Ghetto at the Center of the World: Chungking Mansions, Hong Kong by Mathews Gordon

Author:Mathews, Gordon [Mathews, Gordon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2011-06-01T00:00:00+00:00

The Generation Gap among Traders

All the traders in Chungking Mansions are more or less wealthy by the standards of their home countries, if not of Hong Kong. This is easy to lose sight of in Chungking Mansions, where one often sees Africans haggling over food and room prices—even Chungking Mansions, in all its cheapness, represents developed-world prices for these developing-world travelers. Some older African traders and merchants I have spoken with bemoan how uncouth younger African traders are, but in fact, these younger traders represent the upper classes in their countries in being able to buy a plane ticket to Hong Kong, something most of their compatriots could not dream of.

One Tanzanian trader told me, “It’s hard for an ordinary person in my country to buy a ticket to Hong Kong—US$1,300. For many of these Africans, especially those from West Africa—in one way or another, they’ll tell you, ‘My uncle is the governor,’ ‘my nephew is a colonel in the army’—it’s connections.” As two young Central African traders related to me:

Trader 1: I first came to HK in 2004.

Trader 2: I first came in 2003.

Trader 1: My uncle owns the company I work for.

Trader 2: My father owns the company I work for. Of course they taught us what to do.

Trader 1: My father was asking me what I would like to do with my life. He said, “I’ll give you money, but what’s your plan?” My friend suggested that we go to Hong Kong and China. He said, “If you give me money, I can show you the business. If you have US$10,000, you can go to Dubai, then to Hong Kong and buy mobile phones.”

Trader 2: If there is a problem in my home country, all I have to do is call my father, who will get on the phone to someone else—everything is done through connections.

Indeed, I have met a number of traders who tell me, for example, that their uncle was Idi Amin’s Agricultural Minister, or the Ghanaian Commissioner of Prisons; some of these traders are no doubt embellishing their connections but some probably are not. Many of these traders are the scions of the African upper and upper-middle class, with the capital and the connections to put them on the path to Hong Kong. But this does not mean that they necessarily make money—often they fail.

Many of my interviews with traders have been conducted with men in their thirties, forties, and fifties who have been in the trading business for decades, although all only came to Hong Kong and China in recent years; they have, in large part, mastered the business of customs and other uncertainties. These people often have extended China connections and seem to know exactly what they are doing. They also tend to be largely legal in their dealings with customs in China and in their home countries, often eschewing bribes for more methodical procedures, if they are able. Several have told me that the key is to not seek windfall profits, but rather a relatively small but steady gain trip after trip.

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