Title: “Flu Season / Scene & Herd Column”
Publication: Artforum Online
Date: May 2009
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JUST A WEEK BEFORE THE OPENING of ART HK 09, hundreds of international travelers were quarantined at the Wanchai Metropark Hotel—a stone’s throw from the Convention Center hosting the fair—and most passengers landing at HKG were having their temperatures screened by hazmat-suited officials. Luckily, the specter of swine flu didn’t faze most players in an Asian art market stricken with its own ailments. The hordes descended on the city as planned, perhaps reassured by a statement from ART HK promising “hand sanitizers at the entrance and at strategic points within the fair.” Or maybe, as one Beijing artist joked, people were just hoping to get quarantined at the five-star Grand Hyatt.

At the vernissage, the mood was cautiously buoyant; the fair’s unofficial motto of “better than last year” seemed to hold up at first glance. Near the entrance, new additions Gagosian, Lisson, and White Cube were working big and splashy looks (with Lisson showing wall-to-wall Julian Opie), while farther back, usual Beijing suspects such as Boers-Li, Galleria Continua, Urs Meile, Red Gate, and ShanghART mixed with a host of pan-Asian galleries like Kukje, Tomio Koyama, and Eslite, each of which showed consistently polished work. Prominent collectors and local visitors all nodded their heads approvingly and tossed about buzzwords like quality, professional, and potential. The only complaints were about the white walls (plastic instead of wood) and the white wine (undrinkable).

Better alcohol was on offer at Gagosian’s opening-night afterparty at the Pawn, which sadly seemed a victim of its own exclusivity. The historic Wanchai pawnshop-turned-lounge actually had elbow room at midnight—all the better, perhaps, for the dedicated few dancing to the’80s playlist put together by the gallery’s Nadia Chan. (Though Gagosian opened a local office last year, there’s still no word on when they’ll launch an actual gallery.) At a slightly livelier Pawn party hosted by Schuebbe Projects the following night, a few attendees offered their early assessments of the fair. Beijing/Lucerne dealer Urs Meile remarked that ART HK’s ambition to become the Art Basel of the East is not out of reach. He compared Hong Kong to Switzerland (“Same population, very practical people, forced to become very international because they are so small”) and also explained why it’s a good contrast to Beijing: “Beijing is hell––interesting hell, but hell.” Of course, art sold in China is also burdened with a 34 percent luxury tax––one advantage that tax-free Hong Kong holds.

A highlight of the fair’s programs was the Asia Art Archive’s “Backroom Conversations,” a series of screenings and panels that aimed to give an intellectual counterweight to the market madness. The afternoon premiere of the AAA’s new documentary, From Jean-Paul Sartre to Teresa Teng: Contemporary Cantonese Art in the 1980s, was standing-room-only, and even Sir David Tang (founder of Shanghai Tang and the China Club, art collector, and general cultural pundit) was in attendance. In her introduction, AAA chair and art historian Jane Debevoise discussed the “complex and important reasons” that Guangdong is overlooked in art-history books. It’s a topic close to the hearts of the Hong Kong artists, curators, writers, and dealers who have also felt left out of the narrative (and/or bubble) of Chinese contemporary art. When Sir David in effect called Hong Kong artists lazy for relying on the government to support an arts scene while the ’80s Guangdong artists created their own, an irate woman shouted him down, telling him he didn’t know anything about Hong Kong art.

The state of Chinese contemporary art was clearly on everyone’s minds, and it was specifically explored in another panel, “China Focus: Reinvesting in Contemporary Chinese Art.” Moderated by dealer Johnson Chang, critic Hu Fang, artist Qiu Anxiong, collector Uli Sigg, curator Pauline J. Yao, and Artforum’s own Phil Tinari, the group weighed in, agreeing on certain points: Everything is in flux, artists will be tested, and Mainland criticality has to step it up. In a more combative panel later that evening, the London debate forum Intelligence Squared made its Asian debut with the polemical topic “Finders, Not Keepers! Cultural Treasures Belong in Their Country of Origin.” Inspired by the recent YSL auction debacles regarding the Old Summer Palace bronze animal heads, several distinguished men with British accents (including Sir David, again) spoke for and against the motion, which was moderated by CNN anchor and Twitter enthusiast Kristie Lu Stout. In the end, the audience voted 110 for, 247 against; apparently, people like the Elgin Marbles just where they are.

As the fair plunged into the weekend, visitors were lured farther afield by various openings: Li Qing at Hanart TZ, Yan Lei and MC Yan at Tang Contemporary, and two interrelated shows at 10 Chancery Lane Gallery: photographs by Dinh Q. Lê at the Soho space, and, at the gallery’s annex in the Chai Wan Industrial district, a group show of young Vietnamese artists curated by Lê and Zoe Butt. The latter’s warehouse after party stretched late into Saturday night, mixing young Hong Kong artists like Lee Kit, Chow Chun Fai, and Warren Leung Chi Wo and his wife, Sara Wong Chi Hang, who compared the annex space with the sizes of their own studios with artists Rirkrit Tiravanija and Michael Lin.

By Sunday evening, the fair was all but over––except for those who were staying for the opening of the Louis Vuitton exhibition, “A Passion for Creation,” opening at the Hong Kong Museum of Art several days later. News circulated about big purchases of works by Damien Hirst, Opie, and Gilbert & George, but most galleries went home with few sales. Robin Peckham of Boers-Li Gallery twittered a glum summary of the scene: “Art HK winners: major Western galleries, local Hong Kong galleries. Big losers: major mainland galleries.”

Title: “Ourselves Beside Me” (note: as of publication time, the band was still using the name ‘Ourself Beside Me’)
Publication: Theme Magazine
Date: Dec/Jan 2008/2009
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Sweet Factory is a tiny recording studio unexpectedly tucked into a nondescript apartment complex outside Beijing’s 3rd Ring Road.

Inside, three girls in jeans and vintage shirts—known as Ourself Beside Me—are lounging on the couch and shag carpet, one idly toying with a tambourine as the engineer and producer set up to record their debut album. It hardly looks like Beijing rock history in the making, but sometimes evolution is a pretty subtle thing.

The retro trio has quickly become one of Beijing’s buzziest acts. Guitarist and singer Yang Fan is hardly new to hype—while still a teenager she founded Hang On The Box, the iconic all-girl punk band that helped define the Chinese underground in the nineties. After HOTB disbanded last year, Yang (now 27) turned in her studded collar and formed Ourself Beside Me with friends Xie Han (21, bass, film student) and Emi Namihira (27, drums, a Japanese student who studied Chinese for a year and never went back). Befitting a new, more expansive era of Beijing music, they began forging an electrifying new sound—that is, an older one.

“Syd Barrett!” Yang Fan and Xie Han both exclaim, when asked about influences; Yang Fan discovered rock’n’roll in middle school via Pink Floyd’s The Wall—it was cheaper than the other cassettes and had better cover art. This psychedelic affinity permeates their songs, but filtered through tight, mannered melody lines and a rhythmic, garage-y thump, all underlying Yang Fan’s trademark whisper/shout of oblique English lyrics. The interweaving of guitar and bass bears traces of Talking Heads, The Fall, Television, and the Velvet Underground, with an insistent twist.

Producer Yang Haisong (founder of veteran rock band PK 14) has his work cut out for him trying to get OBM’s debut disc right; the band’s paradoxically meandering but tight live presence isn’t easy to capture. But what kind of sound are they looking for, Xie Han considers. “Hmm…More like ourself.” She shouldn’t worry too much. Smack in the midst of Beijing’s ever-mutating scene, there’s no one else who sounds quite like Ourself anyhow.

Le French May might be in full swing, but there’s an unofficial parallel event you may not have noticed: the decampment of Hong Kong’s top film industry players to the beaches of south France. Why? For Cannes, bien sûr!

