Transcription
There's a lot of misconceptions powered by various people in the West who are very much against China, particularly in North America, but also there's a few in Britain. Meet Judy McKay. Born in the UK, she moved to Hong Kong 60 years ago. She became a fierce anti-tobacco activist and fought so successfully that the industry saw this tiny woman as one of the three most dangerous people in the world. Judy shares what outsiders get wrong about Hong Kong? Whether Hong Kong is becoming just another Chinese city and Hong Kong versus Singapore, which one is winning? I'm Max Chernov, your insider to expert life. Hangla.
So you think that Hong Kong will still be a welcoming place for foreigners, for experts coming here, or it's becoming more and more like another Chinese city? Eventually, it will be more like another Shenzhen but with just a, with a long. I think both. I think both. Coming here as a tourist is so safe, you wouldn't believe it. In Hong Kong, we have a population of 8 million people and we have 30 murders a year. Now, you'd get that overnight in some Western cities. 30 murders a night or a week. I mean, we have 30 murders a year and they're not of visitors, are expected. They're between the triad gangs themselves. This is this is what happens. I can go to any car park in Hong Kong at midnight on my own with my car and pick it up. I never even think of feeling frightened. I certainly wouldn't do that in many cities in the West. Be on my own and go up and pick up a car at midnight on my own in an isolated car park.
We have a very sound education system here with free education for whenever, as well as many private and international schools. We have the equivalent of the National Health Service here. People do pay about £10 to go for a visit. And we're facing the same problems as the NHS, you know, more people using it, an aging population, and so on. 50% of all Hong Kong is is a country park. People think of Hong Kong as the the concrete jungle of the central part of it, but actually, there's massive numbers of places and outlying islands to hike and to barbecue and to, you know, take your dogs for walks and things like that. And we've got a lot of amenities like our pandas, like our Buddha, like going up the Peak, but it's incredibly safe for tourists here. A bit like Singapore. Singapore, I think, is a safe place for tourists as well. So, I think that Hong Kong is definitely like that. And yet, there's all these misconceptions. When we go back to Britain, we people say to us, "Are you safe?" And I mean, I almost laugh. I said, "Am I safe? I'm safer in Hong Kong than I'm here in London." For sure. That's for sure.
"Are you safe? Are you going back? You know, what about this brutal communist dictatorship that's ruling you?" There's a lot of misconceptions powered by various people in the West, a small number of people in the West who, um, you know, are very much against China, particularly in North America, but also there's a few in Britain, including some people who were here in the civil service and as governor, who really are very, very anti-China and I think spread a lot of misinformation about us. As I said, I think I'm safer here than almost anywhere in the world. And tourists are so welcome here. And of course, the Hong Kong government and the people want tourists to come because it's part of the livelihood. Yeah, tourists for sure. But what about like people who want to move, like from America, come to work? Yeah. Come to do business. Would it still be a place for this? Yes, I can certainly answer that question. I think that people, nothing to do with 1997. I think gradually there is a change from people coming for lifelong into people who are coming on shorter-term contracts, coming for even 3 years or 10 years. People come here, they make money, they advance themselves in their business, but they go back. This is particularly true of Americans. Not very many Americans stay on here, but they never have. They've tended to go back to their country. But for certainly somebody coming from Britain, I think it is gradually becoming more Chinese as a city, and that's only expected. It was more British under the British. It's more Chinese under the Chinese. I mean, who would expect anything different? But I think there is definitely from a business point of view, there's an incredible future for people coming here still. I mean, particularly as we're linked with China, which of course is just the growing economy in the world. So, I think, and especially as we are becoming integrated, I think there's a massive future for people coming here. Well, not just in business, but coming here and working in, you know, in all sorts of things, working in the health field and things like that. I think, um, whether they stay on into retirement, I think probably not so much nowadays, but I think, um, Hong Kong will certainly see us out. We have no plans to move. We go back to Scotland for 3 months every summer, and that is just a perfect divide. You know, we see our family, we see our friends, and yet, uh, my work persona is still in Hong Kong. It's not in Scotland.
