Twisted Stack

Hong Kong's domestic-layer cake: How many years can we eat it?

2011-10-24T23:50:00.000-07:00

I wandered home from visiting my delightful, private-care dentist today, feeling vaguely guilty (as ever) that I took so much pleasure from something as vile as another person cleaning my teeth (and why has every single dental-hygienist I have ever met been a woman). When I arrived at my door, my helper M was chatting with a friend about the recent case before the Hong Kong court about granting the Right of Abode to several Philippine domestic helpers who have lived and worked in Hong Kong for many years.

For those who do not know, Hong Kong will generally grant residency (Right of Abode) to any international worker who has lived in the Special Administrative Region (HKG SAR), provided they have continually worked and paid taxes full time for a period of seven years. Well, it will provide residency unless you are a "domestic helper", a person who has most likely come to HKG to raise people's children, care for aged parents, and clean the houses and offices of those Hong Kong folks who can afford their services (which a extraordinarily cheap by Western standards).

Under Hong Kong's constitution, the Basic Law, a foreigner can gain permanent residency after living continuously in the territory for seven years. In a landmark court ruling last month, the court deemed the city's immigration law, which excludes some 290,000 domestic helpers from applying, unconstitutional....

Opponents fear granting the right of abode could open the floodgates to an influx of up to half a million people, including the children and spouses of the helpers.

The Hong Kong government plans to appeal the ruling.

I have always deplored the obvious racism inherent in Hong Kong's system in this regard, but save for my personal disgust, I have also always been as guilty as the next rat who benefits from it. By denying domestic helpers the Right of Abode, Hong Kong has managed to keep the costs of domestic helper's services artificially low.

In Canada, most of my friends and relatives plan and scrimp and save to afford a baby sitter for a few hours. In Hong Kong, a parent has a full-time nanny/maid/nurse/dog-walker/gardener, six days a week, for as little as USD$600 a month.

To the working poor at home in the West, that is clearly a fair bit of cash, but Western folks in Hong Kong are - by and large - not the "working poor". Even those in the lowest of salary brackets seem to find a way to have a full-time care-giver for their children (arguably necessary, since working hours in Hong Kong are much longer than school hours, and single parents - in particular - would need someone to care for their children until they are home from work).

I love my "helper". I had originally hired her to walk my dog when I was at work, and when she asked me to take over her contract here in Hong Kong, once the family she had worked with for some 8 years no longer needed or wanted - or could afford (ha ha) - her services, I was happy to do it; though I have always, always been uncomfortable with paying someone for these services.

To this end, I have long been haunted by Caitlin Flanagan's March 2004 article in The Atlantic, "How Serfdom Saved the Women's Movement."

In it, Flanagan notes:

Many professional-class women, who had previously encountered mistress-servant relationships only in literature, are stunned to find themselves suddenly plunged into just such a relationship, a consequence of hiring a nanny that they had never even considered. Hondagneu-Sotelo points out that although these women don't like to think of themselves as members of the landed gentry, paternalistically doling out favors to humble dogsbodies, neither are they eager to think of themselves as "employers" in the contemporary American sense of the word, or of their homes as workplaces. They prefer to think of themselves as consumers of a service—and consumers, of course, have no obligation or responsibility to what they consume. In such a perspective, the relationship may seem cleaner, less encumbered: a sterile transaction of cash for services. But the law is very clear on this, and it was written to protect domestic workers: unless they make less than $1,400 a year, they are deserving of the same wage and hour regulations, the same disability insurance, and the same Social Security set-asides to which all other employees in this country—from the law-firm partner to the lowly Wal-Mart clerk, and everyone in between—are entitled.

"Mistress-servant relationships." Makes one gag more than a little at the North American historic echoes there. The fact remains, domestic helpers in Hong Kong are regarded as servants. They are denied the Basic Legal rights that other international expatriate workers are entitled to because of class and race, and - we must assume - gender.

And regardless of how deeply this runs counter to a wooly-liberal Canadian's sentiments, the fact is, there is no denying that I have benefited from this situation.

Nevertheless, I whole-heartedly support Hong Kong's domestic workers in their suit, and though I am certain it will take a long time, I pray that their wages rise to levels that make the current status unsustainable.