Now in its sixty-first year, the venerable Cannes Film Festival runs from May 14-25. Featuring its trademark blend of high-brow and Hollywood (where else can you catch a double-feature of the new Wim Wenders flick and the long-awaited Indiana Jones?).

Though few Asian films are appearing this year, some interesting entries from our neighbours made the cut, including 24 City, Jia Zhangke latest bleak look at China’s development, My Magic, a Tamil-language drama by Singapore’s Eric Khoo, and Serbis, by up-and-coming Filipino director Brillante Mendoza.

But hold the presses! If the stars align, Hong Kong’s go-to auteur Wong Kar-wai will have by now premiered Ashes of Time Redux! If you’re not up on your WKW-ology, Ashes of Time is Wong’s 1994 foray into wu xia (martial-arts fantasy), and features an entire generation of Hong Kong stars in their luscious youth, including Maggie Cheung, Tony Leung (both of ‘em!), and the late great Leslie Cheung. Depending on who you ask, it’s either regarded as a pretentious misfire or an overlooked masterpiece. Perhaps the Redux version will convince more viewers of the latter (though in the case of Apolcalypse Now, the re-release only served to confuse matters).

According to long-swirling rumours, the film will not only be re-mastered and restored for sound and image quality, but also re-edited with a new score by cellist Yo-Yo Ma. Wong is known for his dramatic Cannes appearances, such as the anxiety-fraught debut of 2046 (originally scheduled, then cancelled, in 2003; then barely making its 2004 screening), so some have been sceptical that Ashes … will be finished in time. Hopefully it will, as there is an entire Facebook group called ‘Support a Standing Ovation for Leslie Cheung at Cannes’, with 62 members (at time of writing), who want to salute Leslie when he appears onscreen. Really, Wong fans everywhere are eager for anything that will wash away the sour taste of Blueberry.

As screenings and schmoozing are equally important at Cannes, another iconic Hong Kong director (and one who, ahem, still actually makes films here) may also be on hand. The big buzz on the local production front is that Johnnie To will direct a remake of 1970s French crime drama Le Cercle Rouge, set in Hong Kong and Macau, and possibly starring Chow Yun-Fat, Liam Neeson, and Orlando Bloom. (That high-pitched sound you hear is every Hong Kong schoolgirl squealing at the same time.) According to To’s production company, Milkyway Image Ltd., they will make a presentation at Cannes on the project ­– all they will confirm at the moment is that To and frequent collaborator Wai Ka-Fai are now writing the script, which is good enough for us.

So when Hong Kong’s film contingent returns all bronzed and champagne-fed next week, try not to be too jealous. They’re just representing for the homeland, and maybe they can even bring back some of that movie glamour in their carry-ons, like so much stolen hotel shampoo.

Title: “Expiration Dates (Sunday July 1, Hong Kong)”
(note: published in both English and French in the two editions of the journal)
Publication: Purple Journal
Date: Fall/Winter 2007/2008 (Issue #12)
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Title: “Interview: Ai Weiwei”
Publication: Artkrush (now defunct, a branch of Flavorpill)
Date: Jul 2007
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Ai Weiwei is one of the most prominent figures in Chinese contemporary art and culture. The son of legendary poet Ai Qing, the younger Ai was a founding member of the avant-garde Stars groups in the late ’70s. After living and working in New York from 1981 to1993, he returned to China and helped establish the famous Beijing East Village. Artkrush contributor Samantha Culp interviews Ai about his groundbreaking work at documenta 12, including the Fairytale project, for which he brought 1,001 Chinese citizens to Kassel — home of the Brothers Grimm.

AK: How did the idea for Fairytale come about, and how did you find 1,001 people in China willing to participate in a project in Germany?

AW: I grew up in Xinjiang within a hardcore communist society — we got all our education in labor camps. Today, it’s a very different time; the development of political, economic, and technical systems has brought us to a completely new age.

At the same time, I think the old systems and power structures, based on the old thinking, are still here — especially in China, but also in the West. I believe that personal awareness and experience is absolutely essential for social change; that change should be based on an individual confrontation with reality.

When documenta asked me to do a project, I really wanted to do this exercise, Fairytale, of bringing 1,001 people to the event as a kind of disruptive intervention. It wasn’t a specific commentary on documenta — any other show or fair still operates within the old framework of thought. This way of presenting [art], the kind of communication, who’s doing what, how it’s received — it’s all based on the old structure. My project draws from personal effort and results in an individual engagement, no matter who the viewer is — somebody who’s art-savvy or somebody who doesn’t know art at all, but is just willing to have contact with this experience.

I recruited participants on my personal blog. The whole process went so well on the Internet; we couldn’t have done it otherwise. People really had a sense of trust in this new channel of expression, which was very encouraging. I didn’t know them, they didn’t know me, but we could still communicate well. Still, it was more or less intangible until the time when everyone actually got on the bus. I was very touched and impressed to finally see everyone as a real person.

AK: What were some of the biggest challenges of bringing such a large group to Kassel?

AW: It’s still a miracle to me that this happened without any big complications or tragedies. When I gave my concept to my gallerist, Urs Meile, he didn’t hesitate. He knew the budget it would need, but immediately thought it was a good idea. A week later, he already had the contract — I didn’t even read it, because I have complete trust in him. [Two private Swiss foundations helped fund the project.]

For the participants, everyone had to get a passport, which isn’t easy in China — you need to return to your home province just to apply. But people just did it. Nobody in those 1,001 ever mentioned it to me, but I know it was difficult in terms of money and time.

We designed a dormitory in Kassel for them so that they could eat well, sleep well, and have a good, relaxing time. On one hand, they retain a sense of security and a sense of identity, but they’re also cut off from their original sociocultural structure. We did everything possible to find the right location, to design the interior and the installation structure to create symbolic surroundings for their mental condition. We even brought cooks who made homestyle Chinese dishes three times a day.

They came in five groups of 200 each — the maximum that the dormitory could hold and that the airline could accommodate.

AK: In the end, how do you think the participants felt about the whole experience?

AW: They came from all over China. I don’t think anyone from Taiwan or Tibet applied, but the rest — 20 provinces — are all represented. They have all kinds of backgrounds: government people, policemen, people without jobs, workers, farmers, gardeners, fishermen. Almost none of them have been outside China before, and nobody speaks German.

They came excited, and they left… well, some are sorry they couldn’t stay a bit longer. It’s like a dream; they said it’s affected their lives and the way they look at the world. Maybe that’s just sentimental poetics, but anyhow, I really think a new awareness has been added to their lives.

AK: You also created physical works as a part of Fairytale — a massive construction of doors, salvaged from Ming- and Qing-dynasty houses and an installation of 1,001 chairs, from the same historical periods. During a storm in Kassel, the open-air door construction collapsed, and you decided to leave it as is.

AW: I think that an exhibition is just a moment in the whole process. Of course, some artists might want to make a permanent, unique, perfect condition [of their work], but I never think that way.

The structural work involved 1,000 pieces of doors and windows, and it took 20 people 20 days to put it up. After six days of exhibition, a storm destroyed it — it wasn’t completely broken, but it was heavily damaged. They’re old windows from the ruins of China, and they quickly became ruins again. For me, that’s OK. The weight hasn’t changed, just the shape. If I “correct” it, I’m saying that this shape isn’t as “good” as the one before.

The chairs for Fairytale were put in and moved around the exhibition halls, one for each participant. People loved it. It gives the exhibition a very special feeling, because the 1,001 chairs have been everywhere. And [laughing], when you look at contemporary art today, you need a place to sit.

AK: These sculptures, as well as much of your previous work and interest in architecture, seem to blur the lines between “art” and “design.” How do you feel that the two overlap? Is there any meaningful line between them?

