How did I get here?
Kings and the Rockstar drop me off at Admiralty station, from where it’s about 4 stops to Mong Kok, cross the platform/ change trains, another couple stops to Kowloon Tong. It’s early afternoon Saturday, and the trains are packed; possibly more so than when I venture along a similar (albeit shorter) route in search of Rockstar’s school supplies in Jordan work day lunchtime
(Reflection in the Mong Kok train doors)
I don’t think I’ve ever taken the MTR to this part of Hong Kong / Kowloon. On the train a guy, deep in very loud Cantonese conversation with another guy, coughs. The woman in front of him (who looks to me to be also a Hong Kong local) frowns and discreetly moves away.
Beside me 2 couples who look to be in their late 30s/ early 40s speak quietly in Putonghua.
Filling the opposite seats are a half doz strapping, tanned Asian teenagers – 2 boys and 4 girls – all speaking English with a heavy American accent.
Walking thru Festival Walk to City U
From train to Festival Walk to City U is clearly marked, the one time I miss a sign because of the crowd, Customer Enquiries in the mall points me in the right direction in polite English. Turning to leave, I look back. The same two girls behind the counter are rattling off various Cantonese directions to various shops/restaurants like rapid machine gun fire to a fast-moving line of shoppers.
Aiming to attend just the second half when Elizabeth Wong is speaking, I instead arrive before the break in time to catch Hong Kong Deputy, The National People’s Congress of the People’s Republic of China Ms Ko Po-ling, but still miss Executive Council Member Ms Anna Wu and Cambodian Parliament Member Ms Mu Sochua’s segments, as well as the opening remarks.
(No, scratch that, I missed more, because it took me awhile more to leaf thru the handout and realize the Bosch shaver-looking things with headphones are for simultaneous English translation – then bum one off the woman sitting next to me. As I exit to take a call and re-enter, the friendly undergrads (I guess) manning the entrance then ask if I need a translation kit – and I realize they have umpteen bins of shaver-looking things and headphones behind them. They’d probably assumed I understood enough Cantonese my first time going in until they heard me on the phone.)
As such, I feel this post doesn’t do actual Summit material justice. I was unprepared for how meaty presentations were going to be, and except for the 2 non-Hong Kong based speakers, the rest carried on in rapid Cantonese as translators struggled to keep up. I only just picked up questions from the audience like “Hilary Clinton achieved a lot, but how come she felt she had to go about it like a man in order to get the job done?” and repeated comments about how Margaret Thatcher didn’t do enough for women. Many of the slides used by the speakers were in Chinese only.
The only English on this brochure was the title, though the detailed handouts had complete English-Chinese in them.
Ms Wong herself spoke relatively briefly, but her careful, impartial narrations of the criticism that some women politicians in Malaysia come under for colorful vs non-colorful jackets, and of her own pictures experience, are met with gentle incredulity (and of course sympathy). It gets picked up by 2 or 3 local speakers, including an acknowledgement that Hong Kong is “still rather conservative” compared to “even China and Taiwan,” by Ms Mak Yin-ting, Chairperson of the Hong Kong Journalists Association.
But at the end of the day it seems harder for the Hong Kong women gathered to relate to it, it’s that far into the realm of Are You Kidding Me? and there’s an (albeit distinctly sympathetic) air of “We really don’t have this in Hong Kong.” (Ms Ada Wong, Chief Executive, Hong Kong Institute of Contemporary Culture.)
Then there was the push for a bigger voice for foreign women working here – by which I was made to understand they are referring to domestic helpers. NGO representatives for the domestic helpers raised lengthy, plaintive questions to the speakers about the lack of a bigger voice, the fact they were not heard.
It’s a pity, when they appear so energetic and passionate – I think they would have greatly helped their own cause if they could better drive home the credibility of the people they represent**. Maybe they already did this and I’m coming to the party late, but it seems had they also actively assisted authorities in weeding out the false nuisance cases (which I truly believe hurt the credibility of the people who need representation the most), I believe their presence would have been very greatly valued. And needed. For every nuisance case that gets heard, a genuine case has to wait that much longer for the limited resources all authorities have to go around.
Mural near the lecture theaters
A mummy friend (also one of the organizers) comes over at break time. “They’ve got childcare in the next room, too.” Sure enough as she rushes off and the second half begins, I notice a toddler, probably younger than Rockstar, joining his mummy 2 rows down. Amazing. Not a peep from him, as he sucks on a little box of juice and idly kicks at the balloons on the floor.
This is why I feel self-conscious about Rockstar acting up – especially in front of local Hong Kong mummies/ grandmummies.I find some of the local kids in particular unbelievably well-behaved and erm, reserved.
And – I can see balloon animals on various table tops throughout the lecture theater. The woman sitting in my row manning one of the cameras has a yellow – I don’t know what it is – balloon dog?
