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Click <a href="http://www.asianweek.com/2001_05_18/opinion1_emilamok.html">here<a/>for some interesting writing by Emil Guillermo of AsianWeek.com.
Or, here it is:
<b>Part I: My International Incident</b>
I didnt want to start an international incident, but what do you expect from an amok with a knife? But first, let me explain why Im in Hong Kong, SAR. The appendage stands for Special Administrative Region, which means its China and its not. It depends on how much money you have.
Ive been put to a special test for Asian American Heritage Month. It didnt start out that way. It was quite innocent, really. Pacific News Service, the news organization for which Ive hosted and produced the television program, NCM-TV: New California Media The New America Now, has sent me to Asia to do stories in HK. (You can see the shows starting next Friday, May 25 on KCSM-TV at 7:30 p.m. and again at midnight, and on Saturday at 4:30 p.m.)
It was going to be fun. Hong Kong, high-rises, flat noodle chow mein, The World of Suzy Wong. Have you ever been? Have you ever tasted? To get a sense of it all, just go to Chinatown in San Francisco, say anywhere off Grant, and stand on any street corner and look up. Imagine everything you see multiplied by a factor of 7 million. Thats Hong Kong.
Use a 14 million-factor if youre in Oaklands Chinatown.
100 million if youre in Chinatown-Houston, Texas.
300 million if youre in Chinatown-Des Moines, Iowa. Theres got to be one of those. If not, and you happen to be in Iowa, just look at a corn silo and imagine each yellow kernel as an Asian in a $6,000 a month condo. Thats Hong Kong.
Hong Kong is all about overload. In Chinese.
And that was my test.
Im not Chinese. I can point at a dim sum tray. And I know the difference between lo mein and romaine. But Im not Chinese. Am I Asian? Asian-looking, but definitely not Asian. Yes, theres pure Asian blood. But not nearly enough Asian. Too much Mission District. Does that make me Asian American? Yes, but as Ive written in the past, that phrase is just an umbrella term for the census. Or in a more intimate perspective, the term provides politicos a decent set of love handles to hold onto as they perform that supreme act that is sometimes nice and sometimes not.
So whats left? Am I American? Definitely. Sometimes. For passport purposes, all the time. And for one not-so shining moment in Hong Kong, 100 percent of the time.
I am here among other things to cover the Global Economic Conference sponsored by Fortune Magazine. CEOs from around the world have paid $5,000 dollars to be part of a three day affair that includes luminaries from companies like Sybase. Bet you didnt know CEO John Chens company provides the software that runs Chinas income tax system.
And theres Qualcomm, QCOM in Nasdaq speak, just one of the big winners recently in the China sweepstakes. Qualcomm owns the patent to CDMA (code division multiple access). Its one of the mobile technologies used in the United States, but not yet in China, which uses GSM (global standard for mobile). This week, China announced that it would build-up CDMA infrastructure. To American companies its worth over $1.5 billion.
Moral: Dont let the spy plane talk muddle your senses, Chinas all about money these days. No one can afford to be its enemy. Theres too much money to be made in China to blow it up. Over Taiwan? Dont be nuts. Then again, George Bush did trade away Sammy Sosa.
At the conference, the main attraction are speeches by Chinese President Jiang Zemin and former U.S. President Bill Clinton. Throw in the Premier of Thailand, and along with the captains of industry, you have the other side of an official governmental summit. You have the real top guns talking bottom line stuff. The only relevant ideology? Cold hard cash.
So at an event like this security is tight. They put the media riff-raff in another building so as not to soil the event. All access to the event is controlled. By remote cameras, reporters are allowed to eavesdrop like spies.
And now for my amok moment. I was queued up to enter the hall where Bill Clinton would give his speech. Even an ex-president in disgrace merits an extensive media search. At the Hong Kong Convention Center, the metal detector folks had the full complement of police officers and security officials, where the request was made to unload any cans or water bottles at the checkpoint. I could imagine that at say, a Raider game. But at a business luncheon in a convention center?