AW: That’s always the question… how or when it becomes art, why is this real, what’s fake, and what’s the value related to it. If I design, I change a condition that can either be art or a chair. With these chairs, I didn’t change anything. The chairs show the status of the owner — people have a hierarchy everywhere. Traveling to Kassel, they’ve totally lost their design context, but I didn’t do anything but add the title to the bottom of the chair. Like Fairytale itself, it uses the concept of design as a readymade to question and challenge these categories.

AK: What interests you about architecture?

AW: I think it’s everywhere. Architecture to me is more or less a gesture. It relates to the situation today of what is necessary and unnecessary, what to control and not to control. It’s the same kind of exercise as art, but under very different conditions. It’s much more political because you have to deal with state policy, development, labor, and production, and then it always becomes a social activity because it’s public.

AK: Particularly in designing art spaces, such as the new gallery spaces, artists’ studios, and cultural center in Caochangdi, outside Beijing, how do you deal with the constraints of the “white cube”?

AW: In an art space, you design for no particular user, and you try to find a maximum usage for the space and its possible uses. The spatial conditions must be right, as well as the lighting. It should have an identity; at the same time, the identity should fit into the landscape.

AK: What do you think about the current state of Chinese art and the influence of the market on it?

AW: All of these bubbles are made by people, and people understand them. There are always bubbles. They affect the quality of work and the attention given, but I don’t think it will last, and I don’t think the good work will be affected.

AK: What projects do you currently have in progress?

AW: I have to prepare several shows — a lot of deadlines to meet. I’m doing a large documentary film [about Fairytale], which currently consists of 1,500 hours of footage. The final film will be over six or eight hours, and there are about 20 directors working on it. It follows the participants before their trip — what’s on their minds, what their lives are like. I want to show it to the general public. It may be the largest single documentary ever made.

AK: Are you considering moving more into filmmaking?

AW: That’s what I’m thinking; I’m a little bit tired of producing objects. Film is still attractive to me because I know very little about it. I like all kinds of films. I think that films are a kind of fantasy where we try to make another reality. We can be charmed. It’s magical.

Ai Weiwei’s Fairytale can be seen at documenta 12 in Kassel, Germany, until September 23. His work is also on view in the group shows China Welcomes You… Desires, Struggles, New Identities at Kunsthaus Graz in Graz, Austria until September 2, and Metamorphosis: The Generation of Transformation in Chinese Contemporary Art at the Tampere Art Museum in Tampere, Finland, through September 30.

Up in the room, things are quiet. There is the whirring fan, and water dripping in the airshaft, but the ancient, wall-mounted television doesn’t go above a murmur, so better to keep the Nepalese evening news on mute. Down on the street, however, the world is at full volume.

On a typical night, the sidewalk of Hong Kong’s Chungking Mansions is roaring. In contrast to the sedate Peninsula Hotel just across Nathan Road (the colonial “grande dame,” where white-gloved butlers still reign), there is no white marble reception desk—just the pavement.

Here, there is a gauntlet of eight young Indian guest-house touts, each aggressively trying to persuade a dazed Australian backpacker and a broad Nigerian businessman that his establishment is the best. Some of the men are doing double-duty by simultaneously pushing restaurants or tailor-shops, copy-watches or hashish. The Nigerian waves them away: he has been here before and knows exactly where he’s going. Heading to the A block elevators, he passes a bunch of women in bright blue shalwar kameez, changing rupees at one of the Xchange booths that line the entrance; young Chinese women with frizzy hair sit behind the bullet-proof glass with sour expressions. He zig-zags toward the bank of elevators at Block B, and joins the queue. The dazed Australian is also here, with a guest-house worker who is practically holding onto his backpack (to make sure his “sale” doesn’t get stolen away), plus a lanky Somalian woman with a swaddled baby, and a young boy laden with take-out containers from a restaurant.

At the 7th and 15th floors the Australian and the Nigerian split for two different guest-houses. Doors are opened. Fans and televisions are demonstrated. Room rates are bargained down. Keys change hands. And then, most likely, because nobody wants to sit in a bed-sized room watching the fuzzy Nepalese news on mute, the guests will lock their bags in the room and head back to the mainframe.

This massive complex of five blocks (A-E) and 17 stories was completed in 1961, originally intended as luxury flats for Hong Kong’s elite (hence the aspirational noun in the title). Somewhere down the line, things changed. The first tenants were recent immigrants from the Mainland, who in turn sold units to members of Hong Kong’s resident Indian community. As a major transportation hub (Victoria Harbor, the Kowloon-Canton Railway, old Kai Tak Airport), Kowloon was always a natural magnet for travelers. TST gained a seedier reputation in the 1960s and 70s, due in no small part to hordes of American servicemen on shore-leave, who were some of the earliest guests of Chungking Mansions. Decades later, Chungking is hardly just a hotel space, but its nearly 1000 guest-rooms have shaped and given purpose to the structure as a whole. Although the rooms belong to around 90 distinct guesthouses, these distinctions begin to melt as the greater design of Chungking Mansions reveals itself.
The rooms are usually the same– large enough for a bed (a rock-hard twin kitted out in fading Mickey Mouse sheets), a single square-foot window, and, if one is willing to upgrade to “ensuite”, a telephone-booth bathroom. Some, of course, are a bit more “business motel” (double beds, pastels), others more “flop-house” (six Indian restaurant workers sharing the floor of a 40 sq. foot room). But as few of these guest-houses are anything beyond a blank hallway with 5-10 guest-rooms, there is little space for the expression of individual hotel identities. Which is why they are all subsumed into the experience of Chungking Mansions: the meta-hotel.

Within the building, guests can choose from several dozens of restaurants, or order room service (all restaurants deliver). For entertainment, cheap DVDs and DVD players (both bootleg) abound. Internet cafes and international calling-card shops (“$1 per minute to Ghana!”) serve as the “business center”, and restaurants that stay open late, the “hotel bar” (not to mention the all-night 7-11 around the corner, which is also the place to pick up female company for the night).

Strangely enough, most of the waiters, cooks, touts, and men pushing boxes through the hallways, as well as the women who “work” Chungking Mansions (primarily Indian, dressed in bright saris and too much make-up) are travelers themselves. Of course those who own property and shops in the building have proper immigration papers or HK residency, as do the managers they hire. But the managers then rely on temporary, illegal labor to run their businesses. Because of tight visa regulations, many of these temporary workers must return home fairly frequently, or go on exit/re-entry runs to the Mainland or Macau. Some may continue this cycle, coming and going, for years. This is another remarkable feature of Chungking. In essence, the guests are running the hotel.

While illegal labor is rampant, and prostitution and drugs are plied, Chungking’s current illicit activities pale in comparison to those of the past. The 80s for example was a period that saw a series of murders, assaults, deadly fires and peculiar arrests within the building. Between 1985 and 1988 there were 29 fires reported (a Danish tourist died in one, trying to jump out of a window). When inspections were attempted, the Fire Services Department only had 800 addresses of 1500 suspected guesthouses. Then there were bizarre stories like the capture of a New Zealand man who had been resident in C block for some time—in his own DIY bomb-making workshop. All manner of urban legends spun out from these events, which eventually led to public pressure on the Mansions management to do something. About three years ago, security cameras were installed on all floors, illegal guest-houses (like those built in corridors, or in gaps on stair-landings) were removed, and former police officers hired as enforcement muscle. Still, the image of Chungking Mansions as ultimate den-of-iniquity remains—maybe because a city like Hong Kong needs a mythic ghetto to call its own.

In many ways, Chungking appears to be a system that is organically running itself—a sort of urban artificial intelligence. It is also an illustration of ground-level globalization (it is estimated that at least 20% of all mobile phones in usage in Africa have passed through the entrance of #36-44 Nathan Road at one point), and a condensed model of world catastrophe (there are currently 2500 refugees and asylum-seekers in Hong Kong, most of whom have stayed in Chungking Mansions or use services there daily). It’s a holographic hotel, or perhaps small city, made up entirely by its own tiny reflections.

