The King and us

One of the most bizarre entries in the fairly weird collection of yarns I penned for the South China Morning Post's Postmagazine was joining the Hong Kong Elvis Presley Fan Club on its trip of a lifetime, a pilgrimage to Graceland for the Candlelight vigil and stations of the cross observed each year in Memphis, Tennessee by the true believers.

FOR three nights running now, the King has come to me in my dreams. Conjured by a combination of greasy junk food, Deep South humidity and serious sensory overload, he wafts into my subconscious as a giant, disembodied head. Not beefy, bloated Las Vegas Elvis, but the preternaturally beautiful young Hillbilly Cat. His airbrushed skin kissing the inky lustre of his soaring pompadour like a peach on black velvet; the perfect pink cupid's bow mouth curling up at one corner. And as I'm transfixed by those sad soft glazed eyes, an unshakeable conviction takes hold. Elvis is about to eat me. His lips part to reveal a graveyard of rotting teeth and a grotesquely swollen tongue, drooling hungrily. As the King moves in to chow down, I awake with a jolt and a stifled shriek, a sweaty wreck in a sodden bed.

In his pomp(adour): The Hillbilly Cat

Strange? Sure. But it would be stranger not to have such visions after a few days immersed in the madness that is Memphis in August. For when the going gets weird, it seems the seriously weird go to Graceland. The ante-bellum mansion has become Mecca, Calvary and Varanasi for the ever-swelling ranks of true believers coming to commemorate the death - and lucrative resurrection - of Elvis Aaron Presley.

In these sacred surrounds, the quirky quickly becomes the quotidian; the bizarre, banal. Where within a week, you can attend the Elvis for Everyone Convention, rival Elvis impersonator contests, the Heart of Elvis show, the Elvis Fan Club Festival, the Elvis: Legacy in Light Laser Show, Elvis Video Nights, the Elvis Reunion Concert, the University of Oxford International Conference on Elvis Presley (topics to include The Elvis Connection to Feminine Spirituality and Understanding Your Inner Elvis, along with a guest performance by San Francisco Lesbian impersonator Elvis Herselvis) and, bafflingly, even the Elvis Presley International five-kilometre Run. Where you can stuff yourself with fried peanut butter, banana and bacon sandwiches and empty your wallet on all manner of Kingly kitsch.

But that is to jump ahead of the story. We are here in the eye of Typhoon Elvis with six members of the International Elvis Presley Fan Club's Hong Kong chapter, who have travelled halfway around the world on a solemn pilgrimage to worship at the altar of the King. Meet club founder Regina Cheung, vice-president Katima Khan, and paid-up, card-carrying members Mabel Lee, Elsa Yuen, Tina Lam and, yes, Elvisina Tang.

Despite what might seem the excessive devotion denoted by the latter's choice of moniker, these ladies actually tend towards the saner end of the Elvis fandom spectrum, in that they boast not a single Elvis tattoo or white jumpsuit between them, nor do any profess to have fathered the King's love child or spotted him serving up slurpees in a 7-Eleven. What unites them - and tens of thousands of other pilgrims - is a forgiving and unquestioning love of their idol; a love that transcends the cheeseburgers and amphetamines, that rises above the weird obsessions and the snivelling sycophants. A love that draws them inexorably to Graceland, Graceland, Memphis, Tennessee ...