Take a cup of kindness for Lan Kwai Fong
Fourteen years ago tonight, I went out on New Year’s Eve for the last time. That was the year I spent New Year’s Eve in Hong Kong’s Central district. The area was packed with people, and most restaurants and bars were too crowded to admit more patrons by the time I arrived. So, I ended up ringing in the new year at the Foreign Correspondents Club, a cozy, private space situated in a former ice house. Meanwhile, a couple of blocks away, on Lan Kwai Fong — the center of Hong Kong’s nightlife for hip expats and locals alike — the crowd continued to grow. By some estimates, it reached 20,000 people, all crammed into a tiny, steep street that was once a nondescript row of seedy tenements and vegetable stalls. At one point, people began to slip on the pavement, which was wet with rain, beer and champagne. Someone jostled someone. Someone else pushed back. Suddenly, what had started as a peaceful New Year’s Eve celebration turned into a panicked mob, with all 20,000 souls rushing to get off of the street. When the melee ended, 21 people were dead and more than 100 were injured.
Two blocks away, I might as well have been in another world. When I left the FCC to head home, the streets were still packed with people, most of them oblivious to the nearby tragedy. But the next morning, the tragedy was all over the news, and for a very short while, Lan Kwai Fong became synonymous with death. However, in Hong Kong as elsewhere (or as nowhere else, perhaps), life goes on, and Lan Kwai Fong continued to thrive. Today, it remains a centerpiece of Hong Kong nightlife, albeit with a strong police presence on occasions like New Year’s Eve. For me, however, it cast a pall on the very idea of going out on New Year’s Eve. Three years later, I was living in New York, close enough to Times Square to hear the midnight revelers if the night was still and a window was open. The idea of joining the throngs never occurred to me.
It’s been a while since I thought about Lan Kwai Fong, but I was reminded of it when I decided to write something up about New Year’s Eve safety for the CR safety blog. In scouring the web for information, I found plenty of references to the tragedy, but very little practical advice for people who might want to exercise a little caution while still going out on New Year’s Eve. The best tips I found came from the office of the Mayor of London — not surprising, since that city’s New Year’s Eve party brings in as many as 200,000 people. But I was disappointed to find that that cities with even larger celebrations, such as New York and Sydney, don’t offer similar advice. That’s too bad. Hundreds of thousands of people around the world will go out tonight. Though a repeat of Lan Kwai Fong is unlikely, and many cities (including New York) have superb crowd-control measures in place, a little advance planning can go a long way when it comes to personal safety. That’s as true today as it was 14 years ago, when I was lucky enough to wander away from Lan Kwai Fong — and away from the hubbub of New Year’s Eve for years to come.
February 17th, 2007 18:04
A photo on Flickr triggered the memory. People enjoying themselves out on the streets of Lan Kwai Fong, as I had on so many nights during the early 90s. I’d looked before for some mention of the events of that night, maybe some memorial but I found only snippets of news. It was almost as if an event of such magnitude, as it was to me, had not happened because it had done so before the age of the Internet.
I was there that night, right at the heart of it. I was 19 at the time and looking forward to one of the great New Years Eves. Everyone I knew would be there, a coming together of all of my groups of friends. Some working in HK, some still at school, some back for the holidays from College and University. We arrived late and were startled at the numbers but I had a singular mission to get up amongst the fun.
It was when I reached the crossroads, pushing my way through the dense crowd with my friends literally clinging to my coat tails that the first surge hit us. Within a split second I found myself carried sideways and for a brief second suspended surreally in midair over the steops that ran parallel to the street. As the crowd swayed back I managed to find my footing and got sucked back towards the centre of the road.
So many were blissfully unaware of the danger, they smiled, cheered, whooped and in among them as the surging of the crowd became more severe people dropped. A man fell but a metre from me and although for a fleeting second I had his hand it was futile as the surge of the crowd suddenly took me 20 feet away in seconds. He disappeared horrbily beneath the crowd. I came close when the crowd surged back I had no control over my movement. My cries in English went unheard, when I resorted to my little Cantonese I knew it was too late. A young policeman stood atop a flatbed truck with a loud hailer frozen in a mixture of shock and fear. I screamed at him to urge the crowds back but he just looked on ashen faced.
All of this happened in a matter os seconds. My friends were gone lost in a sea of black hair and when I knew I could not help them my survival instinct kicked in. Oddly many of my friends used to refer to me as ‘Uncle’ because I was always the last one standing, the one who talked us out of trouble or saw that a ‘casualty’ made it home at the end of the night. I luckily am usually blessed with a clear head in times of crisis. I literally fought my way diagonally away from the epicentre and looked for a way to save myself. My solution was to climb a lamppost. It’s strange the thoughts you sometimes have at critical junctures in your life but as I climbed this lamppost I could only think of how silly I might look on the news when my friends and family saw me.
This action kept me out of harms way. It sadly gave he a horrible vantage point from which to survey the unfolding chaos. When I felt it was safer I climbed down and to forced my way down one of the sidestreets away from the crossroads. I had to do ao full loop and reappeared back at the Northern end of Lan Kwai Fong. I was stunned that so mnay were just absolutely unaware of what had ben happening but streets away.
I desperately tried to get people to move back and informed as many as I could of what had happened. As a passage began to appear through the centre of the street the full horror and severity of what had transpired became evident. I urged friends, drunk from bars who were nurses and first aiders out as the emergency services could not yet make it through the crowd. Some of the police, most useless in the face of this unexpected tragedy were even assisting memebers of the press and at times fighting with those trying to ge to the dead and dying.
I was in shock.I searched desperately for friends and tried to gather many I knew together to help each other as it was as if everyone was missing someone or awaiting the arrival of someone. We went from horrible scene to horrible scene to see what help we could offer but nothing prepared me for the sight of a friend, whom I had only recently met that holiday trying in vain to resusitate his own brother.
We walked the streets that night long into the morning stunned and insilent shock but angry at what had unfolded. Pangs of guilt swept many of us as we realised our part in the events, our inability to help and that maybe if we had been better organised we might have been ‘all’ safely inside a bar at the time. HK wasn’t prepared for such an event and it was almost the moment the HK media lost their innocense. The images, the pictures, the reports were endless.
I thought I’d managed to banish my demons in 2000 attending the London Millennium celebrations but I was constantly wary of the crowds and when briefly the crowd began to surge I was very quick to move my friends out and away quickly. They understood.
I lived in Hong Kong for 14 years and it always has a place in my heart. I hope very soon to go back for the first time since the tragedy occurred. I need to go back to Lan Kwai Fong to remember all those that lost their lives and to hopefully be at peace with what happened that night.
Sorry for the length of this but I felt the need to share.
Rich