Richard Peters -in the Sai Kung Country Park

An Epistle to Hong Kong - Chapter 3 - "Hong Kong and the Future"

This final of the trilogy is an attempt to review the current zeitgeist of Hong Kong, to suggest directions it should now pursue and to make summary of our time living in Hong Kong. Blogs are essentially rants, often angry and best forgotten, but this post is written with a sense of the gravity of impending times. So please allow repetition of what was said in the first of the trilogy, that I make appeal to that which moves a person and that it should strike a resonant chord in order to provoke discourse and, hopefully, action. It is also noted, with some serendipity, that this is my 100th post!

In the previous post a brief sketch of the political background was given along with brief outlines of education and the undelrying theme of the centrality of wealth acquisition. Although within this excellent city there are innumerable fascinating examples from which to choose, those in this post are language and ethnicity, domestic helpers, and housing and accommodation. This post has caused some difficulty, not least because the intention was to steer away from sounding like another useless complaint against the inescable negative foibles thrown up by life in the Pearl of the Orient. In fact, the beloved city of Hong Kong and its beloved people have a charmed place in the world – one that requires wisdom and intelligent direction.

Language and Ethnicity

In our time here Hong Kong's population has increased by at least 1 ½  million to a little over 7. This statistic appears to contradict the fact that the fun-loving boys and girls of the city are simply not having enough babies to effortlessly sustain this growing economy – 0.9 per child-bearing woman, way below the required replacement rate of 2.1. In fact, the increase has been achieved largely through immigration. The city has always been a transient place and because of the nature of work here will probably always be thus, nevertheless each year more settle than leave (or die). The constant and consistent population growth has been one of the largest engines of this perpetually expanding economy fuelling the demand for housing, services and infrastructure and constantly prompting the expected sale of government land to this end. More on this later, but future economic dependency must surely encompass other dimensions and not merely rest on the bedrock of lucrative land sales to already-profitable individuals and companies. Hong Kong and the world deserve something better.

94% of Hong Kong's population is ethnic Chinese, either home grown or specially imported (everything, even the people, are imported from China). That ethnicity, however, is somewhat difficult to ascertain because the perception of one's origins –Guangzhou, Shanghai, Beijing, Bognor Regis– can get a little blurred after a few years domicile in Kowloon City. Obviously this is a very personal thing, but has to do with an established and local mind-set: Hong Kongers are tearful, flag-waving Chinese only up to a point! Even ethnic Chinese returning here from western countries can find it hard to fit in and may forever feel like outsiders: their co-patriots sneeringly call them bananas – yellow on the outside, white on the inside. Apart from the more obvious minority skin differentiations amongst South Asians, real ethnic identity appears, therefore, to be focused on mother tongue usage, particularly at home. Some families may speak three or more languages each day, but prefer one when seated around the dinner table. Indeed, it is possible to walk down Nathan Road and hear 20 or more languages and dialects being casually spoken, and yet most are able to get by using Cantonese.

Getting by in Cantonese, however, can be a minefield of uncertainties. It may begin with a puppy-like glimmer of semi-encouragements, grow in to a confusing mix of happy discoveries and semi-encouragements only ultimately to miserably sit a constant and dismal puddly reminder of overall linguistic failure. How is it 20 million people learn this language as babies but I can't ask the time properly? There are no tenses, for God's sake! God knows I've tried – indeed I cannot recall how many times I have given taxi drivers simple directions in the clearest, best-remembered Cantonese only to be met by furrowed brows that deepen with each more sinicised repetition until finally something clicks, there is a long "Ahhh!" and those very same words with identical nuance and tone is parroted. I swear, and sometimes audibly, that they bloody do it out of grudging and deliberate obduracy... Sorry, I promised not to rant!

By the way, there's no Knowledge required of taxi drivers as there is with the London cabby – Hong Kong's taxi drivers simply queue up to buy their license, get in, start her up and wander about, puzzled passenger within, until they find the required address – or not! If they don't know where they're going they may a) 'fess up with a "You show me?", or b) bluster merrily until the see by your red-faced interjections that they're going the wrong way. And don't get me started on the evaporation of taxis in the rain or at 'changeover' time, whatever that is, or of charging double for the tunnels, or the shameless shouting down the phone to their mates, or of belching, farting and drinking beer whilst driving or of leaving bottles of taxi driver's lemonade at the traffic lights... Upon our emigration in '98 drivers we learned a lot about Hong Kong from good and amicable taxi drivers, but they have ceased bothering to chatt, amicably or otherwise, in English at all. They are a belligerent lot, as are taxi drivers in any city of the world, but surely it's time the public required them do a better job, one worthy of Asia's World City? Sorry – this has become an extended taxi rant!

Sadly racism, like many other negative and primitive hindrances in our social make-up, appears to be near-universal on this planet. Although Hong Kong was no stranger to racism in the past, largely by the colonial Brits, public and physical demonstrations of a racist nature are pretty much unheard of or kept carefully hidden behind the closed doors of slang Cantonese in schoolrooms or unleashed from the carefree tongues of market traders. Funny foreign names, especially south asian ones, may merely provoke titters or unequivocally act as surreptitious hindrances to flat viewing and job opportunities. Having said that, as outsiders in a new culture the Mem and meself felt no outward hostility upon our arrival and, apart from the odd quizzical checks askance on the minibus or at the local Wellcome supermarket, we have felt entirely comfortable and fully at home here: I guess compared with some we're lucky. In truth, it has been hard to leave this comfort zone. For the local population racism may not be fully recognised or even viewed for what it is, but it is a cancer that requires excising – from all walks of life and if legislation is required then so be it: only good can come from such a focus.

