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The Peninsula’s verandah was a popular social venue among expats in the 1930s. Photo: SCMP

Dinner party rule No. 1 for Hong Kong expats: don't stand out

In early colonial Hong Kong, polite society required expats to restrict their discussions – and sobriety, writes Jason Wordie

LIFE

Near-obligatory entertaining has been a noted feature of Hong Kong society since the British colony was established. Nineteenth- century memoirs vividly depict the “social” side of European life, and many of these observations remain true today.

From the beginning, few Europeans who came to Hong Kong had much inner life; those who did soon realised that to avoid being labelled “a bit queer” and socially shunned, they should keep their thoughts to themselves.

As in other closely interlocked societies – such as prisons or boarding schools – conversational scripts seldom varied. Vagaries of the weather, moaning about the natives, and dissecting the amusements and annoyances offered up by one’s servants were – and remain – perennially safe dinnerparty staples.

“Conversation was intimate and friendly. They knew everything about each other, their incomes, their hobbies and interests, how much they paid their servants and all the details of the gossip retailed behind the back of every member of that small and closely linked society,” one 1930s memoirist recorded.

“Guests gathered for dinner night after night, the ladies moving their pink or white ostrich fans and agreeing that it was stuffy this evening, or exclaiming over their hostess’s dahlias, ‘You must have a very clever gardener,’ [to which she would reply,] ‘Yes, I took him over from Lady Smith’.”

These observations – with minor contemporary costume and subject changes – could just as easily have been made somewhere on Hong Kong’s expat dinnerparty circuit last night.

Food and interior décor were likewise predictable and other than occasional accent pieces picked up on their Far Eastern travels, neither offered much concession to where people actually lived their lives.

Averil Mackenzie-Grieve, the artist wife of a Borneo administrator, recorded the early 1920s Hong Kong scene in her perceptive memoir, A Race of Green Ginger: “The Chinese servants offered beautifully decorated food in old Worcester dishes. Our host dissertated and demonstrated upon a gravy-catching dish – essential, he maintained, to the proper delectation of roast beef.

“We drank coffee in the chintzcovered drawing room, where there were photographs framed in silver and blue velvet on the piano and, on the walls, gentle watercolours of English landscapes, slightly cockled and foxed by the Peak mists. Beyond the windows, the dark garden fell sharply with transition to constellations of harbor lights, riding lights, the lights of Kowloon, as if the sky had slewed around like one of our host’s Victorian dish-covers, and lay beneath our feet.”

Repetitive culinary excess and vulgar displays of wealth predominated nightly. Elaborate early surviving menus document multiple courses with terrific quantities of meat, sweets and alcohol on offer.

An old cliché – but one which is nevertheless true – holds that many people drank excessively less for personal enjoyment than to make others appear more interesting.

And while genuine individuality was frowned upon, drunkenness was socially acceptable, as long as the sot in question was wealthy, powerful or useful enough.

As reciprocal hospitality obligations accelerated on this social merry-go-round, conversational options proportionately diminished.

When the evening’s company was largely composed of colleagues or professional contacts, the range of safe conversation topics became further limited.

Social conformity, however, led to business success; those who could not adapt in terms of behaviour found their prospects sharply and swiftly reduced.

Unable to navigate life in a goldfish bowl well stocked with piranhas, many simply left for more congenial – and natural – societies elsewhere.

For more on Hong Kong history and heritage, go to scmp.com/topics/old-hong-kong

 

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Conversation killer
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