I was dutiful. And as I was about to pass through the x-ray gate, I reached into my pocket and offered up my handy dandy 1-inch pocketknife, bought from my local Sears. Its a small sharp pointed blade with a serrated edge, a key chain model that comes with an LED light to figure out what hole to stick your key in, not which victim youd like to puncture.
But I should have known. Knife. Asian male. Amok?
It all spelled bad news. Especially in Asia.
A pair of security guards took me off to the side for questioning. As one began to examine my knife, the other began his probe. You bring knife to see Mr. Clinton? said one plainclothes Hong Kong officer. Why you bring knife to see Mr.Clinton?
I explained it was just a key-chain knife I carry to open boxes, slice food. In fact, I used it in the morning to cut some mangoes I bought at a grocery store.
Mangoes? said the police officer.
This required a higher level of official to ponder. The junior one engaged a senior one on his walkie-talkie in Chinese.
In the meantime, as I turned casually, to my left and in path was a replica of Chow Yun-Fat. I turned to my right, and there was another Fat clone. Just making sure I didnt make a mad dash to freedom.
Soon there were eight of them. One of me. And a 1-inch pocket knife. The officers took me up a non-working escalator to an isolated part of the convention center, presumably for more questioning. Welcome to Hong Kong.
<b>Part II: My International Incident</b>
Ive seen and heard of too many stories about police taking minorities into hidden places for a little, as they say, probing. But I am in Hong Kong, not the South. Not in parts of L.A. even.
And Im not nearly as amok as I am inclined to be. Im positively restrained and outnumbered, as eight plainclothes police take me up a flight of non-working escalators to an isolated, closed-off part of the Hong Kong convention center.
Besides Im like them, an Asian, right?
There are no race cards to play here, buddy.
I was in Asia attending a global economic conference given by Fortune Magazine, and doing stories for NCM-TV: New California Media, the television show I host and produce.
My cameraman was already in the venue setting up to cover a speech by former President Clinton. I was queued up at security when I offered up my one-inch knife to them for safekeeping.
Now, when do the bad guys ever turn in their weapons for safekeeping?
The knife was a one-inch key-chain special, a serrated-blade that never needs sharpening. It even has a handy infrared light so I can put my keys in the right hole.
This is a tool of modern convenience, not a weapon!
So now I was caught in the web of Chinese bureaucracy. Its my own Kafka scenario. In Chinese. Is this what they mean by rule of law? I am caught in the intricacies of interpretation. Knife, not good. Man at Clinton speech with knife. Man, not good. SOUND THE ALARMS, WE HAVE A CRIMINAL PRESENT!
Of course, while Im thinking all this, Im trying to be cool and diplomatic, trying hard not to look like the exasperated American. But everyone is speaking Cantonese. Ive seen this Bruce Lee movie. Im supposed to take out all eight of these guys and slide down the inclined glass walls. Or was that a Jackie Chan movie?
Forget the movie, my freedom is being taken away from me by the second. Im chafing against the loss of freedom. I need some baby powder. Baby oil. I need something to slide me through this mess.
When we get to the top of the escalator, it is clear, I am dealing with powerless bureaucrats. Theyd make the airport security guards at SFO seem like FBI agents. No, no. They make even bigger gaffes. Theyre not just doing their jobs. Still, Im not sure about these guys, who seem to need permission to breathe. Im trapped until walkie-talkie 1 gets to walkie-talkie 2, who then insists they confer with walkie-talkie 3. In person. That is, if walkie-talkie 3 can find us.
We have now moved to a dormant part of the convention center, the one that Benny Hinn didnt rent (yes, the evangelist, hes here too, quite coincidentally. Perhaps I should have him save me).
Why not? My advocate was one ineffective corporate PR type from Time Warner, an ex-pat Brit who was totally useless. I initially tagged her Time Magazine, to which she snapped, NOT the magazine, corporate. Imagine me confusing her with an institution of journalism.
Finally, after some Chinese is spoken, I am brought to the police headquarters at the convention. This is it, I thought. I will be taken away to a small island. They will hang me like those ducks in the window. They will make me eat taro root whole.
But instead, they sit me down, take my passport number. They take my knife and give it to its very own police escort. Me, they allow me to walk and cover Clintons speech.
He says nothing new.
