How I Almost Died in the Chungking Mansions (Part 1)

First, let me start off this random blog post that I’m writing at exactly 4:14AM by saying I am residually faded right now from my shift at Yardbird and I got my glasses over my contact lenses just so I can see the words I’m typing. Do you ever go through your Instagram story archives when you’re bored and get lowkey emotional taking a trip down memory lane, well that’s where I’m at now. I’m gonna take you back to when I was in my early 20s, (I think it was 2018) when I didn’t get 2-day hangovers that give me existential crises and I could still change my fitted sheets without slipping my disk. This is the story of why I don’t drink in the Chungking Mansions anymore. 

It was a random weekend day and I was still running the bar at Ozu; I believe it was summer time because I’m pretty sure I wasn’t in the back of a police car in a jacket, that wouldn’t have been very ergonomic and I would have remembered the discomfort. This is called foreshadowing. So if you haven’t heard of Ozu, it was a bar on Hollywood Road in Hong Kong - I’m about to flex real heavy here - and we managed to last 7 or 8 years in a cursed location and I can say, with 100% confidence, that we were responsible for the closure of many, if not all, venues around us at the time. We was running shit. Ask about us cuz muthafuckas know. We were so lit that we ruined alcohol for people - we used to give triple gin tonics in a pint glass and only charge $108HKD and everybody was saying how they can’t drink anywhere else cuz their tolerance got built up too high. Me and Manny (our General Manager) used to take walks around the whole Central when it got boring and literally scoop familiar faces from other bars like “yo what you doin’ in this lil’ offbrand place, pull up”, while their GM watched hatefully yet helplessly, and pack the whole bitch out in an hour. We were so dope that we didn’t even have a demographic - our regulars could be the elderly bitching about how their son 34 but still won’t leave home, college kids who would pay $1500 for a gram of coke, bankers who don’t even like drinking Old Fashioneds but do it anyway because it’s part of the douchebag starter kit, gangsters who would openly sell to said college kids in front of us and tip us $500, shareholders who owned 5% but acted like they owned the whole venue, depressed moms who only drank Sauvignon Blanc, it really didn’t matter - if you were nice to us, we were nice to you. Other venues hated us and we basked in that shit like an Asian dad with three kids and all three of them were doctors. The word “Ozu” is a play on the word “O/王” in Japanese which means “king”, and the “zu” was a play on the plural form of the word, like an “s”; so basically Ozu meant the kings. And we were the kings of Hollywood Road. To this fucking day. 

Ok flexing is over. But if you ever been there, then you felt every single muthafuckin word that I just said. I said all of that just to say this - if a bar can afford to give away that much alcohol, best believe we drinking just as much to match that. LOL what ENT bill, charge that shit to the game baby. There was a point in time when both me and Manny could drink 20 - 25 shots of spirits a night just to show respect to our regulars (believe me, the amount of people we knew combined, this wasn’t hard) and still be fine and go out drinking after. We would talk shit and back that shit up like a Mack truck. We look back now and realise how dangerous that was, but then we were drinking Bacardi 151 (75.5% ABV) and mixing it with cheap Prosecco like it was nothing. Only the Bacardi wasn’t Bacardi, it was a bootleg version of it called Potter’s and it sold for $38HKD. Death is cheap, life is not.

Ok back to my story. This was just one of those days when we were up to our usual shenanigans - and by shenanigans I mean finishing at least a bottle of JD to myself before work was even over - and I don’t really remember any significant details about work. Every weekend day was more or less the same - we would get our usual wave of regulars and we’d kill our service while being siu siu faded, then we’d close up and see what’s good for the rest of the night - usually we would pull up to Frank’s and Runway (shoutout to the family) and then go somewhere in Lan Kwai. After this alcohol abuse, I would sometimes go to the late night spot to get a plate of gailan (芥籣) and pretend I was actually healthy for the day. That day was no different, but I just so happened to get a visit from two of my boys from Chungking, Frank and Robby Runner. We got a song together btw and they dope as fuck, check it out here.

Frank is a big, Colombian dude who got one piercing, one tattoo, and never stopped after, and Robby is a slim, laidback mf with the smoothest swagger from Tanzania. Fun fact, Robby freestyled half of that verse on that song “Chungking” at my house. Another fun fact, me and Frank are so close we get into heated roast sessions where I make fun of how ugly his feet are and I only learned about this when he came over to record and I had to force him to take his shoes off. I’ve told him he’s got Playstation 2 graphics feet, I’ve told him his feet don’t fit in one-size-fits-all socks, I’ve told him when God was building his feet, he had Lego on His mind, I’ve told him that in a drive-by shooting the opps would only aim at his toes, I’ve told him that he should start an OnlyFeet, I’ve said it all. My other boy, Soto, who is a boricua from Spanish Harlem, was already there at Ozu cuz he my day one and also a regular, and we all just tambay-ing throughout the night. “Chillin” for all the non-Pinoys. All of these guys are family, it goes without saying.

