Where do discerning villains stay in Hong Kong? In Chinese drama about graft, always the ‘Three Seasons’
Although the hotel only exists in the fictional television series about corrupt tycoons fleeing the reach of the Communist Party, many viewers were quick to find a real-world counterpart
A hit TV series on China’s anti-corruption campaign surprised audiences when it featured a “Three Seasons Hotel” in Hong Kong as a refuge for well-connected mainland tycoons fleeing graft investigations, which many interpreted as a blunt reference to the city’s Four Seasons Hotel.
The Four Seasons was swept into the limelight in February when Chinese billionaire Xiao Jianhua was taken from his long-stay residence at the hotel and spirited across the mainland border to assist investigations.
Two months after the incident, with Xiao’s whereabouts still a mystery, Tuesday’s episode of In the Name of People featured a wide shot of Connaught Road in Hong Kong’s Central district, where the Four Seasons is located, then cut to a conversation between two major characters inside the hotel.
The son of a retired senior Communist Party leader – the main villain – is meeting a woman who heads a company laundering his money after escaping the mainland with one of his five passports.
He says he chose the “Three Seasons Hotel” because of its “concentration of information”.
A group of “brothers” who had fled the mainland were all living there, looking north into the distance, the direction of the mainland, and waiting for a safe day to return, he says. He also refers to the hotel as the “north-facing watchtower”, a well-known nickname for the Four Seasons Hotel among the mainland’s wealthy businessmen in self-exile, after the government officials they had ties with fell under suspicion of graft.
On social media, some audience said they were amazed at how far the show went to draw the parallel. One marvelled that “the plot is in synchronisation with the actual conditions in the country”, while another wondered whether authorities had scheduled the show to fit the pace of the corruption crackdown.
The series, which by Tuesday had racked up 2.6 billion views for 34 episodes out of 55 in total on Iqiyi.com, is the first to feature corruption since 2004, when the media watchdog banned dramatic representations of the theme.
The Four Seasons caught the attention of mainland media as early as 2014, when Tencent’s financial news portal Prism reported that the number of mainland tycoons seeking refuge there had soared since Chinese President Xi Jinping launched the anti-corruption campaign in late 2012.
Although news about Xiao’s disappearance from the hotel was widely censored over the border, details of the incident have quietly spread on the mainland’s social media, sending a chill through the circles of its business and political elites.
The incident also sparked fears in Hong Kong about the violation of Basic Law, the city’s mini-constitution, which states that mainland law enforcement officials are not permitted to operate in the city.
A spokesman for the hotel said they declined to comment on the TV drama.
