Riding With Hong Kong Street Racers
When I walked passed the garages today. I noticed Mike’s shop is still closed. This is coming to the second week. When I walk pass Fai’s shop, I see his car and not him. Something has gone down. I mean to call Mike every day to see how he is. I know the reason for the closure if the lack of rent money or another big argument between the partners. Either way it is not good.
The minimum I can do is be there as a friend he trusts enough to tell the truth to. I of course, feel bad I am writing about it. But we made a pact that I can do so in English, and never tell another soul. I also think of what Truman Capote said after he was banished from the High Society in New York after publishing a pretty thinly veiled rendition of those women’s lives, “They knew I was a writer, what did they think I was doing there?” So I do this. I never lied that I was there to document their lives.
Of course, I am also avoiding it because it makes me sad that is has not worked out. For a moment everything looked hopeful. Maybe this was a way out of semi-survival, a better future for his son who is not even two yet.
I even went in to help them paint the floor. It always amuses me that these tough guys can’t do stuff like that. I ended up having a bit of a debate of the “best way to paint,” which eventually they agreed. Some of our neighbours were standing around, close to shocked that the strange girl next door, was not only painting the garage (women don’t do this kind of thing here) but doing it well. I guess it’s growing up abroad. Work like this is always contracted out here.
I knew there was a problem when I asked why it was not finished. I said, if it was a lack of time, I’d come down to help and Mike finally confessed when everyone else was out of the room they didn’t have enough money to buy the paint. I couldn’t see it sustaining long term if they didn’t have cash backing. It takes a long while for businesses to have a return. What to say? Just kept quiet.
It’s hard to think of the days and nights they went out to the whole neighbourhood and beyond putting those pink and mauve flyers in letter boxes with the services. It’s all gone to waste now. The time and money they put in buying the equipment, and setting the thing up. What about all the people who bought “packages,” I suppose that’s a loss those customers have to deal with.
Have to admit that there were times when I could see these guys banging their head against the wall because they didn’t have a business plan or a business loan. The money to start this was savings from their parents. It’s gone too. The sums were not small. This is not a lost the family can blink away.
I tried to help, but it wasn’t my place. And they don’t listen. It’s one thing I learnt, these people are not flexible or open to new ideas. What they know is what they know. The rest of us don’t understand. And talking to a logical conclusion, brain storming, just playing with ideas just doesn’t exist.
It’s exacerbated by learning not to disclose the truth to each other. I know what is said is always partial. The story is never told fully. Mike tells me the most, and only late at night, when his wife, he, and I are at their apartment just chilling.
And since I have been away and sick, that’s not happened for a while. We can’t talk out at the tea places, because you never know who is listening in. These are neighborhood places. For two streets garages and other car services compete next to each other.
Within the shop, the other partners are there. First they will get mad at him for talking to a stranger in such a candid manner, and also as I described before, the tensions between them are great. They don’t even trust each other, forget liking each other, and communicating openly.
It’s hard to move on in the world. I see it so clearly now. At some point going to college and getting educated seemed unimportant. Even a waste of time, when other people are out making more money than you would when you first graduate. Now 10 years of from high school, I see there is some sort of ceiling you do come to. It’s not like these guys can go back to school and start again. Not to be down on the idea. But it’s like they are stuck. And that’s for a lifetime. Which is very long. Some of the choices we make as kids have such an impact on our adulthood. It’s not fair is it because we were just plain dumb then.
Yan Sham-Shackleton Online 