Media : The Comic Side of Hong Kong : An American cartoonist spatters ink across greed, British bumbling and the colony’s culture clash.

Lily Wong and her relatives live the life of a typical Hong Kong family. They share a small apartment in a crowded district amid neon signs and street vendors. The only thing not typical about this family is Stuart--Lily’s American husband.

Stuart is not popular with Lily’s father, who doesn’t believe in mixed marriages. Lily’s mother, on the other hand, is oblivious to the fact that Stuart is not Chinese. And Lily’s younger brother, Rudy, just isn’t interested.

These are all facts well known to thousands in this British colony, because Lily “lives” with her American husband and sharp-tongued relatives in a popular comic strip.

Lily is the creation of Larry Feign, an American who uses satire to expose Hong Kong issues ranging from politics to racism. To Feign, Hong Kong is out of control--a victim of greed, Britain’s bumbling over a 1997 turnover of the colony to China, and clashing cultures. And all those topics find their way into the comic strip by Feign, a native of Buffalo, N.Y.

“Chinese assume foreigners are rich and that foreigners don’t give a damn about the Chinese people, which is true in most cases,” Feign said in an interview. Fortunately, anger is one of the tools of his trade: “The best way to come up with a topic is to find out what really annoys me,” he said of his creative inspirations.

Raised in Tustin, Calif., Feign was introduced to life here through his Hong Kong Chinese wife, Cathy Tsang. They met as students in Hawaii and returned to her birthplace not long after they were married. A cartoonist by avocation, Feign quickly got a job with a local newspaper and a year later created the “World of Lily Wong.”

Now the strip is published in an English-language newspaper, the South China Morning Post, with a circulation of more than 10,000. More than half the readers are Hong Kong Chinese.

“I think (the strip) has been seen over the last few years as a pretty caustic observation on Hong Kong life, which is a bit uncomplimentary to different races,” said Morning Post Editor Phillip Crawley. “(Feign) patronizes the local Chinese, the colonial race and the Yanks. . . . He has established a satirical style which has been very good at a time when Hong Kong is going through a period of considerable change.”

One recent Feign target was America’s decision to boycott toys made by prisoners in China. “When I heard about the ‘toycott,’ I thought it was a hypocritical reaction on the part of the Americans. . . . Prisoners in the U.S. are making goods, which is better than just sitting around. . . . And in China, not all prisoners are political prisoners. . . . Americans can get very self-righteous without fully understanding a situation,” he said.

In one strip, Stuart fumes to Lily that America’s “toycott” is all based on rumors and exaggeration. “God! Americans are such self-righteous, sanctimonious, hypocritical, ignorant, pompous, bigoted, self-important, loudmouthed, dumb lunk. . . .” But then he stops abruptly. “Oh my God! What’s happening to me?!” Stuart asks Lily, who assumes that her husband is appalled at the idea of taking Beijing’s side.

“No,” Stuart says, “I’m afraid I’m beginning to sound like a Brit.”

Feign also addresses what he calls an “invisible cultural clash” between Chinese and foreigners.

“There are things the Chinese misunderstand about the foreigners, and things the foreigners misunderstand about the Chinese. Each side never hears about it, which makes perfect material for cartoons,” he explained.

One example is a lack of consideration among neighbors in Hong Kong. While Americans and many other foreigners may consider noise a annoyance, to the Chinese it means fun. Quiet signifies loneliness. Feign captures the difference in his strip through karaoke, sing-along music videos with microphones provided for the amateur vocalists. In the “World of Lily Wong,” the festive pastime becomes a new way for neighbors to irritate each other.

And what do the Hong Kong Chinese think about Feign’s view of their home? “The Hong Kong people cannot deny that there are some people like those depicted in Lily Wong,” said To Yui-ming, a Hong Kong Baptist College lecturer in communication. “But I think our culture is being a bit underrated.”

Daisy Li, chairwoman of the Hong Kong Journalist Assn., believes most Hong Kong women would not identify with the heroine of Feign’s strip. “Lily is very greedy for money, which may make readers think that Hong Kong people are always searching for ways to get rich, which isn’t true,” Li said.

However, Aaron Tan, vice president of Citicorp’s real estate division, confesses that “I read Lily Wong faithfully every morning. My favorite character is Stuart, who is a typical American trying to deal with exaggerated Chinese stereotypes found in a Hong Kong-Chinese world.”

Feign says that when he joined the Post nearly four years ago, the newspaper asked him to make the comic strip more political. So, he placed Lily’s brother, Rudy, in the Legislative Council, Hong Kong’s legislature, just to poke fun at local politics.

“The brother is the most popular character because he is an obnoxious, scheming Neanderthal. And to get him into the council among all the pompous, holier-than-thou people is just a natural,” Feign said.

The cartoonist has put Lily to work for the Hong Kong government because he wanted to make fun of civil servants. “I always show them sitting with their feet up on their desks, reading golfing magazines,” Feign said.

While some of the bureaucrats complain, Kerry McGlynn, assistant director of the Hong Kong government’s Information Service, commented: “Hong Kong’s civil servants can’t be too thin-skinned. Some of the things said in his (Feign’s) strip are wide of the mark, but sometimes you have to stretch the point to make the point.”

Chinese government officials--who have also been lampooned by Feign--may not be so open to criticism by people in Hong Kong, which is to revert to Chinese sovereignty in 1997 under an agreement with the British. Continued freedom of the press here hinges on Beijing’s adherence to a “one country, two systems” formula as stated in the agreement, which promises that Hong Kong can maintain its capitalist system for at least 50 years after 1997.

“I’m sure the Chinese don’t particularly like his comic strip that was based on forced labor camps in China. But I think they accept the fact that Larry (Feign) takes his own line,” said Post Editor Crawley.

A spokesman for the New China News Agency’s foreign affairs department--China’s de facto consulate in Hong Kong--commented: “I never follow that comic strip. . . . ‘The World of Lily Wong’ deals with the opinion of the writer rather than the facts.”

Feign plays down any personal concern about the regime in Beijing. “I do feel the Chinese look seriously at the Chinese cartoonist in Hong Kong. . . . A lot of these Chinese cartoonists are quite bold. . . . I’m sure a lot of them are on some kind of hit list. I’m not sure if I’m on that list,” he said.

Feign added that he doesn’t intend to leave just because the Chinese take over. But he’s clearly concerned about his economic future. “I feel that it is unlikely that I’ll have a job after 1997,” he said.

Meanwhile, Feign says he has become “the unofficial spokesman for mixed marriages in Hong Kong. . . . A lot of my cartoons deal with intra-racial relationships.”

Still, the cartoonist stresses that his strip is no mirror of his own life. “Lily and Stuart are not based on me and my wife. . . . We’ve known each other for years, we have a little boy, we don’t live with Cathy’s family, and we actually love each other, unlike my cartoon characters.”