Slate-gray fog obscured the Hong Kong skyline all weekend, and the rainy weather was sadly well-suited to the gloomy and sodden financial climate in the city. But the weather did nothing to dampen the spirits — beer, Pimm’s Cup and Jack-and-Coke, mostly — at the Hong Kong Sevens rugby tournament.
The Sevens has long been an annual coping mechanism for the BlackBerried and Burberried expatriate set, the well-heeled bankers, brokers, lawyers and property developers across the Asia-Pacific region. The event has been inked into marketing plans and promotional budgets for decades now: Rent a luxury box, fly in a few dozen favored clients and indulge in a weekend of off-the-hook drinking and off-the-record debauchery.
Tickets to the three-day event — the fraction that were available to the general public — sold out in two hours this year, as usual, but the global economic crisis was apparent in the corporate hospitality suites at Hong Kong Stadium.
“Maybe they need to be quieter and more sensible in their approach this year,” Beth Coalter, director of the International Rugby Board’s Sevens World Series, said Thursday, speaking about corporate bashes. “Maybe there won’t be as much free booze flowing as in years past.” Goldman Sachs and AIG gave up their customary hospitality suites this year, other firms dialed down their profiles, and there wasn’t a Lehman brother in sight.
The naming of rugby sevens comes from its roster of seven players, instead of the 15 players in regular rugby union. The history of the sport even has some resonance in the current economic crisis. Rugby sevens was invented in Scotland in 1883, during a time of labor strife, farm protests and economic despair. When a Scottish butcher, one Ned Haig, didn’t have the funds to stage a full-blown rugby tournament, he and his mates concocted the sevens.
Yes, they downsized it.
Downsizing seems to be a modern trend in major corporations’ sports sponsorships. General Motors did no advertising at the Super Bowl this year, for example, and terminated its endorsement deal with Tiger Woods. Honda has pulled its racing team out of Formula One.
Happily for the Hong Kong Sevens, its two title sponsors are still in place: Cathay Pacific, the Hong Kong-based airline that lost $1.1 billion last year, and Credit Suisse, which lost $7.1 billion. Both firms have two years remaining on their existing sponsorship contracts.
And plenty of lower-level sponsors and corporate-boxers showed up again this year. Sean Moore, the Sevens media director, said 97 percent of box-holders renewed their contracts when approached last November.
While Citibank, RBS and other big banks seemed to tone down their partying this year, Deutsche Bank had a hospitality suite that was jammed all weekend. And unabashedly so: more than one senior bank executive was seen dressed up in lederhosen and blonde Brünnhilde pigtails.
Asked about the bank’s approach to entertaining this year, given the economic gloom, one Deutsche Bank employee said, “I’m at liberty to say nothing at all, ever, about any of that. But anything could happen to this town and it wouldn’t matter at all, not to the Sevens. Nothing can touch the Sevens.”
And there was no touching the alcohol consumption among the great unwashed in the South Stand of Hong Kong Stadium. People can wait for hours to get into the uncovered bleachers, the life of the Sevens party. In the South Stand, it’s highly debatable whether the Sevens is a rugby tournament with a party tacked on, or vice versa.
“This is unlike any sporting event in the United States,” said Duffy Lorenz, 27, a merger and acquisitions lawyer from Grand Forks, North Dakota. “There aren’t a lot of fights here, even though there’s lots of drinking. It’s friendly here. At a Giants-Dodgers game, you know, people can get mean.”
Things got mean early Friday, when a 5 a.m. brawl in the Wan Chai district broke out, involving bar bouncers and a number of club players from visiting rugby teams. The riot police were called to restore order. A player from New Zealand was arrested and fined 500 Hong Kong dollars, about $64, for punching a cop.
When Alan Knott-Craig, the managing director of a telecommunications company, flew in Friday night from Johannesburg, he and his group went straight from the airport to Delaney’s Bar in Wan Chai. “We got absolutely numb and never made it out,” he said Saturday afternoon at the stadium.
Most of his entourage — friends, co-workers and clients, 17 in all — left the bar early Saturday morning and went right to the stadium, bypassing their hotel and hoping their luggage had somehow arrived. He still wasn’t sure where many of his people were. “We lost a lot of good men out there,” he said, laughing.
Not far away, Gary Soper, a first secretary at the British Embassy in Seoul, stood watching the rugby with his wife. Both were dressed in traditional Korean women’s gowns. “Seoul is very Korean and very Asian, so Hong Kong is such a nice breather,” he said.
Cross-dressing diplomats were hardly out of place in the fabled — some might say notorious — South Stand. Halloween on crack? Mardi Gras on steroids? The perfect analogy escapes.
There were plenty of ballerinas, ninjas, gladiators and cowboys in the South Stand. Lots of Boy Scouts, Jack Sparrows, all manner of farm animals, lifeguards (many carrying inflatable sharks), Catwomen, admirals, sailors and various Trekkies. Also, a Guantánamo Bay prisoner, a Kim Jong-il, a spermatazoa, a King Tut or two, at least one Borat and some Ghostbusters.
Meanwhile, there was some world-class rugby going on nearby. Fiji won the title Sunday afternoon, beating South Africa, 26-24.
Drag queens are a form of cross-dressing as performance art.
回复删除Some people cross-dress as a matter of comfort and style. They have a predilection for clothes that are only marketed or in connection with the opposite sex. In this case, a person's cross dressing may or may not be visible to other people.
Some people cross-address, in order to shock others or challenge social norms.
Both men and women can cross-dress to hide her true identity. Historically, some women cross-dressed to the inclusion of male-dominated or male-exclusive professions, such as military service. Conversely, some men have cross-dressed to the exemption from compulsory military service.