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Webfiles: Despair in Hong Kong
A mother's wrenching account
of trying to get by in a city that was once golden
By CRYSTYL MO
Wednesday, November 28, 2001
Web posted at 03:45 p.m. Hong Kong time, 03:45 a.m. GMT |
Last week, I conducted one of the most difficult interviews
of my career. I was researching the impact of the economic
recession in Hong Kong. After many calls to social service
agencies, a social worker named Grace told me she had a client
willing to talk about her devastating financial difficulties.
One month earlier, Grace explained, MaryJane had planned to
kill herself and her four-year-old daughter.
I arrived early at the social services center where Grace
had arranged for us all to meet: a large, echoing building
at the end of a dead-end street in a gritty Kowloon neighborhood.
I waited for them in a room filled with children's toys and
a paper cutout on the wall labeled The Tree of Hope. When
MaryJane walked in, I could almost feel her body trembling.
A small woman with long glossy hair, she looked at me with
a hesitant smile, but her eyes were shining with tears. My
stomach tightened. How could I ask her about suicide when
she looked so frightened of everything, I thought? "Can you
tell me how your financial difficulties started?" I began.
MaryJane spoke in a quiet voice. "My father was a wonderful
jazz musician," she said. "He played with all the greats in
the 1950s. We had a lot of money back then -- servants, a
nice house." She paused and her eyes flickered over to Grace
for reassurance. "But my father was a gambler. We lost it
all." MaryJane explained that after high school she immediately
began working to help support herself and her family. She
married at 19 and four years later she had her first son.
"Back then it was easy to find jobs," she told me. She had
another son and though her family was not well off, she managed
to support them for over a decade. In 1993, her sister died
and in order to pay for the funeral, MaryJane took on the
first of a series of debts that would eventually drive her
to the brink of suicide. A few years later, MaryJane's parent's
debts had piled up to overwhelming levels. She paid for them
to move to a different address, escaping the bill collectors
but still living hand-to-mouth.
In 1997, MaryJane's brother lost his job. She had a third
child, a daughter she dotes on. Meanwhile her own credit-card
bills soared into the tens of thousands. Her brother, unemployed
for two years, relied on her to pay the $60,000 debt on his
card. Then she lost a small business she had founded. "I was
stupid," she said looking at the floor. "I opened a restaurant
on the second floor of a building. I worked very hard and
I barely charged anything for the lunchboxes, but still nobody
bought them." MaryJane now works as a receptionist for a large
firm, but her $18,000 monthly income cannot cover the minimum
repayments for her seven credit cards.
Collection agencies began harassing her over the phone. After
a few late payments earlier this year, several credit companies
all announced at once that they were canceling MaryJane's
accounts and demanded full payment of all debts. For the first
time, she became desperate. "I am willing to pay, but they
won't agree to a compromise," she said. "I pleaded with each
of them to let me make a smaller monthly payment. I said I
really have nothing. They told me, 'We have our bottom line
to think about.' When you hear these words, your mind goes
blank, you feel lost."
MaryJane spent weeks scouring the city for a second job. But
in today's frail Hong Kong economy, there are no longer any
takers. She entered every restaurant in a two-kilometer stretch
but no one was hiring. "That's when I told my daughter everything,"
she said. "I told her I wanted to die." MaryJane planned her
suicide in detail. She located a suitable hotel and bought
charcoal to suffocate herself and her young daughter. In a
suicide note written in the third person, MaryJane explained
she wanted to take her daughter with her because "The mother
was never happy even during her childhood days, she was not
able to fulfill the dream she promised herself when she was
young."
Our room went quiet for a moment. I thought of the hundreds
of suicide calls that have been pouring into hotlines in Hong
Kong over the past few months. So many broken dreams like
MaryJane's. Counseling with Grace has convinced MaryJane to
hang on, even though she says she sometimes still feels "that
suicidal emotion overcoming me." For now, though, MaryJane
has decided to fight for her life and for a future for her
children. She is determined to juggle her bills, bargain with
the collection agents and come up with a strategy for survival.
I thanked MaryJane and left. In a dark alleyway outside, a
wiry young man was stripped to the waist, with white gauze
wrapped around his hands. He looked gaunt but was punching
the air energetically, bouncing back and forth as he practiced
boxing. I finally let out a long breath and smiled at him.
"That's the spirit," I thought.
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