Lively memoir of a colonial childhood

~ Gweilo: Memories of a Hong Kong Childhood, by Martin Booth ~

This is Martin’s Booth memoir written at 64 years of age, about his childhood spent in Hong Kong. His father, an Admiralty civil servant, was posted there when Martin was seven. His father wanted to leave Martin in England, in boarding school, but his mother would not hear of it. From the outset, it is clear Martin has a very low opinion of his father, but a strong bond with his mother:

My mother was full of fun, with a quick wit, an abounding sense of humour, an easy ability to make friends from all walks of life and an intense intellectual curiosity. She was also as determined and tenacious as a bull terrier.

               By contrast, my father was a stick-in-the-mud with little real sense of humour and an all-abiding pedantry. Furthermore, he had a chip on his shoulder which insidiously grew throughout his life.

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As the book unfolds, Booth recounts more and more incidences which place his father in a most unfortunate light – a self-absorbed, petty little man, risk averse, unsociable, self-important, blustering and rigid. Martin clearly feels he has inherited his adventurousness from his out-going, fun-loving, high-spirited and fearless mother.

Booth takes to Hong Kong like the proverbial duck to water. He explores the streets of all the areas he lives in, gradually winning his mother’s confidence to be allowed to roam on his own, as a seven year old. He is naïve, but not stupid, he tells us. He has a certain ability at self-preservation and good instincts. By and large, in his stories, the locals loved him, and he had unrestricted access almost everywhere, including to the triads and opium dens.

Everyone I met would greet me, from the coolies carrying massive sacks suspended from their poles to the briefcase-toting taipans walking down in the damp morning mist to the Peak Tram.

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Also, because he was golden haired, most locals wanted to touch his hair for luck, which is good humouredly put up with.

The memoirs are quite charming both for the extremely authentic local colour, and for the sheer enjoyment and revelling Booth had and did in the Hong Kong life and culture. He quickly learns basic Cantonese, he eats everything he is offered no matter how strange or unfamiliar (including boiled beetles), he makes friends with any and all locals he comes across, and he is always up for any new venture or exploration or adventure. If this book is to be believed, this must be one of the most precocious seven year olds ever to have existed. And yet, it is just within the possibility of credulity.

Although at 9 years old, he had to return to England with his parents, in this short time, he encounters typhoons, visits a number of islands (including a leper colony), climbs a mountain, goes to many temples, has many strange encounters with animals and local characters ranging from the insane to the dispossessed; his time in Hong Kong is certainly action packed. How accurate his memoirs are may be debatable, particularly in the level of detail supplied – though he says in the prologue, “I do have a very retentive memory” – but what seems beyond doubt is his real affection for Hong Kong and the Chinese living there. He is remarkably accepting and unjudgemental – perhaps because he was still so young, or because his mother was singularly open minded and liberal for her time – already keenly aware of his positionality and outsider status, but disarmingly seeing no impediment to social interaction and friendships as a consequence. His fearless diving into Hong Kong life in the 1950s is one of the most delightful aspects of the novel. It is of course, also one of those portraits now preserved in sepia-tones – the Hong Kong as seen and experienced by the British as its golden colonial days.

A pleasant read of personal memories, with a child’s absence of questioning and awareness of the broader context and background.