Looking at the hulking presence of New World’s Masterpiece on Google Earth brings back memories of the Minden Avenue/Mody Road/Hanoi Road area in days of yore – the mid-late 1980s. Minden had the vegetarian Indian restaurant Woodlands, known for its decent thali. I think it still exists somewhere. A few doors away was a pub called (perhaps) the Black Crow, or the Raven, or something similar. Dark and dingy. Across the way was a Filipino restaurant offering chop soy (with a bit too much liver) and kalamansi juice for 20 bucks. Hanoi Road had some sort of Swiss-German place with a beer garden and waitresses dressed improbably in dirndls. And then there was… The Ship.
The Ship had another name (the Bell? – and a namesake, or maybe sub-branch, in a basement on Wellington Street, Central, famed for its 1960s jukebox and ceiling graffiti). After pulling on the nautical steering-wheel door handle and coming in from the street around lunchtime, the occasional unwary tourist would look around for a few seconds as his eyes adjusted to the gloom and hurry back to the Black Crow or the German place, having realized they were not the appalling dives they first seemed.
The décor was dark brown with nicotine trim. The ambience was cramped, with seating for only a dozen or so, probably. The furnishings were scratched and chipped black-painted wood with imitation red leather. The proprietor behind the cramped bar was an aging, overweight Brit who would order customers curries from the neighbouring slop-to-go shop through a hatchway in the wall. An ill-looking woman of indeterminate Asian extraction, well past her prime, helped out. Presumably his wife. Up on a shelf near the hatch was a fish tank housing a vile, eel-like creature that spent the whole time sucking the glass. Along from it were some bottles of port with a picture of a cat on the faded labels. The cute face on such down-market product gave the stuff an almost menacing look.
Then, slumped around at safe distances from one another, were the clientele – probably left over from the night before. A horribly made-up mama-san, well beyond retirement age, off-duty from one of the older girlie places in the quiet street up from the Mariner’s Club; a chain-smoking, criminal-looking Indian filling in horse-racing slips; a comatose member of Her Majesty’s armed forces. Cheerless. But cheap.
What would Peter Lok, demon letter-writer to the South China Morning Post, have been doing in those days? He started off in air traffic control in the 1950s and over the years worked his way up until he became Director of Civil Aviation in 1990. So by the time the Ship (I’m now wondering whether it was called the Ship Inn…) was lapsing into terminal sleaze-dementia, he would have been a division head (negotiating air service agreements with other countries, in fact) and then Deputy Director of the whole department.
Having come up through the ranks during colonial times, he must have shined an awful lot of gwailo shoes. He would have taken a lot of snobbish and racist put-downs, and put up with unequal treatment, like housing allowances for whites. Even when he became the first local to be appointed to the top, he must have been aware that he had never really been accepted as ‘one of us’ by senior members of the soon-to-depart regime. Perhaps the consulting work he did with mainland aviation interests after retiring in 1996 made him feel better.
We can reasonably guess that he has a chip on his shoulder from the content of his frequent missives to the paper. He usually airily dismisses criticism of the political status quo with implicit claims of knowing what Beijing really thinks, and clearly takes delight in taunting pro-democrats.
His letter yesterday goes one step further and addresses the statement that Liu Xiaobo was not allowed to deliver to the court that sentenced him to 11 years in prison for proposing through words that China’s government obey its own constitution. (Hilariously, the SCMP puts this statement, of all its content, behind its paywall. There is a copy here: “…a must-read, simultaneously evocative of the gospel of Christ, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the poetry of Yeats,” no less.)
Liu’s pointed comments seem to have unnerved Lok. That’s why he begins by assuring the reader that he approves of their publication. “Now that is freedom of information.” Lok’s logic is: China’s leadership is second to none in the world; calling for it to submit to democratic process is no different from physically subverting it; thus the prison sentence is correct and Liu got what he deserved.