When its over, my knife escort leads me past the security point, and my knife is handed back to me.
As I walk away, theres a voice from behind. Sorry, about all this, says the Time corporate PR person.
With each step I am re-acquainted with freedom. And then I realize what has been taken away.
This is news! What were they doing here! I see my comrades in the press. Was this such a ho-hum sort of occurrence?
I was detained for a key chain! I tell them.
That was you? said one cameraman, who admitted to immediately tucking away his massive leatherman tool with a three-inch blade, when the scuttlebutt reached some reporters.
Other reporters were more blasé. Thats nice, said one jaded journo. Oh, what a cutthroat business.
Later at a news conference, I asked Mike Rowse, the top Hong Kong executive behind the conference about my knife. In the journalistic-third person, of course, not to call any further attention to myself.
My question came as a coincidental follow-up to charges of real police brutality made by some protestors who had gathered outside the convention the last few days.
My press conference question cum speech: Im usually skeptical of such charges, but given the experience of a western journalist, being detained by no less than eight police over a harmless one-inch knife, isnt this a sign that the police may be prone to over-react?
Rowse bristled. Knife? Journalist? He was proud the police had done their jobs. A one-inch knife can kill, he said.
Frankly, I had a hard enough time cutting a big mango for breakfast that morning. Let me put it this way, if John Wilkes Booth had my knife, he would not be immortal today.
The next day, leave it to Hong Kongs British-inspired tab, the HK I-Mail to recognize a bloody injustice when they see it. On page three, right under the story of Clintons big speech before a global economic conference read: Seizure of knife journalist defended.
Knife Journalist?
Seized, detained, call it what you will, I still feel the compromise of the moment.
Alas, my case is but a minor one. During my visit to Hong Kong several protestors charged the police with brutality. Two Falun Gong members from New York were detained at the Hong Kong airport and deported. Later, it was revealed Hong Kong has a blacklist of Falun Gong members. And then theres the case of Hong Kong University professor Dr. Li Shaomin, an American citizen who crossed into the mainland and was detained February 25. Only last week did Beijing reveal that Dr. Li was being charged with being a spy for Taiwan, four months after disappearing mysteriously upon arrest.
Or, here it is:
<b>Part I: My International Incident</b>
I didnt want to start an international incident, but what do you expect from an amok with a knife? But first, let me explain why Im in Hong Kong, SAR. The appendage stands for Special Administrative Region, which means its China and its not. It depends on how much money you have.
Ive been put to a special test for Asian American Heritage Month. It didnt start out that way. It was quite innocent, really. Pacific News Service, the news organization for which Ive hosted and produced the television program, NCM-TV: New California Media The New America Now, has sent me to Asia to do stories in HK. (You can see the shows starting next Friday, May 25 on KCSM-TV at 7:30 p.m. and again at midnight, and on Saturday at 4:30 p.m.)
It was going to be fun. Hong Kong, high-rises, flat noodle chow mein, The World of Suzy Wong. Have you ever been? Have you ever tasted? To get a sense of it all, just go to Chinatown in San Francisco, say anywhere off Grant, and stand on any street corner and look up. Imagine everything you see multiplied by a factor of 7 million. Thats Hong Kong.
Use a 14 million-factor if youre in Oaklands Chinatown.
100 million if youre in Chinatown-Houston, Texas.
300 million if youre in Chinatown-Des Moines, Iowa. Theres got to be one of those. If not, and you happen to be in Iowa, just look at a corn silo and imagine each yellow kernel as an Asian in a $6,000 a month condo. Thats Hong Kong.
Hong Kong is all about overload. In Chinese.
And that was my test.
Im not Chinese. I can point at a dim sum tray. And I know the difference between lo mein and romaine. But Im not Chinese. Am I Asian? Asian-looking, but definitely not Asian. Yes, theres pure Asian blood. But not nearly enough Asian. Too much Mission District. Does that make me Asian American? Yes, but as Ive written in the past, that phrase is just an umbrella term for the census. Or in a more intimate perspective, the term provides politicos a decent set of love handles to hold onto as they perform that supreme act that is sometimes nice and sometimes not.
