I have never been one for parties, late nights or rituals. However, the few times I have been out celebrating the New Year, I have ended up with something worth remembering. This was one of those times.
Once, when I was living in Hong Kong, my friend Erwin invited me to dinner on New Year’s Eve with another friend, Jean. It was a Chinese restaurant. The others had arrived before me and started on their beers; I skipped the drink. Erwin was my hiking buddy. A European who had lived in China, he and I had become fast friends soon after our first meeting. We had organised hikes together and gone stream hiking, coasteering and trail running together. Jean was a Chinese woman who had moved to Hong Kong a few months prior. She had joined us for some of our relatively easy hikes.
The other two had no plans after dinner. Another friend, Sandro, invited me to a party at a tiki bar, so this was a good next stop. The bar was in Hong Kong’s famous party district, Lan Kwai Fong (“LKF” for short). I often visited the area for lunch as my office was nearby and also regularly went to some of the less noisy pubs with Sandro and mutual friends. Sandro, more of a party animal than me, was enough of a regular at our favorite establishment to get VIP service there. He was friendly enough with the staff to be allowed to get behind the bar and have his go at mixing the drinks. Going with him meant a certain round of fernet branca shots before we left.
It had been a hard year in Hong Kong. Protests against an unpopular law had rapidly morphed into anti-government protests. For over half a year, there were protests nearly every weekend and many weeknights. As these were planned in a decentralised manner over social media, I had mostly used the upcoming protest information circulated via Facebook or WhatsApp to check which areas I needed to avoid.
We expatriates had observed as the protests escalated from peaceful to violent ones involving protesters, riot police and gangsters, with the Hong Kong government heavily under scrutiny and the long arm of the Chinese government suspected behind every police action. Just like everyone else, the expats had the pretension of objectivity, but no one was devoid of sympathy for one side or the other.
LKF was crowded that evening, which was normal for a night before a holiday or at the start of a weekend. Due to the ongoing protests, there was an unmissable police presence in the area. Erwin, Jean and I found our way to the bar where I saw Sandro. I did the introductions. A couple of other people I knew were also there – Mika and Yerin, with whom I shared a mutual friend.
The bar had a deal for three cocktails, which most people seemed to be taking. Yerin advised me to try the mai tai, their signature drink. The drinks had been poured, the music was on and people were dancing. We paused for a minute to count down the New Year; then the music resumed. The mai tai was unpleasantly sweet. Erwin let me sample his drink to help me decide on my next one; it was odious and horribly strong.
I’ve never been one for clubbing and generally prefer quiet bars where one can talk. Billy, the bar owner, had inserted himself into the proceedings and we chatted. He told me that his father had inspired him to start the bar. The big idea: it should serve drinks exactly as they were in the 1950’s. Separated from the era by over six decades, I did not know what that meant: were the drinks horribly sweet in the fifties? Billy helped me select my second drink – a cocktail that he identified as strong.
I found Jean by herself, smiling as though enjoying the vibe and approached her to chat. I was interested in her. Moving into a new city just as it gets rocked by transport-affecting protests for many months is challenging for an expat, especially when it’s one’s own country that is being protested. The drink arrived as we were talking; it too was sickly sweet and I put it aside after a couple of sips. I was not making much headway with Jean; the atmosphere was not for talking and I did not feel like asking her to dance.
The others were having a good time. Mika, who had an absent boyfriend, was flirting and dancing with one of the guys I did not know. Yerin, whose taste in alcohol I had realised was not to be relied on, was falling into Sandro’s arms.
I attempted a third drink; this was also horribly sweet, stronger than it needed to be and generally disgusting. Jean seemed to also have given up on the drinks at the place. Erwin joined us, clearly tipsy and unsteady. He started flirting with Jean. “I’m so drunk!” he declared. He then turned to me to say he did not feel too good. I took him over to the bathroom, accompanied by Jean. Erwin kneeled in front of the toilet bowl and puked into it; I stood at the door, Jean a couple of metres away. Billy showed up. “If you’re puking, it means we’ve succeeded”, he declared with a grin. I was beginning to reassess his character.
