Princes.in - The
lights of Hong Kong’s Wan Chai district remain undimmed. Wild parties
at Club Bunny, Wild Cat, Crazy Horse, Cockeye and other ‘broad-minded’
establishments simply carry on this week, just as they have done for
decades along the notorious Lockhart Road.
No
matter that high overhead — on the 31st floor of the J Residence tower —
a grisly investigation continues. So what, the thumping music along
this lurid strip of bars seemed to suggest, if two Indonesian prostitutes have been butchered?
The
women can be replaced: hundreds more very young and very poor Asian
hopefuls will arrive in the former Crown Colony in the coming weeks to
seek their fortunes in the booming sex trade.
What
the Cambridge-educated banker Rurik Jutting has allegedly done is
simply to confirm what the locals have always believed: most gweilos (or
foreign devils) in Hong Kong are crazy.
What
drives them crazy? The fact that easy money can be made compared to the
opportunities that have to be chiselled out in the higher pressured,
highly competitive and more regulated money markets in London and New
York.
With
such substantial rewards, the expatriate gweilo sensualist can indulge
himself — they are almost always men — in the dizzying variety of cheap
sex, drink and drugs on offer with no fear of the repercussions or
opprobrium that such excesses would invite back home.
Cocaine-fuelled Jutting, a former university rower, simply seems to have gone a few ghastly steps further.
When the Union flag was hauled down in 1997, many thought that Hong Kong was finished as an international financial hub.
Indirect rule from Communist Beijing would surely ruin this hyper-capitalist, neo-colonial party, the analysts predicted.
The
Square Mile rejects who had decamped to the tropics — the so-called
FILTH or ‘Failed In London, Try Hong Kong’ — would no longer have the
powerful advantage of their birth.
Many
expats did leave. But the predicted downturn did not happen. Today,
Hong Kong is a powerhouse because it is a gateway to the Chinese
mainland and so offers a potential slice of the profits from the
incredible expansion of that country’s economy.
You
can make a lot of money very quickly. It is estimated that Jutting was
on £350,000 a year, including bonus. Not bad for a twenty-something
bachelor.
‘There
was a time when second-rate bankers and accountants would end up in
Hong Kong because they could not get good work in the UK,’ says a
British multi-millionaire private equity investor, who started his
career in the former colony.
‘People got jobs out there on the basis they had decent qualifications and could speak English. But that is not the case now.
‘If
you are young and talented in the financial services sector then you
would want to work in Hong Kong because it is a place where capitalism
is celebrated and you can make serious money.
‘The
downside to that is the easy availability of drugs and women. It is a
place where you can quickly go on a downward spiral in your private life
if you lose your moral compass.’ Author John LeFevre, who also worked
as an investment banker on the island, agrees. This week he described in
graphic detail the debauchery he witnessed among the island’s expat
banking set.
‘What happens when you take a young Briton and throw him into an alternate reality, a world largely without any restraints and an industry with a
set of deviant moral benchmarks?’ he asked.
‘For some people, and maybe for Rurik Jutting, things fall apart.
‘To
a large extent, expat bankers in Asia can do whatever they want. As an
overhang of colonialism, they tend to get treated better than the
locals.
‘They
can start food fights in the five-star Mandarin hotel overlooking the
harbour, flee the scene of a car crash or take their pants off and run
around Lan Kwai Fong’s trendy bars in the business district.
‘And if they get so out of control that they get banned from three bars in one night, then the cops will just take them home.
‘My
sense of reality and entitlement got so warped in Hong Kong that when I
would go home to visit my family, my mother suggested I walk around a
supermarket to acclimatise myself and “be less of an a*******”.’
This
sense of Western entitlement and heightened hedonism has long existed
in the territory, which became a British colony in 1842 as a result of
the First Opium War.
By the 20th
century, the whole island with its red pillar boxes, English-style
racecourse and districts named after queens and other imperial figures,
was run by British expats for British expats.
‘Apart
from being the last stronghold of feudal luxury in the world, Hong Kong
is the most vivid and exciting city I have ever seen,’ James Bond
author Ian Fleming wrote on his first visit in 1959.
He
had arrived shortly after the huge success of a novel which for better
or worse came to define Hong Kong’s louche image in Western imagination.
The
World Of Suzie Wong by Richard Mason told of how a young British artist
arrived on the island and fell in love with a beautiful teenage Chinese
prostitute.
Fleming
certainly approved. Indeed, his account of his visit to Hong Kong
opened with the words ‘Is more better now, Master?’ — asked by a
‘dimpling masseuse’.
He alluded to the ‘25 registered nightclubs where 8,000 hostesses plied their trade’. Today, there are many more of both.
Such
encounters in these places are an integral part of expat business,
according to author John LeFevre. So, too, is drug-taking.
‘When
I moved to Hong Kong, the first thing one of the outgoing hedge fund
sales guys gave me was the number of his drug dealer,’ he says.
‘He told me: “Look, I don’t really know you, but trust me, you’ll need this for your clients.”
‘And
everyone knew it when Drug Dealer Joe’s not too subtle Toyota Supra
sports car would show up in front of ICBC Tower (where Jutting’s former
employer, investment bank Merrill Lynch, is based) for a delivery.
‘It’s often
not even a matter of choice. A colleague was chastised by our boss for
not attending an important client’s stag party trip to Manila in the
Philippines: “You have a pregnant wife at home, so what?”
‘I think it was the itinerary titled A Weekend Of Debauchery that scared him off.
‘And he paid a price for not indulging — getting fewer trades than his more willingly deviant counterparts at other banks.
‘One
time I went to a dinner at Ruth’s Chris Steak House, where an
investment banking colleague showed up with two prostitutes and
proceeded to hold a contest to see which of them could keep their hand
on the famously hot plates the longest.’
Expat female colleagues were not wanted in these situations, says LeFevre.
At
one evening with clients to mark the closing of a business deal, the
boss indicated the party would be going to a karaoke bar, which provided drugs and prostitutes.
The
female bankers present were ordered home by text message. A happily
married male colleague who wanted to leave was told to stay because the
deal depended on it.
‘Thirty or 40 girls in skimpy dresses, each wearing a tag with a number on it, were paraded,’ says LeFevre.
‘From
there, it doesn’t take long for the process to get started: “I’ll take
number 12 and number 34.” Or “Dibs on 11.” And “Don’t be greedy; just
get two.”
‘At
the end of the evening, the madam presented a bill that appeared to
have been issued by a restaurant rather than a brothel — and therefore
was claimable on business expenses.’ This arrangement still continues,
according to a current Hong Kong banker who is a former colleague of
John LeFevre.
‘Walk two minutes from Rurik Jutting’s apartment block and you’re in the world of Suzie Wong,’ he says.
‘Hostess
bars are the norm throughout Asia. At the top end, a group of the most
beautiful women you’ve ever seen (though many tend to look the same
after having plastic surgery) will sit beside you, wipe the condensation
off your glass and maybe feed you fruit.
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