistanis and Africans. They were open-minded towards other races but hoped that they could understand what it meant to be a Hong Konger. But with all the social change lately, and with the threat of China, did anyone really know what that meant anymore? Well, it still meant something, thought Richard, recalling the slogan of the protestors: ‘HK is not China.’

Richard and George headed north along Ma Tau Chung Road’s busy pavement, crossed San Shan Road, and then walked a little further before they reached the McDonald’s. It was only half-full, as it was late-afternoon, going on for 4.00 p.m. Their mates, Paul and John, were sitting together at a square table across from the windows but