While Flanagan is writing specifically about child care, I still believe her closing argument applies across the board to all domestic helpers, and certainly to those men and women who are denied their rights based on their work:

Upper-middle-class working mothers may never have calm hearts regarding their choices about work and motherhood, but there are certain things they can all do. They can acknowledge that many of the gains of professional-class working women have been leveraged on the backs of poor women. They can legitimize those women's work and compensate it fairly, which means—at the very least—paying Social Security taxes on it. They can demand that feminists abandon their current fixation on "work-life balance" and on "ending the mommy wars" and instead devote themselves entirely to the real and heartrending struggle of poor women and children in .... And they can stop using the hardships of the poor as justification for their own choices. About this much, at least, there ought to be agreement.

As to Hong Kong: The Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions chairman Pan Pey-chyou was quoted as saying "we are not discriminating against migrant domestic helpers, as they are workers and we want to protect them too." However, he also warned that

A survey by the Hong Kong Employers of Overseas Domestic Helpers Association showed an overwhelming majority of helpers would apply for right of abode if there was a chance of it being granted, (and that) migrant workers' command of English could put local workers at a disadvantage.

Shocking: Multi-lingual, hard-working, educated men and women from around Asia might crowd out a less-educated, unilingual, local workforce.

Be still my heart.

Go forth and prosper, Hong Kong domestic workers. I can wash my own dishes and laundry.

home by the sea moment - late in coming

2008-04-13T17:16:00.000-07:00

Took three outrigger singles out on Sunday afternoon for a short paddle and to introduce the boats to a new club member (who only flipped hers twice, which is pretty good, even if she didn't think so), and we did a leisurely 7km up to a local beach on the island.

Junks commonly park up there, and it seems to be a favourite "secret" location for tourists and operators. I assume this is because it's a relatively protected bay and affords people the idea that they have parked somewhere special, though it's still in direct sight of the Lamma Power station.

In any case, we pulled the OC1s up to shore and gave new paddler Jane a chance to stretch out for a few minutes. I looked up and noticed my first dragon fly of the season.

Dragon flies are so common here (and so spectacular) that when they are absent, you almost don't notice. In any case, it was nice to see this whirring reminder that the season was warming.

There are some rather beautiful boulders at the edge of the beach; enormous slabs of granite that are piled in such a way that you cam easily visualize the earth splitting and pushing them up out of itself, like a 12-year-old's growth spurt. Bumping against each other before settling down.

These boulders are so big, and piled so precariously, that they form a sort of cave - big enough to wander through. But the tide was high and it's getting on snake season, so I didn't want to wander indiscriminately through the boulders for fear some local inhabitants might take it amiss.

Still, barefoot and feeling a little Robinson Crusoe-ish, I heaved myself up over the first set of boulders and set to scale my way up their scabby, rough corners. I love climbing rock. Fear of falling in a gap and splitting my skull keeps me sane enough not to try to jump too far between them, but scrabbling up is hard to resist. These are 20-30 feet high, which doesn't look like so much when you begin, but affords great views around.

Still, when I get to the top of the biggest boulder, I stand up and suddenly, the view is framed by more giant boulders, bright green vegetation on my right and thousands of dragonflies snipping through the air overhead. The slate-gray of the SC Sea rolled through the middle of this little panorama, making it one of those "ocean" moments that surprise me sometimes. It was a stunning picture; made for a yuppie outdoor sports catalogue.

So I sat down and just looked.

Seems to me there will always be a set of images that stick with you through life. I have a small set of these on permanent display in my memory. Several of them include looking up from some book I've been intoxicated by, noticing the winter sunlight streaming in a window and feeling completely at peace with the world, or resting in the heat of an Ottawa summer.

Many others, however, are set to "water view." The scene, from the top of a granite boulder at the foot of Mt Stenhouse, reminded my of the hours I would whittle away up in the fork of an old tree on Darlings Island. I must have been around 9 or 10 years old. I would sit there - looking out over the lake, wishing the tree could swallow me up, or open like some porthole to a fantasy country (I'd read the Narnia series many times at this age). It was a dreaming scene: water, sky, trees, leaves and more water.