Singapore and Hong Kong were always like these two competitors in the region. Yeah. And some people say Hong Kong started to lose positions after China, uh, took over on a global scale. So, it's more like now it's not the gate for Westerners to China anymore. Uh, but some people say it's another will be another Chinese city. What do you think? Uh, if you see it for like the last almost 60 years, the competition between like these two incredibly successful cities, what's your thoughts on it? What's your takes on them? Certainly after 1997, Singapore was able to pick up quite a lot of people who were repositioning their businesses out of Hong Kong because they were uncertain what the future would be like being under ultimately a Chinese jurisdiction. I think that happened, but I think what is now happening is that this is being rebalanced by the fact that we are having in Hong Kong, we're having the advantage of being part of China and being part of the Belt and Road Initiative, part of the Greater Bay Area. So, I think that Hong Kong's strength in terms of coming up to be equal to Singapore, and it's not hostile. I don't feel it's hostile at all. I feel it's just a, a pretty good friendly rivalry between the two. And Singapore is rather more, to use the word sterile, and chaotic are far too far down the road for what I'm trying to describe. I mean, Singapore is more orderly. Hong Kong still has a business of being a little bit less orderly and a bit more freewheeling than Singapore in a number of ways. So, there are differences between them, but I think both of them are going to do well. I think actually, and I think the rivalry is no bad thing. I think, uh, Hong Kong is benefiting heavily from being a part now of this huge, the Greater Bay Area, which is like, we Googled yesterday with my friend, it's like 80 million people here in the region, Guangzhou, Macau, Hong Kong, 80 million people. It's like Germany, yes, yeah, it's crazy. And and Singapore is a little bit like isolated. It's only Malaysia here, yes. Uh, so there is a Johor Bahru which they have like economic ties, but still Hong Kong is the part of something much bigger, I feel like physically. Yes. So, I think it does sort of checks and balances as we go along. But many people here, they visit Singapore, you know, it's a, it's a safe place to go. It's a nice place to go. Um, so I don't think there's any hostility or any antagonism. There's a bit of rivalry, and as I said, this balances in different times in different ways. Many like wealthy people left Hong Kong after COVID to Singapore and relocated their businesses or home offices to Singapore. But now also, I talked to some people yesterday, they say, okay, now it's the opposite trend. So, people were like afraid, they were leaving after 1997, after COVID, but now they're kind of moving back, returning to Hong Kong. It was the same with 1997. Some people, a lot of people left to Canada to get their children born there, and then they've sort of come back. Yeah. But, um, in 2019, we quite a few young people from Hong Kong went to Britain under a special arrangement, and I think it's possibly unlikely that they will come back.
I mean, Hong Kong, I think, is still a remarkably free society. Interestingly enough, I've just written an article published in the China Daily on human rights. That, that, that's quite an achievement to do that. But when I was researching it, I went onto the United Nations page on this human rights, United Nations department, and it interestingly enough, it says the biggest human rights violation in the world is poverty. Now, that comes as a great surprise to people in the West. Well, poverty. Yeah. Okay. They see human rights as being able to criticize your government. Whereas, in fact, if you were to take the UN criteria of lifting people out of poverty, China has lifted 80 million people out of poverty. And so sometimes when I'm in the West, just controversially, when people say, "Oh, there's no human rights in China." I'll say, "Actually, if you take the UN definition, China's done more than any country in the world on human rights because it's lifted people out of poverty." And they just don't see it like that.
