words yvonne teh

Ho Chi Minh ‘returns’ to prison and Hong Kong.

“I knew very little! Except that he was the father of the Vietnamese liberation struggle.” Peter Jordan, confesses that, before being asked to direct the play Ho Chi Minh in Hong Kong: His Persecution & The Triumph of the Glorious Rule of Law, he knew only that Ho Chi Minh was a Communist who didn’t live to see the unification of Vietnam, although it was already well on the way by his death. “My only conception before this was as this iconic revolutionary figure. So I had a very external view of him.”

A statesman as well as a revolutionary, Ho Chi Minh – whose real name was Nguyen Tat Thanh, but who used close to 200 pseudonyms during his lifetime, including that by which he has become best known – led bloody wars of attrition that forced the French and ultimately even the Americans from his native land. He was the founder and president of the Communist-governed Democratic Republic of Vietnam after spending several years abroad, including France where he embraced Communism and in Hong Kong, where he established the Indochinese Communist Party in 1929.

Also during his time in the Fragrant Harbour, Ho Chi Minh was arrested by the British Crown Colony’s police. Taking up the tale, Jordan, who knows quite a bit more about Vietnam’s ‘Uncle Ho’ now post-accepting the offer to helm this play about Ho, tells of how, in the summer of 1931, the French wanted him deported. “They wanted to try him and I think they wanted to execute him as well.” For Ho Chi Minh had been an increasingly outspoken agitator for Vietnamese revolutionary activities and independence against French Indochine’s colonial masters.

But rather than automatically cooperate with their fellow colonial power, the British delayed. “Then they agreed that, in principle, he could be sent back if it wasn’t for the fact that a lawyer, a British lawyer, stepped in and took Ho Chi Minh’s side and argued that this would be tantamount to extradition and there was no treaty or something. Anyway, he argued from a legal point of view and won the case.” Even though it went on for more than a year and all the way to the Privy Council, essentially the final court of appeal, in London. Consequently, Ho Chi Minh wasn’t delivered into French hands.

The British lawyer in question was a solicitor only slightly older than his client named Frank Loseby (pronounced ‘loes-bee’). Jordan describes him as “a dyed-in-the-wool colonialist” but with a sense of honour that compelled him to treat whoever he was representing impartially. “The picture that comes across,” says Jordan, “is of a likeable, independent-minded, stubborn man who sticks to his guns and regards his saving of Ho Chi Minh as his greatest achievement. He took great pride in it. And then he was invited to Hanoi as a honoured foreign guest by Ho Chi Minh, and this also was a great source of pride for Frank Loseby.”

Jordan admits that the portrait people will get of Frank Loseby from Ho Chi Minh in Hong Kong is actually “largely invented”; this not least since this dramatic work by playwright Peter Wesley-Smith is a solo piece in which multi-award-winning actor-director Lee Chun Chow – who Jordan happily admits admiring – plays Ho Chi Minh. Although a few extras play policemen and so on, there are no other characters.

So since Frank Loseby doesn’t actually appear in the show, pretty much everything the audience learns about him comes through Ho’s point of view! Additionally, while the British solicitor looms large in Ho’s thoughts and the relationship between Loseby and Ho Chi Minh is a major element in the play, Jordan says there really is no mistaking that Ho Chi Minh in Hong Kong is about fleshing out Ho Chi Minh as a human being as well as an historical figure. “It’s a short play,” he says, “so we can’t have everything.”

At one point in the work, Ho Chi Minh “wonders aloud why on earth the Vietnamese would put their faith in a leader with a Chinese name.” It was a name Nguyen Tat Thanh took from an old Chinese man, believed to be a beggar, who died leaving nothing but an identification card, which the Vietnamese revolutionary leader bought. He assumed the name on the card following a common practice of the Chinese outlaw society at the time. But the play never directly addresses the Vietnamese anti-Chinese sentiment of Ho Chi Minh’s famous statement, “Better to eat the French dung for 100 years than the Chinese dung for 1,000!”

Rather, the focus is on constructing an inner life for Ho Chi Minh from dry legal facts and historical details. As in the case of Frank Loseby, Jordan readily admits, “The actual basis of the character of Ho Chi Minh is all speculation. That is really our own invention. Humanizing an iconic figure is always interesting ­– I think it’s very true to remember that even such figures are essentially human beings with their usual daily urges and drives, insecurities, fears and fantasies.”

Consequently, imagine, if you will, Ho Chi Minh in Hong Kong, suffering from tuberculosis, languishing first in Victoria Prison before his transfer to Bowen Road Hospital. “And he’s getting more and more frustrated because he wants to get back to Vietnam and start a revolution! But he’s stuck here with terrible food and damp conditions and all of that British legalese which he doesn’t always understand or follow. After a year, they decide that he can go. But, then, he doesn’t know where to go...”

That is where Ho Chi Minh in Hong Kong begins – with the future leader in prison, talking to the audience. In the second half of the play, he has found where to go and reached his destination. He is president of the Vietnamese republic and looking back at what happened to him all those years ago in Hong Kong, where eight decades after the fact his tale of confrontation, unlikely friendship and escape from death is once again enacted – albeit on stage this time, rather than in reality.

Ho Chi Minh in Hong Kong will be staged at the Fringe Club’s Fringe Theatre from May 15 to 18. All evening shows begin at 8:15pm while the Saturday, May 17, matinee commences at 3:15pm. Tickets are $150 from HK Ticketing, 31 288 288. Prior to the evening performances, there is a Visit Ho Chi Minh in Jail companion programme at the Central Police Station Compound, which starts at 7pm. Registration costs $45 per person. To register, call 2525 4416 or send an e-mail to michelle@hkfringeclub.com