Ironically, it now seems that Chungking Mansions may outlast most other Hong Kong landmarks. Because the colossal structure is owned by so many individual property-owners, for another developer to buy them all out would cost around 20 billion Hong Kong Dollars (about 3 billion USD), far more than any new development could possibly justify. Somehow fitting that as the Peninsula Hotel down the street gives a glimpse only to a darkening past, Chungking Mansions is a window (one square-foot, covered with a Snoopy drape, facing an air-shaft) to the future.

On a cold, gray morning in China’s Hunan province, I met a Unicorn. And then a Pepsi and a Strawberry. Next, an Angel King, and a No Foot Bird. These middle school students all stood around me in their red-white-and-blue uniforms, smiling sweetly, launching questions like cannon fire.

Do you like basketball?

“Well, Jackrary, I am actually very bad at sports . . . ”

Do you watch Friends?

“Yes, Killer, sometimes I watch Friends-it’s a pretty funny show!”

In American high school, do girls and boys go out on dates?

“It really depends, Small Bat. Some American teenagers date, but not all of them . . . ”

What is your favorite thing in China?

Their eyes shone a little brighter in pride and expectation. I rattled off the standard litany of history, culture, food, but I thought to myself: “Well, Fashion Words, at this moment it might just be your name.”

In the same way you might have been dubbed Dominique in a middle school French class, all the little Jiangs and Xiao Weis also get new monikers for their study of English. Yes, there is still an abundance of Janes and Jacks. But then there are the wild cards: Bison, Feeling, Lawyer Yo-Yo, Wiance, Blackhorse, Waterman, Shaq, None, Superdonkey, Beyond, Yuki Juice, Rubbin, Viva, Felix, Santemillion, Bear, Leg, Lala, Lalala, Icy Cat, Civic, Captain, Lettuce, Coker, Win Kids, Email, Renus, Vitality, Panday, Double, Landfill, Square, Jekyll, Snakie, Orange, Do Do, Shiny.

Despite the strangeness of these names, there is some method to the madness. For one thing, unlike the Pierres who were christened with a teacher-scrawled name card, the English students of China mainly pick their own names. And considering that they learn foreign languages sooner than Americans, this means 6-year-olds sometimes are left to choose their own names.

Diana Lin, a teacher at Zhongshan University in Guangzhou, recalls the self-chosen toddler names she encountered working at a Montessori preschool in Beijing: “I had a Flying Tiger, Dragon, Happy, and Hamburger-from her Chinese name, Han Bao Bao [which happens to mean hamburger, too]-an unfortunate name for a cute little girl.” But the most popular name was Monkey King, inspired by the classic Chinese tale Journey to the West. “I’ll have to say it was rather fun running after a kid screaming, ‘moooonkeeeeey kiiiiiiiiiiiiiing!! Come back, Monkey King!’ ”

The many Monkey Kings of Lin’s class won’t necessarily stay Monkey Kings. After a few years, they may move on to something else, perhaps equally as zany. Part of the fun of these names seems to be their malleability. While the students’ Chinese names were chosen after much deliberation by a convocation of parents and grandparents, students can try on and then abandon English names as if they were trendy T-shirts. Like Han Bao Bao/Hamburger, some students do choose English names that are linked either by sound or meaning to their Chinese name-Tao (”cherry” in Chinese) becomes Cherry, Luo Man Xi becomes Romancy, Luo Yi becomes Roy (even if she is a girl). Most students, however, go with names that have little connection to their Chinese identity and are that much easier to mix, match, and trade in.

Besides sports (Michael Jordan, Beckham, even Manchester United), other realms of Western pop culture are ripe fodder for name choices. Current favorites include Rachel (due to the wide availability of Friends on bootleg DVD), Draco, and Harry Potter; young girls might add the surname Di Caprio to another name (Yoki Di Caprio, for example). Though celebrity names can be deceiving. Keanu, a 20-year-old history student at Zhongshan University, chose her name not so much because she loves Keanu Reeves but because she wanted to have a boy’s name since her Chinese name, Xiao Lan, is so “typically female,” she says.

Even some of the most nonsensical names contain hidden personal meanings. No Foot Bird, for example, named himself after a Chinese proverb that describes how a bird with no feet will have to keep flying. Flying Bird, on the other hand, says she looks like a bird and thinks flying is great. Truth claims he finds it hard to tell the truth, so he chose the name to remind himself to be truthful. Cactus, a geography student, likes how cacti can thrive in harsh conditions, and she wants to share that quality.
Others are chosen (or made up) mainly for the way they sound-and this is where people occasionally run into trouble. While Jackrary (an unlikely combination of January and February), Disney, and Lalala are fairly uncontroversial, names like Syphilis, Vagina, and Cancer can be more problematic. Though they are mellifluous to the nonnative ear, when the young people are studying abroad or working with foreigners, these names simply will not fly. Neither will Satan nor Willing. And definitely not Gas Chamber or Hitler. Teachers usually try to persuade kids away from the more inappropriate names, with mixed results. Mariko Hirose, a teacher at Yali Middle School in Changsha, relates her attempt to reform a Killer. “Killer used to be Jason but in J2 Oral English he learned that ‘killer’ could also mean ‘cool,’ and so he changed his name.” She tried to get him to change his name at the beginning of the year but it didn’t work: “He said that I needed to respect his opinion.” Inside the classroom, anything goes, but as China becomes increasingly international, younger generations have a bigger chance of using their “English” name out in the world: on documents and correspondence, and in business deals. The potential for embarrassment is high, but so is the likelihood of self-correction before it gets to that point.

In the meantime, maybe we should just respect their opinions. Teenagers everywhere strive to be unique, but in a nation of more than a billion, wouldn’t it be nice to be the only Winky? Teenagers crave independence, and in a culture where filial piety is still the rule, at least you can subvert the Fang family name by adding Cobra to the front. Teenagers dream of rebellion, and under the rule of a government that discourages it, the safest option might be the personal revolution of becoming Dangerous. And in schools where dating is prohibited, unisex uniforms are the rule, and studying for exams occupies every hour when you are not taking them, perhaps you cannot have fun, but you can be Fun.

Then again, these are Western values talking. We may appreciate the names because they seem rebellious or subversive, but they may be subverting more than their own culture. Language is an instrument of power, and it can be challenged from the bottom up by something as simple as a name. The ability to choose or even create one’s own name is empowering, especially in the process of negotiating a new language (”the international business language”) and the new ideals that come with it. Names like Genius Jeffson, Ice Wolf, and Celery turn the English language upside down and inside out, simultaneously deconstructing and celebrating it. They’re playing with “our” language until it is “their” language too, and are carving out elastic new identities for rapidly changing China. Every day, in classrooms across the nation’s 23 provinces, these students turn morning roll call into pure, surrealistic poetry.

Title: “My Month as a Poor Man’s Geisha”
(note: this article about my experience working in a Tokyo hostess club was originally published in the Hong Kong Standard newspaper, and has since been republished in other publications such as Asia Weekly and the Asia Sentinel)
Publication: The Standard
Date: Apr 22, 2006 (Cover article of Weekend section)
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Life as a Japanese bar hostess is as escapist for the women as it is for the salarymen. Samantha Culp makes it her reality.

“Ow!” That was the sound of me slamming my knee against a futuristic Japanese toilet. Hard. Changing into a cocktail dress in a women’s bathroom stall of the Shibuya Seibu department store is no easy task, especially when it’s already 7pm and you’re due in Ginza in 30 minutes.

I winced but kept dressing – my mandatory nude stockings would hide any bruise. Finally clad in slinky black polyester, I emerged to a bank of mirrors – glossy lipstick (not too dark), colored eye-shadow (not too bright), hair brushed out smooth and long (any form of band or clip strictly prohibited). Then out of the dimly lit restroom into the clamor and neon of Tokyo, the rush- hour subway packed with businessmen and office women hurrying home from work while I was on my way to mine.