There are restrictions in Hong Kong on what you can say. There is a red line that you cannot call for independence for Hong Kong. And nobody in their right mind would do so anyhow. It's never going to happen. It was one of the five demands of the protesters in 2019. Never ever is ever is Hong Kong going to be independent. It is part of China and it will remain so. And China, you know, the British took it for 150 odd years. China's got it back. There is no way that China is going to let it go. And it's not from the students here. It doesn't resonate. It didn't resonate in 2019. If you ask students in China, they say, "No, of course it's ours. We don't want to give it up." There was no cross-border fertilization of a protest movement in China as many hoped it might be. Many of the protesters hoped it might be. It didn't resonate at all in China. That. So in Hong Kong, you cannot publicly call for an independence for Hong Kong. And you certainly can't do what many did in 2019, and that's cooperate internationally and to go to countries like the US or Britain and ask for their support in making Hong Kong independent. That you simply cannot do. So I think we're searching with legislation here that is our security legislation. Hardly different from most of the rest of the world, I have to say. It's modeled on the British one, for example. I think many people are just trying to find their way. And I think for journalists and for teachers, they're still trying to find, you know, what level is it that we can be sort of critical, you know, in terms of teaching students about history, you know, just the nuances of of politics with that. I think there are some sensitivities, but I think Hong Kong is working it out. I'm very confident that Hong Kong will be okay. We have a very good Chief Executive at the moment, John Lee. I think we're on track to bounce back as we've bounced back from most things before. And not to say there's not problems. We have problems of, for example, care of the elderly. We have problems of people who are poor and housing. Of course, we have problems like everywhere else in the world. And I'm not dismissing those problems. I'm not saying we have problems putting them aside. No, we have problems and we have to deal with them. And we have to deal with them with, you know, better housing and more equality. But I think the days of Hong Kong being run by the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank and the big Hongs, the big property owners, for example, I think those are going. I think those, I think the very big property owners are not as powerful as they were once in Hong Kong. And again, that ties in with China's philosophy. They're trying to do the same in China with not allowing people like Jack Ma and the big oligarchs. They don't want Russian oligarchs in China, and they don't want Russian oligarchs, the equivalent of Russian oligarchs in Hong Kong. They want a more equal society. So I think that is also happening here, and that's really to the good as well.
What I think the biggest, um, changes that happened in Hong Kong in terms of how in society, I think they behave with more confidence. I also think they expect more. They, the young people here today expect the government to do more. Um, they expect the streets to be swept. They expect the education system and mass transit, which is absolutely marvelous. We've got the most amazing mass transit system in the world. It breaks down one morning, and you'd think Hong Kong had come to an end, all the complaints there are about it. Um, that I think there, there is much less tolerance in a sense, almost in a more Western way. There's much less tolerance of sort of small glitches. It's not a major problem. If our mass transit, oh, I don't even mean the whole mass transit. I mean, just one line breaks down for a few minutes or is delayed. There's a lot more complaint. There's a lot more expectation that, um, you know, they have to be held to account. I think these elements are now sort of creeping in. Um, and I think it's certainly a much more sophisticated society than it was then.
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Are you PR, permanent resident in Hong Kong? Uh, the system here is that if you're here for 7 years, you can become a permanent resident. And our two boys were born in Hong Kong. So they're a little family of permanent residents. So we have British passports still, but we have a Hong Kong ID card, a permanent ID card. And China has now given us 5-year visas. Those of us who are permanent, got permanent ID cards, they've given us for almost no money at all, very little. Uh, we now have 5-year visas. China has tried after 1997 very hard to make the expatriates, um, comfortable and welcome here, um, in many, many ways. I mean, we still have Cornwall Street. Um, we still have a very Chinese solution right in the middle of Central. We had a huge statue of Queen Victoria. Now that has been moved to a park much further away from the Central. They haven't destroyed it. They haven't exported it. They haven't, they've left it in Hong Kong, but it's not right in the Central anymore. I think that's just a, a wonderful solution. And they, China was quite uncertain as to whether, uh, the expatriate community in Hong Kong would stay on to start with. Would they leave? Would they stay? And in fact, um, I was asked by the wife of the Prime Minister, Alip Po, his wife, Julian. She asked me what she really wanted to know what would be the situation. This is way before 1997. This is in the 80s and early 90s. We had several discussions on this. What was the attitude of the people, the British in particular, staying in Hong Kong? So I said, well, I think the attitude is that the time has come. You know, this is part of China. The time has come. Uh, it's right that it goes back to China. Most of us are staying on. It's really not a problem. And I think, uh, I think in my own small way, I was able to sort of reassure the Chinese government that actually there wouldn't be a mass exodus of people who were running the place. There wouldn't be a mass exodus even from the civil service. They, the civil service were not allowed to stay on as heads of a department, but they could stay on as either subheads or as advisers. And now that's gradually moved through in the last several decades since the handover. There are, um, there's still a few pe few Western people in the civil service, but really very few.
