RW: First… Got a light?

LF: Sorry, no smoking allowed in this publication.

RW: &%#*&@! Get this over with quick, then.

LF: Okay. Maybe I can talk about my new book, Hongkongitis.

RW: Rather talk about ciggies, but… Anyway, so what do writers do?

LF: Well, writing requires discipline, focus –

RW: Tsk. I mean, what do you do with your money. You must be rich, right? What about groupies?

LF: I make a living. But most writers, cartoonists or artists don’t go into it for the money.

RW: For the groupies, then.

LF: I wish! No, don’t print that.

RW: You’re best known as a cartoonist. Which raises the obvious question: can you draw Garfield?

LF: I suppose I could.

RW: What about Bart Simpson?

LF: If I had to.

RW: Man, you could make a fortune in the counterfeit t-shirt business. What’re you wasting your time writing books for?

LF: After so many years doing cartoons about Hong Kong, I found a number of topics just couldn’t be expressed in comic strips. So I started writing them down for various magazines. I gathered together the more interesting ones, or the ones that got the biggest laughs, polished them up a bit, and compiled them into this book.

RW: So the whole book’s nonsense, then.

LF: No, I really mean everything in it. For instance, I prove that everyone on earth, including me, is actually Chinese.

RW: Even Paris Hilton?

LF: Even her.

RW: Cool!

LF: I also offer reasons why the Vatican should move to Kowloon, proof that Hong Kong is actually located in France, how government policy is guided by The Wizard of Oz, and I apply quantum physics to explain why Hong Kong people shout “Wah!” in unison every time they see a cat.

RW: Wah! Heavy stuff.

LF: Not really. I also write about why westerners hate Chinese desserts, fear of ants, the absurdity of the slogan ‘Asia’s World City’ –

RW: You know her?

LF: Huh?

RW: Paris Hilton. Know her?

LF: What the –? No!

RW: Oh. Just figured… you’re both, like, gwailos. Thought you might maybe set me up.

LF: I thought we’re talking about my book.

RW: Why’s it called Hongkongitis? Sounds like a soft drink.

LF: No, it’s a condition people get when they live in Hong Kong, that makes you do things that people from other places would consider odd. Like in restaurants, washing your own dishes in tea, or walking into someone’s home and the first thing you say is “How much you pay?” Or thinking of stairs not as places to walk but to dump rubbish.

RW: That’s just being normal, ain’t it? What’s so strange about that? I’ll tell you what’s strange. It’s when my stupid gwailo neighbour pounds on the wall at two in the morning.

LF: Why does he do that?

RW: I dunno. Guess he thinks my jackhammer’s too loud. But when else am I supposed to fix up my flat? I work during the day, for God’s sake. Weird guy.

LF: That’s a perfect example of Hongkongitis.

RW: Hm. Maybe I should read your book.

LF: You didn’t read it? But you knew you were going to interview me.

RW: Listen, buddy. Figured you’re gonna jabber it about anyway, so why read it? Ain’t a journalist in all of Hong Kong who wastes their time actually preparing for interviews.

LF: How true. But you might like it. There’s a great chapter about why we shouldn’t recycle plastic bags.

RW: Hey, I said I’ll read it… um, if I can fish it out of the paper recycling bin. I think it was the one outside Admiralty station.

LF: Well, let me tell you more about it. There are 27 chapters, each on a different topic about life in Hong…

RW: Maybe you know Christina Aguilera instead?

LF: No!!

RW: Man, you don’t know nobody, do ya? Where you from, anyways?

LF: Here. Hong Kong is home.

RW: (snorting laugh) Gimme a break, gwailo.

LF: That’s also in the book. The way everyone thinks that if you have a non-Chinese face, then even if you’ve lived in Hong Kong 20 years, you can’t possibly be ‘from’ here. The other expats are the worst, always calling some cold dreary grey land thousands of miles away home, though they haven’t lived there in decades. Worse, they indoctrinate their kids into calling it home, even if their kids were born and raised over here. Drives me crazy. So I wrote about it.

RW: Then what were you doing before you came here?

LF: For several years I was a full-time cartoonist in Honolulu, then worked for a major animation studio in Hollywood.

RW: Right. So you leave glamour and fortune in Hawaii and Hollywood to come to Hong Kong, world capital of creative industries (not!). What kinda BS is that?

LF: That’s really what happened!

RW: Oh, come on. Ain’t met an expat yet that wasn’t some kinda loser back home. You were running away from something, I bet. Real estate scam? Get caught with the boss’s girlfriend? Snitch on somebody big back in the ’hood?

LF: Can we get back to talking about Hongkongitis?

RW: If you can do it in 83 words. That’s all we got before the editor starts chopping. Oops, now it’s 62. Now 60. Now…

LF: Shut up! Hongkongitis is an entertaining, enlightening – and sometimes plain ridiculous – book about life, love and shopping in Hong Kong. Available at your local bookshop or online retailers. Also, 100% of my royalties are being donated to the Animals Asia Foundation.

RW: Says you.

LF: If you don’t believe me, go to my website, where you can read sample chapters and see other work I’ve done: www.humorist.net

RW: Got any photos of Paris Hilton posted there?

Larry Feign is a big famous professional cartoonist and writer whom bc magazine tricked into writing this article for free by promising that
you, dear reader, will run out and buy his book, Hongkongitis. And so now you have to, or we’ll be sued for breach of contract, and the editor will have to go back to his old job as stage manager
at a well-known Pattaya transvestite bar.