Domestic Helpers

If in this city, as elsewhere, wealth is the indicator of status then those at the bottom of the Hong Kong heap are the most despised – the homeless, those with menial jobs, asylum seekers, anyone with dark skins. Included in that are the ubiquitous domestic helpers, the invaluable labour force of around 274,000 – that's 4% of the population. Many of these poor girls from the Philippines, Indonesia and Sri Lanka may be expected to work more hours than their employer is awake, daily scour floors and walls, provide gourmet meals on every occasion, keep the car spotless inside and out, endlessly child mind, care for elderly parents, provide security when the family are elsewhere AND sleep without air-conditioning, sometimes in a shed on the roof or on the kitchen floor with the dog (this is still expected by some employers). This they do for the minimum wage provided: HK$3,920  (US$505) per month. The employer may also be expected to provide a food allowance of HK$875 (US$112) per month. Whilst this sum amounts to more than a lawyer or doctor would acquire outside Manila, Jakarta or Colombo, in practice these human beings are often expected to work under near-slave-like conditions and may suffer from endless berating, beatings and sexual abuse. Other than their holiday time, their only glimpse of their own children growing up at home may be the occasional photo or phone call. In addition, the employer may take away their passport and not pay wages for months only to ultimately plant jewellery in their suitcase and call the police. Then there's the case of a helper 'falling' from an apartment window when that troublesome payment time ultimately came round. In reality, accused domestic helpers don't have a legal leg to stand on (it's their word against the employer's), they will almost certainly be jailed only to be deported, never again able to obtain employment in HK or elsewhere unless desperation drives them to choose somewhere like Saudi Arabia.

Why do some put up with all this? Permanent employment in Hong Kong means that their families back home have the chance to escape poverty; it's probably very few of us reading this blog share a similar background. Millions of people rely on regular incomes sent home to alleviate suffering, build houses and pay for their family's education (remittances account for a yearly US$24 billion injection into the Philippine economy). So it's ok to have a seat with the family at a restaurant (glass of water if you're lucky) in order to chase the fidgety children around the tables all evening whilst the parents get on with the business of eating and having a good time, it's ok to be daily shouted at, to be cursed, to keep all your possessions locked in a suit case: the monthly remittances are Western Unioned home and the families offer thankful prayers on Sundays and late-night phone calls in return.

Unlike the United Kingdom, many Hong Kong families, including our own, have employed domestic helpers, enabling both parents to work, the dog to get walked, the house to be cleaned and the children be safe at home. To obtain a good reliable helper is an achievement in itself and for some she becomes an extension of the family. Any helper will tell you that being employed by a gwailo family is often a better and less demanding deal for them too. So, it's not all that bad for some in ole Hong Kong: each Sunday after church they gather in their thousands at any available open space and do what Filipinas love the most – sitting around chatting, eat chicken wings and letting off a bit of steam. Sometimes they'll get a group together and sing and jig about to the sound of guitar and tambourine, praising God for his miracles in their lives. If they're lucky they may find love interest, maybe a serious boyfren' or even husban' – the answer to the whole family's daily prayers...

Perhaps one way to view the way domestic helpers are treated is as an indicator of the health of Hong Kong society, a barometer of social trends regarding the way Hong Kongers think about their city and those within it. And yet – to broach discussion on such things with many-a local Chinese is to court a certain amount of ire. Long-gone are the days of the poor pig-tailed Chinese amah who sweatily argued for cheap bean sprouts at the local market stall, baby on hip. Some of my students saw domestic helpers only as lazy, opportunistic, money-grabbing spongers that the local population only endured because they needed squeaky clean clothes each morning and a squeaky clean car to drive the kids to school. I've seen so many children (and parents) get a little too used to proxy parenting; picking up after them, tidying their rooms, walking five paces behind them carrying their bags to school, their only care when sick. These permanent babies never learn how to pick up after themselves or use the Hoover or know how to iron or even cook and wash-up and it is almost certainly expected that they will have their own domestic helpers in adulthood. So ingrained are they kids to this life that in classroom discussions it was sometimes hard for them to see that the difference between indentured slavery and the lot of some Hong Kong domestic helpers can oft be slim indeed. Yes, it may be worse in other countries, but that doesn't make it right in Hong Kong.

Accommodation

On paper Hong Kong has it all – a welfare state by which all needs are met from cradle to grave. In truth, this society deals a mixed hand to those that require benefits. When all eyes are turned upwards it may be hard to look down. School and kindergartens are packed sometimes with 40, 50 or even 60 to a class. Hospital wards are infamously crowded because of the economic benefits of meeting their needs en masse. Some patients decide not to return home to their even-more crowded apartments and stay for years, even if each ward has 24-hours of TV blaring cartoons and Cantosoaps. 'Retirement' homes are truly dreadful, dingily-lit waiting rooms of death where waist-height partitions separate the unfortunate and uncomplaining old folks.

Even in this land of superstition and ancestor-reverence the bodies of the dead are sometimes forgotten and left for the government to deal with: after the customary burial time the relatives are supposed to disinter the fleshless remains for transference to ossuaries or commit the remains for final cremation. This rather unpleasant duty, however, is increasingly not done by the more fussy of families – a constant headache for the government's Cemeteries and Crematoria Department. Land prices are so high that 'coffin spaces' in government graveyards are not held in perpetuity! After six year's interment, and regardless of family consent, the space is re-used, the remains disinterred and cremated and then re-interred at the Sandy Ridge cemetery near the border with Shenzhen.

Hong Kong land prices hold such a vaunted premium and command a value way above their actuality in raw materials. As mentioned earlier, land sales are one of the most-revved engines of the economy and forms a permanent grip on the average Hong Konger's psyche that one of the litmus tests for any des res area is the number of realty or estate agents shops. This is how the engine works:

• the government mandarins are ever-seeking politically-expedient ways to generate income and regularly does so through the tried-and tested selling/auctioning off of gazetted sites dotted all over the territory,
• the boys who 'have' (corporations/powerful and rich families) put in their tender for development as close as dammit to their margin of profitability,
• the sale usually goes to the highest bidder,
• most of the planning gets whizzed through and processed pronto (unless some bearded lefty cries the frightful words 'environment' or 'heritage'),
• building starts using imported (and illegal) cheap Chinese labour who get killed in accidents,
• by this time the realty agents with connections to the developers begin pitching – this results in multiple besuited property agents on the streets eager to escort potential customers around showhome apartments or office space in cut-throat competition,
• all flats/offices are bought immediately and then sold again for profit – square feet of sky can exchange hands several times before the builders even get there,
• by this time the average Wong or Chan family have scraped together enough dough to put up the deposit for an apartment, office or retail space is a slightly different kettle of fish,
• the flat is rented out to cover cost of mortgage or the retail/office rent is set for maximum income within the allotted lease (usually 2 years) with the management taking note of the success of the business.