We had an incredibly peaceful handover. Um, and we prepared well for it well in advance for 20 years beforehand, and then after the handover itself. So probably, if you look back at the British Empire, we probably had about the best of all handovers, actually. Um, in terms of peacefulness and security. It was almost a non-event. The place was full of journalists, you know, and we had this joke in Hong Kong. They were all in St. John's Cathedral on their knees praying, "Let there be blood on the streets. Let there be blood." So they could write something about this handover and how dramatic it was, and they had nothing to report on. It was all peaceful. And so it has continued. Yeah, I mean, I think as I said, they, they've made sure we've got permanent ID cards are in place. All the land leases are automatically renewed. They've just announced China, they're automatically renewing all the land leases from 19, after 50 years, um, 1947 automatically being renewed. I think China's done a lot to reassure the people of Hong Kong that actually the the basic institutions and the basic way of life is in place for the long term. And China now, I think sees 1947 as almost a non-event. And what is happening is that there are more and more people from the mainland coming to Hong Kong. You hear more and more Mandarin being spoken on the street. Um, I was meeting somebody at the airport the other day on the, you know, the side of the barrier, which is where you meet and greet people, the Hong Kong people, and everybody around me was speaking Mandarin. So, they were greeting people coming into Hong Kong. So, everything like our mass transit railway now is English, Cantonese, and Mandarin. That's all been so you see more Mandarin, you hear more Mandarin. There's more, we're much more integrating, slowly integrating with Shenzhen, slowly cross-border. People go across for dinner now. Um, in fact, that's a bit of a problem for the hotels and restaurants in Hong Kong because you can just pop across the border, have dinner, and it's cheaper than actually having it in Hong Kong. And so, we're part now of the Greater Bay Area. And China has also with this present problems with America and the tariffs, China has said categorically that we will help Hong Kong, whatever, whatever it takes, we will help Hong Kong, um, see this through. Who knows where it's going to go? All this tariff business and particularly with China, who's facing tariffs of 240% on some goods. We don't know where that will go. But China has said very categorically, don't worry Hong Kong, we will, whatever, whatever how this works out, we will help you. So, I think China has done a lot to make sure that, um, you know, that that they're looking after Hong Kong and they're helping support our stock exchange.
And the People's Liberation Army are stationed here, but I've virtually never seen one of them. Um, the British troops when they were here, you saw them in Central, you saw them going to the bars and the restaurants and things. Never. You never see the Chinese, the PLA going to bars in Wan Chai, for example. Never. Uh, I think in fact, we feel rather sorry for them. They're not with their families. They're here quite isolated in their barracks. Um, they don't really come into town. They don't have the money to do so actually from their salaries, you know, to spend a lot of money here. And sometimes they have an open day where they will open up, if a ship comes into harbor, they'll have an open day and people can go onto it and children go and, you know, look at the ships or things like that. And, you know, as I said, I think we feel a bit sort of sorry for them that they're so isolated. Um, and they don't, they don't really come out and integrate with the population. So the population never sees soldiers in the street ever. I mean, it just doesn't happen here. So I personally think, um, you know, China's done quite well, um, in terms of taking over and running Hong Kong. In fact, staying on, I feel it's my duty almost as a British expatriate who was here as a colonist to start with. Um, I feel it's my duty to stay on and just help in any way and try and make sure that it works as best as it possibly can do. I regard that as not being a failure or anti-British in any way, shape, or form. And of course, the government has problems. China has problems. Every country in the world, the government has problems. Um, especially today, it would seem, the Western countries as well. I mean, no, no government is without its its faults, but actually, I think the government here does really pretty well in terms of creating a safe society. And Asia, as you know, I mean, Asia compared with the rest of the world is an incredibly safe place. We haven't really had a war in Asia since the Second World War. I mean, that's the last 60 years. We had, I suppose, the Korean War. We've had internal wars, Korean War. We've had dissident and uprising like in Myanmar. We had a border skirmish between Vietnam and China in 1989. But, you know, I'm having to think and search my memory to think what, when did we last have a war? It's a very safe area of the world. It's probably the safest area in the world you can think of today. Asia in general, and, you know, Hong Kong is part of that.