That view from the boulder top gave me the same, dreamy feeling I had as a kid. It was one of those rare moments that leaves me completely satisfied with where I am, and what I am doing.

Most of the time, I ache for home. I miss Canada, and the geography and the ocean like its some phantom limb. I realize how trite that sounds, but it is utterly true.

So these short, surprising moments are an absolute blessing. It draws those two worlds together. And though I remain far from my family and old and dear friends, sitting on a chunk of stone, overlooking the ocean with the wind in my hair and a kingdom of dragonflies overhead is as close to that childhood as I ever get. It has made the month worthwhile.

i have stolen from y'all

2007-02-07T23:54:00.000-08:00

These poems were posted on the Guardian for a poetry workshop modified by Jane Hadfield. They were brought to my attention by the young Canadian poet Ariel Gordon.

First of all: kudos to Ariel, for her wonderful poem Seven months: the navel-gaze (see below for full text).

Here, what runs just before Ariel's poem, is A Starving Man Turns his Nose up at an Apple, by Philip Rush.
The close of Rush's poem tickled my tiny, clotted heart - as Ondaatje did, mentioned in an earlier post.

(Do I know who Philip Rush is? No I do not).

A Starving Man Turns his Nose up at an Apple

Don't sell me the optical illusion line
I don't buy it
the savagery of them
the lack of knife and forkness of them
the brutality of them
the noise
the self-important keeping the doctor awayness of them

Don't sell me the Cezanne meets the Beatles line
I don't buy it

the crunch and spray of them
the bared teeth of them
the acidic gargle
the nibbled core nibble nibble nibble like a squirrel like a
timelapse monster
maggot mouth nibble nibble core
the ridiculously unfair social acceptance of them

Don't sell me the costermonger great tradition line
I don't buy it
not even in a crisp flicky brown paper bag I don't buy it

their dishonesty
their cloning
their amateur clockwork GM status
their crunch
their crunchy crunchy crunch

their smack of the lip
their spray of sticky
their acid bite
their bared teeth
their crunchy crunchy crunch

the way always a bit of skin
wedges in your teeth till it rots

their beauty
their seduction
the way you cannot share them you can only threaten or
intimidate

a man in a film who eats an apple
is always what the experts call
'an unsympathetic character'

a woman in a film who eats an apple
is always hiding a serpent
between her breasts

the fruit of eternal damnation
the orchards of death
the maggot of crunch
the many-blossomed avenues of purgatory
the tart ambassador of suicide
the selfish picnic

imagine a man

eating raw steak
on a train

licking his fingers
the blood
daintily daintily daintily

- Philip Rush

==================================

Seven months: the navel-gaze

My belly button is a fairy ring just about to turn
into wet clippings and mulch a drain
grout half gone that sucks and gurgles
as the basin empties
my belly button is a muddy worm run
just before it rains and the whole thing sinks in on itself
the perforated flank made whole
by too much too much

My belly button was a dime store notion
punctuation between gastro and intestinal uro and genital
my belly button intact is the last gasp of before
when a slowing metabolism and slouch economics
what called loudest from the cupboard
were the roundest
of my concerns

My belly button has become a third eye winking
from beneath shirts riding up pants slung low
my sage on high and my carnie crystal ball reader
my belly button has become my keeled over canary
and my abandoned mine shaft while you sputter
turn over several times daily
like any old engine.

- Ariel Gordon

and we're still alive

2007-02-07T23:24:00.000-08:00

Al Purdy doing something fine.

On Being Human
When my mother went to the hospital
after a fall alone in her bedroom
I was eighteen miles away
trying to build a house

I visited her later
and something in my face made her say
“I thought you’d feel terrible”
and she meant that I’d be devastated
by what had happened to her
— I wasn’t feeling anything very much
at the time and I guess it showed
just thinking I’d have to travel
those eighteen miles every day
to visit her and grumbling to myself
At that moment
she had seen behind the shutters
normally drawn across the human face
and suddenly realized
there wasn’t much if any
affection for her in my face
and that knowledge
was worse than her injuries.