The whole economy benefits from development – the government coffers are filled, the developer's stock value increases, the workers get paid, the café owners sell lunches and taxi and bus drivers transport to and fro, the Wongs and Chans get a foot on the property ladder (and a little social caché), the new occupants get a home and service providers get income. Above all, the financial institutions of Hong Kong benefit from every transaction at every level.

So what's wrong with this system? It is that people are considered less than the dollar at each point in the process: yes, there isn't a Hong Konger who doesn't like it when the government is in the black, or that work is plentiful, or that they are able to buy and rent new properties, but people come second to the mighty dollar. This inevitably leads to social problems for some – overwork and stress, bad borrowing and the inevitable complications for family life and overall social stability. It has also led to staggering inflation in the housing market to impossible and unsustainable levels – since 2009 property prices have risen by a staggering 110%! Great for developers, very very bad for first-time purchasers or low-income families that may wayit for years from the Housing Authority Department.

The bubble that is the Hong Kong housing market has long-been expected to burst. Thus far price have consistently risen largely on the backs of cheap borrowing and a plethora of mainland Chinese investors hoping to put their cash into something more solid than that available in China – something beyond their shores yet not too far away. The Hong Kong housing market has hitherto seemed the most secure of investments. But all good things must come to an end and just as in 1997 property prices inevitably took a dive, and sank all those chained with them, it looks like that time may be immanent.

For many the government policy regarding housing appears to have been mostly the latter of an all-or-nothing approach, a timid floundering around the edges aware only of the political value of everyone's greed and unbridled success and unable to take on the necessary and steely boldness of governance faced with tough decisions. No-one wants to be told they can't make as much money next year as they did this, or that their property's value may not actually equal the price paid, but if the government had not been so hands-off in the past few years then the expected property crash would not be so severe and uncontrolled. In truth, it's what has been experienced the world-over since 2008, but by its very nature Hong Kong has been immune to this.

The expected property devaluation, however, will not be the real issue for many Hong Kongers. Human cogs in the various machines of wealth, many are happy merely to put rice on the table and hope not get ill and take dips in wages or have to pay medical costs. At the very bottom of the ladder are those who can afford little more than a box to inhabit, such is the chronic state of public housing. Over the years, and with limited success, the government has tried many grand housing schemes, such as clearing slums and erecting massive public housing estates and even building new towns in the boondocks, but people vote with their feet and overcrowded and often dangerous private housing is rife.

Apart from cardboard boxes under flyovers, the infamous cages have always been the very cheapest accommodation in the city. These squalid, Dickensian conditions just should not exist in one of the world's richest cities – they are another testament to what is wrong in eden: their inhabitants the detritus of society, the poorest, most powerless and least heard of all Hong Kong's people.

To Conclude

Many Hong Kongers do not realise they have such an amazing role to fulfill as those who really have it all – money, opportunity, political awareness and individual conscience. Perhaps growing up in the territory has engendered amongst many a sense of entitlement without responsibility (whereas it could be argued the converse may hold more sway over the border). It could be argued that Asians relish the comfort the certainty that comes with the collective mind. Craftily formed, this collective mind of Hong Kong could be that best suited to bridge east and west and become a model for the rest. As exemplars of enlightened pan-Asians, others would look to the 'Hong Kong Way' as the most successful in financial, social, political and even religious considerations. I believe the wonderful tolerance and acceptance exhibited by many Kong Kong Chinese could be the watchword for success.

Instead, and unfortunately, there sometimes appears to be the worst of both where individual greed is seen as unquestioningly good, unhindered material self-interest the ultimate goal of life and rather dull middle class social mores are bludgeoned into the lives of the rest. At the moment it looks as if Chinese investors will be able to take advantage of overseas stocks: Hong Kong is once again ready to capitalise on a massive rush of investment from domestic mainland Chinese. But I hope that's not the sum total of Hong Kong's projected achievement potential. It also looks like Hong Kong will remain closed to outsiders, especially the domestic workers who now cannot apply for residency no matter how long they have lived there. The poor, the real poor of Hong Kong do not benefit from such investments either directly or indirectly.

So, what should be done to improve things?

• Change government policy and, as in Singapore, make English the official language – this will encourage trade across continents and make Hong Kong less dependent on cronyism and Beijing-focused sinophiles.
• Change government policy over discrimination and racism – ensure equality of opportunity for all regardless of the colour of their passport. This also will make Hong Kong a better place to do business and comfortably live without hindrance.
• Change government philosophy regarding intervention in the marketplace – ensure the sale of land occurs using different priorities in order to take heat out of housing-based economy, encourage diversification and make housing fairer for all. In particular, it is vital to take matters in hand regarding the Small House Policy.

In fairness, the Hong Kong government does promote socially-aware policies through its social health and welfare departments, but they seem a little like diversions from the real business of making lots of money. Please don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating a Socialist revolution, but the current system favours none but the powerful and well connected. And a lifetime of acquisition means that they're not likely to share their wealth anytime soon and will use the government to defend their money, their lifestyle and their means of income. In the end it all comes down to power and who has it.

I am not proposing that the Hong Kong government leads the way. There's enough good people out there who work for and with charities, indeed it's big business now, and God-only knows how much tax avoidance is done through charitable donations from businesses great and small, but we live in the 21st century and the role of individuals is now greater than ever before. Just as the government surely encompasses more than merely lawmaking, citizens should be more than mere consumers and now be giving more thought to what happens in their city and beyond. The alternative is simply to ignore any and all problems and merely hope the government is competent and diligent enough to pick up the pieces and that's where we are now.