So whats left? Am I American? Definitely. Sometimes. For passport purposes, all the time. And for one not-so shining moment in Hong Kong, 100 percent of the time.
I am here among other things to cover the Global Economic Conference sponsored by Fortune Magazine. CEOs from around the world have paid $5,000 dollars to be part of a three day affair that includes luminaries from companies like Sybase. Bet you didnt know CEO John Chens company provides the software that runs Chinas income tax system.
And theres Qualcomm, QCOM in Nasdaq speak, just one of the big winners recently in the China sweepstakes. Qualcomm owns the patent to CDMA (code division multiple access). Its one of the mobile technologies used in the United States, but not yet in China, which uses GSM (global standard for mobile). This week, China announced that it would build-up CDMA infrastructure. To American companies its worth over $1.5 billion.
Moral: Dont let the spy plane talk muddle your senses, Chinas all about money these days. No one can afford to be its enemy. Theres too much money to be made in China to blow it up. Over Taiwan? Dont be nuts. Then again, George Bush did trade away Sammy Sosa.
At the conference, the main attraction are speeches by Chinese President Jiang Zemin and former U.S. President Bill Clinton. Throw in the Premier of Thailand, and along with the captains of industry, you have the other side of an official governmental summit. You have the real top guns talking bottom line stuff. The only relevant ideology? Cold hard cash.
So at an event like this security is tight. They put the media riff-raff in another building so as not to soil the event. All access to the event is controlled. By remote cameras, reporters are allowed to eavesdrop like spies.
And now for my amok moment. I was queued up to enter the hall where Bill Clinton would give his speech. Even an ex-president in disgrace merits an extensive media search. At the Hong Kong Convention Center, the metal detector folks had the full complement of police officers and security officials, where the request was made to unload any cans or water bottles at the checkpoint. I could imagine that at say, a Raider game. But at a business luncheon in a convention center?
I was dutiful. And as I was about to pass through the x-ray gate, I reached into my pocket and offered up my handy dandy 1-inch pocketknife, bought from my local Sears. Its a small sharp pointed blade with a serrated edge, a key chain model that comes with an LED light to figure out what hole to stick your key in, not which victim youd like to puncture.
But I should have known. Knife. Asian male. Amok?
It all spelled bad news. Especially in Asia.
A pair of security guards took me off to the side for questioning. As one began to examine my knife, the other began his probe. You bring knife to see Mr. Clinton? said one plainclothes Hong Kong officer. Why you bring knife to see Mr.Clinton?
I explained it was just a key-chain knife I carry to open boxes, slice food. In fact, I used it in the morning to cut some mangoes I bought at a grocery store.
Mangoes? said the police officer.
This required a higher level of official to ponder. The junior one engaged a senior one on his walkie-talkie in Chinese.
In the meantime, as I turned casually, to my left and in path was a replica of Chow Yun-Fat. I turned to my right, and there was another Fat clone. Just making sure I didnt make a mad dash to freedom.
Soon there were eight of them. One of me. And a 1-inch pocket knife. The officers took me up a non-working escalator to an isolated part of the convention center, presumably for more questioning. Welcome to Hong Kong.
<b>Part II: My International Incident</b>
Ive seen and heard of too many stories about police taking minorities into hidden places for a little, as they say, probing. But I am in Hong Kong, not the South. Not in parts of L.A. even.
And Im not nearly as amok as I am inclined to be. Im positively restrained and outnumbered, as eight plainclothes police take me up a flight of non-working escalators to an isolated, closed-off part of the Hong Kong convention center.
Besides Im like them, an Asian, right?
There are no race cards to play here, buddy.
I was in Asia attending a global economic conference given by Fortune Magazine, and doing stories for NCM-TV: New California Media, the television show I host and produce.
My cameraman was already in the venue setting up to cover a speech by former President Clinton. I was queued up at security when I offered up my one-inch knife to them for safekeeping.
Now, when do the bad guys ever turn in their weapons for safekeeping?
The knife was a one-inch key-chain special, a serrated-blade that never needs sharpening. It even has a handy infrared light so I can put my keys in the right hole.
This is a tool of modern convenience, not a weapon!
