Not counting her gym clothes at secondary- school PE classes, Lam Oh had worn a sports outfit only twice in her life, and in both cases it was a football kit. It was at the time of the World Cup, when a weekly magazine had a special issue about football shirts and wanted a girl for a photo session, and so the model agency sent Lam Oh. Never having considered herself the athletic type, she had no idea why she’d been picked. After three years as a model, Lam Oh saw herself as being out of luck. Apart from never having made it big on the catwalk, she hadn’t even wangled a spot on a magazine cover. At best she’d been in fashion photos on the inside pages and more commonly in the completely pointless demonstration or design photos in the magazines. When the tournament started, she didn’t even get to be a World Cup girl in the backdrops to the television football coverage— all she managed was a minor special on football kit. She couldn’t see that she was in any way inferior to the others. Her figure and appearance were pleasing, but how could she deal with the fact that the world wasn’t exactly lacking in above-average beauty? It was like being no more than ordinary. In any case, this year’s World Cup made Lam Oh feel even more lost than ever.
When she arrived at the studio on the day of the shoot, she learned that a football fan was going to be in the photos as well. Once they were finished with the studio photography, they went to the fan’s home to take more pictures in addition to an
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interview. In low spirits, Lam Oh changed into various football shirts, shorts, and socks, all very loose- fitting and garish, more suitable for monkeys than people. It was not in the least bit to her liking. At the World Cup four years earlier, Lam Oh had gone to her boyfriend Ah Chai’s home to watch the final with him. His family were on a trip abroad, and Ah Chai had turned down invitations from his other football mates, so it was the first time the two of them were on their own in the same room late at night. Something was inevitably to be expected. However, the football got in the way, and they had barely got intimate before they felt obliged to pause. The match began, Ah Chai supporting Brazil and Lam Oh Italy. To start with, they only pretended to be diametrically opposed, not imagining it might develop further, but for no good reason their language became hostile, and a cold war broke out. The result was victory for Brazil in a penalty shoot- out, but Lam Oh stubbornly refused to admit it, and Ah Chai said she was being unreasonable, claiming expertise she didn’t have. What should have been a wonderful evening somehow went sour as they angrily voiced a whole series of everyday grudges. After Lam Oh had flung the door open and departed in a temper, she roamed the streets on her own in the early morning hours, vowing never to watch football again. Later on, she found herself a young man who was completely ignorant about football, thinking he was a better match for her. She split up with Ah Chai but in the end didn’t stay long with the other man either. It turned out that the focus of the photo shoot was a young woman. She was short, didn’t look like the sporty type, and when she put on a football shirt, it looked rather like the robes of a church choir. She was extremely energetic and enthusiastic, her eyes shining with passion for football, so Lam Oh responded in a professional manner, jumping and laughing. Their arrival at the young woman’s home was a real eye- opener for Lam Oh and made her reflect that this fan was a hundred times more fervent than Ah Chai had been. Piles of football
Ah Chai answered, his voice sluggish. “Are you on your own?”
“Mm,” she replied. “How about you?”
Back at home, Lam Oh kept wondering why the young woman had given away this precious object so lightly. She couldn’t figure it out, and not knowing what to do with it, she just hung it up in front of her bed. She didn’t watch a single one of the subsequent World Cup matches, nor did she think it was much fun to go out, since all the bars had turned into venues for live broadcasts of the competition. Instead she stayed at home every night, buried her head under the covers, and got a lot of sleep.
KITSFOOTBALL
Lam Oh wept without making a sound. “Ah Chai, Brazil lost, I’m so sorry, Brazil lost!”
“I’m also on my own,” he said.
40 books, magazines, and videotapes served as her table and chairs, the wallpaper was posters of star players, and her wardrobe was filled with well over a hundred football kits. While she was being interviewed as she displayed her treasures, Lam Oh, who had until then been weary of football, was actually beginning to feel admiration, something she hadn’t thought conceivable. Just before Lam Oh left, the young woman presented her with a Brazilian national football shirt that had Ronaldo’s autograph on it. She said she’d got him to sign it by making a special trip to a football stadium when she was traveling in Europe.
After her shower one evening, she couldn’t find her pajamas, so she took the Brazilian football shirt hanging by the bed and put it on. She fell asleep but suddenly woke up at midnight to hear the next- door neighbors making a racket. As if sleepwalking, she turned on her television only to realize it was the final between Brazil and France. To her surprise, the longer she watched, the more awake she felt, her heart thumping with excitement. When she saw Brazil concede a third goal, she hardly noticed that her tears had wet a big patch on the front of her shirt. She stretched out her hand to the phone on a side table and dialed Ah Chai’s number from four years earlier.
“I read these ninety-nine sketches with a mixture of dreamy fondness and rueful melancholy. Dung Kai-cheung deftly captures the city at a time of fundamental change in this series of offbeat stories, and one couldn’t ask for better translators than Bonnie S. McDougall and Anders Hansson.”
—ANTONY DAPIRAN, AUTHOR OF CITY ON FIRE: THE FIGHT FOR HONG KONG
—MICHAEL BERRY, EDITOR OF THE MUSHA INCIDENT: A READER ON THE INDIGENOUS UPRISING IN COLONIAL TAIWAN
“Dung Kai-cheung is Hong Kong’s greatest living writer, and this translation is a cause for celebration, giving global readers another path into his unique, uncanny Hong Kong. May it help bring him the wider international readership that is long overdue.”
Cover design: Julia Kushnirsky Cover illustration: Chihoi
“These half-allegorical sketches by a uniquely gifted Hong Kong writer bring to us a nostalgic mosaic of the sights and sounds of a city whose cosmopolitan splendor is fast fading. It is even more heart-rending to read them in English today than some twenty years ago when these astonishing literary tidbits first appeared in the Chinese original.”
“By the most prolific and imaginative Hong Kong writer of the past three decades, this book is a fascinating and singular literary meditation on how objects and stuff create meaning.”
—LEO OU-FAN LEE, AUTHOR OF CITY BETWEEN WORLDS: MY HONG KONG
PRESS
—TAMMY LAI-MING HO, EDITOR IN CHIEF OF CHA: AN ASIAN LITERARY JOURNAL DUNG KAI-CHEUNG teaches writing at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He has published more than twenty books in Chinese, mainly novels and short stories. His works in English translation include Atlas: The Archeology of an Imaginary City (Columbia, 2012), translated by Bonnie S. McDougall and Anders Hansson with the author, and The History of the Adventures of Vivi and Vera (2018).
ANDERS HANSSON is the author of Chinese Outcasts: Discrimination and Emancipation in Late Imperial China (1996).
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BONNIE S. MCDOUGALL is honorary professor of Chinese at the University of Sydney and has translated works by writers including Bei Dao and Ah Cheng.