I spent two days in in China, mainly in China yesterday, and it's interesting to see that probably Chinese are very different also south and north. There are like few countries inside one country. But also I guess Hong Kongers are also like proud Hong Kongers, especially who are originally from here. What do you think would be the difference between like the Hong Konger and mainland Chinese? Well, at one stage, they would have been really different, but, um, I mean, you could, 30 years ago, you could have recognized a mainlander here just by the way they were dressing. You can't do that anymore at all. Um, what was the way like Hong Kong was more, well, they were smarter and they had more money, whereas the people from the mainland were really poor. They had no money at all. And I think Hong Kong is used to feel a bit sort of superior to people from the mainland in many ways. But I think that has changed now. And I think the mainland people are doing so well. My goodness me, all these cars. I think the mainland traffic. I think the mainland people are doing so well. I sometimes can't tell seeing somebody in a street until I hear them speak whether they're from the mainland. Here we go. Whether they're from the mainland or if they're Hong Kong people. Um, I think Hong Kong people do have an identity. I think at the moment, it's quite southern Chinese. Um, so I think the, the major group of them, and in fact, the whole global diaspora of Chinese is mostly Cantonese. If you look at the Chinese restaurants around the world, for example, they're virtually all all from the southern part of China. Oh, really? Yes. Yes. You, you don't get many Mandarin people going and opening a restaurant in New York or something. That's much less common. It's the Cantonese who have created this like more entrepreneurial, entrepreneurial. Yes. Perhaps because they've left their homeland. They've many have come to Hong Kong first and then gone overseas. They are a bit more temporary. Anyhow, they say the difference between the north and southern Chinese is like in Europe. You've got the northerners who are, if anything, rather taller. They're rather quieter. They're like the Scandinavians. Whereas the southern Europeans are more like the Italians. They're more expressive. They're more, um, they're shorter. They're noisier. If you listen to the volume speaking, the northerners speak much more quietly than southerners everywhere in the world. Um, and the Cantonese do speak quite loudly, and their language is more almost Germanic. It's more staccato. This, the, um, northern language is much softer. For example, the word for friend in Cantonese is pao. Pao. That's quite definite. Whereas in Mandarin, it's po. That's. Or apple is pingguo or pingguo, almost the same. Uh, and if I am speaking Mandarin and I don't know a word, I just try it in Cantonese and, uh, soften it, soften it a bit, and sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't. For example, the word for five is in Cantonese, but it's wu in Mandarin. So sometimes it's completely different. Different. Yeah. So it can vary quite a lot.
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Are there many people who actually stayed through this almost 60 years that you're here? Or many, I guess many people left? Many friends left, or have someone who stayed actually? Yeah, most expats do leave, and that's economic. Uh, many of the, when they came, they were given accommodation by the government, in particular, a huge group of people, but also people like Cathay Pacific or the bank in those days provided accommodation, provided rent. And the only way you can stay on in Hong Kong after you retire, after my husband retired, is to own your own place. To try and pay today's rental for a flat, even a small flat in Hong Kong is, is high, very high. So, from a very practical point of view, not that many people stay on. And I think I would say almost everybody we know who stayed on, um, managed to get their own place, often very early, like we did, when you could pick up a place for for peanuts, 'cause we bought our house in 1971, and they say you should buy when there's blood on the streets, and that's pretty much what we did. It was the Cultural Revolution. The Red Guards and the bombs were still here. So many people who did as we did, we are the people who have been able to stay on. I think many more people would have liked to, but if you don't own your own place here, you can't. Yeah.
How many times did it get more expensive through the years? 100, 100 times, something like that? Well, it's, uh, it's, it's, I think Hong Kong, I think Singapore and Hong Kong are both pretty expensive places, but I think Hong Kong is the most, one of the most expensive places in the world. So, we're just again, very fortunate that we made that decision so many years ago, and we made it. We were renting a flat in town, and the landlord put up the rent by $100 Hong Kong dollars a month for the next three years. And $100 Hong Kong dollars is what, about £10, US, something like that? Peanuts by today's standards. But I remember saying to my husband, "$100 a month more for the next three years, gosh, that's a bit much. We better buy a house." So, we came, we saw this one, bought it that same day, that afternoon. A very big impulse decision, um, which has served us well, the best thing we ever did financially, but also it's an oasis because we're surrounded by trees and bushes and green. It's just an oasis for when I go out and fight with the industry. Um, and people love coming out to us because many of our friends do live in apartments. So to come out and be able to sit in the garden and just, uh, be surrounded by, you know, the peace and the quiet and the birds. You're probably picking it up on your recording with the birds all around us. It's just lovely. We're really lucky. Yeah, it's beautiful and lovely. When you bought it, it was a bit maybe far away from the city center, but now it's like