THE HUI BOYS

Who are the Hui Boys?

They are the defendants at the trial, the lawyers, the lackeys, the bodyguards, the SHK directors, their dimwit secretaries with selective memories...and possibly the journalists and even the judge and jury - all there at or following closely the Hui Kwok graft trial at Court No 7 at the High Court, there to support. defend, judge, finance, report or simply witness with astonishment and some degree of disgust one little man managing to screw so many other people up.

For this hundred-and-twenty-and-more-day trial, one of the longest and certainly the most expensive Hong Kong has ever seen, was a tribute to Rafael Hui Si-yan, former Chief Secretary of the HKSAR, dismounting at the final station of the gravy train he thought was never derailing, faltering or taking an unscheduled stop.

We were all there to see him safely onto the platform. The four defendants had paid his ticket or at least tucked him into his sleeper and led him to the buffet car. Some had financed the imported carrots for his racehorses and seen that he got the best bimbo from Shanghai. Amongst many, many other things.

This is a rolling reportage of the Hui Kwok graft trial, held in Hong Kong between the beginning of May and the end of December 2014. On the way to the verdicts, slowly, under a mountain of facts, a unique literary narrative of satire, humour and even personal tragedy emerges, for this was a most absurd and pathetic case in many ways and bound to fuel the righteous indignation of a satirist.