But there is no going back in time
to do anything about it now
if something wasn’t done then
and nothing was
She died not much later
her mind disoriented
forgetting what happened to her
but I remember those last words
list them first
among the things I’m ashamed of
as intolerable as realizing
your whole life has been wasted
— remembering my cousin’s words
about her drunken brother:
“It would have been better
if he’d never lived at all”

I remember those last words
before the fever took her mind
and the only good thing now
is thinking about those words
and she is instantly
restored to life
in my mind
and repeats the same words
“I thought you’d feel terrible.”
again and again and again
and I’m still ashamed
and I’m still alive

— Al Purdy, from Rooms for rent in the outer planets

good as new, alas

2007-01-21T23:06:00.000-08:00

Epitaph on a Tyrant

Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,
And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;
He knew human folly like the back of his hand,
And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;
When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,
And when he cried the little children died in the streets.

- W.H. Auden

After shooting Gregory - and before

2007-01-21T22:36:00.000-08:00

When I was 17, a crazy boy in my school used to stalk me. He told his doctor that we'd been in love, but that I had abandoned him. Then, he told his friends and various peers the same. For a short while, he was committed and on a suicide watch. This caused a small sensation in my school, and I was one-half of the focus of a body of jittery teens and several creepy teachers who seemed to find the situation salacious.

I was furious with despair because people didn't take the seriousness of my problem conundrum to heart (and he was a ghastly, whining kid, who had brought a gun to school long before people were regularly shooting each other in classrooms across North America; which, in hindsight, is scary).

Well, it was during all of this high-school drama that I read this poem and loved it.

Who says poetry isn't a balm for a troubled heart (or adolescent temper)?

After shooting Gregory
this is what happened

I'd shot him well and careful
made it explode under his heart
so it wouldn't last long and
was about to walk away
when this chicken paddles out to him
and as he was falling hops on his neck
digs the beak into his throat
straightens legs and heaves
a red and blue vein out

Meanwhile he fell
and the chicken walked away

still tugging at the vein till
it was 12 yards long
as if it held that body like a kite
Gregory's last words being

get away from me yer stupid chicken

- Michael Ondaatje

old favourites

2007-01-18T01:26:00.000-08:00

One Art

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

- Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

- Elizabeth Bishop

at 28 in September

2007-01-02T23:59:00.000-08:00

I cannot remember what the dinner conversation was about, but I vaguely remember the hostesses then boyfriend: Tall, sleepy, sultry and sullen, he seeped disdain for everything but her.

During the beautiful meal, my dinner companion mentioned that I had just come off duty as my sister’s birth coach for her first child.

Our hostess turned to me brightly. “How wonderful," she said. "Would you like to come for dinner on Tuesday night? We are having guests that I think would love to speak with you. He's from Africa.” (exhale.)

I could not: I had work.

A part of me was impressed by this networking style. Everyone else I knew seemed to enjoy a purposeful, truculent gaucheness.

Yet how easy it was for her to work a crowd. How graceful.

from the shore

2007-01-02T22:38:00.000-08:00

I remember a series of lakes near our home in Gates Brook. I remember one summer at dusk, a few neighbours had buried one end of a long plank, deep under a pile of heavy stones. The rest of its length jutted out over the black water of the lake.

A damp life vest was tied around my chest and neck, and was cold, musty and heavy.

I fell off the board from a crouch, and the waters closed over my head, just long enough wink out the lights of the day's end, before I surfaced in a splutter.

I don’t remember being afraid. It felt like magic. It felt like a story book.

from the bridge

2007-01-02T22:22:00.000-08:00

Further down the river the tall eel grass grew and we were told that enormous lampreys lurked. The current could be strong under the bridge and every child who did jump would surface fast, to swim at top speed to the river’s edge. Nobody wanted to get stuck in eel territory. Occasionally someone from another neighbourhood would float downriver in an inflatable tire or on a raft that left their legs dangling.

We shuddered over the horros awaiting them and the impossible feat of returning unbitten. Then we would leap again, scramble out at top speed again, and rush up the banks to the bridge again; pausing for moments to devour the wild, dusty and viciously sour cherries that grew alongside the road. They tasted like river clay, lemons and summer heat. We ate handfuls.