So now I was caught in the web of Chinese bureaucracy. Its my own Kafka scenario. In Chinese. Is this what they mean by rule of law? I am caught in the intricacies of interpretation. Knife, not good. Man at Clinton speech with knife. Man, not good. SOUND THE ALARMS, WE HAVE A CRIMINAL PRESENT!
Of course, while Im thinking all this, Im trying to be cool and diplomatic, trying hard not to look like the exasperated American. But everyone is speaking Cantonese. Ive seen this Bruce Lee movie. Im supposed to take out all eight of these guys and slide down the inclined glass walls. Or was that a Jackie Chan movie?
Forget the movie, my freedom is being taken away from me by the second. Im chafing against the loss of freedom. I need some baby powder. Baby oil. I need something to slide me through this mess.
When we get to the top of the escalator, it is clear, I am dealing with powerless bureaucrats. Theyd make the airport security guards at SFO seem like FBI agents. No, no. They make even bigger gaffes. Theyre not just doing their jobs. Still, Im not sure about these guys, who seem to need permission to breathe. Im trapped until walkie-talkie 1 gets to walkie-talkie 2, who then insists they confer with walkie-talkie 3. In person. That is, if walkie-talkie 3 can find us.
We have now moved to a dormant part of the convention center, the one that Benny Hinn didnt rent (yes, the evangelist, hes here too, quite coincidentally. Perhaps I should have him save me).
Why not? My advocate was one ineffective corporate PR type from Time Warner, an ex-pat Brit who was totally useless. I initially tagged her Time Magazine, to which she snapped, NOT the magazine, corporate. Imagine me confusing her with an institution of journalism.
Finally, after some Chinese is spoken, I am brought to the police headquarters at the convention. This is it, I thought. I will be taken away to a small island. They will hang me like those ducks in the window. They will make me eat taro root whole.
But instead, they sit me down, take my passport number. They take my knife and give it to its very own police escort. Me, they allow me to walk and cover Clintons speech.
He says nothing new.
When its over, my knife escort leads me past the security point, and my knife is handed back to me.
As I walk away, theres a voice from behind. Sorry, about all this, says the Time corporate PR person.
With each step I am re-acquainted with freedom. And then I realize what has been taken away.
This is news! What were they doing here! I see my comrades in the press. Was this such a ho-hum sort of occurrence?
I was detained for a key chain! I tell them.
That was you? said one cameraman, who admitted to immediately tucking away his massive leatherman tool with a three-inch blade, when the scuttlebutt reached some reporters.
Other reporters were more blasé. Thats nice, said one jaded journo. Oh, what a cutthroat business.
Later at a news conference, I asked Mike Rowse, the top Hong Kong executive behind the conference about my knife. In the journalistic-third person, of course, not to call any further attention to myself.
My question came as a coincidental follow-up to charges of real police brutality made by some protestors who had gathered outside the convention the last few days.
My press conference question cum speech: Im usually skeptical of such charges, but given the experience of a western journalist, being detained by no less than eight police over a harmless one-inch knife, isnt this a sign that the police may be prone to over-react?
Rowse bristled. Knife? Journalist? He was proud the police had done their jobs. A one-inch knife can kill, he said.
Frankly, I had a hard enough time cutting a big mango for breakfast that morning. Let me put it this way, if John Wilkes Booth had my knife, he would not be immortal today.
The next day, leave it to Hong Kongs British-inspired tab, the HK I-Mail to recognize a bloody injustice when they see it. On page three, right under the story of Clintons big speech before a global economic conference read: Seizure of knife journalist defended.
Knife Journalist?
Seized, detained, call it what you will, I still feel the compromise of the moment.
Alas, my case is but a minor one. During my visit to Hong Kong several protestors charged the police with brutality. Two Falun Gong members from New York were detained at the Hong Kong airport and deported. Later, it was revealed Hong Kong has a blacklist of Falun Gong members. And then theres the case of Hong Kong University professor Dr. Li Shaomin, an American citizen who crossed into the mainland and was detained February 25. Only last week did Beijing reveal that Dr. Li was being charged with being a spy for Taiwan, four months after disappearing mysteriously upon arrest.