It is a mark of Lok’s letters that he uses arrogance and haughtiness rather than hard facts or reason to support his case. There is something self-indulgent, almost playful, about it; you have to wonder whether he really believes what he is saying or whether it is just a way of irritating people and sorting out some old frustrations. And thus it is here. China’s leadership is looking no less desperate than any other government in the world right now. It is jailing people who fight corruption and injustice. It is probably (look at property prices) misjudging its response to the world’s financial crisis. It is looking inexperienced and clumsy as it throws its new weight around on the world stage. It is petrified of its own people – even the harmless descendents of the Ship’s regulars all those years ago in Kowloon – and we all know that means a government that is not up to the job. The mainland businessmen buying our luxury apartments with hot money must sense it. I am pretty sure Peter Lok knows it too, but he is too busy avenging past slights to admit it.
I think it was called “the Stoned Crow”. Woodlands did not serve beer so I never went again after the first time. Weinstube still exists, I think. There was also a sleazy nightclub named “The Five Sisters”, where I once met Alan Ball, the soccer legend, on a Sunday afternoon.
That basement joint in Wellington Street, wasn’t that “The Dateline” ?
That particularly fetid bar had some kind of feline title, if I remember. The proprietor used to stagger round late at night to the “Kangaroo”, (then in Chatham Road), sit at the bar, order a meal, and then, almost invariably, fall asleep with his head face down in his uneaten dinner.
Visiting tourists would gesticulate to the manager – did the honourable gentleman need resucitation? – but the regulars simply dismissed their concerns since it happened so frequently.
Ah – the Five Sisters (or was it Four?) – haunt of Kowloon’s demi-monde and much missed…….not to mention the dai po dong just opposite…..
Would that pub in Minden Avenue be The Blacksmiths with its faded mock Tudor appearance?
Seem to recall The Ship had a large mature tree (obviously long gone) right outside causing me, on a few occasions, to miss the ship’s wheel and enter.
Don’t recall meeting Peter Lok in either however they were pubs with character that are sadly few and far between in todays Tsimsy.
I think it was the Blacksmith Arms. I went there on its very last night in late 1993, probably. It was part of a long terrace of pre-war buildings which occupied that side of Minden Row — all long gone, and the glitzy ‘Kowloon Lan Kwai Fong’ development in its place.
Don’t remember the Ship Inn… did it change its name to the Honey Bee? But the German place on Hanoi Road was the Biergarten.
The Biergarten’s still on Hanoi road. Nice place. They don’t wear funny dresses now though.
There’s a Weinstube on Ashley Road. Same place? Quite weird – like drinking in someone’s kitchen.
Think the Kangaroo is back on Chatham Road.
Woodlands is in the Wing On Plaza in TST East.
I arrived in HK in 2003, and have been drinking in TST ever since. There are still a few interesting bars around, if not so dank and sordid as those of old.
Loved the description of The Ship – have no recollection of that particular establishment, but the words would pretty aptly fit the House of Doom (Horse & Groom) in Lockhart Road circa late 1980s. There was no way you would want to walk through the door sober – you had to be pretty well gone in order to find some, erm, charm in the dirt and sleaze.
There is no shortage of Peter Loks wannabe these days. Lick the right boots and kiss the right arse and the door of opportunity will open for you. It’s pathetic that those kinds of people are running the show here. But that’s reality for now.
Let me just add that for Peter Lok, I doubt he sees any difference. In the colonial days, he was kissing the darn gweilo’s arse. In today’s SAR days, he’s kissing Beijing’s arse. Simply a change of master.
Think 1979: you would start drinking at happy hour in the Gun Bar in the lobby of the Hong Kong Hotel (closed in ’86), then stagger along Peking Road, past the skanky dai pai dong on the corner, and if you were in the mood: “Bottoms Up”, if not, “Ned Kelly’s”, or, if desperate, “Red Lips”, with the oldest ‘girls’ in Asia, hop over to “Lindy’s” for bagel & lox and a BIG pickle, and then you would cross Nathan Rd. And the rest is colonial history, and memories lost in the mists of time and liver cirrhosis.