just 20 minutes drive from the from the. But people thought we were mad buying a place when there was still all the unrest. They thought it was so far out. We're at the ninth milestone, and it was very remote in those days. We had to sink a well. We had no water supply. The electricity went off quite frequently. Would people ever come out as far out as this and see us? Um, we had difficulty finding a Chinese amah to come and out and work here because it was so far out. And in fact, we became the first Westerners in Hong Kong to employ a Filipino maid, because I went down to the Philippines and interviewed myself and interviewed about eight of them. Heart rendering. They all wanted to come. They all had, you know, parents who were sick or brothers they wanted to, um, educate, much the same as today, in fact, but they're all desperate to come. But and we have the same family today. We're in our fifth generation of the same Filipino family. So we must be doing something right. Well, the fifth generation of that same family we employed in 1972, and certainly in the 1970s when there were all many, many immigrants coming in illegally into Hong Kong following the Cultural Revolution in the 60s and 70s, our garden seemed to be a conduit. They would come up from Sai Kung over the hill, and, uh, if they made it south of Boundary Street, they were allowed to stay in Hong Kong. Boundary Street in Kowloon, so they came here, and they all were trying to get into Kowloon and south of Boundary Street, 'cause if they were picked up by the police, then they were still allowed to stay. So they're all coming in, and, you know, the first couple of times we were told we had to film the police, but actually, by the time the police got to us, they were long gone. So we just pointed. In the end, that's that's a way to Kowloon, that way. Um, and they were a very ragged, often barefoot in open sort of plimsolls, very ragged, desperate, frightened group of people, the illegal immigrants. We had a rush of them in the 60s and 70s following the Cultural Revolution, and then the famine in China. And, you know, that's they were the people who built up Hong Kong. So I'm not sure if any of them would ever remember coming through our garden, but that's where, and, you know, they were never threatening, never. We never worried that they would harm us in any way. They were always astonished to find a Westerner, as you can imagine, if they saw us, and very frightened, but, you know, they were the people who've led to Hong Kong being what it is today. Yeah.
So how was Hong Kong back then? It was like very international or like very Chinese or how was it? What was the vibe? Well, I arrived right in the middle of the Cultural Revolution, and people don't appreciate that Hong Kong was very much affected. We had the Red Guards here on the street. We had bombs. We had all this communist schools and banks barricaded. We had big character posters saying, "Imperialists, go home." It was at a time when people were very uncertain whether the Hong Kong police would be able to hold Hong Kong or not, because the People's Liberation Army came right down to the border, and if they had invaded, I think Hong Kong would have fallen. But China decided, as it always decides in the fullness of time, they would get back Hong Kong in a more peaceful era, which is what happened. Um, but there was a great uncertainty at that time, and certainly a feeling of danger. If you went out onto the street and saw a cardboard box, for example, on the street, you absolutely called the police, you know, went nowhere near it because it might be a bomb. So, I certainly arrived at a rather dramatic time in Hong Kong.
I guess it's quite exciting and terrifying at the same at the same time. Yes. But it was a sleepy town compared with today. That's for sure. I mean, it's become bigger. It's become much more international. It's weathered a lot of storms. It weathered the Cultural Revolution. It weathered, um, many really bad typhoons. It weathered economic collapses, the Asian collapse. Um, it weathered, uh, further disturbances in 2019. It's weathered COVID. So I think Hong Kong is a survivor. It's a survivor city, for sure.
What would be the way, um, to make friends with, uh, Hong Kongers? Is it different versus making friends in England? No, it's through, through work, through schools, through neighbors. I think it's very similar, really. What's the way I? We've had the same neighbors in Blue Gardens since we moved there, and we're on our fifth generation now, actually, from the great-grandfather, grandfather, father, the, the boy, and now they've got a baby. Yeah. Five generations of people next door. Again, it's, it's a very courteous relationship. Um, we sometimes we go in and visit them at Chinese New Year. We go in and see old Grandma, who's now heading for 100, if not 100. Nobody's quite sure. Um, and, uh, you know, we go and pay our respects to her and pay their respects to us. And so, it's very harmonious. I think that's the one thing that, um, is really important to Asia, in fact, but certainly Hong Kong, China in particular. It's they've been through so much turmoil in the last century. China, so much turmoil, being occupied by Japan, and then, you know, having the Cultural Revolution, having major famines. I think there is an appreciation here of stability, which is you don't get as much in Western countries. If you were to ask somebody in, I don't know, in rural Scotland, you know, how important to you is a stable society, they would be surprised at that question. Well, you know, like, what do you mean? Kind of thing. But I think it's very important here that the, that, uh, there is a Chinese curse, in fact, that says, "May you live in interesting times," because interesting times are very destabilizing, yeah, and very uncertain. So, "May you live in interesting times" is a curse you put on people, not, not a, a challenge or, as may be perceived in Western countries. Yeah.
