Learning sex in Hong Kong

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What would you say is good sex education to a child of eight who has yet to learn the basic knowledge of life:  that all girls have a vagina, babies do not come from a woman's anus, and penises are useful for more than peeing?  Just give the facts straight up would be my answer....the Hong Kong government thought differently.

For months there was talk about the need to teach safe sex to children, this was in the Eighties, when the whole world grappled with fear over the spread of AIDs seemingly overnight.  "The teachers ought to do something." was whispered among parents.  "Ain't our problem, these kids have parents." the teachers said.  In the meantime, we the children let our imagination play out with our Barbies and Kens, but really, nothing in our wildest dreams could come close to the actual genius of coupling.  Eventually, the government took matters into it's own hands.

It was deemed early on that teachers were unable to handle such a task, after all, their Gestapo like approach in keeping discipline would be seriously compromised by sex education.  Parents were also out of the question; the strict conservative Chinese parenting culture must not be meddled with either.  Time passes and frustration mounted as the city watched debates on the news discussing what to do, until one day, the government announced that it was producing a TV series to be aired on a prime time slot.  Immediately after that, a short ad was shown over and over, "The Nature of Sex", the show was to be called.

The parents were relieved.  At last, their children will learn the truth without any hassles to themselves.  They didn't mind loosing their favorite TV dramas to this upcoming new show either, in fact, they were looking forward to it because finally sex is on screen.  Before this, only soapy melodramas were available where the same pregnant wife character appeared again and again in different story lines, and she inevitably banged her bump like an African drum whenever her husband was unkind to her.

All this was followed by months of anticipation, until the day came when the first sex show was to air.  The city was electrified, we could not wait to get out of school; our teachers gave us less homework that day and sent us home with an unprecedented "Make sure you watch TV tonight.  Channel 2, seven o'clock."

Forgive me for remembering it so well, but really, it isn't something you'd forget given the circumstances.  This was the plot of the episode:

A boy of fifteen was living with his brother who was a cop after his parents had passed away.  The boy and his school friends were very curious about sex.  After playing sports in the evening, they took with them a ruler and stayed behind in the change room; they did something to themselves [not shown] which brought the boys a lot of pain.  

One day the boy was walking down the street when a young attractive girl ran quickly towards him, she was being chased by the cops.  She saw that she was cornered and she begged the boy for help.  The cops surrounded them, and the boy gallantly wrapped his arm around the girl and said to the police, "Why are you bothering my girlfriend?"  One of the cops ends up being the boy's brother, so the cops let them go.  The girl kissed him on the cheek, thanked him, gave him her pager number and said "Call me whenever, I'll give you a discount."

The boy couldn't stop thinking about the girl and her 'offer'.  He started saving money, and he purchased five condoms.  He reasoned he could wear three condoms for the first round and still have two backups for seconds.  During this time, he went through a moody period when he tried to decide if he should go through with paying for sex, his brother was worried about him.  

The boy decided to meet the girl, and they got a room somewhere.  She was in the bathroom when he tried nervously to put on a condom, he barely got one on him when the girl came out wearing nothing but a towel.  She smiled sweetly and unwraps the towel in front of him. [no sex or nudity shown]

The next scene both boy and girl were lying in bed.  He was calm now and was reflecting on what he just did when the cops burst into the room to arrest the prostitute.  One of the cop was the boy's brother.  

The final scene was the boy walking out of his school after he was suspended, and his friends rushed out to talk to him.  They asked him what sex was like, and they called him their hero.  He smiled proudly but told his friends not to have sex with prostitutes.  

- The end -

To this day I do not know what to make of it.  Two weeks after the show, my mom caught me and my sister playing a game of hookers and cops.  I'll leave it to you to conjecture the effects of this sex education to a generation of youngsters.

Jackie

Three little boys, one vast desert

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I have a theory. The best way to get to know a culture that is not your own is to date it. And if you are really curious, then as logic speaks, you must marry it. So, with a robust sense of adventure, I knew quite early on that I would marry out of my race. NO, not just out of my race, I wanted a complete foreigner, someone who believes in uprooting his entire life at least once. I have no distinct reason for wanting this, except I can't help being bored by my Chinese immigrant surroundings during my formative years, as much as dim sum eating and bubble tea sipping enhanced the cultural landscape of Toronto Canada where I partly grew up, I wanted to do everything humanly possible to avoid making a life out of it.