Unrestricted laissez-faire capitalism has given us the Hong Kong we see today, warts n' all. Perhaps it's time for something else, something better and something good. It won't be easy and it may be painful, but in the end the struggles for a better society make it worthwhile.

Related articles

An Epistle to Hong Kong - Chapter 1 'In the Beginning'

An Epistle to Hong Kong - Chapter 2 - 'Muddling Through'

From the Republic of Ireland to the Czech Republic

How to Stop Giving to Charity

An Epistle to Hong Kong – Chapter 2 – 'Muddling Through'

In this second of three epistles, inasmuch as a blog purports to be entertaining, I want to show that wealth acquisition is the overriding fixation of this culture which, when combined with aspirational education and a hands-off political culture, ensures focus is fixed on the self. I want to show how the city's success story is generally built on wealth acquisition and that this has only come about through hard work, good connections or education.

We settled in Hong Kong in 1998, one year on from the handover of sovereignty from the British colonial government to the Beijing authorities. This transfer of power, so feared by many of the population that had only 20 years previously escaped across the border from the terror of Red Guards and the Cultural Revolution, meant that British, Canadian, American and Australian passport holders had either already fled or had emergency plans to do so if things went tits-up! When the shiny People's Revolutionary Army tanks didn’t thunder down Nathan Road to crush the dissenting cries of the capitalist running dogs between the cracks of the blood-strewn pavements, everyone breathed a huge sigh of relief. But no-one really knew what would happen once the Chinese were through the border.

In fact, it made sense for Beijing to keep things the way they were and keep their eyes firmly on other, more-lucrative-still future prizes, such as Taiwan. Besides, they had to slowly begin the process of sinicisation, the fickle Chinese population of Hong Kong being both patriotic and unpatriotic, depending on the topic of discussion: on reunification of Taiwan with China everyone agrees, on autonomy for Tibet, everyone disagrees, or is it vice versa? As with any urban population, there have been divergent views and firmly entrenched positions to defend. I like to believe that as teacher of Philosophy and Religious Studies, which I will discuss a little later, my hand was one of many on the spoon that helped stir the pot.

In the intervening years when I've confessed to living in Hong Kong some have felt compelled to ask whether the place has changed much since Beijing swapped flags – of course not! 2nd July 1997 everyone got up and went to work, got paid, ate lunch, had their babies, buried their grandmas and made money in the same old way. I can't help wonder if the British had extended the lease on the New Territories for another 100 years the end result wouldn’t have been much the same...

The simplistic view, and this thinking is still found a-plenty in newspapers of 2013, is that China is great – no, it’s really great. The glorious handover meant the enabling of the poor, downtrodden Hong Kong Chinese to cast off the maleficent hegemony of the nasty British imperialists to join in the beneficent hegemony of the ever-loving motherland.

You must remember that for the Special Administrative Region until 2047 things will, in theory, remain business as usual – a full 50 years of 'non-intervention’ from their chauffeur-driven Mercedes-owning mainland Chinese masters. By then all 426 square miles are expected to host a people as unbendingly patriotic as the rest, and by which time anyone who was involved with the handover will be long dead. Thus, the disturbing establishment of a form of democracy by that Whore of the East, the last governor Chris Patten, was seen by the Communist Party's powerful elite as a deliberate unsettling process for Chinese reintegration. Democracy has not, is not and never shall be popular in the People's Republic of China.

In truth, I thought the chippies* would take over. Over the years many companies were happy that the government would not "frustrate the operation of market forces" as the long-time financial secretary Sir Philip Haddon Cave put it and continue its policy of positive non-interventionism. Surely if a government did not intervene with the natural order of things then the market would be allowed to set the trends and to get on with generating wealth. With the return of Hong Kong to the PRC, perhaps one of the most planned economies of the planet, it was inevitable that it would seek to increase its involvement in the running of all things. Thus, when a measure was introduced to positively integrate more of its work force into the economy, supplanting the nearly 150,000 expats that departed in the years around handover, it was apparent by those doing business that setting artificial targets for the appointment of Chinese, either from Hong Kong or more frequently from mainland China, did not correspond with income generation. Businesses, operating on their strict adherence to a laissez-faire creed, simply went back to employing the right people for the right jobs, regardless of their origins. What was therefore identified by all of this was that the local population required an increase in skills for the market, clearly the responsibility of the underfunded education system and ultimately the responsibility of government. Some chippies may have got work, especially those educated overseas, but thus-far they have remained a fringe phenomena.

Some of the richest people on the planet live in this city where finances have never dipped into the red (indeed, last year many of us received cash because the government felt it needed to spend some of its vast reserves). Wealth creation, however, appears to have followed several well trodden routes. The first is the old style – hard, hard work, night and day. This has always been the bedrock of Hong Kong wealth generation. Although it is becoming harder to make ends meet by working thus, there are still a myriad of small shops that just about tick over, thousands of tired market stalls that are open all hours to ensure returning local customers get 'the usual' and unknown numbers of delivery companies, in the now-ubiquitous Toyota Hiace vans with ridiculous spoilers, that carry anything anywhere to anyone. It has always been in the Chinese psyche to carry out these mercantile tasks and without doubt they do it very well

The next route to riches is to club together: Grandma's lifetime savings combined with living at Mum & Dad's (or with in-laws) in their tiny flat with the addition of siblings putting a portion of their income into the pot helps to set up family businesses or fund property acquisition. It is a tried and tested method that has enabled families to expand their wealth opportunities in stocks, deals, property or business growth. Hong Kong families may not always be happy, but they are strong.

Another route is to be well-connected with 'older brothers' that may offer business assistance so closely akin to cronyism or nepotism as to be indistinguishable. These leg-ups need not necessarily be through legal means and they are never merely benevolent. The final route that seems to have taken hold now is really a secondary route that has only emerged as a result of combinations of any of the other means – property development at home and overseas, a topic for further discussion in the next blog.

