Searching For Poetic Humanity

Riding With Hong Kong Street Racers.

This thought has plagued my mind for months. Should I put the film on hiatus? I know I cannot go any further into the lives of my current subjects. They are not giving me any new insight, and one of the people I want most on this film Ah, Lai, whose brother severed his arm in the process and still races, our relationship can only be categorized as “Hostile.” Everyone has said I can’t take him personally, because he is “Chou Lo” which means Rough, and he is erratic and angry.

My Other Informant Candy, is driving me up the wall with her personal flaws and it’s not only me who do not want her around, but everyone else involved. None of us can do anything because she is the girlfriend of Ah Fai, who is one of the fastest guys, and owns his own garage. He knows what’s she’s like, but we have to take the two of them part and parcel. Even though I can personally ignore her and walk away, the others cannot because they share Business Interests, and Business and Social life is completely tied in this world.

Part of wanting to drop my film is also for personal reasons. I don’t want to hang with those guys anymore. It exacerbates my feelings of lost in regards to living in Hong Kong, and not wanting to participate in the culture and the people any longer. The city itself I still love. I enjoy walking around the buildings, I like being able to eat any kind of Chinese food at all time of day. I love the good public transport system and the Octopus card.

But the society itself, I feel at odds with. It’s not a place that fosters creativity, and cynicism is rampant. To be kind and considerate outside one’s family is seen practically as naïve. The problem is, most of my family are either in the US or Australia, and thus I don’t have a strong support network here, and it can make me increasingly isolated.

An editor in Boston who has is a real champion and friend of both this film and my sanity said that part of my struggle is that I would like to be around more “Poetic Humanity,” a thing that is above the basic search for material reimbursements, (he made up that phrase just when we were speaking, but it sounds practically theoretical) and I am now investing that search into my subjects.

He’s right. And since he grew up here and later moved to the US, he knows the sort of society and people I am dealing with right now.

Thus part of the distress I am going through is during this period of my documenting the lives of these men and women is I accidentally invested my own hopes and dreams into them instead of looking at them objectively.

But I can so clearly see, that after a while I stopped asking the right kind of questions because it became a search for things about them that would fit with who I wanted them to be rather than whom they really are. Of course this is completely at odds with the whole concept of what it is to be a documentary maker: to record the truth.

Unfortunately the truth is, as I said before, their lives are dull and colorless. They don’t treat each other well. The previously honorable concepts of “heng dai” (Brotherhood,) and “yi hei” (the sprit of friendship) looks increasingly hollow and is revealing itself to me as mutually beneficial economic relationships.
So many times when people treat each other appallingly, like after someone’s borrowed money they don’t return or said some incredibly harsh things to the other, all is forgiven because they are “heng dais,” or that’s what they say. But to an outsider like me, it seems to be a mask over the fact they have some sort of financial tie that makes it impossible to break.

It’s really hard when you don’t have enough money and you’re barely able to make a living to sever any ties that might even be useful in the future. I think part of the proliferation of “Yi Hei” is a cultural construct to keep that society from breaking apart, when things are bad and “Heng Dai” is what reminds people that when living is good, they must share the benefits.

The other more pressing concern for me with this film is also my own safety. I am starting to be afraid to piss the wrong person off because part of this fabric is the connection with Triads. Most, if not all the racers are somehow connected, even if they are not involved in crime. It could be their family, friends of business associates. People who have put money in their garages, in a way to launder money, or just leant them some as a way to go “white.” (Triads in Chinese is known as “Hek Sei Wo” (Black Society) so the lingo with leaving the gang world or trying to get out is “Bak” (white.)

And if I asked myself whether I think the gangs members will come torch my apartment or hurt me in some ways, I would have to say “No.” I can’t see it really happening, my father is a retired Deputy Police Commissioner and I make it well known to the most “top” guys. In some ways that is my “Connection” and they know hurting me will mean a lot of hassles that go way beyond the usual. Each will look after their own so to speak.

So the fear I have has two levels. One is I am co-opting the fear the drivers also have with pissing the wrong people off, saying the wrong thing. It’s part of this culture, and a friend who does labor organizing concurred that the working classes of Hong Kong has a huge fear of retribution from the triad gangs, both personally and professionally. As he says, most factory worked hate their bosses because they are dumb, but will not fight them because they are involved with Blackness. Partly because of where the money are in small medium size factories. We really do need a better loan system for these people.

The other part of my fear comes from what I was raised with. That some of the reasons girls like me, should not get to know “those people” is how they behave. They gamble away their savings, they visit prostitutes, they cheat and steal from each other.

Not every one of the racers do this, and in fact, I think racing keeps some of these guys out of the vices because keeping and modifying these cars are so expensive. But the people around the group do so, and as my search in their lives expand, my encounters with these things increase.

It’s a real problem for me, because I don’t want to see those things. It makes me uncomfortable, and it can be upsetting when was done to or perpetuated by people I care about. And make no mistake, after spending this much time with them I do.

I also have to admit, that making this documentary was to fulfill my own curiosity of whether the stereotypes were true. As I was afraid of these people you see on the streets with bleached hair, smoking cigarettes, in their tight clothes, (this includes men) and tattoos of dragons. While at the same time, I glamorized them too having fed on the great Hong Kong movies in the eighties, the John Woos, and Chau Yun Fats, the Better Tomorrows, and Once A Thief.

I can’t even say they are bad people. Some of them have been incredibly good to me in their own way. In a world where trust is not exactly an easy commodity, they have let me in, maybe not as much as I would like on one hand, and willingly showed me the downfalls on the other. I am not sure how conscious it all is, but I have seen it.

And those “downfalls” are what the middle and upper classes here feel about the working classes of Hong Kong. And they aren’t myths, not just snobbery that made people think that way. It’s what happens when people are struggling with the every day. When someone can’t pay the rent, and there is a gold ring sits on a dash board of a car. Well I can see the temptation and the justification.

My aunt says, “Not all poor people are bad people, but being poor doesn’t give them the excuse to be bad.” I think about this a lot. It is true that’s their excuse a lot of times, and the people who I am most disgusted with are the ones who constantly talk about how poor they are, and how are very interested in my “wealth.” They are also the people who make me feel most uncomfortable with my safety.

So here I have been trying to make a film to say they are not bad people. That there is some beauty in the way they live, when there isn’t much. And if we take societies rules at face value, well some of their behavior is bad, it’s despicable and I am disappointed in them. So I can’t make the film “I” want -a film about the people, not car porn.

And I suppose is why they are so addicted to driving that car, as it is the only beauty that resides in the every day.

The way one can control those hundred of pounds of metal to drift around the curve and let it spin out while still going forward. Turning the wheel the opposite direction to the curve and hearing the screech of rubber as it goes the other way. In those seconds, when the collapse of machine and body is close to spiritual.

And those moments are very real, even for the person sitting next to them in the front seat. I know when I feel the ground move beneath, see the flashing of the outside world accelerated in ways never before. I feel this thrill and hope next time I can go faster.

But in between those times which is few and far between and practically impossible to capture on film, life is so mind numbingly disserting that I can’t see how I could make it interesting to watch, when I don’t even want to bring myself to be there.

For now I just have to write about it. Sort it out in my own head and see it for what it is. And think of a way forward.

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