So I guess it's, it's a different definition of freedom, I guess, in the West, in the East. I'm generalizing, but well, freedom from famine. People forget that. They forget how recent, you know, it's, it's within people's lifetime memory that there was a major, following the Cultural Revolution, there was a major, major famine in China where, you know, millions of people died, and this is embedded in people's psyche. You can't expect it to be otherwise, just as many people in the West, that people are still traumatized in America by the Vietnam War, and it wasn't even in their country, it was in somebody else's country, but you've still got people who are traumatized by and remember it or lost people with it. These things don't disappear for many, many generations.
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What's the best thing for you about living in Hong Kong? It's been my home now since 198, uh, since 1967. I think I really appreciate the job that I do. I think I've been extraordinarily lucky, just being the right person in the right place at the right time. And I think being female has helped at all. I mean, for example, the Minister of Health in Mongolia said to me, I was the first non-Russian expert they ever had in 1990. In fact, I arrived in Mongolia the very day the Russians were leaving after having ruled Mongolia for about 80 years. And he said, "We weren't quite sure what it would be like having a non-Russian adviser coming in." And when we found you were female, we felt we were happy about that. I think they felt I would be more perhaps gentler, more understanding in some way. I think being British helped because it would be unlikely, for example, that China would invite a Malaysian doctor from Malaysia to go and advise them on national policy. I think the fact that people felt I was part of Asia. I'd made a big effort to learn the language. I had a solid medical degree behind me, but I was not of any one nationality, one Asian nationality. So I think that helped. I think not being in my 20s and 30s helped because Asian governments in general respect age. Yeah. And they tend to listen more to people who have got experience behind them. And, um, I think I just was was at the right place. I don't think it's a job that would be possible now. For example, China. China's doing it themselves. They're passing the laws, they're raising the tax. Every country in Asia is now on wheels. Every country in Asia has ratified the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. They've picked it up. They're up and running with it, and they don't really need an advisor like me now. Whereas in 1980, I was helping them draft laws. I was helping them stand up to the transnational tobacco companies. Um, for example, the Minister of Cambodia said to me, um, "I've got a big problem with tobacco because the head of Philip Morris said he's coming in two weeks to meet with me, and I will actually be out of the country." I said, "That's fine." And he said, "No, but he said, I won't be here to meet him." I said, "You don't have to meet him. You don't have to meet him at all. You know, you're the Minister of Health in Cambodia. You can choose who you want to meet with." And I said, "In fact, it's probably not a good idea to meet at all with the tobacco industry." So I think I helped empower a lot of countries in the very early days of standing up to the tobacco companies, but equally, I helped them a lot with designing legislation, designing tax policies, and things like that. So these are all part of the course now. They're all up and running. They're all happening. So I think it was just that moment in time, and I'm very appreciative of that. I was very lucky, and I've just had such an interesting life being able to work principally with governments, and including, for example, I've been three times to North Korea. Not that many people have done that. In China, I've been five times to the Party School. Now, the Party School is the ideological think tank of the Communist Party in China. It's places where Kissinger goes, for example. So to be invited five times to work with them is a tremendous privilege and help them with a document they were drafting on tobacco and it coming into force. Visiting the Great Wall when there was not a person on it. Um, going to countries and working with the governments instead of going as a tourist and just seeing the sites and so on, but working, you know, with the people in that country has just been the most amazingly opening in terms of just seeing how people live. Quite different from just going on a visit to Malaysia for a week and, yeah, or to India to see the Taj Mahal, but just actually just living and working for decades with these people. I mean, it's not that it was just a one-off. If you know countries like Singapore, for example, I must have visited, oh, one, two dozen times working with the governments there.