I saw Sandro taking Yerin to the lift. Under normal circumstances, she looked fragile enough to be carried off by a gust of wind; if she had had two mai tais at this place, let alone three, I doubted she could stand straight. At least she had Sandro with her.
It was clear that someone needed to support Erwin. He said as much – to Jean. He didn’t think he could make it back to his place. Jean offered her place for the night, which was not too far away. This could potentially be a load off my back, but for multiple reasons, I did not want to let him go off alone with Jean. She would struggle if Erwin put too much of his weight on her. “Do you need help?” I asked her. “Yes!”
We left the other revellers and took the lift down. I had both my arms around Erwin, one around his waist and the other at his chest, as we needed to move forward and I did not want him falling forward or backward. Jean went ahead of us looking for a taxi; we lost sight of her. We stopped multiple times so he could vomit on the street. “I’m so drunk, man”, he exclaimed. Incredibly, not long after one of these bouts of vomiting, Erwin had the bright idea to ask random girls passing by for their numbers; I dragged him along to the intersection at the bottom of the slope along which LKF ran.
The place was now even more crowded than when we had arrived. The police presence was now pronounced, with armed cops in riot gear walking by and managing the crowds. I sat Erwin down next to a store at the intersection, found Jean and came back. Erwin, no fan of the Hong Kong police, started cursing at them for their role in containing the protests. I hurriedly stood in front of him saying, “Ignore him; he’s drunk.” This was a particularly bad time to antagonise the police.
It was at this point that Erwin realised that he had not taken his jacket. Hong Kong’s winter is mild, so we had not immediately realised. Jean headed back to the bar. The police, doing crowd control, refused to let her pass. Erwin was outraged that the cops would block a “nice girl like Jean”. I tried to calm him, telling him he was drunk. “I’m drunk but reasonable”, came the reply.
Jean called us an Uber, but it was tricky for the car to stop just anywhere. We would have to walk a little. Meanwhile, our buddy under the influence had started getting thirsty. He was asking random passers by for water and they were ignoring him. He expressed annoyance that he had asked over twenty people for water and been ignored.
After what seemed an eternity, we got into the taxi. Jean gave the driver her address. New concerns were emerging. Erwin started worrying that the taxi driver was kidnapping all three of us, as though moving a drunk Erwin alone was not challenging enough. He worried out loud enough for the driver to hear. I sounded like a broken record as I asked the driver to ignore the drunk. Erwin then started insisting that the driver let us out immediately as it became clear he was a paranoid drunk. After a short ride that seemed another eternity, the taxi dropped us in front of Jean’s apartment.
I asked Jean to run up for some water because I suspected that the first order of business was more puking and we did not want that to happen in the apartment’s lift. Erwin puked into a garbage bin. Jean arrived with a bottle of water that was well appreciated. We took the lift up, feeling a bit safer than before.
Outside the apartment, Jean tried to help Erwin take off his shoes. He was using a knot that she was not familiar with; I could not untie it either; we gave the task to its tottering owner. “I don’t want to be raped”, he stated. I could not figure out what prompted the non-sequitur. We asked him what he meant. He just repeated himself.
There was more puking in the bathroom, but things finally quieted down. I went to use the toilet and came out to observe Erwin recite a Chinese poem to Jean. It usually impresses Asians when westerners make the effort to learn their languages. Erwin had more than a rudimentary understanding of Chinese and Jean was appreciative. It was way past midnight. Jean cooked some dumplings. She let the two of us use her bed, which was barely long enough for us, while she used her much smaller couch.
Given everything that had happened, nobody was getting laid that night. Well, except probably Mika, and Sandro and Yerin… Literally everybody I could name at the party except the three of us.
It didn’t matter. It was a brand new year and there was hope for things to come. We had stepped into 2020.