“We go dim sum sometimes” was something that I heard frequently in Hong Kong in the 1960s. My mother-in-law, so did everybody else, would say this to anybody that had provided a favour or service, whether paid or unpaid. Though there was no intention to go dim sum with someone you hardly know, it carried the message that the favour or service would be returned sometime. What that translated to was that to get things done quickly, you would need to give out “tea money” or “lai see money” or to put it bluntly a bribe.
Corruption was part and parcel of life in the Colony in the 1960s and 1970s. Little could be achieved if you did not pay a bribe, small or big, depending on what were to be accomplished. Corruption had a long history in China since imperial days, so had in Hong Kong since its birth in 1841.
The Police Force, The Fire Fighters and The Health Department were the most corrupt public bodies. To get a fire safety certificate for your establishment you needed to bribe the fire department, for a sanitary certificate the health department and for security the police department
Paying a bribe was an open secret, there was even a system set up as to how the bribe was to be paid. For instance, the health inspector arrived at your establishment, hanged his jacket on a designated rack and went to the washroom. The establishment’s owner discreetly slided an envelope with money in a pocket of the jacket. The inspector came out of the washroom, put on his jacket and issued a compliance certificate.
As for the police, the constable on beat would collect the bribe individually from the street vendors, the small mom and pop shops, the restaurants and other businesses, legal or illegal, and handed the daily receipt to a designated officer at the precinct. Once a month or so, envelopes containing money were handed to individual participants, the higher the rank the more the payout. Participation was somewhat “mandatory”, lest you were quickly demoted and transferred to a remote border station in the New Territories.
Hong Kong Police 1960s
One of Hong Kong 1960s attraction was the hawkers who plied their trade on the pavements of busy roads. Here you could get, at a bargain, things that were used on a daily basis, from ladies stocking to hats, from underwear to overcoat, and fast food, from curried octopus to wanton noodles. This bustling trade was what made Hong Kong lively when the sun had set. Unlicensed hawking was illegal, yet the business thrived under the nose of the law enforcing police. It was hilarious that the police even staged mock up raids from time to time, so as to appear clean and straight, whence the hawkers would run with their carts down the street in panic, shouting “jau gwai” (run from the devils). One hawker summed up this trade as follows: “without hawkers, society is quiet and empty”
Hawkers plying their trade in Hong Kong. Find clothes, accessories and all.
Modern Food Hawkers in Hong Kong, not dissimilar to the 1960s
Then the Triads (Mafia) extracted money from the businesses, not paying meant trouble and disruption to the business. The Police stepped in and extracted more bribe in the name of protecting the businesses from the Triads. Triads also controlled illegal gambling and prostitution, and business would run normally if under the police protection. Other businesses were raided now and then until they came under the police umbrella.
“No Money No Water”, a sarcastic term used to poke fun at the firefighters. During a fire, the firefighters would be busy with all sorts of activities but dispensing water. Anxious property owners knew they had to negotiate to get the firefighters to open the hose. Then the reverse was also true, “No Money More Water”. This time the water kept flowing causing unnecessary further damage to property even after the fire was extinguished. Pay up to close the hose.
Fire Fighters 1960s Hong Kong
It was not that there were no apparatus in place to control bribery. There was the Hong Kong Police Anti Corruption Branch, established in 1952. However it was ineffective, as the Anti Corruption Branch became corrupt itself, extracting bribe from police under investigation. In the classic Golberg case, the Anti Corruption Branch was investigating Senior Police Officer Golberg for having huge sum of unexplained money in his bank account. Before he was charged, the Anti Corruption branch let Golberg to flee Hong Kong to the UK, though he was eventually extradited and convicted.
“Foh Kei” meaning “Colleague” was a powerful word used within the police force. With this word, the member of the police force and their family could get away with a lot of contravention such as illegal parking, speeding or even running illegal or unethical businesses. I had the opportunity to use this technique once, when ticketed for illegal parking. “We are foh kei” we told the ticketing officer and provided him with the name and rank of one of our detective relative. We were let go.
There were also routine corruptions such as a business corporation giving the manager of a bank an expensive Rolex watch so that he/she facilitated some business deals, or paying the public work department for insider information to land a contract, or paying a senior executive to get a lucrative promotion, or paying the personnel manager of a company to land a job. Even in the hospital “tea money” was systematically paid to the nurses to get an extra blanket for the sick, or to extend the visiting hours. The whole Asia was generally corrupt. I remember when we travelled to Thailand and Philippines, it was an advisable practice to have a banknote enclosed in your passport for the immigration officer to take, without which you might be subject to long baggage search and inconvenience.
Then everything changed in 1974 with the establishment of ICAC, the Independent Commission Against Corruption, and today Hong Kong is regarded as one of the most corrupt-free societies in the world. As we speak even the previous Chief Executive of Hong Kong could not get away from the claw of ICAC, he being brought to court for alleged corruption during his term of office.
Modern ICAC Hong Kong Headquarter, Over 1,200 employees
All these, however, pale in front of today’s corruption in China, the latest was a top former general in the Chinese military investigated for accepting bribe, estimated to be more than another earlier charged general’s accumulation of a tonne (in actual weight!) of banknotes found in his house. It was reported that in 2015 HK$245 billions of bribery money was channelled out of Guangdong in illegal money transfer. This is just the tip of the iceberg of corruption money in China