In the beginning, I didn’t know how conspicuous I was, a blond gaijin (or foreigner) in evening wear and heels on the Ginza line. Later I realized most people probably knew exactly where I was going – to an institution designed for the total relaxation of overworked salarymen. To a place where fantasy is as good as (or better than) reality. To the cheaper, modern-day version of a geisha house. To a hostess bar.
“And what, exactly, is a hostess bar?” This question was usually accompanied by raised eyebrows. The easy answer: A hostess bar is a place where businessmen pay to have attractive young women pour their drinks, light their cigarettes, and engage in charming conversation with them.

“That’s all?” the same eyebrows, raised even higher, seem to ask.
Yes. And sometimes no.
We’ll get back to that.

Suffice to say that in Japan at least, the birthplace of the “hostess bar” in its pure form, there are enough establishments offering only alcohol and chit-chat to attract even “respectable” girls to the industry. Even girls who don’t really need the money. Even college-educated Western girls. Even a girl like me.

In the late 1970s, many hostess bars began to employ young Western women, from out-of-work French models and American English teachers looking for extra spending yen to German backpackers saving up for a summer in Thailand. Throughout the Bubble years, the word spread: If you were a reasonably attractive Western woman, you could make upwards of US$40 (HK$312) an hour just drinking and talking – you didn’t even have to speak Japanese.

I had first heard tales of Japan’s foreign hostess bars in high school, and decided then and there that someday I had to try it. The money was appealing, but more than that, it was the weird glamor of the phenomenon. For a teenage girl already obsessed with Japanese culture (and Asia in general), the idea of being paid to wear pretty clothes and coquettishly entertain high- powered salarymen seemed too good to be true – not such a far cry from the iconic geisha of ukiyo-e prints and Mizoguchi films. So when I recently had the chance to spend a month in Tokyo and see for myself what the lofty geisha tradition had come to, I jumped at it.

Little did I know that I had picked one of the worst possible times to become a hostess. The hostess bar had appeared in urban centers like Tokyo and Osaka after World War II as an evolution of the geisha okiya for the needs of the “economic miracle” salaryman. For many decades, the industry of the “budget geisha” had nowhere to go but up. But once the Bubble burst, it entered a slow but steady decline. With the party over, businessmen were less willing to spend so much on seemingly so little, which led to lower salaries in the clubs and most of the fair-weather hostesses from Western countries heading elsewhere. They were increasingly replaced by a wave of Eastern European and Southeast Asian women who, out of desperation, were willing to work for less and perhaps, do more to keep their jobs. And now, just a few days before I landed at Narita airport, a new problem had developed.
“You didn’t know? Just last week, they raided so many clubs, many girls got fired. So now it’s going to be hard,” said Hans, the German “agent” I had met outside of a Roppongi restaurant called Cafe Almond after finding his number in a hostess ad. Talent scouts such as Hans serve as a liaison between the clubs and the girls, receiving a commission from the club for each successful match-up (never, he repeatedly emphasized, “touching a penny” of the hostess’ money). He was a tall, shaggy- haired man in his forties, and had tried to bond with me via his Mickey Mouse sweatshirt a moment before, pointing at it and intoning “America! America!” in a funny voice. Now he was explaining how the recent government crackdown on illegal trafficking of women had sent ripples through all of Japan’s nightlife quarters.

Though mainly directed at keeping Filipinas and Thai women from being forced into prostitution, the new laws also resulted in free-for-all raids on any place that women might be working without proper visas – particularly Roppongi hostess bars. On a single night, more than 50 girls had been caught in a sweep at the legendary club One Eyed Jack’s. Hans was pessimistic about my timing and lack of visa. “You’re American though, that’s good, so many Americans are leaving.”

So he took me on a tour of the clubs which spanned the spectrum of class and comfort. In the Westernized playground of Roppongi, the bars were typically geared toward a younger, party-hearty clientele. One Eyed Jack’s was clearly nostalgic for the heady Bubble days of expense accounts and cocaine, and opened on to a strip bar called Private Eyes across the hallway. Faded snapshots of visitors such as Richard Branson and Jackie Chan hung in the entrance. The passing of the golden years was underlined by the cavernous disco beyond, now vacant of hostesses except for those with, of all things, marriage visas.

Club Greengrass was a much smaller, darker space brimming with blonds who mostly lay around waiting for customers or sang lackluster karaoke. I later found out that Greengrass was once called Casablanca and had been where Lucie Blackman met her murderer. Blackman had quit her job as a British Airways flight attendant in 2000 to pursue better money as a Tokyo hostess. She had been at Casablanca only a few months when she disappeared on a dinner date (or dohan) with a customer. After a prolonged and controversial investigation, the 21-year-old’s dismembered remains were eventually found in a seaside cave, and businessman Joji Obara was arrested for her drugging, rape and death. The resulting trial, still continuing, rocked the nation as it revealed the unspoken dangers – and societal stigma – that foreign hostesses face.

Though hostess work anywhere carries these risks, at least in upscale Ginza the atmosphere was more refined. Venus Palace was all white pleather booths and velvet paintings, run by a beautiful African mama-san, who first described her love for red wine and then explained the harsh rules of the club (mandatory leafleting on the sidewalk, escalating fines for each minute of lateness). Her “girls” were squeezed together at one table, watching pop music videos projected on the wall while enduring the awkward wait for a customer.

The last stop on Hans’ circuit was Century Club, a relative oasis of good taste in a skewed aesthetic universe. Heavy brass door handle, subdued burgundy banquettes, low glass tables and fewer sequins per yard in the hostess’ wardrobe than in previous clubs. A petite Japanese woman in a Chanel shift dress seemed to be in charge, but I later discovered the mama-san was someone else. In Century Club, as in the others, I was asked to fill out an application form and in the space devoted to visa status, I wrote “getting a working visa soon.” That seemed to satisfy them here as well, and I had my fourth job offer as the bartender asked me, “Can you start Tuesday?”

That was the last I saw of Hans, but I checked out one more place on my own before deciding – a tiny, upstairs lounge in Akasaka (one Tokyo district where geisha can still be seen) run by a woman named Tanaka. She met me at the station and led me to the linoleum- floored space, insisting all the way that though yakuza or mafia were rumored to be most established in Akasaka, her club did no business with gangsters. That must have been true – judging by the empty tables this late in the evening, it appeared that they didn’t do much business with anyone.

So on Tuesday, I showed up at Century Club. I arrived early, expecting to get dressed in the hostess’ dressing room. Big mistake or, rather, a little one, as the “dressing room” consisted of a meter-wide hallway and glorified closet that 18 grown women were attempting to use at once. I struggled into my zebra chiffon dress amid a storm of flying bras, flashing compact mirrors, and criss-crossing conversations in at least six languages. My new colleagues were from Russia, the Philippines, Israel, Canada, Australia, Romania, Peru and America respectively. While at a table with customers, hostesses were not allowed “private conversation,” and any language besides Japanese or English was strictly forbidden during business hours, so many tried to maximize their opportunity to gossip before timecards were punched.

This was one of many rules I was soon to learn, but I already knew that we had to be in our seats near the bar by 7.30pm or else be fined. Oh, the endless fines. So I clocked in and took my place. One of the tuxedoed waiters came by and gave me the briefest job training I have ever received.

“When you sit with the customer, you say: Nomimono yoroshii desu ka? (Would you like to buy me a drink?) If he has bottle, you take ice like this, pour whiskey like this, then water, stir together. When he goes to toilet, you get hot towel for him,” Yamamoto-san explained. He then disappeared to attend to other business. Luckily, some of the other girls shared their hostess know-how before customers began trailing in.

