Shenzhen Zen

Hey baby, it's the Fourth of July (Dave Alvin)
While Monday was The Standard's official move-in day, I managed to duck it by combining a much needed journey to HK Immigration for a visa renewal and new ID with a late afternoon interview. After sitting from essentially 10am-5.30pm in the immigration building waiting with hundreds of others for our papers to be pushed, processed, stamped, stapled and filed in sextuplicate, it was a relief to interview a lawyer. And that's saying a lot.
The Fourth found me navigating my way via subway to the eastern edge of Hong Kong to a place I'd never been before and a building I'd never seen before. Within two hours of finding the site, I'd discovered there was no smoking room and was hit up for a loan by a near-sobbing coworker who told me he needed it for his wife who is hospitalized in Shenzhen with severe vaginal bleeding. The guy is also a notorious gambling junkie -- supposedly once did time for some bookie related hijinks -- and I'm short myself already this month. But I'm also nothing if not a frigging sucker, so I gave him about the equivalent of US$60, though he says he needs much, much more.
I also learned that a perfectly competent, hard working, part-timer had been suddenly laid off after she'd worked like the proverbial dawg to help move her department. No reason, no pity. No job. And she needed it more than I'm sure my debt-bound coworker needed his loan.
It got better, though. A lunch time stroll revealed that our new neighborhood is a real, honest-to-gawd funky, cozy enclave -- unlike the scabby, rusty soul sucking vacuum we just vacated. And while we have no cafeteria as in the old digs, it's jammed with modest eateries -- sushi, Chinese, yes, a McDonalds and Pizza Hut, a working black smith shop, dessert shops, bakeries, CD and DVD shops, two -- count 'em two -- temples, one Christian church, florists, funeral supply shops -- and very few high rises save our building.
Our office also faces a harbor and the view is spectacular what with the boats, ocean and mountains. But there's a dark current, too, I discovered while dining on a traditional American Independence Day meal of flat noodles, brisket, fish balls, french toast and a 6 oz bottled Coca Cola with two Chinese coworkers and an American intern.
''Two people have also quit already,'' one announced after telling us about the part-timer's savage layoff.
"Why?"
"Bad feng-shui!," she replied. "They say our new building has bad feng-shui. They say that the bad feng-shui will also cause all the employees' parents to die early. But (owner, publisher, tobacco and press baron) Charles Ho's parents are already dead so it doesn't matter to him."
This elicited a grimace and a snort of amusement and disgust from me, something I kind of regretted after the other Chinese coworker looked hurt asked why I'd made "such a face."
"Well, my mother died 11 years ago and it wasn't from feng-shui," I said. "It was from smoking, drinking and wayward genes."
"It is part of our culture," she said.
"I know. But it doesn't mean I have to admire it, believe in it or even sympathize with it." Lifting some instant wisdom from Stevie Wonder, I added, "As one of America's wisest blind sages once said: 'When you believe in things that you don't understand, you suffer. Superstition ain't the way.' "
"We are not suffering," she said. "And it isn't superstition. It is Chinese science."
"That's like saying 'American peace keeping in Iraq.'''
Point taken, she agreed. Then she asked why me and the other American were eating a shared order of french toast off of the same plate.
"Why not?"
"It is so intimate. I have only seen foreigners do it and it always fascinates me. I thought maybe only homosexuals or lovers would do this."
I turned to the intern and faked a deep, soulful gaze. "Nick and I more than friends," I told her. "We are countrymen. And we're declaring our independence from feng-shui and our right to share french toast off of a single plate."