Aurelio Porfiri
There are several scholars and witnesses that have reflected on the recent turbulent past of China, including the one of Hong Kong and Macau. The 20th century was an age of great transformation in Chinese society and there were topical historical moments when these transformations were even more traumatic.
In Hong Kong on the Brink: an American diplomat relives 1967’s darkest days (2017 Blacksmith Books), autho Syd Goldsmith leads us with him to the 60s, looking at Hong Kong and Macau in a way that is lost for us today, two cities that were still relics of a past that in some cases was very heavy on them. It is very interesting also to see the role of greater China even decades before the handover in both cities.
Can you tell us a little about yourself?
I grew up in the United States, not far from New York City. I never dreamed that I would be living the majority of my adult life in Chinese societies, 41 years as of early 2018. Nor did I dream at age 20 that my passion for classical music would lead me to perform in more than twenty countries. And I didn’t imagine at almost 60 that I would soon be propelled to write two novels and my just-published memoir, Hong Kong on the Brink. I’ve had the enormous good fortune of enjoying multiple careers, as a diplomat, entrepreneur, musician, columnist and university professor.
Highlights of my thirty-year career in government service include bit parts in the monumental changes leading to the first ever Chinese democracy, as the unofficial American Consul General in Kaohsiung, Taiwan and earlier as the Taiwanese Political Officer in the Taipei Embassy. During a tour in the Pentagon as military basing agreements negotiator, I was the senior Defense Department representative to the Philippine base negotiations, and also participated in negotiations in Turkey, Canada, and for Seychelles independence. Later the State Department assigned me as point man for a futile effort to stem coca production in Bolivia and Peru.
My passion for music and the flute is the most constant thread running throughout my life. I have taken it to every continent except Antarctica, and toured worldwide with guitarist Lisa Hurlong, Our Five Hundred Years of Romance and my Flute Flight series of recordings can be found on Amazon and elsewhere, along with my books.
In which capacity you were living in Hong Kong in the 60s?
I had just entered the United States Foreign Service and my first overseas assignment was for training in the American Consulate General in Hong Kong. The harbor was a stunning sight upon arrival in October 1965. The purpose of the training was to familiarize me with the operations of the various sections common to our missions in foreign countries. There were the political and economic sections, the consular section which deals with travel and immigration to the US as well as American citizen services, and the Administrative section which provides the support required to maintain the mission and its people. A typical training tour for a novice diplomat was about two years, with six months in each section. My fate was much different. I was provided with six months of intensive Cantonese, while the China watchers trained in Mandarin and the State Department considered to be of marginal use in their careers. I was the first State Department officer to be trained in the local dialect in more than ten years. Shortly after I was assigned as an apprentice trainee to the Hong Kong/Macau Political Officer, the incumbent left. By the time his replacement arrived, I had reported extensively on the Macau crisis and riots in December 1966, was given the position, and soon became the rapporteur of the Hong Kong “Emergency” and the months of riots, strikes, takeover threats and bombs which created havoc and widespread fears of communist takeover in 1967. I stayed in the position until my reassignment in June 1968. All the while I was passionate about music and the flute, performing chamber music and as a soloist with quite a few of Hong Kong’s best known musicians at that time.
When you were studying Cantonese, you met with some Catholic missionaries. What is your memory of that?
My closest friend at the New Asia College intensive Cantonese language program was Father Ron Saucci. He was in his early thirties and so evidently charismatic that if you did not know, you would be more likely to guess that he was a movie or media star than a missionary. Ron related to me how he could not settle down after army service. A friend led him to the Maryknoll Fathers and everything happened from there. He told me that this was his best opportunity to be of service, and that he went for it even though his family thought he was nutty.
He started by establishing bakeries in the squatter areas surrounding the Star of the Sea parish in Chai Wan, Hong Kong. He fed thousands of the poor without any regard for religious participation. Later he did serve as that genuine compassionate star in the Catholic broadcasting firmament in the US, but after a few years he returned to serve the people in Hong Kong who needed him most. I was so happy to reestablish contact with him shortly before his passing. He confirmed that my extensive portrait of him in Hong Kong on the Brink was totally accurate.
How was the Cultural Revolution climate felt in Hong Kong?
When it took hours to get to work because half of Hong Kong’s bus drivers went on strike and were fired when they refused to return, you could not help but feel under constant threat. You did not know when you might walk into a riot, as happened to me, or come across a bomb planted at a busy corner. The general population read about People’s Liberation Army troops moving toward the border and the five Hong Kong policemen shot dead at the Sha Tau Kok station by machine gun fire from the Chinese side. When I visited the border, I had a machine gun pointed at me from the Chinese side. And then there were the frequent threats of a Chinese communist takeover, quite believable during all the havoc caused by the local leftists. For months, the Cultural Revolution stirred acute anxiety in Hong Kong. Recall that half the population had fled chaos, famine, or civil war in China to get to the British colony. While there was little love for British rule, very few wanted to relive the haunted memories of their past, under communist control.
You recall in your book an occasion when your life was in danger. This event will return also at the end of the book. Can you tell us what was that?
I can only say that I don’t know a single author who gives away the end of the story before it has been read. Let’s just say that Hong Kong on the Brink is a work of gratitude for the life I have been granted to lead.
You talk of a person in a way that has caught my attention: Y.C.Liang. Can you tell us something more about him?
YC Liang was a master spy for the British during World War II. He created an extensive network of agents in South China and was entrusted right after the Japanese surrender to the allies in WWII with getting a message to the senior British internee in Hong Kong to form a government before either the Americans or the Chinese Nationalists did it. What he told me about Beijing’s intentions and the Cultural Revolution there was so prescient that I could not help but think that he might have more or less direct contact with Chou En-lai.
From your book I have the impression that you deeply love Hong Kong. Am I wrong?
Not at all. For me Hong Kong was the most exciting city in the world back when I lived there in the 1960s, and I continue to love it and the people through thick and thin.
In those years, why did people have the impression that China wanted to invade Hong Kong?
All that was necessary to have that impression was to observe the Red Guard inspired chaos and read the threats in the principal Chinese mouthpiece newspapers in Hong Kong, the Ta Kung Pao and the Wen Wei Po. You almost had to be a mind reader to ignore the disorder and realize that ultimately more rational elements in China would prevail and Chou En-lai would order the local Communist leadership to end the disturbances (which were not always in their control).
Do you have memories of your contacts with Catholic hierarchies in Hong Kong or Macau?
On my first visit to Macau, I talked to two priests who outlined their fervent hopes to establish the first university in Macau. Five years later, my principal Taiwanese teachers were at the Maryknoll mission in Taichung, Taiwan.
What is your memory of Macau?
It was a glorious kaleidoscope of more than 400 years of interaction between east and west. I could wander and feel like I was in a China of centuries past, then come out by the grand stairway leading up to the incredible façade of Saint Paul’s. To really see it was to look to the heavens and pray that this magnificent monument to the glory of God would live forever.
Just beyond the bottom of the stairs was a sudden return to the temporal world, a baboon caged in Dante’s inferno, a tiny cave-like cage carved out of the massive wall there.
Then there were the glorious strolls along the Praia Grande and stunning views from the Hotel Bela Vista. I might just as well have been in the Algarve, complete with a Portuguese and Macanese restaurant at the intersection of the road leading to the center of the city. Pick your specialty, and you could wash it down with a Portuguese bubbly that tasted better than champagne. My contribution to the then new Lisboa casino was a tiny price to satisfy my curiosity. Connections to Taipa and Coloane were not yet built, and a visit to those tiny islands suggested that back then, some things didn’t change for centuries.
Follow
