Fame: a disquilibrium

A man becomes famous when the number of people who know him becomes markedly greater than the number of people he knows. The recognition enjoyed by a great surgeon is not fame. He is admired by not by the public but by his patients, by his colleagues. He lives in equilibrium. Fame is a disequilibrium. "

– Milan Kundera, The Curtain.

One of the reasons that I finally left Linnan, the village in the hills where I spent my gap year, was that my fame was preceding me. Villagers that I came into everyday contact knew me, of course, and life proceeded as normal. But after the press got hold of the story, reporters started to trickle in. First the local papers, then the national papers, then the papers from HK, and a documentary team from RTHK. In general the reporters didn’t cause much disturbance -- they’d just turn up for an afternoon, and then life was pretty much back to normal again.

However, I began to get rather uncomfortable when I went to nearby villages (e.g., 油嶺which was a 3 hour hike away), and have villagers whom I have never met grasp my hand in gratitude for the work I was doing. I started to receive letters from admirers, including university guys who would send me their photos of them posing next to their bikes. When I turned on the radio one day, I was rather taken aback to hear a letter I’d written to my Primary 6 class read out in the air. Ok – I did post it on the classroom wall, so in all fairness it was in public domain. But still. Still.

Enough was enough. So I left.

Growing up as 周兆祥 (Simon Chau) ‘s daughter, our family has always had to deal with being semi-public. Dad would announce the arrival of some reporter or TV crew, and we’d have to all pitch in and get the house in a presentable state. (This usually involved throwing our mess under the table, into a cupboard, or somewhere upstairs)

In Club O, I can see people’s reactions to me change when they learn that I am my father’s daughter. So I generally keep it quiet; and anyway, those who come regularly on Thursday come to know me as me.

So in general, I do my best to keep my relationships in balance. It’s discomforting to have people relate to a fixed idea they have of me, rather than who I am right now. I have family friends who still think of me as the girl who went to China, and still dredge that up even though that was over ten years ago.

I was thinking about all this again this week because I got pleasantly surprised by my summer paycheck. I wrote on facebook, “Hofan earned enough money this summer to fund another theatre production.” The response I got from my family and friends was immediate and resounding. I don’t think I received so many comments and thumbs up in a short space of time.

The heroic narrative of “Hofan who has finally managed to figure out a way to do what she loves and make it financially viable” is undeniably potent. In retrospect, the audience came to see Berzerk! because of this. They didn’t come because they wanted to see their daily grind in the city put on stage, but because they were attracted by an ensemble who were proving that, “Yes, it is possible in Hong Kong to do what you love, and somehow make a living.” The excitement of someone, having next to no budget, no actors, nothing, but somehow believing that – through sheer will and the generosity of friends - this piece was going to happen was infectious.

But that was last year. It’s time to move on.

The trick is, I think, not to get stuck.

---

(Look back at it, the newspapers are pretty funny. The more sensational article is from 東方日報. The article in English is something I wrote for IB World (here in .pdf form)