Nika, a fellow Californian who had come to study Japanese after graduating from Stanford, helped me write my name in on temporary business cards. “What’s your hostess name?” she asked. I hadn’t thought of one and figured I’d just use my real name. Transliterated into Japanese, I thus became “Samansa.” I was better off than one French-Canadian girl who went by the name Layla.
Sandra, a curly-haired Romanian who taught English to toddlers by day gave me an insight into the arcane dress code restrictions: “It’s because of the shacho, what he thinks looks nice.”
I hadn’t yet realized that the shacho, the boss of the whole place, was the little balding man cooking away in the tiny kitchen beyond the hostess’ dressing room. He fancied himself something of a gourmet chef and would prepare all the club’s overpriced food (napkin- sized pizza for 4,000 yen or about HK$265) himself. It seems he fancied himself something of a taste-maker as well.

“He doesn’t like mules, so we can only wear shoes with closed heel or straps. He doesn’t like dark lipstick, so we can’t use it.”

And the prohibition against any form of hair clip? “He thinks that pinned- back hair is a symbol of oral sex. Like a mama-san in some country inn.” Sandra pantomimed a haggard woman pulling her hair back and about to give her customer some service beyond the bounds of a bed for the night. It was unclear if this was a widespread cliche in Japanese culture, or in the lurid imagination of just one man, but better not to wear a ponytail. We wouldn’t want to give the wrong impression. Girls were supposedly fired from Century Club for having sexual relations with customers (or at least having them discovered). The other sure way to get fired was to not have enough dohans or dinner dates.

Stefanie, a red-haired Canadian, gave me an overview of the Byzantine pay structure. “You could write a book on this bloody system,” she sighed. She had figured it out well enough to keep an apartment in Bangkok that she visited in her free time. Starting pay was 3,000 yen per hour, with a 2,000 yen bonus for each customer request – either a returnee or just some guy who likes your looks while passing by the hostess’ seating area. Not bad. But to make real money, a hostess needed real customers, and for that she needed dohan. The dohan was set up through the club – the customer paid 25,000 yen for the privilege of taking the hostess to dinner at some fancy restaurant, footing the bill there and then escorting her to the club for work. After two dohans he was “her” customer, and then each time he came to the club, she got a cut of whatever he spent at his table. This is known as uriage and with that factored in, her “hourly wage” could go up to 4,500 yen and beyond. And then there were the tips, gifts, shopping sprees and weekend trips that a girl might be offered.

So how did one procure this kind of adoring customer? What did they really expect for paying 8,000 yen per hour just to sit with you? I never got a complete debriefing on this as, one by one, my tutors were called to duty by Yamamoto or Yamasaki: “Nika-san! Jennifa-san!”

I just sat, fidgeted with my little red purse and was beginning to feel a bit like the unchosen puppy at the pet store, until finally – “Samansa-san!”
And then it was showtime.

I don’t really remember my first customer which either shows how nervous I was or just testifies to how formulaic the whole thing becomes. Either Hiroshi, the towering, tousle- headed manager, or one of the waiters, would lead me over to a table, and announce me to those already seated. I would bungle a small bow and my few lines of conversational Japanese, exchange meishi or business cards with everyone and sit down next to “my” designated guy to be his temporary blind date.

Sometimes there would already be girls there tending to him. The club tries to keep a high ratio of hostesses to male customers, the better to make him feel like a king with two or three girls vying to refill his drink the fastest and laugh the hardest at his jokes. If other hostesses were present, I would take a beat to assess the existing dynamic (”my” guy might already be the official customer of another girl after all, the staff often forgot to clarify this), and then try to fit into it, playing charming younger sister to the hostess whose customer it was, or funny friend of the customer’s obvious favorite. If the customer was new and hadn’t “clicked” with one particular girl, it was open season for his affections. Eyelashes got battier, giggles got breathier, humorous entendres doubled (or tripled). I remained an amateur in this type of contest, and was often relieved that other hostesses were doing most of the work. But if I was the only hostess assigned, it was all up to me.

First, conversation. Since my Japanese is limited to about 10 phrases and many customers didn’t speak English, this was often difficult. I’d start with simple things (”What’s your name?” “What kind of job do you do?”), but if even these were too hard, I’d have to switch to a more absurdist track. “I love Japanese food,” I’d say in some of the worst-case scenarios, slowly and accompanied by the international sign- language for eating, and then proceed to list all the Japanese foods I could think of. Sometimes it was a long, excruciating monologue met with only slight grunts or nods and I’d rack my brain trying to come up with extra sub- categories of sashimi. At other times the customer would gamely play along, suggesting food words as if to ask if I had eaten them, or offering his own favorites. I sometimes substituted animals, countries or Japanese film directors for food-nouns, with similar results. The stereotype of Japanese politesse seemed to hold true for many of these good sports, but for the glummer types who would smoke in silence, I would just talk and talk, pour whiskey and smile, unsure if they could actually understand but hoping at least they’d feel they were getting their money’s worth.

Thankfully, most of the customers did speak at least some English, and the waiters usually tried to seat according to language ability (or at least rotate us out when it was clear that some distinguished Hitachi executive was getting sick of the “Do you like dog? Inu? Cat? Neko?” shtick). A few were highly educated abroad, and it was always a shock to readjust from pidgin English when speaking to a Harvard MBA. Others spoke English enthusiastically if not particularly well, but when the alcohol was flowing, we could pretend to understand each other and still have a good time.

Drinking is a huge part of the hostess world, and of Japanese business culture itself. In a country where a staggering percentage of the male populace staggers home each night, “alcoholism” is hard to define. Hostess bars have an important role to play in this culture that requires obligatory drinking with colleagues after work, and getting wasted with partners to seal a business deal. Drinking comes to signify trust, relaxation and a certain absolution from any adult responsibility. When inebriated, society dictates, men are not accountable for their actions, whether those entail attempting to squeeze a hostess’ thigh, or puking and then passing out on a subway platform. I’d often pass one of these unfortunate souls, unconscious next to his briefcase on a staircase or sidewalk, on my way home from work at night and wonder about his family, his life, the joy or sadness he had recently found in the bottle. I’d wish someone who cared about him would come and pick him up off the floor. Of course, earlier in the evening, it was part of my job to put him there.

A glass case near the Century Club’s coat check held hundreds of bottles of Johnnie Walker Red and Blue Label belonging to regular customers. When one of them arrived, the waiters would bring his bottle to the table and the hostesses would attempt to pour it all so he would have to purchase another. Hostesses didn’t drink the whiskey – on special occasions a customer would charge a bottle of expensive champagne or wine, but usually just ordered standard, tiny cocktails for the girls. Hostess glasses are miniaturized in size so as to maximize the actual number of 1,000 yen screwdrivers or gin and tonics the customer will order for her (and lessen her intoxication). Clubs like One Eyed Jack’s offered “drinkbacks,” which meant a hostess would get 500 yen for every drink she’d bought. With a direct profit from each cup drained, girls in the drinkback system were more likely to get wrecked (or to resort to substances that kept them drinking past the point of wreckage – cocaine and “ice” were well-known bathroom pastimes at such clubs). In the more old-fashioned uriage system, there was little incentive to binge-drink, for which I was thankful. That didn’t mean it was easy to stay sober. Though I would sip my Lilliputian servings slowly, the rounds kept coming. And even when I wasn’t tipsy, being surrounded exclusively by red- faced, slurring, stumbling people made me feel as if I was.

This is certainly another reason why my nights (and days) as a hostess began to blur together: The hours of light banter and hard liquor, the clocking out at midnight and running to catch the last train (or being requested to stay late, which meant anywhere from 2am-6am) stopping at konbini or all-night convenience stores to load up on high- calorie snacks before making my way through the silent streets of Kagurazaka to my six-mat room, sleeping until one or two in the afternoon, then heading to a cafe or aimlessly shopping in the afternoon. By 6pm I needed to think about getting ready for work (after my one attempt at the dressing room, the department store quick-change was born), then back to Ginza, back to the banquette until beckoned, the familiar ballet of head-bows and business cards, the quickly-predictable dialogues (”Where do you come from?” “How long have you been in Japan?”), the rotating from table to table, the repetition of introduction dialogues, the karaoke and dancing, the random discussions of Baltimore as a tourist destination or whatever else was linguistically possible, more karaoke, more conversation, cheeks that ache from smiling so long, the good nights to customers, extorting promises from them to return, going home to send them cute e-mails (”Thanks for the wonderful evening!”). Then, passing out, only to start the whole thing over again.