The most interesting element to emerge from our time here is my new evangelical belief in accountancy. I used to wonder how so many local people could afford new Mercs and Beamers each year until I discovered that many of these vehicles are owned by their companies as good depreciable assets. All electronic goods are immediately written off! In fact, if we had to do it all again it would be on the back of a 'business' wherein all our assets were lumped together and through which all our income could be beautifully channeled. It's really only the salaried class (such as honest, humble teacher folk) that keep the tax system functioning; everyone else has a proxy adulterous relationship with the taxman through their accountant!

Coming to Hong Kong may have been fortuitous for us and, as mentioned in the previous post, has allowed us to have a pretty amazing time here, but this great city has allowed so many to do much better than us and to grow seemingly without limit. Wealth creation may have provided opportunities for good Hong Kong people, but it has also caused waste, destruction, corruption and, conversely, poverty. More on this in the next post.

Not having worked in any other industry here I can only really discuss Hong Kong education, and that provided by the English Schools Foundation in particular. The ESF was set up in 1967 to provide "modern liberal education" for (mostly-) British expatriates. Before that schooling was a matter of choice – either one sent one’s sproggs across the seas back to one’s native land and into a boarding school or one signed up to a local school. The most prestigious of these were well established institutions such as the catholic Grant Schools of St Paul’s (1851), of St Francis’ (1869), St Mary’s (1900) or Sacred Heart Canossian (1860), the Anglican Diocesan Schools (1869) and King George V^th School, established as the Kowloon British School in 1894. The colonial government saw the sense of supporting its English-speaking movers and shakers and provided money to support the education of these future captains of South China's commerce and industry. The ESF, now dominated by expat Chinese, still receives a direct subsidy of HK$23,659 per secondary pupil on top of the substantial fees of HK$98,000 for students in secondary and HK$102,000 for those in the 6^th Form.

These substantial sums means that the organisation receives quite a hefty sum from government and parents for the 17,000 students that pass through the doors. Much of this has been passed on to attract and retain good quality teachers in this overseas ‘hardship posting'. That parents are eager to cough up the readies so that their precious little ones can be included in this system is testament to two things – the well-publicised stellar performance of many of its top pupils and the inherent prestige that the institution has hitherto carried.

As a teacher coming into this system it was abundantly clear that busy, heads-down, studious HK classes and muddling, fidgety, English kids at a comprehensive school calling everything they didn't understand 'gay' were miles apart – perhaps even light years apart. I felt I was able to do something here, something I had great difficulty doing in the UK – teaching! In fact, any pressure generating within an ESF classroom was not because of control or improvements in discipline or upping grades, it was caused by trying to meet the incessant demands of these little academic sponges. I actually didn't quite like it to begin with!

It is an expectation of Hong Kong parents that their children work hard. This is to ensure that they gain the best grades possible, an indication of good investment and maintenance of family honour. Do not, however, confuse these amazing grades for personality or remarkable individual characteristics: that usually comes with a more worldly maturity in mid-20s, a necessarily delayed factor arrived at after University study and/or travel. A typical student's day may begin by rising before 6 a.m. to be ready for the school bus. Many do not eat before classes begin which, depending on the school, may be anytime from 7 until 8.30 . At the end of the day after-hours activities begin – sports or martial arts/music lessons or practice/cram school. Unless they are eating out with parents, these children often may not get home until early evening by which time they are expected to study again with homework. This may continue well into the wee small hours, depending on how diligent or distracted they are. And the whole process continues next day, except many children will suffer from sleep-deprivation, a self-inflicted torture. They are well-organised, highly-stressed and often overworked, a preparation for a well-organised, highly-stressful and overworked life they will inevitably lead where chasing the dollar will be the overriding objective. Existential angst be damned – few, if any, question all this because failure at any level brings shame and angry parental disappointment.

The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, the book that describes the strict disciplinarian Chinese parenting, may have been slightly ironic in tone, but it has described a crystal clear reality for a great many Hong Kong students. The uncomfortable truth is that this hard, aspirational parenting is a global phenomena by no means limited to the Chinese.

I enjoyed teaching – most of the time. Many students came into school with no preconceived ideas, others with such confirmed opinions that it was a real sweat to oil the hinges on the gates of their perception. It's not that they didn't care, it's just that for many philosophical and psychological ideas were just not important. It is easy to see how this situation has come about. I remember meeting one troubled parent who, on showing me the book we used in class, complained that there were no answers at the back, nothing to confirm that the reader was on the right path to academic success. I had to explain that this book was all about forming the right questions: as she walked away shaking her head I could almost hear her thoughts of incredulity. The right subjects to choose are Business Studies, Economics and Chinese (Maths, English and Science are mandatory), the wrong ones are Art, Drama, Music, History, Design & Technology, Physical Education, Philosophy & Religious Studies. When asked why, students repeat a parental mantra that the chosen subjects will undoubtedly help them get on in life. No amount of discussion about interests outside education, about golf handicaps or backhand strokes in tennis can shake this belief until mid-way through their studies, by which time it would be too late and they are committed: and every year it would be the same.

With such an unfortunate, blind focus on the means to wealth creation, it has seemed inevitable that many Hong Kongers appear to see no further than the basic accumulation of worldly goods, the tangible assets of work and industry, even if that means being surround by them in their living space, all stacked up to the ceiling in neat PriceRite plastic boxes. Shopping is, after all, Hong Kong's best-loved sport: whole families will go out to spend the day in gargantuan shopping malls such as Pacific Place or Festival Walk. Orderly snaking queues form down whole streets for discounts or the acquisition of free gifts. Although many are too proud to beg, pensioners will nevertheless fight each other for free rice from temples – even if their fruit money has increased! The most frequent time for banks to be robbed is in the weeks before Chinese New Year when those desperate for cash to pay for all the expenses in that season turn to even-more desperate measures. And I fear to even mention horse racing and the Jockey Club, the biggest game in town!

