words rachel mok

Busking four hours a night seven days a week is tough – especially when you are mainly singing to empty space. bc finds out how the performers on Temple Street pass their time.

The 1st hour
It is 7:30pm on Temple Street, right next to what was once gloriously called Yung Shue Tau, ‘The Place with Banyan Trees’. Singer Summer is setting up the booth for her nightly performance as a man sits and waits for the night to start. “Hey, it’s your lucky day,” Summer shouts at me. “Mr So has been our audience for years and he can answer your questions.” It turns out that the high-spirited and cheerful Mr So is already in his 70s. “I have been here almost every other night for the past 30 years,” he smiles proudly. “A lot of elderly [folks] like me don’t have much to do, so we end up coming here to listen to music after work.” He points at buildings further up the street, near the famous Mido Café. ‘There are seven or eight cabarets over there, but you usually need to pay $20 to get in,” he says. Here on the street, performances are free – it’s up to you whether to give ‘lai see’ to the performers who Mr So calls ‘idols’. “I like Chinese opera the most but not many people sing it these days. They all sing old Cantonese pop songs now… Oh look, here’s another fan.” And Mr So nods at a man strolling towards us.

“That is Mr Ma.” Summer is pouring tea for her audience – she seems to remember all their names. Mr Ma is a fortune teller stationed in Wong Tai Sin, but he too regularly comes for the performances. Only in his mid-50s, he also says he has been coming to Temple Street for more than 30 years. He is a bold, hunky looking man; you don’t really expect him to be a wannabe pop idol. “I was 21 when I came here for the first time,” he tells me and mentions that, when younger, he used to sing in nightclubs like Tonnochy and Washington for fun. That was when the locals were forsaking Mandarin pop songs for Cantopop. “I knew all Sam Hui’s songs… and now some of Andy Lau’s too,” says Mr Ma. And just as he tries to tell me what a good a fortune teller he is by pinpointing my age – his guess is well out – Summer starts her first song, a Cantonese hit from the ’70s. When she finishes Mr So drops $20 into her basket.

The 2nd hour
“There were competitions among the performers in the past,” Mr So says. But things were more lively then. Now only between five and eight stalls open nightly, though some are closed on Wednesdays due to the horse racing. Also business is quieter towards the end of the month. To Mr So, not only is the atmosphere not as vibrant now but the people aren’t as generous. He points at the little red and blue donation baskets. “We used to filled all these baskets with $5 coins,” he says, “and every time our favourite performer finished a song, we would pour the money on the floor. In that way the idols could compete among themselves. They could easily earn $2,000 to $3,000 dollars in a good night.”

Out of the blue, a man with a black cap walks furiously towards Summer and the keyboard player. “Turn down the volume, would you?” he demands. The keyboard player turns it down a bit, but lifts it again once the man turns his back. The man returns, looking as if he is likely to throw a fist at the musician. This time the keyboardist turns the volume really low, and the man disappears. But Summer is upset. “He is from the booth next to us. I recognize him,” she mourns. She says she has been harassed from time to time by a singer and his friends from another booth. “Last June, one of my customers was dragged away by them right here and they beat up our guy as well,” she recalls. “He was bleeding and we took it to the police, but no one dared to be a witness.”

It is 9pm already, and still only two people are in her audience. I have to ask: “Does it make you feel bad singing to empty seats for most of the time?” “That part is alright,” she replies. “What really upsets me is being disturbed and bullied.”


The 3rd hour
The owner of the stall, Mary, is sick today, but a stand-in shows up for the night. Water Sun, a dance teacher and reiki practitioner by profession, has been performing at Temple Street since 2002. Wearing sunglasses and dressed in a long trench coat, she looks like Paula Tsui at first sight. She hasn’t been a regular here in recent months, but still describes the famous area as a ‘night club for civilians’. She even regards it as a place of healing. “A lot of our audience are elderly, and we know them quite well,” she explains. “When we know they are sick, we make some soup and deliver it to them.”

Interested in knowing whether busking on Temple Street can survive, I ask her how people make ends meet in the business. A keyboard player costs $250, she says, and $150 goes to the person who sets up the booth and connects the electricity. Add that to equipment storage and other expenses and costs can come to $500 or $600 a night. As the owner of the booth and the artists split a night’s take equally, performers need to make around $1,000 just to break even – I can hardly see that happening. Isn’t this a losing game? “It is actually,” Water Sun admits. “But we want to keep the tradition and culture here.” Other businesses like tarot reading and fortune telling are her and the owner’s main source of income, but performing is where the fun and enjoyment are. On a good weekend, five or six more listeners turn up at peak time. It is not many – but the show must go on.

The 4th hour
The night is still quiet. Two people take the stage to perform – they are regulars and Summer identifies them by name. Each puts a $20 note in the hands of Summer and the keyboard player. The musician sighs that there used to be a full band in every booth – keyboard, guitar, saxophone – you name it. But now he can only imitate the sound of those instruments on the synthesizer. “It is just hard to earn a living by playing music full time,” he says while tinkering on the keyboard and simultaneously placing a cigarette between fingers on his left hand.

A man, who later introduces himself as Mr Liu, walks into the booth and sits beside the musician like they are old friends. He reaches for a song book, and starts reading it, showing me how to decipher the notations. “I will go sing a song,” he finally says and chooses I am a Chinese by veteran composer Lau Ka Cheong. He sings – and dances, moving to and fro over the stage. He finishes to cheers from across the street – bizarrely, it is the first applause of the night. I look at my watch – it is already 11pm. I decide to call it a night – and so will the performers in half an hour, they say. Tomorrow morning, Summer will be a housewife seeing her children off to school and Water will teach dance in the community centre. But, come tomorrow night, they will be back – and the show will go on.