La Boca is the underbelly of Buenos Aires and the roots of that
melancholic dance, tango. Despite the tourist developments in
the area, the hardcore dockyard ghetto still hovers around the
parameters of the neighbourhood. We are repeatedly warned by
police to be careful exposing our equipment in public as I was
also warned on my previous trip. But I felt no threat or tension
wandering these streets. In terms of class, there’s a parallel
connection with the working class neighbourhood that I grew up
in. I like to think that there’s a special unspoken bond and
respect between working class brothers that crosses over borders
of race and nationhood.
As we stroll by Boca Juniors’ stadium, I’m reminded of an
incident from my research visit last Christmas. Maria had given
me a Boca Junior jersey for Christmas. Not understanding the
local soccer politics, I mistakenly wore it to visit her cousins
up in the yuppie neighbourhood of Olivia. I was verbally abused
although I didn’t know what they were saying since I spoke no
Spanish. But I was pretty sure those were “fightin’ words”. Some
even threw things at me from moving vehicles.
Maria’s father, an avid Boca Junior fan, later told me that the
yuppies are chickens and would never dare to confront a Boca
fan. They would only cowardly shout profanity at me from a
distance. Apparently, Boca Juniors are a fierce and violent
team.
Maria also told me that yuppies would be afraid of me for the
simple superficiality of being Chinese. They’re apparently under
the impression that the Chinatown in Belgrano is a dark and
sinister place lurking with Taiwanese triads because that’s all
they get from the media. I found out later that day that her
cousin didn’t even know where Chinatown was and he’s lived in
Buenos Aires all his life. I just hope that they had seen Sidney
in “Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner” and I wasn’t too colourful a
guest last Christmas… wonder if they hid their kitchen cleavers.
We brought Chiang for another interview in front of Puente
Nicolas Avellaneda that Cheuk calls the Wong Kar-wai bridge
because Wong had staged it in “Happy Together”. We continue
interviewing Chiang at a local restaurant and I managed to catch
some nice sequences of the lonely old man as he gazes
melancholically while a young couple performs the tango for him,
as if exclusively, in the empty restaurant.
From my fruitless cruising of the gay bars on my research visit
last Christmas, I would say, this is probably as close as I’ll
get this asexual lonely old man with two left feet onto the
dance floor. Nonetheless, it is a perfect mirror image of those
bygone dockyard immigrants who use to drink and dance the night
away searching for a fleeting moment of love while yearning for
their true love back home.
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