I close the bar and it’s the usual chat about where to go after work and Frank suggests the Chungking Mansions. If you’re from Hong Kong and you don’t know about the Mansions, then either you’re from Discovery Bay and you walked by one time and now you brag to your friends about how hood you are, or you literally live under a rock. Like literally, like Patrick Star. For those outside of Hong Kong, the Mansions is somewhat of an infamous place. A building full of immigrants, guesthouses, restaurants (both legal and illegal) catering to ethnic minorities, shops full of secondhand phones dropped in taxis, sketchy SIM cards that let you call Philippines for free, and bootleg Adidas that has 4 stripes instead of 3. Cheap drugs cut with acetone, weapons of various stab-like nature, money exchanges with better rates than the bank, you got it all. They say that a man can go into Chungking Mansions and live there for months without ever leaving it because it’s a city of its own - and it got its infamous status from the occasional murder, stabbing, kidnapping, etc. Trust, it ain’t as dangerous as the media likes to play it, actually it’s a very harmonious place that reminds me a lot of Toronto - a bunch of immigrants with a dollar and a dream, getting along and hustling to make it out here. I fucks with it heavy and Delhi Club is one of the best spots for Indian food in the city. (Shoutout Mandeep) And if you need a haircut or a new phone, in no order, holla at my boy Hussain on the 1st floor (sorry bhai can’t find your contact). AND if you need African food and vibes hit up Paul’s Kitchen on 1/F. There’s a barbershop on 1/F too that I haven’t been to yet but some of my bros go there so best believe they versatile and will keep you fresh cuz Chungking mans do NOT play when it comes to hair, I can only imagine the roast seshs that would stem from a fucked up cut.

Now, at this point in my life, I been going to the Mansions for years, either to visit Abacha who owns a hip-hop clothing store, (who was responsible for every ethnic minority kids’ throwback jerseys and fitted hats back in the day) or to escort one of my boys who was picking up or buying cheap alcohol aka Empi. (Fun fact, don’t buy Empi at Chungking it’s cheaper in Yau Ma Tei) But I never drank there afterhours and this was like.. 2:30 in the morning already. And I thought to myself yeah I’m still not even drunk, and Lan Kwai kinda dead so why not. Both Frank and Robby are in and out of Chungking so it ain’t shit to them, and all my other friends disperse except Soto and it was also his first time. So it was the 5 of us - me, Runner, Frank, Frank’s crooked ass toes that look like they’re throwing up gang signs, and Soto. I was kinda excited because I hate clubs and I done been around the bar scene already so this shit was new to me - AND I lived in TST back in the day which meant I was a 5-minute walk away from our destination. I could crawl in 10. Shit was about to get lit. 

This was before me, Runner, and Frank shot the MV for “Chungking”, and this was before I knew some of the main players in the Mansions so I was a familiar face but I wasn’t exactly known either. The 5 of us pull up in a taxi and the vibe of the Mansions at night is different - especially since this was before COVID. For once there are no hawkers slash drug dealers openly offering you custom suits and meth at the same time. Like bro, how do you sell success and failure at the same time as a package deal? I’m kinda interested lowkey. Brown mans are the best salesman in the world, you can’t tell me shit. Anyway it was literally just a bunch of Pakistani goons on the steps smoking hash, totally ignoring and being ignored by the police car outside. But it’s whatever, we’re used to shit like that and we walk past and go inside. We go up to 1/F where I am immediately introduced to a man I’ll call Fred, who seems to be the dailo of the place; tall, friendly African man (sorry don’t remember which part of Africa he was from) with glasses who was very hospitable and it’s a bunch of the Chungking goons on plastic chairs and tables drinking everything under the sun, vibing to shit like Vybz Kartel and Shatta Wale. And everything is dirt cheap - I think it was $100 HKD for 20 Heinekens and I made decent tips that night so I said fuck it and bought mad rounds for everybody. The shit was LIT. I was having so much fun I said fuck Lan Kwai I’m pullin’ up here every time. I’m meeting some of these new guys and the connection is crazy - started talking about mutual friends in HK, about how some of ‘em having relatives back in Toronto, some of them even remembered me from when I was a kid when Abacha had his store in Mirador Mansions. I’m eating jollof rice off Frank’s plate while his feet are living its best life, Runner is just coolin’ being the cool Tanzanian mf that he is, Soto doing his Harlem thing and his accent is thicker than Cam’Ron at this point fully playing the NY card (love you bro), it’s vibes to the power of 100. What could go wrong?

LOOOOL.