Throughout much of my teaching time the students' heroes were often the most financially successful, such as Bill Gates and Li Ka-shing. Wealth, even avarice, contentment through acquisition and one-upmanship is properly understood – they could almost be seen as sparkly aspects of the same golden virtue: wealth is good. Even Chinese New Year can be seen as legitimising and celebrating this in both real and symbolic forms; lai see packets full of money, the placement of decorative yuanbao gold ingots, the centrality of flower blossoms that symbolise prosperity. So if the most important yearly festival confirms these ideals, it is no wonder it has become a unquestioned tenet of life. This may be not, of course, be limited to Hong Kong society, but it certainly dominates the flavour of it.

In fairness, Chinese history has been nothing if not eventful. Natural and man-made disasters have swept countless millions away leaving those still alive to ponder the meaning of it all. Through the troubled lives of forbears who lived in interesting times a widely-held assumption has filtered down that the only one to look after number one is number one. That's not to say welfare associations have been unknown in Chinese history or that government agencies haven't done wonders over time, but pity belongs to the weak and unfortunate. A fall from financial grace brings social embarrassment – people stare.

So, to recount this fairly lengthy blog entry, Hong Kong is a politically stable and sometimes rich society with a populace that is generally left to do as it pleases – Ayn Rand would have been proud. Many people, however, have become severely stressed because culturally-inspired aspirations surrounding wealth can only be met through expensive  education and/or fortuitous connections, things beyond the means and social orbits of the vast majority of the population. Wealth, therefore, may only be realised in the next or future generations after much hardship, through a lucky break or by consenting families pulling together. The Hong Kong Chinese, however, have established what is perhaps their best weapon in dealing with life's vagueries – a fantastic sense of humour.

I love the city of Hong Kong, the people and the countryside in which we have been lucky enough to have lived. Unfortunately, in our years here things have got tighter in terms of wallets and wages, tolerance has become less of a freely-available commodity, the environment has quickly worsened and the lifestyles to which many Hong Kongers have become inexorably committed are unsustainable. These are the troublesome topics I will waffle upon in my next blog entry and where I propose a solution.

*Chippies – Chinese yuppies

An Epistle to Hong Kong – Chapter 1 'In the Beginning'

This is the first of three open epistles intended with the heart in mind. In these I make appeal to that which moves a person, the inner stirrings of awareness, conscience and pity. The intention is that my thoughts should strike a resonating chord and provoke discourse and action.

The subject is Hong Kong, our experience here, our expectations and departure. Having thought on these things for a time and, knowing my days in the city are numbered, I have decided to give them form and to cast them, for good or ill, into the electronic ether. It begins with our entry to this far-eastern metropolis.

Our lives in Hong Kong began by fluke. Just before Christmas 1996, on business I cannot recall, we visited the Royal Bank of Scotland in Sandbach, Cheshire. Waiting for the Memsahib, I completed a simple promotional flyer that required a few ticks and a sentence – the prize being £3000 of Thomas Cook Travel Vouchers. The Mem saw this as a waste of time: I shrugged. A few days into the New Year someone claiming to be with the RBS phoned and congratulated me on winning the first prize in the bank’s national competition. Assuming this to be an elaborate wind-up, I came close to slamming the phone down after a few choice words, but hesitated. Days later, smiling for the cameras, we received an enormous cheque and pondered what to do with all that cash.

We concluded we should go to a place we were unlikely to visit again in our lifetime, the place our dear friend Gethyn had recently emigrated and whose concluding words to us was to be sure to come and see him. Our vouchers became two Cathay flights to Hong Kong with cash to spend...

That Chinese New Year week of 1997 was an incredible novelty. Spectacularly flying in over the streets of Kowloon we arrived at the old Kai Tak airport and filled the week doing the touristy things that all wide-eyed visitors do, the Big Buddha on Lantau, the sweaty market in Stanley, the bouncy Star Ferry to Tsim Sha Tsui. Our gracious host took us to view the night city from Stubbs Road and to view a misty China from the Robin’s Nest helipad.  The first trip to be taken without our little girls, we enjoyed the differences of culture and the ease with which we could get around. It was all so very exciting – a noisy and bright world away from the silent and dark streets of Northwich.

We took time out to visit the special needs Jockey Club Sarah Roe School where the Mem’s ex-colleague and friend, the late Jenny Doke, had recently began working. Limbering out of the taxi I peered down the long drive next door to what clearly appeared to be a long-established educational institution, the King George V^th School, its grand Art Deco frontage with clock tower overseeing a green sports field. As a trainee teacher, I thought at the time, if I could teach anywhere then it would ideally be here.

The night of our departure we spent in a Mexican Restaurant in Times Square with a gaggle of English Schools Foundation teachers – a birthday party. With one eye on the clock, we drank salty margaritas and ate nothing but nachos all evening. The party continued and we politely made excuses for our 11 pm plane. No, don’t go! voices clamored. But we have our kids… we replied. Bring ‘em over – we’ll get you a job! This flippant remark was not without weight in the days leading up to the handover of 1997.

At 10:45, and with a “Fi-dee! Fi-dee!”, our host bundled us into the back of a red taxi. Sliding across the back seat, we sped at the highest of speeds through the Central Harbour Tunnel to Kai Tak to the awaiting return flight, but it was all too much and before immigration hot, orange, sticky nachoey sick splashed over my black jeans. Such was my state, the Mem threatened to fly without me if I was refused on board. I promise I'll never drink another!

Such a world had never existed for us: teachers with money, regularly polishing off bottles of wine in a school staffroom after work, regular international travel to hot, sunny destinations – it would surely remain a sparkly dream, a nice idea, but something we would forever want. Before the end of the year the Mem had applied for a post at the very same Sarah Roe School.

Deciding to move to Hong Kong was easy, although saying our goodbyes to friends and family was painful, but the opportunities that quickly arose in the Pearl of the Orient made our first few months a joyful adaptation. Our apartment began to look like an IKEA showroom and we watched DVDs during typhoon days. We began to go native – the English expat native – taking on a domestic helper and enjoying sausage, mash and a pint of Tetleys at the Railway Tavern in Tai Wai (in those days you could get gravy and mushy peas with your pie and chips). We loved giving Chinese New Year red lai see envelopes containing money to employees and children, but perhaps I over-reacted to the slang term for westerners, gwailo – was I really a foreign devil? On my way to work I could see down the entire length of the MTR train: I was the tallest soul anywhere without westerners, something that just ain’t so anymore.

