Fortune favours depraved

I’d forked out HK$60 for the palm-reading, but I couldn’t concentrate on what Mr. Fortune Teller (once “interviewed on TVB”!) was saying. My legs were too bloody itchy. Some invisible midget skin-nibblers near the Lam Tsuen Wishing Trees forced me to break Mr. FT’s gentle grip every 13 seconds to scratch my epidermis clean off.

Not that he was saying anything interesting — or that I could fully comprehend his muttered broken English.

“Dead at 73.” (Not if these little fuckers biting my calves can help it.)

“Health troubles in your 50s.” (I can’t name a 60-year-old who hasn’t had health troubles in the past 10 years. Mind you, I don’t get around with many 60-year-olds.)

“Your business will do well, but you’ll have to work hard at it.” (Where did that gem of wisdom come from? Your ass?)

“Something like doctor… accountant… lawyer.” (No. No. No. Just because I’m white and in Hong Kong, doesn’t mean I’m doing something that’s actually going to make me money.)

Actually, though, he was a nice fellow, perhaps past his fortune-telling prime (a glossy brochure showed him in his glory days, resplendent in a crisp suit, perched at a desk in a modern office with a computer at his fingertips — by the time we got to him, he was doing business from behind a small wooden table in a dusty corner of a temple near the wishing trees), but jovial and easy-going. Indeed, he was quick to slash his initial $150 asking price on account of me and my girlfriend being ’students’. Perhaps it was her influence. He did show a great interest in her palms, and even, towards the end of her reading, her foot. And I’m pretty sure I caught him getting a good read of her ass on her way out.
She was somewhat less sceptical than I was about the teller’s talents. “He only said good things, so it can’t hurt to believe him, right?”

Right.

And he was more entertaining than the two wishing trees. Both were fenced off for fear of falling branches, and to say they were non-descript would risk over-describing them. The major attraction, for instance, was so bland that, as we casually breezed by, I pointed to it and joked: “That must be it.” One of the handful of attendant incense sellers had to pull us back to it, managing to do some business in the process. She unloaded on us some sheets of red and yellow paper, rolled up like a script. We each bought two scripts. Under careful instruction, here’s what we did with them:

1. Wrote our names on each one.

2. On the first one, we each wrote down a general wish (although I think it was supposed to be related to bringing luck to our “family dwelling”).

3. On the second one, we each wrote down a wish relating to romance.

4. We then took three joss sticks and burned them at the altar beside the tree while half-genuflecting to the wishing gods.

5. Finally, we hung our scripts from hooks on a board. In times gone by, the scripts, with oranges attached on string as deadweights, were thrown over the tree branches . A few broken branches and bones put an end to that practice.

My two wishes were simple. The first was “To have a wholly sustainable ecological environment on planet Earth in which humans, flora and fauna can peacefully co-exist.” For the romance wish, I asked for “a partner who is compassionate, understanding, and good at cleaning.” I’m not holding out great hope for the first one.

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Note: Congratulations; you have just made it through the first post on Hong Kong Ham, the weblog of a drifting rookie journalist. I look forward to the pleasure of your company for the unforseeable future.