At some point, you are considered as one of the most dangerous people for the tobacco industry. I guess it takes a lot of courage on your side. How was it? And were you get like threatened by them? And like what did you feel? Cuz I guess like many people would just quit at some point because of the pressure, 'cause you basically, you're one person against like super powerful corporations. I think at the very beginning, it was quite daunting, um, just being on my own, and certainly I was quite vulnerable. Um, the tobacco industry in 1989 said I was one of the three most dangerous people in the world, and I have come to wear that as a badge of pride, actually. And then more recently, just a few couple of years ago, they said there were eight people who were, you know, the most dangerous people. I was still on the eight, so I was pleased to see that I hadn't, I hadn't sort of gone down a bit off the top list. And the tobacco industry has never learned that the more trouble I have with them, the stronger it makes me. I get more and more determined when, um, I see them. But certainly, they have called me every name under the sun you can think of. They've said I'm like Hitler, I'm like a nanny, I'm like an interfering busybody. They've called me so many names. I've twice been threatened with being taken to court for lawsuits by them. Nothing came of it. So, in other words, it was just a threat, and they never followed it through. So, it was a threat, and it was also, however, a message. Once I was on live radio when they threatened to threaten me on live radio on RTHK with this. They were also letting the audience know she's not accurate with what she's saying, which, in fact, I was. And RTHK the following day checked up. They said, actually, what Dr. Mai said was accurate. And so, but it's trying to sort of undermine my authority as well as being threatening. One, I have to say, one reason that we sent our two sons back to Scotland to continue their schooling was that I was quite concerned about their safety. Um, they had to go up what was then a pretty lonely road up to catch a school bus. Um, that was not really good news. Um, but to give it a sense of how important it was, the Secretary for Security, Geoffrey Barnes, the late Geoffrey Barnes in Hong Kong, he at one stage insisted that I had 24-hour police protection because he said that, you know what, all these things that are happening, I'll list to say it's the tobacco industry, some of them, we have no proof. But he said, I, we want you to have 24-hour protection. The government does. And I said, "Look, I just don't want to live 24 hours with a policeman." And so he said, "Okay, I'll just let it be known that if anything happens to you, we'll have a government official, government inquiry." And so I felt more secure after that. And of course, I feel secure now because I'm not a suicidal type at all. You know, if, if, um, I was found at the bottom of Hong Kong Harbor, everybody would think it was the tobacco industry until proved otherwise. So I don't feel so concerned now. But certainly in the early days, when I was on my own, being called all these names, I've been likened even more recently to a jihadist. Um, it's changed now from being Hitler to a jihadist. But they've tried to undermine my credibility. That's what they've tried to do all along, and to also make it uncomfortable for me. But it tends to make me stronger. I don't know. Maybe it's my Yorkshire upbringing, my Yorkshire genes. I've got some Danish Viking genes as well. So maybe it's a combination of those two give me strength.
You are, uh, 81. Yes. 81. Yes, I'm 81. How does it feel to be 81? Well, I still feel as if I was the other way around, 18. I think inside myself, I still feel very much the same. I realize I'm not. Of course, I'm, I'm not deluded. Um, but I think I feel much the same as I did. I feel more experienced now. And certainly in terms of tobacco control and understanding the world and, you know, life and friends, of course, I mean, I've had a lifetime of, you know, just wonderful experiences in that regard, but, um, I'm, I, no, I don't feel very much different from how I did then. And I've often said to people, I'd be working till I'm 100. So that's what I plan to do. So the tobacco industry need not pop the champagne glasses yet. I'm certainly not retiring. Not at all. Yeah.
What's the meaning of life for you? I think to be happy. I think there's so many things in the world that we have no control over. Some of the things that are going on in the world today in the Middle East and wars in Europe and so on, we can do only so much ourselves. We can maybe not buy something that comes from a particular country, but in fact, remarkably little. But I think if we ourselves are happy, then we spread that to people. We make other people happy. Um, and I suppose I really value joy in life. I wake up every morning thinking grateful. I feel grateful and I feel positive about life. I'm just a cup half full person. And I think that if I can make people happy and make people smile, I think if I do an interview and don't make people laugh, I think that's a failure. If I give a talk at a conference, even on tobacco, and I don't somehow make the audience laugh with me, I think that's that's a failure, too. So I think I value happiness. Um, and from an individual point of view, you know, what more can we do than to really value joy in life and and appreciate it? And that's a very core value to me.
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