So I guess I got what I wanted, I married a Jewish guy. Israeli to be exact, he corrects me every time when I refer to him as a Jew. And it is fun to compare notes on our childhood experiences. We are each appalled by the other. He gaped when I told him how my mother brought me along to purchase a cane to beat me with (not asking for sympathy here, it is a common practice in Hong Kong, we get to pick the color), and I am shocked at the complete freedom he had as a child.

My husband (My Harry) cannot sustain a continuous conversation about his past, I am not sure why, probably because he is a guy. I practically had to heimlich bits and pieces out of him, but it is worth the trouble because his claims are nothing short of fairy tales to me. I cannot imagine growing up like that. As a little boy of six, he took the bus to go to the library by himself. (What?) His entire school body staged a strike when the teachers implemented uniforms requirement: a school logo on any t-shirt the student wishes to wear. (What the?) His mother bought him as many eggs and flour as needed to egg and flour the principal at the end of the school year. (What the...you get the picture)

So while I was marching to and fro between classrooms and deathtrap playgrounds in Hong Kong (Read my Kindergarten in Hong Kong post), My Harry was spending his time very differently. He lived in a suburban neighborhood in Israel, where he and his little buddies had access to the beach to the west, sandy streets with open spaces all around, and whatever beyond in the east. This was a time of innocence I guess, when parents did not feel compel to escort their children to their daily routines.

One day long ago, My Harry decided it was high time he and his friends Shai and Tzhi explored the east, which was a whole lot of nothing, a typical desert in the Middle East. They planned to map it.

"I orchestrated the whole thing" My Harry said, smiling at the memory.

"Shai drew well, he was in charge of drawing the map."

"Tzhi's mother made good sandwiches."

So the three boys carried little backpacks with water bottles, sandwiches, and coloring pencils and headed out for the expedition. They circled around their kindergarten, passed one apartment building, and it was time to eat. The sandwiches are good.

Then taking off again, passed another apartment building, crossed one big avenue, and approaching a very small hill. Getting tired and hot already.

Then they climbed the little hill, saw a whole lotta nothing in front of them, a span of desert, and decided they had enough. They turned to go home and play.

In the meantime in another part of the world, I was probably threatening my mom yet again that I would jump out of my window off the seventh floor if I had to endure another hour of piano practice. (This is a common threat from Hong Kong kids, we all lived in tall buildings) I carried out my threat to the extent of lining my favorite dolls next to the window, gave them a funeral, and then ceremoniously threw them out one by one.

But in the end, for all the differences in our beginnings, My Harry and I wound up doing the same job in the US. I suppose our marriage is a true product of globalization. Would I have it any other way? Probably not.

Jackie

Kindergarten in Hong Kong

My first lesson on revenge happened in my second year in kindergarten. I was about six years old and I was attending a reputable but strict Catholic school in the suburbs of Hong Kong. I remember scenes from those days like it was yesterday, cramped classrooms, cheap notebooks made of thin scrap papers, memorizing words in unison, heavy backpacks, and mumbling prayers I didn't care to understand. But I recall other things too. In particular, I have vivid memories of falling on the sandy surface of the school grounds and scrapping my knees over and over. Inevitably my knees bled and I bore two very ugly wounds that could never quite healed right because I kept injuring the same spots again and again. In fact, I carry those scars all my life since. I remember how I dreaded having to explain to my teachers why I was so clumsy and fall so often during our fifteen minutes recess, and then explain to my mother all over again why I continually hurt myself. I felt guilty about them in fact; they were proof of my deficiency somehow.

I was rather tall for my age, I had a very lanky body, which I was convinced as the reason I stood out as a target. But it wasn’t so; other girls had scrapped knees as well. We discussed it often as we sat together during our twenty minutes bus ride home and wondering how we should best explain to our mothers. We knew then it was because of our uniforms, which was a dress cut just above the knees. In the summer it was a cotton dress with a plaid pattern, the school logo sewn prominently just beneath the left shoulder, and in the winter it was a woolen dress paired with high dark green socks, but neither ensembles provided protection to where it needed.

