An Eastern Saga: A Film Man's Memoir of a Lost Asia

An Eastern Saga: A Film Man's Memoir of a Lost Asia by Marvin Farkas Make-Do Publishing HK$165

Veteran news cameraman Marvin Farkas is somewhat of a legend in Hong Kong, where he first arrived in its harbour on April 16, 1954. The then 27-year-old was one of just four civilian passengers on the Eastern Saga. This cargo ship was the beginning of the author's life in Hong Kong and its rather poetic name lends itself fittingly to the title of his memoir.

An Eastern Saga is a slight - but charming - read. At its heart is a coming-of-age story: Farkas arrives in the British colony as a young Jew from the Bronx, leaving behind an overbearing father and a dead-end job in the family business. In Hong Kong - with no qualifications, his funds running low, and an expensive board and keep at the colonial Foreign Correspondent's Club (FCC) - he finds himself in a local newspaper newsroom in Wan Chai, performing the pitifully paid job of sub-editor for the Hong Kong Tiger Standard. But a turn of luck opens up the world of film: armed with his camera, determination, and some charisma Farkas becomes a cameraman and winds up shooting news reels ranging from an expose of Hong Kong's opium dens to the Vietnam war and the rapid decolonisation of Asia.

Farkas has lived in Hong Kong for more than half a century now (go into the FCC and you'll probably find him there), but An Eastern Saga covers just the 1950s and 60s. The author reads like a relic of another era: this is a man who gets caught up in a murder case on The Peak one foggy night, whose boyhood friend is Truman Capote (a 'pretty little guy with a peaches-and-cream complexion'), and who beds women with cavalier abandonment.

Farkas is an entertaining companion. Girls have 'drop-dead figures', sex is a 'roll in the hay', and a lawyer friend and his team are 'legal eagles'. It is unashamedly cliched. But it's also fun and Farkas' forceful personality makes his cheeky tone seem endearing rather than detracting.

What makes An Eastern Saga so readable is its familiarity with a lost era. Hong Kong swarms with sedans and rickshaws, while old Chinese customs are particularly absorbing. In a Cantonese wedding an elderly man is presented with a roast suckling pig. Its mouth - stuffed with a bloody handkerchief - symbolises his young wife's virginity.