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SCMP Reporter

A veteran SCMP reporter, Kevin examines the good, bad and ugly  sides of life in the city. E-mail him at kevin.sinclair@scmp.com

Many people are nervous about entering Chungking Mansions. They see the teeming block of five, 17-storey towers at the swank end of Nathan Road as a hot-bed of commercial sex, drugs, nefarious foreigners, illicit money deals,  tricky traders and dubious characters.

That's not Gordon Matthews'  view.

The professor of anthropology at Chinese University sees the collection of buildings opened in 1961 as a fascinating human laboratory. It's a swarming hive of world commerce. An estimated 4,000 people from up to 120 countries sleep in Chungking Mansions every night.

It's an anthropological gold mine.

'You've got traders from the Yemen and every state in  Africa,' Gordon Matthews enthuses. 'You've got South Indians buying saris for sale in Calcutta, Nigerians buying used car parts to ship back home, Congolese with diamonds.'

It's not all on a tiny scale. One youthful trader from Gabon may buy 300 cheap mobile phones to carefully pack into a suitcase; another merchant from Sierra Leone could be placing orders for sufficient brand name mobiles to fill an entire container.

Dr Matthews laughs as he recalls the trader who specialised in exporting top-brand jacuzzis that were sold equipped with in-built computers; every cabinet minister in West Africa just had to have one!

'It's a busy universe crammed into one city block,' he adds. 'It's a working model of globalisation.'

There is, he contends, nothing in the world like Chungking Mansions with its pulsating racial mix, the pervasive rich smell of curry and the urgent sense of everyone trying to consummate a deal.

'For many young middle-class and well-educated Africans and South Asians, their first trip to Hong Kong and Chungking Mansions is a rite of passage into business life,' he explains.

Few people know the blocks better; crowded shops on lower floors, rickety and unreliable elevators, guest houses (some of surprisingly high standard), the curry restaurants, the multi-national sex workers, the merchants from all over the world, the ceaseless murmur in incomprehensible dialects, the woeful look of dejected asylum seekers.

Gordon Matthews first unpacked his backpack in a modest Chungking Mansions guesthouse in 1983 when the young American student was making a  pilgrimage through Asia and Europe. When Dr Matthews, educated at Yale, Cornell and Harvard, returned to teach at Chinese University 12 years ago, one of his first stops was Chungking Mansions.

He returns there several times a week, fascinated with the ever-changing ethnic mix. He's now working on a book on the Mansions, a volume he hopes will straddle both general interest and academic research.

There's plenty to write about.

When constructed in 1961, Chungking Mansions was marketed towards  middle class Chinese.  Its brief heyday as respectable apartment blocks ended after a few years when hostels aimed at international backpackers opened by the dozen.

Then followed narcotics and the sex trade. Then trade. The Americans, Europeans and Japanese who once dominated the narrow corridors have been replaced by Africans and South Asians. Dr Matthews reckons about half of all residents are from Africa.

What seems to the first-time visitor a scene of racial chaos is really a finely balanced community where everyone has a purpose.

Among them are people of many backgrounds seeking political asylum. In a crammed upper-floor flat, Dr Matthews teaches them English.

'They can all speak English, anyway, so the classes turn into pretty vibrant discussion groups on current affairs,' he says. 'Many of those seeking to flee their dangerous homelands are extremely intelligent.'

Gordon Matthews is horrified by talk of tearing down Chungking Mansions and replacing it with another bland shopping mall. Thanks to the ownership pattern where each flat is owned individually, he cannot see this happening.

He urges the Mansions be left alone to develop in its own unique way. 'It's should be a major tourist attraction.  There's nowhere else on Earth like it.

'If tourists realised they could get a clean bed in a safe place for HK$150 a night, I think you would find them flocking back.

'If I was a high school teacher, I'd take my students there. I'd tell them to  interview three  people from three different continents.  It would be a vivid way for them to learn about the world.

'In a way, that's what Chungking Mansions is; a global trading village, a mirror of the world.'



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Chungking Mansions

Kevin Sinclair's Hong Kong