Lo Ting, Hong Kong
Lo Ting, Hong Kong
“A long time ago there were fish called Lo, living around the Lantau Island area. After absorbing the spiritual energy of the universe, they became human. Their success was envied by the sea god and they were cursed to live forever a rootless life. They remained half human half fish until the famous monk Pei Tao positioned many spiritual rocks all over the region to release them from the curse during the early part of the 4th Century. They became fully human on the condition that they should never go beyond their territory. In many history books, these people are called ‘Lo Ting’.
This mythological origin story of Hong Kong and its race of fish headed mermen is referenced dating back to the Qing dynasty (1644-1911). They had human bodies from the neck down, fish shaped heads, and a shiny carapace of scales down their backs that jutted into fish tails. They flitted between land and sea depending on which was safer at the time.
In the 1990’s, Hong Kong artist, curator, and scholar Oscar Ho Hing Kay’s brought new light to the myth of Lo Ting, with his vision as the archetype of the western mermaid; its amphibian characteristics were a deliberate repudiation of the agrarian, rice-planting character of China’s Yangtze River civilization. Being “in-between,” Lo Ting was able to survive and roam between two different worlds, the embodiment of a typical Hong Konger. “I take myth very seriously as it often represents a culture and identity”. Says Ho Hing Kay “Our ancestors are from the sea, instead of from the land, denying the cultural linkage with China. The Lo Ting would be neither Western nor Chinese but indigenously, uniquely from Hong Kong.
Ho Hing Kay’s focus on Lo Ting was to encourage numerous depictions and fanciful creations so that no single person could claim ownership over the myth, so it could live on as a creation in constant evolution. “it’s a liberation from the tyranny of official history”. The Lo Ting was, in many ways, history, community, and identity all rolled into one human-fish hybrid
Later, the famous playwright Wong Kwok-Kui created a play using Lo Ting as a protagonist to revolve questions about Hong Kong’s identity. Wong’s plays reworked Hong Kong history through the eyes of Lo Ting. The fish man as a childlike creature, without strength or murderous impulses. Trusting and taught to speak by his rulers and then used by them for their own purposes. Lo Ting became so tired of human politics that he amputates his arms and legs to live as a fish once again until Victoria Harbor is dried up, forcing Lo Ting to return to human form for his own survival. The finale is a massacre, a stage full of fish headed Lo Ting with gun shots echoing through the air as they all fall to the ground.