By day, the club felt like a dream. By night, the normal world seemed just as unreal. I saw so little daylight I might as well have been a vampire who instead of blood fed on white wine and the fake love of salarymen.

Those salarymen blended together as well, more so because I met so many of them rather than that they were all the same. In fact, they differed greatly, despite how fiercely Japanese corporate culture rewards conformity. Looking carefully at the variants of age, job title, income, English ability, interests, sense of humor, taste in karaoke, family life, happiness level, Century Club had a fairly diverse crowd. The majority were old – in their 50s and 60s – and wealthy, married with children, not very conversant in English, and were in the middle of pretty conventional lives (college, company and later on death). For this older generation, I soon learned that my name formed an instant topic of conversation. The “Samansa” would have barely left my lips when they would invariably respond: “Ahh, okasama majo!” and laugh to themselves. After some investigation, I discovered that okasama majo translated to “witch wife,” and was the Japanese title of that popular 1950s American TV series Bewitched. Unfortunately, even in laborious English, this topic was quickly exhausted.

The younger generation (maybe 30s or 40s) who were brought along to Century Club by their office superiors (though they would have much rather been elsewhere), sometimes surprised by being actually interesting. I once spent a few hours talking to a guy who was a huge fan of indie film director Jim Jarmusch. We felt amazed to have found each other. Another evening I got to chat with a metal-head and sing Deep Purple’s Highway Star with him on the karaoke machine. These younger men returned infrequently and would never become regular customers, firstly because it was too expensive to go on their own, and secondly because they had much better places to be (a Judas Priest concert, for instance).

As it turned out, I wasn’t at Century Club long enough to get any of my own customers, but the closest to one was Maeda-san. He was probably in his late 60s but might have been 70 (the second time he came to the club to request me, one of the hostesses said “Your old man is here”). He was in remarkably good shape and stood nearly two meters, especially tall for a Japanese man of his generation. I was sat with him one night and for some reason we hit it off. He told me about growing up during the war, about his love for Elvis, about local Tokyo politics. When waiters would swing by to rotate another girl in, he would wave them away. He came back a few times and had asked me on a dohan but was unexpectedly called away on business to Osaka. I had to leave before he returned. He was smart and funny, with flashes of something deeper. Though he peppered his jokes with intentionally silly sexual innuendo and liked to hold my hand when drunk or singing karaoke, he was a true gentleman. Because of his age, it felt more like I was doing a community service than being exploited. With the 50-year-old who tried to grab my behind on the dance-floor, however, it just felt like I was being groped.

As mentioned before, alcohol has the magical power of melting linguistic barriers (He says “What?”; you say “What?”; you both collapse into laughter). It also melts inhibition like an ice-cube and can make the hands of shy men start to wander. Some customers will joke about it as they’re trying to touch your knee. “Oh, bad hands!” they’ll laughingly exclaim, as if they had a mind of their own.

Hostesses have various methods to deal with “bad hands.” The simplest is a humorous scolding as one might give a child who has just broken into the cookie jar; “naughty boy!” and playfully slapping the hand away. Most ingenious is the strategic hand-hold, which essentially is to clasp one or both of your customer’s hands before he can clasp anything of yours. I employed both when needed, which wasn’t that often, actually, and I came to see the “bad hands” as an occupational hazard but usually pretty harmless.

In the case of one 40-something drunk in a cowboy hat, however, who guffawed as he “pretended” to strangle me for a few seconds (the sensation of no air is still with me), the physical contact had a distinctly darker cast. he and his creepy friend were asked to leave the club quickly after that, but not quick enough for my liking. (I do wonder if other men like Joji Obara still haunt these clubs.) But for most, the customers seemed to enjoy the process of trying to touch just as much as – or perhaps more than – actually touching.

It was their job to try to touch us, our job to not let them. It was all a part of the game, the knowing laughter, the glow of mischief, the moment they nearly crossed the line just to make us draw it again. In many ways the hostess bar recreated the atmosphere of childhood, a space devoted to pure play and indulgence, but with the boundaries that allowed it to be pleasurable. The fact that the female manager of such a club is called mama-san is no coincidence. Taking care to mark the limits of the customers’ desire relieved them of the responsibility to control it. And sometimes the touching just revealed the basic, fragile humanity of these men. By the end of the night, as Roy, the Ghanaian keyboard player and singer, would be finishing his set with Georgia on My Mind or Across the Universe, the dance-floor would be filled with hostesses hugged close to their hammered dance partners, and it seemed less that the customers were copping feels than they were just clutching on to something so as not to fall down drunk.

After all, hostess bar customers weren’t really looking for a lapdance or a peep show, they could have easily gotten those elsewhere and for far cheaper. The question remains – why were they here? What were they looking for?

Yes, they wanted the fantasy of sex, but also they wanted the fantasy of romance. Of the perfect girlfriend, who is always ready for drinking, flirtation and fun, but who disappears at the end of the night, no strings attached. They wanted a world apart from the daily cares of the working world, where they could be simultaneously be children and kings of the castle. Especially in the post-Bubble era, where most businessmen were not as powerful or as rich as they had trained to be, they wanted a place where they could still command awe and respect, if only by spending 2,000 yen on a dish of cookies or impressing their subordinates with their (middling) English skills.

This was definitely part of the allure of the “foreign” hostess bar as opposed to a Japanese one, and the appeal of the exotic seemed to outweigh the difficulties of language. Though they could have been chatting in their native tongue with adorable Japanese girls who were just as eager to please and had more cultural training in being hospitable, they were in Century Club, trying to understand the dirty jokes of some blond Israeli just out of the army. Just as the nighttime hours were set apart from daylight cares, the international girls at Century were set apart from the rest of Japan, and made them feel as if they were on a brief vacation. They had escaped their own history, their own lives, their own realities. And maybe they needed the blank canvas of a foreign face to put all the stuff they had no other place to put.

One particular man sticks out in my memory, who came in often and each time told me the same utterly slurred, barely comprehensible stories about his college career at the University of Illinois in the 1980s. The tales all revolved around drinking, and as he was telling them he’d proceed to get drunker and drunker himself, more gregarious with each sip, until at the climax of one yarn he’d be practically shouting, frantic with laughter, and would give the punchline (about some fraternity party puking accident): “And he said, `Boy, what a way to use a piece of plastic!”‘ At this he would double-up with laughter at this same old joke and I would follow suit.

At first I thought it was just bizarre, but after repeated visits, I began to feel quite sad for him. Those four college years in the Mid-West had been the best time of his life, and they were long over. And he wanted to convey to me how special it had been, and recapture for a moment those same feelings. Perhaps because I was an American and might understand, but more because I was just somebody who was being paid to listen, however many times he chose to relive that story.

In a country with the highest number of suicides per capita in the world, so much is turned inwards and the moment a neutral outlet is provided, it all cascades out. A hostess is simultaneously therapist and confessor, cheerleader and comedienne, actress and English tutor, bartender and babysitter. She is a reincarnation of lost loves and past obsessions, of some foreign girl they had once had a crush on. She was some spark that lit up their monotonous sometimes lonely days, making them feel again the passions of their youth against the slow twilight of their lives.