Our landlady, undoubtedly mindful of her losses in the property price crash that accompanied the Asian financial crisis, tried to keep us happy in our 600 square feet Tai Wai apartment (including lift lobby). With her we experienced our first dim sum and hotpot, but the flat’s size and price was our rude awakening to what may be the most over-heated property market in the world. Hong Kong being such a perfectly placed travel hub, we took ourselves off for holidays in Thailand and Bali, but a few weekends in choky Chinese cities made us think twice about the mainland.

The many islands of the New Territories beckoned with gazetted beaches, clean sand, lifeguards, butterflies and cold beers in the cafés. It proved such a great attraction that we couldn’t help but call our poor friends Rachel and Bob to tell them how wonderful it all was. Unfortunately, they failed to share our enthusiasm on a dreary, dark British five o’clock in the bloody morning...

We frequently took to two or even three nights out each week, clubbing, barhopping and dancing our way through the crowds of Lan Kwai Fong. Competing bars would often give away drinks to attract punters. We even took up Salsa! Regularly quaffing champagne on Wednesday ladies’ nights at Carnegies in Wanchai often meant dancing on the bar until well into the wee small hours... only to get up and go to work at 6 the next day. But we thought nothing of it. We had the cash (and the energy), we lived a mere HK$100 taxi ride from Central and we loved it!

It became quickly obvious that Hong Kong was all about money. Any Hong Konger becomes conspicuous only by his or her spending. There’s little else this town takes seriously. Having disposable income can bring a level of transient happiness only dreamed of by the rest: the power to walk into a shop and buy anything – ANYTHING! (well, almost)

The vast majority of people are still relatively poor by comparison, particularly older people and women and trends indicate that the numbers of poor have increased. Only the very richest (and very poorest) have had their lot improved.

But as for us, we spent it all. There couldn't be a better place to live than Hong Kong. Outside work, our lives were almost entirely devoted to pleasures: electronic gadgetry, cinema, clothes, holidays, restaurants and nights out. We must have helped many-an entrepreneur on their way to their current fortunes, and lost ours in the process, but at the time we just didn't care.

And this is where I pause. The next epistle is concerned with day-to-day life in Hong Kong and of Hong Kong people in particular.

Typhoon Bopha Heads for Hong Kong

It's December and it's cold (for Hong Kong) – as low as 15° in the mornings! But whilst everyone in Hong Kong is dressed in hats, gloves, scarves, is going, "Brrrr!!!" and complaining like hell, there's another more sinister threat on the horizon: Typhoon Bopha.

This typhoon is unusual for many reasons. It's late in the season (they usually stop by end of September), it's southerly (the last one to cross Mindanao, Tropical Cyclone Washi on 15th December last year, caused similar devastation) and it's a biggy (already a typhoon and set to increase to a severe typhoon as it crosses the South China sea!

Late season typhoons arriving in Hong Kong are not completely unknown: everyone knows it is more likely for typhoons to occur between May to October. Since 1963, however, there have been a total of 29 December typhoons. In 1993 there were 3 alone! Neither in this year have we had a glut of typhoons – a measly 11 in our area (see above pic) compared with the 24 of 1961!

The devastation that occurred in the Philippines is not just a testament to the ferocity of winds of over 100 mph and the accompanying rains that cause mudslides and floods (more than 200 deaths have so far been recorded), but is also a testament to improvements in typhoon management in that part of the world. On a much more dramatic scale last year's Typhoon Washi caused death of 1,300.

Is it the result of global warming? Of course, but on its own is probably not a significant indicator of it –phew! All typhoons are the result of solar radiation that warms the lovely tropical seas and causes massive evaporation and air movement.

Those picture postcard tropical blue skies and warm sandy beaches are the engines of so much of the world's wind, rain and weather cells. We get enough rain and humidity dumped here in southern China because we are at the edge of one of those naughty wettish cells.

So will Typhoon Bopha hit Hong Kong? It's a bit of a lottery, of course. You either love 'em or hate 'em (depending upon whether you are a teacher or student or an normal person). As can be seen in the picture above, we have had quite a few direct hits over the years and one category 10 this year –Typhoon Vicente which I described earlier on. Pretty certain I'm not looking forward to any major weather disruptions in the next few days because the Mem and meself is flying off to colder European climes on Sunday –much colder, in fact, than it will ever get in Hong Kong: "Brrrrr!!! -Bloody weather!"

Pak Sha O

It may be that you've visited a beautiful place or two on your holidays. It may be that you've had to struggle a little to get there, by road or by foot. It may be that you've spent a little time wandering and wondering -who lived here, when was it built, what was life like for them back then? It may be that these questions remain and re-emerge when your photos of this beautiful place are seen again. If this is so, then you've experienced what can only be termed a romantic association with a place and, as with all romances, it's something about which you fondly care –even if you're no longer together.

Such is the case with the hidden village Pak Sha O (白沙澳). Peacefully nestled in the bountiful and verdant hills of the Sai Kung Country Park under the watchful gaze of Mount Hallowes (柦柴山), the sleepy village is hidden from most eyes. Many visitors to the park head on down for a mooch upon the soft sandy beaches of Hoi Ha (海下), grab a quick ice cream and whiz back to fishy fleshpots of Sai Kung without even knowing they have passed an architectural jewel modestly nestling within an exquisite natural setting. They will not have heard the cacophony of frogs and crickets in the marshy fields, nor seen the abundance of butterflies in the flower gardens, the old tiled roofs, the watchtower and the reinforced wooden-barred courtyard door –for keeping bandits and pirates at bay!

It's not that Pak Sha O is a grand palace of the last Emperors or a cascading monumental Machu-Picchu citadel – there isn't a convenient shop to buy "I ♥ PSO" t-shirts or cups of speciality tea and the nearest public toilet is half-a mile away from the village beside the Hoi Ha Road. Instead, this village is a small, vulnerable and fragile remnant of a past era of simple, somewhat-unassuming Hakka folk that literally forged their lives from the environment. Its unambitious beauty really does mean for some, 'once bitten, forever smitten'!

