Lau Reading

Life's rich tapestry

Anthropologist sees globalisation microcosm in Chungking Mansions, writes Mimi

Lau

Every week for the past two years, Ivy-league-educated anthropologist Gordon

Mathews has left his wife at their comfortable Sha Tin home to spend a few days at

the dilapidated Chungking Mansions. The infamous building is a backpackers' haven,

the stamping ground of sub-Saharan African mobile-phone traders, a shelter for

asylum seekers and a community hang-out for ethnic minorities.

In that time, he has learned how discreet deals were made among traders and the

price of the guesthouses and worked out the who's who of a place many

Hongkongers would think twice about walking into.

Professor Mathews has been conducting field research on Chungking Mansions since

May 2006 while holding a full-time teaching job in Chinese University's department

of anthropology.

He received a direct grant from the university in 2005 and another from the

Research Grants Council last year to study Chungking Mansions. Based on initial

research, he published an academic paper in the journal Ethnology during the

summer titled 'Chungking Mansions as a World Centre of Low-end Globalisation'.

Professor Mathews defined 'low-end globalisation' as 'the transnational flow of

people and goods involving relatively small amounts of capital and informal,

sometimes semi-legal or illegal transactions, commonly associated within the

developing world'.

'Thousands of people from sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and other areas

throughout the world seek their fortunes through temporary employment and

low-budget transnational trade,' his paper says.

Astonishingly, Professor Mathews estimates that 15 to 20 per cent of the mobile

phones in sub-Saharan Africa have passed through Chungking Mansions.

From his untiring observations, note-taking and interviews, he demystified

Chungking Mansions and decoded the behaviour of people from different ethnicities

who make a living there. In his paper, he approached Chungking Mansions with anthropological modus

operandi. His portrayal of interactions among different ethnicities demonstrates

how Chungking Mansions can contribute to the anthropological examination of

globalisation in the world as a whole.

Professor Mathews said the analysis of informal globalisation at Chungking

Mansions could shed light on large-scale concepts used in the analysis of

globalisation writ large.

'This place is pure capitalism. It's what I call informal globalisation. These African

guys upstairs buy 3,000 mobile phones with hundreds of thousands of dollars and

take them back to their home countries and sell them in the markets, he said,

adding that deals were often informal.

'This is a different kind of globalisation but it's just as vital. This is really important

to the African and South Asian countries.'

His paper says there are about 90 guesthouses and 380 businesses in the building,

including food stands, mobile phone dealers, watch and clothing retailers and

wholesalers.

On any given night, he estimated, there were about 4,000 people staying in the

building and about 10,000 people from a diverse range of nationalities passing

through each day.

He also found there to be a small number of sex workers, primarily mainland

Chinese and Indians, as well some heroin addicts and petty drug dealers.

Chungking Mansions was built in 1961 and there are now about 920 ownership

shares. The lack of unified ownership and the size of the building had made it

difficult and unprofitable for private developers and the Urban Renewal Authority to

buy the building or tear it down, Professor Mathews said.

Roughly 70 per cent of the properties in Chungking Mansions were owned by

Chinese but most of the businesses, such as guesthouses, will often be managed by

South Asians or Filipinos, he said.

The magnet for the run-down building in the heart of touristy TsimShaTsui has been

China as a powerhouse of low-end manufacturing, Hong Kong's relatively relaxed

visa policies and the building's own rock-bottom prices, he said. 'Life here is really not bad at all. I think the great majority of people there are really

happy. A friend of mine here is working for HK$3,500 a month. It would seem to be

very tough but it's not. He is able to support his family in India.

'Some of them here are illegal but they perform an important role in Hong Kong.

They are working and helping things out. Prices are cheap here because of these

people.

'This is an area in Hong Kong that's totally removed from Hong Kong in a sense. The

rules in here are quite different and yet this place can function because Hong Kong