The Civil Savant
Moss's bookthe third volume in an autobiographical trilogy that began with Bye Bye Blackbird and Distant Archipelagosis more than just a civil servant's confessional, however. The story begins with his arrival in Hong Kong in 1965 as a senior information officer in Government Information Services (the departmental initials were sarcastically said to stand for "God Is Speaking"). A rich store of anecdotes spans what were, arguably, the most tumultuous periods of Hong Kong's historythe civil unrest and refugee influx of the late 1960s, the social changes wrought by the rapid industrialization of the 1970s, and the 1980s boom years (which were never fully enjoyed, owing to the deep anxieties surrounding Hong Kong's return to China in 1997). The book nears conclusion with Moss's eventual appointment as department head and it alsoin a marvelous final twistrelates a fall of sorts. During his career, Moss kept his employer at arm's length not only emotionally but contractually, turning down opportunities to join the government's "permanent and pensionable establishment" in favor of remaining on ad hoc terms. This meant that he retired, at 58, without the comfortable pension that a long-serving official could expect. Neither had he saved the bonuses that were payable at the end of each of his contracts. "I had treated my gratuities as pocket money, and had continued to blow most of them," he writes. "'Live for the moment' had been my motto, and the moments had been many and memorable." Thus, at the end of it all, Moss is broke and living, astonishingly, among the masses in a blue-collar housing estate, dependent for a time on handouts from friends, of which he deservedly has many (the abandoned boy that Moss sheltered decades ago, now married and middle class, returns to make his old benefactor a gift of almost $30,000). Far from being bitter about his circumstances, Moss merely notes that it was "especially pleasing" to realize that his neighbors on the estate were the descendants of squatters resettled in housing programs that he had once extolled as the government's spin supremo.
Spirits don't come much more generous than this. These days, Moss is not short of remunerative assignments if his prolific output of books and articles is anything to go by, and he is living in a spacious new home on Ma Wanan outlying island of Hong Kong where slick new apartment blocks juxtapose a largely abandoned fishing village that was once the island's only settlement. From the highest colonial circles to a working-class estate to an island home that encapsulates the new Hong Kong as it hovers between the past and future: Moss's trajectory mirrors much of the territory's own journey, these past 40 years. And his delighted absorption into the people of Hong Kongafter decades spent inculcating their loyalty to a colonial regimeis, surely, among the happiest of postcolonial endings.
Most Popular »
- America's Most Wanted Teenage Bandit
- Jenny Sanford: The Savviest Spurned Woman in History
- Corliss Appraises Avatar: A World of Wonder
- How to Rule India: Break It Into More Pieces?
- A Mounting Suicide Rate Prompts an Army Response
- Israel vs. Hizballah: Drumbeats of War
- Obama vs. the Banks: The Pressure Intensifies
- Forget Zhu Zhu Hamsters, Classic Toys Have Power
- The Berlusconi Attack: Will Italy's Leader Gain Sympathy?
- The Top 10 FAILs of 2009
- America's Most Wanted Teenage Bandit
- Jenny Sanford: The Savviest Spurned Woman in History
- A Mounting Suicide Rate Prompts an Army Response
- How to Rule India: Break It Into More Pieces?
- Facebook's Secret Code
- Obama vs. the Banks: The Pressure Intensifies
- Should Anthropologists Go to War?
- Forget Zhu Zhu Hamsters, Classic Toys Have Power
- Corliss Appraises Avatar: A World of Wonder
- The Top 10 FAILs of 2009





RSS