Who Put This Junk Here?

Buoys will be buoys...

(The Hi-Lite, a full frontal)

Foreign correspondents, those scrappy journalists who are fortunate enough to report from exotic lands thousands of miles from home, can be a cheeky lot.

Dark and smokey foreign correspondent clubs across Asian capitals echo with swagger as boastful scribblers trade anecdotes, their details lubricated by Singapore Slings. There are endless tales of how they got to this or that hotspot, ditched the agents following them or got an outrageous lead past the copy desk.

I may have been guilty of telling a couple of stories like that, myself.

But if there is one thing expatriate journalists like to talk about even more than how they scored that scoop, it’s how they hosed the bean counters. It has been said that their most creative writing was not in their news stories, but in their expense reports.

Let me back up, because the expat life may be a new concept for you. Most people never get a chance to experience it, or even to see it up close. Assignment packages for expats vary, but typically the job offer, designed to entice promising professionals to move their families halfway around the world, goes something like mine did:

Okay, Bob, you’re living in a cramped, 850-square-foot apartment in New York City. We’re going to treat you to a 2,400-square-foot flat in Hong Kong. Three bedrooms plus a maid’s quarters. A balcony overlooking the South China Sea. Don’t worry about the cost – the rent bill comes straight to us.

You will have a company car. We’ll take care of the insurance and repairs, of course.

Will your wee lad be wanting to attend school? We will pay the tuition along with his uniform, transportation and books.

You’ll need someplace to spend your days off, so here’s your own membership to the Aberdeen Marina Club. We hope you enjoy the swim-up bar in the tropical pool! Do you like piña coladas?

This was the only time in my life that I felt embarrassed about a work offer being too generous. Trust me, it certainly never happened again.

You can see the problem with this deal right away, can’t you? I mean, the paychecks keep landing in your bank account, but there is nothing to spend the money on, since everything is already taken care of.

Sometime in the early 1980s - a little before my time - a group of clever Reuters expats in Hong Kong came up with a solution to this pesky cash problem.

They pooled their money and bought a used Chinese junk called the Hi-Lite. Forty-five feet long, three decks, a covered dining area, a permanent slip near Aberdeen Harbor, and its own full-time sailor, to bring the junk right to them.

If you’ve ever owned a boat, even a small one, you know it can help you solve a too-much-money problem.

(The famous Hi-Lite)

Fast-forward. It was against this very unreal backdrop that we – my wife, my young son and I - landed in Asia early in 1987. If you aren’t imagining Hong Kong as one of the most exotic, romantic places in the world, your imagination may need work.

Sampans and junks plied the waterways. Spectacular vistas were a dime a dozen. Glass skyscrapers, a misty mountain, enchanting seascapes. There was a steep tram ride to lift you up to Victoria Peak, and the Star Ferry could carry you from Hong Kong-side, across the harbor to Kowloon-side, for mere pennies.

If you somehow grew bored with all that Hong Kong had to offer, you could jump on a hydrofoil and skim over to the gambling casinos of Macau, which was then a Portuguese enclave.

Incidentally, those Macau gambling casinos were another good solution to that surplus money problem. They could solve it in a single afternoon, but that’s somebody else’s story, not mine.

This was such stuff as dreams are made on, especially for someone who spent his youth living next-door to the unpaved Indiana State Fair parking lot, always combing fine dust out of his hair. Suffice it to say, too much money wasn’t my family’s problem.

Shortly after arriving in Hong Kong, we were invited out for a Sunday cruise on the Hi-Lite, courtesy of my Reuters colleagues. We were ecstatic. A day on the water, children for our son to play with, good food and drink and a chance to explore the colony that was home to us now.

Our hosts told us all we had to bring was a lifejacket for Christopher and about six gallons of sunscreen to battle the tropical rays.

It was pure bliss. One glimpse of that life, and we were all in. We bought the next junk share that came available. Welcome to heaven.

One sunny Sunday a few months after we became part of the Hi-Lite crowd, I was on one of the decks talking to my editor just after lunch. We watched our children crisscrossing the bow, rebounding off the port and starboard railings.

(Christopher, on board)

Without warning, everything turned to slow-motion. The boat hit some choppy waves, bucked and lurched, and our two-and-a-half-year-old son slipped under a railing and into the rough and roiling waters of the South China Sea.

Close your eyes. However you may picture that moment, let me tell you it was far worse.

For one-eighth of a second, there was total disbelief. I sprang to the railing and saw a little blond head bobbing above a red lifejacket. He seemed more confused than frightened, but that was fine. I was feeling more than enough terror for the both of us.

That blond head was rapidly receding into the wavy distance. I jumped over the railing, aiming myself in his direction, and dove. I reached him, in, I don’t know, ten seconds or ten minutes – take your pick, since time was standing still.

Christopher was sputtering and spewing sea foam, but he was alive. There are moments with your children when it can go either way – it’s up to you to signal the mood, and he was scanning my face for reaction. I grasped a canvas strap on the lifejacket and pulled him into my safe embrace. I held on for dear life.

“Isn’t this great?” I said, and he laughed. We both laughed some more. It was an afternoon adventure, and if all the other children weren’t in the water with us, then why the hell not?

The Hi-Lite had turned in a broad arc and was chugging our way, about a dozen beyond-hysterical adults, chief among them his mother, screaming from the bow. As it drew near and slowed down, they clamped the sea ladder to the hull.

One well-intentioned colleague hurled a heavy cork lifebuoy in our direction. It hit both of us in the face. Suddenly, Christopher was crying. Eager hands pulled us on board and opened the first aid kit for our rapidly bruising faces. We wore those wounds with pride in the days to come.

Whatever trauma Christopher experienced that day, he did not grow up to fear water, lifebuoys or Chinese junks. More than three decades later, he still insists that he remembers the incident. He can supply enough small details that we suspect he really does.

We would spend a full eight years in Hong Kong, and then return to the States, where we got to pay for our own housing and cars and entertainment, just like other people.

It had been a Cinderella fairy tale. We had gone to the ball, we had heard the clock strike midnight, and we were fine with coming back to reality.

That small red lifejacket has followed us on every move we’ve made since then. We have no use for it whatsoever. Only a shared gratitude for saving a life, is all. I don’t expect we will ever be able to let it go.   

(The actual lifejacket}