Joshua Samuel Brown - November 2002

Duty free at Last

Are you going to finish those samosas? You look like you're in a rush, probably to catch a plane somewhere. I mean, why else would you be in the departures terminal of Hong Kong airport, right?  Me, I'm not going anywhere.  I live here, right here in Terminal one. You wouldn't believe how many people order those samosas, only to run off at the first boarding announcement, leaving one or even two perfectly good samosas sitting on the tray. Sometimes I want to run after them, to tell them that they could just ask the counterperson to put the extra somosas in a Styrofoam clamshell. Then they could finish them on the plane. But one man gathers what another man spills.  Such is life in the airport.

I haven't always lived like this, but believe me, I'm better off this way. Once I had it all. A respected young journalist with not one, but two, weeklyc olumns in the Taiwanese English language dailies, a fine home in the mountains of Taipei County, and the bilingual love of a good woman.  I'd been living in Taiwan for seven years, seven years on a tourist visa! Every sixty days, like clockwork, I was forced to drop whatever it was I was doing, head lemming-like to Chiang Kai-shek airport, where I would get online to have my passport looked over by an unblinking immigration agent who would check that the day of my last entry came no more than sixty days ago before affixing his own blue exit stamp. Let me tell you, there's no dignity in living like that.

Then I'd get on a plane to somewhere - anywhere, it didn't matter, reading every newspaper on the plane, scrupulously eating only the salad and desert portion of my in-flight meal. That's the secret to never getting ill on airplane food - never, ever eat the main dish! Take it from me, pal, I've flown a lot.

Then it was debark, a dreary trip through customs, then to the moneychanger to change exactly seven American dollars into the local currency. This was for snacks - I believe its important to experience something of the local culture, even if its only in the form of a processed treat in unreadable packaging.  Then I'd wait in the airport for the next available flight back to Taiwan.

The return flights were always the worst. For one thing, I'd already read the day's news, and would inevitably find myself fidgeting nervously in my seat, pressing the "call attendant" button at random intervals. Testing the attendant's response time, just in case. For another thing, No matter how many times I'd done it before, simply walked through the immigration counter with a tourist visa and a passport that clearly indicated that I'd lived in the country for a very long time, I always had a suspicion that one day my number would be up.  My flights home were often filled with visions of the always-silent immigration officer suddenly looking up from my passport and asking me questions I would be unable to answer, questions like "Do you really think that there's so much in Taiwan to see that you can justify being a tourist here for seven years?" or "Who do you think your kidding? We know that you are working illegally."

Even though I'd never heard of this happening to anyone, the possibility was more than I could bear.  I wasn't saving any money, and the only reason I was even in Taiwan was to live cheaply and to work on my writing.  Finally, on my last visa trip, the idea occurred to me. Why go back?  Maybe subconsciously I knew all along that that trip was going to be my last. Even though I never used it on planes - I get vertigo - That time, I'd brought my laptop with me. With it, I was free, free to set up shop anywhere that had a power supply. Serendipity! In a fit of inspiration, I ripped up my return ticket and passport, flushing them both down the automatic toilet just behind the "Fortress" electronics shop in Terminal one. Now I could really focus on my writing.

Ah, yes, my precious writing.  You need to understand how important that is to me. I don't mean the inane little travel stories, restaurant critiques, or the seemingly endless stream of CD reviews I once prostituted my prodigious creative talents on. By "writing", I mean my novel - "Adieu, Bonjour Chat" - that's French for "Farewell, Hello Kitty", you know. My life's work; a sweeping historical epic about one man's decades-long torrid romance with the famed Japanese cartoon cat of the title, set against the backdrop of the Chinese revolution. We're talking fifty years here, from the early years of the first KMT-CCP alliance all the way up to the bitter years of the Cultural Revolution, and eventual downfall of the dreaded "Gang ofFour".

Before I decided to take up residence in the airport, I'd been in a rut, with some serious writers block. My protagonist - who is really based on myself -  the only Caucasian soldier in Chairman Mao's ragtag army, had just joined the Chairman on his the desperate "long march" across China. Simultaneously, he finds himself falling ever more deeply in love with Hello Kitty, who at this time was both lover and advisor to the charismatic future leader of China.  I was stuck somewhere around page six hundred of my manuscript - they were somewhere in Xian, being strafed by Kuomintang planes, and I just didn't know where to take the story from there. Now the writer's block is behind me, and the story is nearly done,  a tale of love and loss filled with political intrigue, human drama, and luscious designer handbags. But you'll have to read the book -- which now, free of distractions, I'm sure to finish in no time - to get the whole picture.  It will be truly Hello Kitty-liscious, kind of a "War and Peace meets Powerpuff-Girls" story.

And when it's done, I mean finally finished,  I'm sure to meet the right people to help me get it published. Everybody who's anybody passes through the airport. I guess I need to get some sort of waiver from the Sanrio toy company, because they hold the copyright to Hello Kitty. But I'm sure that they'll be happy to give it to me, once they read the manuscript. Hey, maybe you know some big-shot publishers, or maybe even a film producer? If you do, could you please ask them to look me up? Tell them they can find me any afternoon in the men's room on level seven, in between Starbucks and the Fook Ming Tong tea cabin. I'll be the one sitting on the sink by the 220-volt shaver-only outlet, fingering a set of golden prayer beads, waiting for my laptop to recharge.

Joshua Samuel Brown is a freelance writer who writes from and about the world at large. He currently lives in Taiwan, traveling throughout East Asia, doing freelance writing to keep his lifestyle cranked up.

His online portfolio can be found at www.freespeech.org/jsb.