64

So it's been seventeen years. The organizers said 40,000 showed up, the cops said 19,000. I've never been to any one of these commemoration candle-lit nights.

Seventeen years ago I was in my second year at university. I stayed up all night to watch the news, like most other HKers. I went on the vehicular demonstration, in a Mercedes, driven by Duck Tsai, driver by day, bar tender at California at night. My dad warned me about joining the demonstration, the one where a million people showed up, where they protested on foot. He said the commies will be able to spot me, along with everyone else they could identify. There will be a file. I will most certainly live to regret it. I said, I'll be safe on wheels. I'll have my sunglasses on. He murmmered something, then said, "nay ho chi wai G la!"

Club 64. Kwong Tsai, Triad Man, Angle, Ah Kau, Joanne, they've come and gone. Club 64 is now Club 71, and as far as I can recall Grace is still the same as she has always been, looking not one day older.

The big difference is, it used to cost me $50-60 to get home, if I'm going home at all, whereas now it costs me $250.

I have only been to China once, since 1989. I worked as a tour leader for a package tour to Sanya, in Hainan Island. It was during Chinese New Year. I can't remember one bloody thing about that trip, except that I couldn't wait for it to be over. In fact, I was so desperate for the ordeal to come to an end that I didn't even wait for the people on the tour to get through immigration before I hopped on a train myself to get the hell out. Extremely unprofessional, down right rude, even.

So that was me, and China.

Two weeks ago I went to get my travel document for China. "Return to Heung Ha (home village) Pass", it is called. Surely one of the most ironically named travel document? for me, that is.

Well I'll have to go to China again, in a few weeks' time. To Donguan. Work related thingy. Departmental retreat. A resort hotel, I was told.