One day we realized our shoes were a problem as well. We had to wear lady-like shoes, they were some fake patent leather type, tight and binding to our little feet. “We just cannot move in these things!” One girl boldly said at the back of the bus. But we knew she was only willing to say so then because we were in a noisy bus. There was no way we would repeat that to the adults. In Hong Kong those days, little kids were taught to obey orders since birth. We marched everywhere. In the morning after we got off the bus, we lined up like soldiers for a quick prayer in the school grounds, before we marched to our classrooms. We lined up and marched to recess, and again when we go home.

We were told we had it easy in kindergarten, and turned out to be true, I didn’t know then things would later get worse in primary school. But I dreaded my days in kindergarten all the same. We had exams that gave us nightmares, and the system mercilessly ranked us by our grades. In fact, we marched according to our rank so that everyone knew instantly how each student fared in the class. It was humiliating to stand in the last place. I remember Iiving in a state of mild fear all the time, and at any moment it escalated to full blown panic attacks brought on by as little as a teacher’s glance.

There was a playground in the school, and we had access to it during recess time. Like anything else in Hong Kong, schools had very little space, so it was generally madness when the kids are out and about. Recess was the most dreadful times for us girls, the boys terrorized the playground like demons since they were not at all hampered by their comfortable uniforms and shoes. When a girl got in the way, the boys simply pushed her aside. Sometimes they pulled up our skirts. The first time I worked up the courage to line up to go down a slide I was pushed straight down onto the pavement. Clearly, something had to be done. But we thought telling our mothers or teachers completely out of the question. We simply did not have faith in them to make things right. Until one day, I was angry enough to do the extraordinary.

I convinced the girls for a whole week that we should fight back. They weren’t so sure about it at first but I was surprisingly persuasive. We had a good plan. We knew we had one weapon against the boys: The girl’s bathroom. Our plan, was to kidnap the worst boy and hold him hostage. The shame for a boy inside a girl’s bathroom should somehow work its’ magic and make our lives better. We were so thorough we even assigned a couple of scouts to make sure the whole thing happened out of teachers’ view and to prevent other girls from entering the bathroom. Then we picked our boy, and that was a no brainer really. This boy, whatever his name, was the worst of them all. He was always chasing and pushing us. I remember he was a heavy child but very agile, and the other boys looked up to him too. He was clearly our guy.

So the day came, and the minute we were let loose in the playground we gathered and located the boy. Seven girls surrounded him and grabbed him from all over. He didn’t initially fight back; he was utterly stunned. But when we got close to the bathroom he fought tooth and nail, we had to really shove him in. But a few boys were alerted by then, and they waited outside the girl’s bathroom to rage revenge on us. We managed to keep the boy inside but my friends were afraid by then. The girls turned on me, they said I brought trouble on them and now they would really get hurt. I felt awful. The boy said he would get me for sure in particular. When the bell rang, we all got out and I cried to myself thinking about the next day.

And the next day came, and I was scared to the bone to walk out into the playground. The boys were waiting for us, I could see them from the window as we marched down the stairs in single file. A couple of girls didn’t desert me though, but I tell you it was terrifying. We held hands and walked right up to meet them, and a bunch of boys circled us immediately, and the big boy rolled up his sleeves like he was going to beat us stupid.

What happened next was like a dream. Our principal was a genial nun, she had a motherly face with dark expressive eyes. She rarely walked the grounds during recess but for some reason she was there that day. Right then we discovered we had another weapon: uncontrolled tears. We cried like mad, all three of us. And when the principal came to investigate, we all pointed at the big boy. The situation looked really bad for them, we told the principal the boys were going to beat us again, like they always did, and we showed her our knees. We spoke well, and the boys just looked defiant and very guilty.

“So you like to hit huh? We can arrange that.” Our principal said. We stood behind her big habits skirt as she ordered the teachers to take the boys away.

That day, before going home, the whole school spent extra ten minutes to watch my boys punch the cushions of folded chairs while our Principal warn the students against future bullying. She even told the teachers to look after us better. I remember feeling very tall standing in formation that afternoon, and I had a good view too, since I was a good student, I was right up there in the front of the line.

Jackie