A woman of substance
Anyone who braves the rugged terrain of razor-edged politics will come away with cuts, scars or even worse. Say something stupid and you can expect to be ridiculed. Do something wrong and you will be pummelled. You can even be derided for your dress sense. And if you switch sides, trading in one set of allegiances for another, you had better be ready to be despised as a turncoat.
Rita Fan Hsu Lai-tai has been through all that and survived. Maybe it's because Hong Kong's politics isn't all that nasty. More likely, she survived because she does not let things get to her. Things that would have other politicians wracked with despair, she dismisses as if she couldn't care less.
There was the time when Chris Patten, soon after his appointment as Britain's last governor in Hong Kong in 1992, decided to get rid of all those in his Executive Council who were also in the Legislative Council. He didn't want an overlap, he said, but many saw it as a way to dump at least some of the inner circle of advisers he had inherited from his predecessor. Mrs Fan was among those fired. Unfazed, she told the governor he could have her Legco job, too, and promptly quit.
'I was tired anyway. It gave me an opportunity to quit politics,' Mrs Fan recalled in a recent interview. That's the explanation she likes to give, but few buy it. Many saw her defiance as a message to the governor that two could play at the game. It's well accepted that Mr Patten rubbed many of the old guard up the wrong way with his brusque style of politics and blunt manner towards Beijing.
Mrs Fan describes him as a gifted politician but doesn't hide her distaste for what she regards as his domineering attitude. 'He doesn't listen to views that don't agree with his,' she said.
She doesn't say this in a mocking tone. She simply states it as fact. And she backs this up with a story she never tires of telling concerning an occasion when she was offering the governor her views. 'By the time I finished, he had already turned his back to me,' she said.