Gay Saunas in Hong Kong 2

Received from a reader today.  It was actually submitted as a comment to an earlier post entitled, Gay Saunas in Hong Kong 1, but was sufficiently interesting to be published as a stand-alone post.

We've split his e-mail into 2 parts to better answer it. 

1.   To be honest, HK Gay Scene is failing. I am a foreign (Asia born Asian) and I can say honestly the scene here is dead. The people are really falling in standards of looks, communication skills and personalities versus the boys in other key Asian cities. I believe this is a general trend slapped onto HK city itself as the society becomes more inward looking, stagnant (culturally and in industrial terms) and even decaying (compare HK to versus Singapore and even Taipei which is supposed to be economically lagging far behind Hong Kong). 



FuelMix says:

There is certainly truth in what you're saying and your post expands on what we had written in Part 1 (although our comments in it were specifically aimed at the saunas).  Your e-mail highlights a paradox going on here in Very Rich Megacity.  There's no shortage of gay venues and events (mega dance parties, film festivals, sports teams), a developing Pride movement, even a nascent political consciousness - there are openly gay politicians in town.......

......yet something seems to be missing.......and it seems to be that final dash of pizazz, identity and class which makes Very Rich Megacity special.

Your e-mail refers to the Gay Scene which we're assuming also includes the Gay Sauna Scene, but if we had to guess what the problem was, we would say it had to do with the infestation of Mainland Chinese into the local gay scene. 

We had earlier commented on the demise of the local rent boy in the face of the tsunami of Mainland Chinese hustlers. The saturation advertising online by these guys is just staggering.  And that's not counting the ones showing up at Kowloon Park.

Mainland Chinese are also showing up in droves at the local saunas and from what we hear from the local Chinese, their manners and hygiene need improvement. We hear, they are also showing up at the clubs and bars with their usual manners.

The effect of such infestation has been to marginalize and demoralize the HK Queer in a way that has never happened before.  It's all the more difficult to accept or describe because the HK Queer as a socially visible entity, has only been around since 1991 when homo sex was (finally) decriminalized.

We disagree that Very Rich Megacity is becoming stagnant or decaying.  We would say it is undergoing an Identity Crisis and Re-Evaluation of its relevance.

 
2.   Just talking purely on superficial terms, the boys here lack body (seems like nobody really work 
out anymore), have really plain looks (typical southern Chinese flat face, small eyes that lack 
sparkle), dressing style is stale (especially the disgusting woody-wood pecker hairstyle which seems 
all the rage in this city), atrocious communication skills (even if they want to hook up with you, they 
just look and stare without any action). I think it’s really depressing and sad for a city that used to be 
the Pearl of Asia.


FuelMix says:

It seems to us that more of the local gays ARE working out, but we take your point.  Simultaneously, there is a creeping "feminization".  It's probably the local version of the EMO boy.

As for the eyes having no sparkle, that's the Ketamine and the Crystal Meth. 

We're no fans of the woody-wood pecker hairstyle either, but FYI they're not cheap and can set you back about $3,000 bucks at the higher end salons. 

Best as we can tell, the lousy communication skills appear to be the result of politicizing the school system with the insistence of "Mother Tongue" teaching in 1995.  From our conversations with local 20 something GAMs who went through high school in the 1990s, the results were disastrous.  Many of these guys are neither proficient in Cantonese, Mandarin or English and they feel terrible about it.  It's hurting their job prospects as the Mainlanders, with better English and Mandarin, are swooping in. 

That being said, the HK Queer still fails in the art of seduction - badly.

Thanks for writing in.