Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
LARA WOZNIAKFor one resident, the SARS outbreak changed more than the economic climate; it changed a way of life.
HONG KONG - Walking to the ferry this morning on my way to work, thinking about what I could write for this story, I saw one of those "only in Hong Kong" sights:
A golden-haired English girl of about 3 stood at attention, listening to her Filipino amah, or maid, command her in Mandarin, "One, two, three."
On cue, the toddler belted out Frere Jacque in Mandarin.
She sang to Mrs. Chan, a spry, 80-something whose gray-to-white hair is always pulled back in a tight bun, creating a perpetuallook of surprise to her eyes. Mrs. Chan is fluent in Cantonese, conversant in Mandarin, and knows a smattering of English, French and the Tagalog dialect of the Phillipines. But often she prefers to pretend she speaks none of these languages, the better to listen to conversations not intended for her.
I thought: This is what I love about Hong Kong. Let's face it: A Filipino woman teaching an English girl how to sing a French song in Mandarin would be a tad odd anywhere else in the word, but not in Hong Kong.
Here, the norm includes the absurd.
Thus, I found myself thinking about "only in Hong Kong," while trying to answer the editor's question: "How has Hong Kong rebounded from the impact of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome?"
It hasn't rebounded. It has profoundly changed.
You have to understand what it felt like to live here during the outbreak. By about March, the full impact of SARS was hitting Hong Kong. Although I dislike the use of this word in connection to stories on the subject, something like panic blanketed the city.
People were not running amok. Not that sort of panic. But if someone sneezed or coughed, those nearby visibly tensed. And there was this depressing, caught-in-the-headlights on peoples' faces, many of which were covered by white masks.
To be fair, it's an accepted custom in Asia to wear masks if you are sick, so it was not as huge a leap for virtually the entire populace of Hong Kong to put masks on during SARS as it would be in St. Petersburg or Tampa.
But the masks are not comfortable: Your exhaled breath fogs up your glasses, and if your skin is at all sensitive, it could break out around the line of the mask.
And then you get sick of wearing the mask, sick of seeing people look scared and really sick of talking about SARS.
Sad history, scary present
Well before the outbreak, residents had already been saddled with the joke that when Hong Kong sneezes, the world catches the flu. That's because in the past century, three pandemics - the 1918 Spanish Flu, the 1957 Asian Flu and the 1968 Hong Kong Flu - all were thought to have started in this region.
This was a key reason why the international medical community took SARS so seriously.
Of course, most people in Hong Kong did not know victims of this outbreak. While nearly 300 people died this year in Hong Kong due to SARS, it is a city of nearly 7-million residents.
But SARS hurt us all, in some way. Many people had their salaries frozen or lost their jobs because of the economic slowdown it caused. Also, many of the expatriate community chose to leave, perhaps for good.
Those choices were made because the once-robust economy was already fragile before SARS.
For months before the outbreak, the Far Eastern Economic Review, where I work, was reporting record-smashing figures to the world. As in: record-breaking unemployment, bankruptcy filings and numbers of homeowners with mortgages that are larger than the value of their homes.
In January, about three months before the SARS outbreak in Hong Kong (though it apparently was already spreading in mainland China), the median monthly household income in Hong Kong had dropped to what it had been in 1995.
Hong Kong needed a financial shot in the arm. Instead, its residents ended up getting flu inoculations.
And then came SARS.
In April, two-thirds fewer passengers passed through Hong Kong's airport, and retailers said they rang up 50 percent less than the same period a year earlier.
Sure, now the airport has more passengers, and shops are once again busy. But nobody can make up that lost business.
Unforeseen changes
You have to shake off those losses and move on, which is exactly what Hong Kong is doing. But it's moving on in historically significant ways.
If you were to tell me six months ago that half a million people would demonstrate for democratic change in Hong Kong, as happened on July 1, I would not have believed it.
Native residents would have told you the same, for this is is not a city known for political dissent and demonstration. Think about it: This island was one of the last colonies in the world. The British relinquished their control only in 1997.
And on Nov. 23, voters overwhelmingly supported pro-democracy candidates in district council elections and ousted the biggest pro-Beijing party, known as the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong. The party leader subsequently resigned.
While the results are important, more significant is the voter turnout: more than 1-million voters, almost 50 percent of the eligible electorate. It is significant because under Hong Kong's miniconstitution, termed the Basic Law, the masses will get the right to elect all of their political leaders in 2007. For now, the electorate gets to vote in only minor officials.
But rather than any apathy, the masses took the opportunity to make a point. Again. They want change.
Not that Hong Kong a political town, it's a moneymaking town.
But in little more than a year's time, the economy sinks, an unheard-of epidemic breaks out, 500,000 people protest for political change and nearly twice that number vote to oust the pro-Beijing politicians. People woke up. Demonstrated. Took on government.
And that means this is perhaps one of the most exciting places to visit in the world right now.
Is it dangerous, given that many scientists say there will be another outbreak? Hong Kong is probably no more dangerous now than driving on Interstate 4. Come to think of it, it has to be less dangerous than driving I-4.
But like so many of my friends, I am leaving Hong Kong. To be honest, it is in part because of SARS, which has so affected this city.
During the outbreak, our office was quarantined as a preventive measure. Thanks to broadband, nearly all of our staff worked remotely, usually from home.
I live in a little village on a small island, Lamma, away from the hustle and bustle of Hong Kong Island's overcrowded and polluted streets. There are no cars on Lamma, but there are loads of trails cutting through the brush and the jungle-covered hills that lead to secluded beaches and rocky cliffs.
About half of the daily conference calls that I checked into during the outbreak, I called from atop a cliff, my two dogs at my feet. The sound of waves crashing on rocks, or wind whipping up around, usually made it clear to my scattered colleagues I wasn't indoors.
Instead of taking lunch at an overpriced big-city restaurant, I cooked my own. My work clothes were a pink bikini; my desk, a lawn chair with my laptop on my knees; and yet I wrote more stories during SARS than I did when I was in the office. I also sported a fabulous tan.
And I was reminded that there is more to life than cubicles and artificial indoor lighting. I wasn't alone.
Housewives and other women who did not have to report for office or shop duties fled the region for "safe" places such as beaches in Thailand, Sri Lanka and Indonesia. Many folks here speculate that many a marriage was likely shaken up because of SARS.
How many people left last spring and did not return? That's hard to determine. Technically, when you leave Hong Kong, you should alert the government and pay outstanding taxes, or pay in advance. Many people just packed up and took off, as going on vacation.
So the government has no reliable statistics on how many expatriates, or Chinese holding passports from other nations, fled Hong Kong because of SARS.
And many people work "under the table" - so they don't show up on employment statistics - thereby making it impossible to quantify how many people have lost jobs, post-SARS.
But based just on counting the number of my own friends who left, not to return, I am sure there was an exodus.
And the loss of such friends, coupled with the reminder of how much fun it was not to be in the office, has made the fabric of the city change for me. I'm ready to move on. And I think that's okay, because SARS also marked the end of an era, in many ways, for Hong Kong.
Yet, some things remain the same. Such as how this is a city where the absurd will likely remain the norm for years to come. A place where it is not unusual for an English toddler, who already has a posh accent, to sing a French ditty in Mandarin for a Cantonese-speaking neighbor.
- Lara Wozniak, a former reporter for the St. Petersburg Times, is an assistant editor for the Far Eastern Economic Review, a Dow Jones weekly political and economic magazine based in Hong Kong. She plans to relocate to Mallorca this spring.