It's high time that women potted The Shrimp
THE monstrous regiment of women were on the march on Wednesday. It was International Women's Day and their artillery pounded media positions mercilessly. Images of Legislative Councillor and icon Anna Wu Hung-yuk, in red bandana with a bandolier of bullets across her chest and clenching her Equal Opportunities Bill high above her head, invaded the mind's eye.
Quick to fall to the attack was RTHK's Today programme, subverted from within by fifth-columnist presenter Lorna Workman who is, in fact, a woman, but who manoeuvred her way into the show last week, un-selected. She opened the studio doors from the inside to a SWAT team of chattering chicks, including representatives of Amnesty and a local holy synod of women.
Workman, cover blown, was keen to draw the women deep into the region, to situations in which women were systematically prevented from knowing things - namely Islam. There was a palpable nervousness over the air, a fear of counter-attack perhaps. The women dived for cover behind generalisations and waded off into the marshy vagueness of 'China' and 'the villages' and the batterings and assorted cruelties that must surely go on among those that know not the Guardian.
The wives and mothers I knew from a week's stay in a Guangdong village seemed a great deal happier and more purposeful than the ones I know in English suburbs who develop facial ticks watching Neighbours on afternoon television.
The United Nations had whistled up International Women's Day (I am waiting for one for cross-dressers), so not much could be expected in the way of reality. In this, the UN plays the role of aggressor rather than the more familiar part of hapless peacekeeper: with the stubbornness of a drunken Serb, it will not be dissuaded from coming up with these global, day-long gymkhanas.
It has been pointed out to them that the cost of running one of these babble-and-bunting shindigs is mammoth in comparison to that spent keeping UN troops in the field. If middle-class women worldwide could forego their day's earnestness and see the money shifted to putting blue berets on the ground, then more women who had lost their dressing tables to shell-fire might at least stand a better chance of not being battered and raped by men who were not their husbands.
In the meantime, the local regiment might turn its attention to local incidents. There is one planned for next Saturday which is more chauvinistic than a rugby club shower and should have the women firing from the hip.
It is a party at The Viceroy of India restaurant (bring your own $350) where young, local girls will have their pictures taken - wearing very little - in front of a paying audience, under the auspices of something called The Shrimp Club, an international network for those men who appreciate the unique aspects of life in Asia. This is one of the more elaborate codes for an easy lay.
The club was founded by a photographer called Patrick Gauvin, nicknamed 'The Shrimp' because he is a 'diminutive lensman'. I am in possession of printed matter which tells me this and more. He is a self-assured little snapshot merchant, is Gauvin. He is 'a product of Britain's public school system', a process more likely to produce not so much shrimps as prats.
Cliches do not come packed tighter and neater than Gauvin. Although he likes BMWs, five-star hotels and fine wines (French of course), when he came to Asia 25 years ago he fell instantly in love with the region (all of it by telepathy, no doubt) and settled in Thailand. Well, well, just fancy that! He embraced local customs and probably gave them a big kiss too.
'The culture, the language and the food all became a staple diet,' we are told as we picture the little fellow in a sarong, playing the erhu and bursting from time to time into a Laotian folk song.
What a pioneering example he is to us all! I have been here 17 years and, try as I may, I cannot help but feel local cuisines suck once you slide a plate of steak and kidney pie and chips next to them.
After this introduction to 'The Shrimp' there comes, as thousands of lucky Asian girls will doubtless testify, the rub. He has a 'hobby'. He has taken 10,000 snaps of Asian women in 'revealing poses' and he puts them together as wall calendars, which 'men all over the globe eagerly await...' I bet they are men with old stains down their jacket fronts and baggy trouser gussets. Just a hunch.
A British journalist is supposed to have described 'The Shrimp' as the luckiest man alive, doubtless in the voice of Robin Leach and in the Daily Mirror. Now, we (men, of course) can be assisted 'in fulfilling the dreams conjured up by that headline'. Gauvin has clipped on his financial zoom lens. 'The Shrimp Club' is hatched.
It is difficult to know how you can live like Gauvin, unless you are a middle-aged, vertically challenged photographer with a lot of money and an insatiable appetite for tom yam kung. There is much talk of club discounts in participating establishments, although 200 seems a bit of a thin spread over such a loved and embraced region. The joining package includes a lapel pin, a wallet and a watch - the sort of things most of us do not have - and three different kinds of calendar, including a pocket one of 'twelve gorgeous ladies', an invaluable aid to the spontaneous need for stimulation in places like the back seat of a bus.
Then there are the 'invitations'. You can bore yourself watching 'The Shrimp' on a shoot. You can go to private parties full of strangers, which you are effectively paying for. Or you can go to 'auditions' and help select the lucky ladies, which brings us to The Viceroy of India.
'Guys' arrive from 8 pm for 'free drinks and lots and lots of fun' in exchange for $350 at the door. Shrimp Club members, you lucky devils, only have to pay $225.
At 11 pm, 'guys' will be suitably tanked-up and ready to yuk-yuk some more permanent stains down their jacket fronts over the 'auditions' for a swimsuit calendar. The girls will have to 'register', strut their stuff and 'launch a career as a model'. Ladies in swimsuits will receive a special gift, says the flier. Bail money, I hope, as a consequence of walking through Wan Chai half naked.
Come along Women of International Day.
If you have fire in your tights, rally on Saturday and close it down. Boil The Shrimp! Back at the studio on Wednesday it should be recorded that Workman suffered a shocking attack from the rear at 9 am when the regiment of women had left. Leon (Invest in Deutschemark mines) Richardson came on air with his heartfelt desire to make love to the fiery feminist. With or without the Zimmer frame was not made clear.
'Well, this is going to be an interesting programme!' Workman fired back at frantic velocity. It wasn't.