I have a sudden flashback of the first time on West Wing when Joshua Lyman meets outspoken, brilliant women’s rights activist Amy Gardner in her office along the lines of:
“I have nephews who like balloon animals so I got someone to teach me.”
“Are they abstract?”
(defensively) “I’m – a beginner.”
Strange coincidence.
Anyway.
The incongruity is…. Striking. Especially when I realize that in finding it incongruous in the first place, I’ve exposed my own bias. WHY do I find it odd there are toddlers quietly munching little packs of biscuits and clutching juice boxes in the audience of Hong Kong’s Second Women’s Political Participation Summit?
Why had I assumed women with an interest in politics would not be mothers of young children?
A large chunk of my 11-ish years in derivative investment products was in major British banks, though I’ve also worked in other European banks as well as local Singaporean banks, and had local Hong Kong bosses – mummies as well as men. I’ve sat next to New Yorker bosses who punctuate every other word with the F one, and wave umbrellas as they yell and chase down taxis in Raffles Place (no not that normal in staid Singapore), I’ve been the only female in little dealing rooms made littler by the giant British traders who punctuate every other word with a C one. (Yes, the four-lettered one referring to a female body part.)
What does it say about me, the various backgrounds and characters and places I’ve been that have shaped who I am, that I’m surprised at the nurturing environment, the level of encouragement, the rhetoric of Dr Kenneth Chan (incidentally the only male speaker who had been invited to both summits but felt obliged to mention anyway that he is the father of daughters), Associate Professor in the Department of Government and International Studies at Hong Kong Baptist University, asking, “How come women are fine being mummies and running households, it’s still a lot of social responsibility, but you just can never get them involved in politics?”
Why was I so surprised there was (among others) a push for homemakers, stay-at-home-mums, to get involved? That it was raised that it’s impossible to quantify the number of hours a housewife works? That the inability to pay housewives MPF would even be raised, regretted, bemoaned?
Legislative Councillor Ms Emily Lau would later conclude the summit with, “Hong Kong doesn’t care if you wear a skirt or a tie….. Your greatest obstacle is family and expectations of your role at home.”
How true. Because all I can think of is being a mum right now. I would beat myself up if I thought I wasn’t a good enough mum to Rockstar. That’s not a mindset that’s easy to change. (And them birthing hormones can hit ya like a ton of bricks.)
Maybe it gets better as your child gets older.
(Aileen – did you not see the toddler 2 rows down?)
Maybe what needs changing is our perception that we can’t be both good enough mums and heavily involved in politics. The world we shape is the world our children will inherit. If that doesn’t set your mummy instincts screaming nuthin’ will. Except maybe not having thought of it that way before.
And I catch myself thinking had I been born Hongkie I would. Oh, you know what.
Ps: What does it say that despite where I’ve worked and what I’ve learnt I was embarrassed in a previous post at Rockstar acting up in front of his school principal because I had tied some measure of my self-worth/ level of achievement as a mum to it?
(And did anyone catch the giant irony and contrast in my freaking out about my son’s behavior during a charity day for a Japan Earthquake that is estimated to have wiped out tens of thousands of people?)
Do you think I would be the only mummy who would react that way?
One of the quotes you pass along the walkway from Festival Walk to City University
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**We once paid several times the normal helper processing fee (because of the additional paperwork involved in her case), seeking to hire a helper who claimed to have been mistreated by not one but two previous employers. We completely trusted the sterling recommendation she had been given by the people at the shelter, without thinking to independently seek her employers’ points of view ourselves.
Even after this helper was apprehended while trying to run from police during their routine inspection of a pawn shop in Causeway Bay on a day we thought she was doing the marketing in Sai Wan Ho, we chose to vouch very strongly for her to the authorities including completely believing her when she claimed a ring with a large pearl on it that she was trying to pawn was her own, because of our belief in the sterling recommendation she had received.
In the 11 months she worked for us, she got two air tickets home to see her family (NOT including the third air ticket we are required to give her when we fire her) because I always willingly fall for the “you are a mother yourself you should understand” pitch, many additional days off including a period of two weeks of half or less days of work in our home when she claimed to be helping out at church near Christmas (we found out later she was nowhere near the church).
Think that disillusioned us? The next helper we hired got to go swimming in the Bel Air Clubhouse until they banned helpers from using the facilities. Also an air ticket home to see her daughter on her birthday, in her first year of service with us. We finally fired her because she couldn’t keep from cooking and serving the family expired food (or lying about it). Several days after we fired her, she called Kings from the agent’s office, requesting he provide a good character reference to her next employer so she could remain in Hong Kong, in part to complete the guitar, computer and hairdressing lessons she said she’d enrolled for.
We don’t like hiring helpers who do this. An NGO who kept this from happening would easily be able to place a genuinely previously abused helper, despite any much higher processing fee an employer has to bear, with us. And I’m sure we’re not the only employers willing to pay a premium. It is a small price to ensure the trustworthiness of a person who has access to our home, family, children.