Even without getting into these deeper motivations, it’s not hard to imagine what brings men to a bar to drink and flirt with pretty young women. But what brings the women themselves? What do the hostesses want? How do they feel about their job? This question is less explored. Of course, hostesses are there to make money, they’re not volunteers. But it’s slightly more complex than that.
When I first arrived, I found that hostesses were already organized into cliques based on nationality and language, as well as some instinctive sense of different motives – the girls who were there mainly for fun, and the girls who desperately needed the money. I was immediately lumped in with the North Americans, Israelis and the lone Aussie, who were here on some adventure or another, not on a long-term mission to feed families back home. This discrepancy in overall goal found expression in other differences. For instance, hostesses from Russia, the Philippines and other developing countries were usually fluent in Japanese. This was necessary for girls who didn’t otherwise speak English, such as the Russians, but I didn’t understand how it was possible until I discovered that they often had hostessed in the suburban sticks of Japan until they had perfected their Nihongo, then moved to Tokyo to cash in. It gave them the competitive edge over native-English speakers who were sometimes younger and prettier, but who would eventually return to their lives in London, Sydney or Chicago. They were in it for the long haul, and whatever that might entail.

Though usually the mama-san of a club was an older woman, often a former hostess who would manage the relationships of hostesses and clients like an expert maitre’d, in Century Club the mama was a 30-something Russian woman named Katya. Tall, blond, striking and utterly fluent in Japanese, Katya didn’t do much to help the rest of us out, but certainly managed her own affairs to gain the most clients and earn the most income of anyone in the club. I have to say, she was good. Dressed in sleek designer frocks with a tiny Gucci bag dangling from her wrist, she gazed adoringly at every customer while still making each feel as if he was the only man in the room, always ready to show her heartfelt interest in whatever boring topic was being discussed. Still, there were other theories about the reason for her popularity. A few hostesses claimed they knew beyond a doubt she slept with some of her customers. The same was alleged of other Russian and Filipina women, and I think it’s likely that a portion of the hostesses at Century Club were going above, and below, the call of duty. I doubt these were cash transactions, more likely an extension of the virtual-girlfriend relationship that would be supplemented with trips, tips, gifts and continued patronage of the club.

I personally never experienced the legendary “secret handshake,” wherein a customer shakes the hostess’ hand and moves his middle finger to ask if sex is a possibility; if the girl does it back, the answer is yes. Other hostesses I knew were asked this coded question, and replied no by keeping their hand still. But for those who needed to make their limited years of being a young, alluring hostess to be as profitable as possible, they’d move their middle finger and eventually make fantasy into reality. Indeed, they were nurturing their own fantasy as well, of the big pay-day, of the customer who might just decide to set her up for life or at least buy her a house, college education or a bar of her own. As this was not unknown to happen in the Bubble decade, the hope is still there. And in the meantime, however physical they chose to make it, being a hostess was probably preferable to whatever kind of work they would be doing back in the Ukraine or Mindanao.

For the girls who didn’t really need the money, their motivations were not as obvious as cold hard cash. Many were just passing through, but others stayed in the business for a year or more and for what? According to Nika, who had been at Century for more than a year already – “You just get sucked into it. All of a sudden you’ve already been here a year and you figure why not stay a bit longer?” – hostessing pays better than English teaching or most other forms of work a foreigner can do in Asia. Some girls came to Japan to study Japanese, and found that hostessing was possibly the best way to become fluent in the language. “Every night you’re asked the same questions, you practice the same stories and jokes, and the customers are happy to teach you new things,” one girl explained, adding that studying Japanese was one of the few things a hostess was permitted to do while waiting for customers. And despite the endemic boredom, the “bad hands,” and the tacky club decor, it was a glamorous job. Getting paid to dress up, drink wine, and feel special for a few hours was rather exciting, and the attention itself can become addictive. You don’t need to be gorgeous or talented, even a moderately cute brunette can become a star in this secret world. If a hostess is the average man’s geisha, the hostess life is the average girl’s dream of being a supermodel. But for a hostess with other options, this faux-stardom eventually gets old, and it’s time to move on.

Eventually, as I was one of the privileged hostesses with other opportunities waiting for me, I had to leave Century Club. I needed to be back in Hong Kong to work, and truth be told just a few weeks of this strange life had gone a long way. The alcohol, the nocturnal schedule and the peculiarities of the job itself were distorting. A half- dozen courtships happen in a single night, romance blossoms into commitment in a few weeks, a career can unfold in a month or two. At the same time, all seems frozen, as one endless night broken briefly by daylight and meals. The same itty-bitty cups of wine keep arriving, the same songs are sung on the karaoke system, the same relationship is played out over and over again by different actors, slight variations on an age- old theme. But changes did occur, some indicative of the larger shifting tides in Japanese culture and economy.

For one thing, the clothing rules became even more specific, and hostesses were banned from wearing black dresses to work. “It looks like you are at funeral party, we don’t want to make customers feel like a funeral party,” Yamasaki-san explained. Girls continued to come and go, and because a few girls were fired right around the time I left, I thought it would be easy to make my exit. Not so, in fact I had to feign a family emergency to resign and still get my paycheck (something I’m not proud of, but deception was a part of the job). After I departed, a few hostesses at Century kept me apprised of new developments, one of which was the hostess industry’s minor brush with grassroots labor politics.
Because of a few slow weeks at the till, the management decided to open the club later on Mondays and Tuesdays, effectively cutting an hour off of each hostess’ salary. The girls were only informed of the 9pm start when they arrived for work one Monday at 7.30pm, and so they congregated in a coffee shop across the street to wait and to air their endless grievances about unfair and dishonest working policies. Eventually a few hostesses decided to hold a mini- strike in protest. “None of us are going in at nine – are you in?” a girl from one table asked the others. They sat and smoked menthol cigarettes as 9pm came and went, and at 10.30, Hiroshi the manager came to negotiate. Though their attempt to “organize” was impassioned at first, eventually their zeal was quashed by failure (Mondays and Tuesdays would keep the new opening time) and punishment (all hostesses in the club were fined for disrupting work). The club held all the power. They could have easily fired everyone and re- staffed, with only minimal losses. After all, there will always be another hostess waiting to take your place.
These cut-backs seem to signify the financial constraints that are ever tightening on the hostess industry. With the disappearance of the corporate expense account, how many customers could (or would) spend 100,000 yen on an evening of whiskey and flirtation? And will this shrinking number sustain the thousands of women ready to serve them? Just as the true geisha is gradually fading into history, her less-refined niece the hostess may be facing a similar fate. Is this the end of an era? Probably not anytime soon.

“It isn’t as profitable as during the Bubble days, but I don’t imagine them disappearing unless the Nikkei goes to s***,” said Mia, a smart, Japanese- speaking American hostess who in three months had made about US$10,000, not to mention gifts including a new computer, a Louis Vuitton watch and a weekend trip to Singapore.

All in all, I didn’t make a very good hostess. I dropped ice cubes when refilling someone’s glass, I sometimes forgot to get oshiburi (warm hand towels) for men returning from the bathroom, and I never mastered the delicate art of wheedling for expensive champagne and snacks. But more than that, I wasn’t very good because I always felt like I was doing something wrong or dishonest. I felt bad lying to men about my lack of a boyfriend, my plans to stay in Japan long-term, my very interest in them. A good hostess doesn’t mind the dishonesty, and sees it as part of the rules of engagement that even the customers understand. Which is true – the men are only as fooled as they choose to be by a hostess’ smile, flattery, and gushy e-mails. It’s almost like a movie, the suspension of disbelief, the knowledge that it’s not exactly real but just enough verisimilitude to let you hope. This surreal world could perhaps only exist in Japan, where the realms of childhood, dreams and the virtual are still so deeply valued. The hostess bar is a trap-door for everyone involved; for a time, the businessmen can escape the lives that were chosen for them, the developing-world hostesses can escape certain poverty, and the good-time sojourners can escape feeling ordinary. They may not share the same dream, but they are dreaming it together.

Title: “The Cos Effect: Cao Fei Makes Art for a New China”
Publication: The Fader
Date: Jan/Feb 2006
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