For centuries the villagers of Pak Sha O deftly farmed their rice from a myriad of tiny fields -some the size of a large room- and ensured that their stream water irrigation was in good working order from year to year. They fished where they could and at low tide would gather at the rocky bays of the peninsula to collect shellfish and the fruits of the sea, returning to the village to feast on their catches.

Each festival was properly celebrated and civic duties undertaken with propriety, if not pride. Certainly the rich decorative motifs that adorn the buildings are symptomatic of residents that held themselves in check by form and convention. They were good Hakka people.

Round about them the rest of the world moved on so that by the latter quarter of the 20th century the tensions brought about by the conflicting aspirations and opportunities for many Hong Kong villagers were simply too much for their communities. The beginning of Timothy Mo's 1982 novel, Sour Sweet, encapsulates the dilemma of those times: the happy rural village life had become unsustainable and most of the younger people simply had to move away either elsewhere in Hong Kong or to cities in Europe and North America. Year-by-year, the older people also moved out to inhabit urban rest homes or died in-situ to be ceremonially buried up in the hills, sometimes in magnificent horseshoe-shaped graves. Those empty properties that they looked down upon eventually fell apart, collapsed and were buried under the ever-encroaching forest: lifeless and rotting midden mounds are all too often the sum total of the work of generations.

Some villages, however, have had a new life breathed into them by quite a different set heading in the opposite direction, purposefully removing themselves from the stress of the city to live a quieter life closer to nature. These settlers are predominantly westerners who have sought, along with creature comforts and air-conditioning, to incorporate their values into their revitalized abodes. For them the old has an intrinsic beauty, its value matched with age. For them simplicity has clarity and unecessary re-development remains unwelcome: what has simply been left by others is the first and best reason to live 'miles from anywhere' and has stirred in them a need for sympathetic (read expensive) maintenance and preservation of those unique remnants of the past.

It would be naive to suggest that the new tenants' motives are entirely selfless, but they would be in keeping with similar such projects undertaken in remote French or Italian villages -it's just what some westerners do! The fate, however, of other vulnerable and beautiful old Hong Kong buildings springs to mind, such a the King Yin Lei building on Stubbs Road (above) where demolition was reprieved in the nick of time by government intervention only after the press expressed outrage.

 
Pak Sha O today is under immanent threat – the village is set to be purchased piece-meal, evacuated, razed to the ground so that in its place will be new luxury developments. This overall aim, of course, has not been explicitly admitted by the purchaser, Lau Ming-shum of Xinhua Bookstore Xiang Jian Group, the company that has been buying up these recently un-zoned plots. It has put in an application to build two new houses in the village. If they get final approval it means the future of this astonishing village as it stands is uncertain.

The local and international press have investigated further (we attended the recent press briefing by Friends of Sai Kung that explained the plight of village and its environment), but so far the Hong Kong government remains unmoved or unable to move –the village enclave is technically not part of the Sai Kung Country Park and the new landowner is within his rights to do whatever he likes to his land, even if that means irrevocably destroying it! It therefore seems likely more damage will probably be done and bewailed before the security of the village, the residents and the surrounding wildlife can be guaranteed through government action.

To emphasize what has already been reported above, a third of all Hong Kong species are found in the valley; "75 species of butterflies, 11 types of freshwater fish, 38 types of birds, eight species of amphibians and 23 types of insects". One can imagine the devastating impact if the woodland was 'improved' into terraces of tarmac car spaces and concrete box dwellings. It's a story familiar to many in Hong Kong's environmentally-empoverished New Territories villages.

So, what's to do? Plenty – please feel free to share comments on this blog or copy this blog's link or links within. Drop a quick email to the reporters (through the highlighted links above) and let them know you read their stories. Better still, write to the Town Planning Board to remind them of their responsibilities to preserve one of Hong Kong's best-kept Hakka villages. Write an email to the Hong Kong Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department's Sai Kung Country Park office to inform them of your interest in this matter. Ask the Antiquities and Monuments Office Heritage Conservation office what they are going to do about Pak Sha O.

Please don't let this beautiful and remote village disappear because it's too much bother to defend. It could be your next romantic association!

Hong Kong Ferry Disaster is Nothing New

The collision and sinking of the Lamma IV in Hong Kong's harbour is tragic, if that is the right word, because many of the people killed must have assumed they were safe and that this journey, like thousands of others taken daily, would be a fun, event-free way to see the fireworks on National Day. It seems Hong Kong can only make news if there's death, mayhem, disease, corruption, protest, scandals and dirty political intrigue.

If you know anything about Hong Kong, you at least know it is an island. The Kowloon peninsula and the New Territories add the majority of the landmass. The total territory of 1,100 square kilometers has 200 hundred islands, some very large like Lantau and some mere rocks above the water line. With all that territory surrounded by water it is no wonder that people who want to get about use, indeed have to use, ferries and water taxis.

The ferries in Hong Kong are a great way to get about. The most obvious is the Star Ferry, the historical land-/watermark of Victoria Harbour. Since the 1870s ordinary folks have crossed the narrow stretch of water in order to get to work or homes. Until 1972 it was the only means of getting across. Its importance could not be understated -when in 1966 the Star Ferry chose to increase their charges by 50-100%  the infamous Star Ferry riots erupted causing one death injury and and thousands of arrests.

Other ferries from Central regularly connect islands and promontories. At present there are at least four major operators of passenger ferries in Hong Kong waters. Around the Pearl River others operate the lucrative Hong Kong-to-Macau or Hong Kong-to-China routes. Speedboats, many of them licensed, can be privately chartered to get you from point a to point b. Sadly silent, masted and batten-sailed junks in the harbour are no more, the one exception being a floating bar owned by the restaurant chain, Aqua. For most here, the word "junk" means motorised launches that act as glorified luxury cruisers when you want your party to have a constantly changing view or visit a bay for a swim). But along with hundreds of yachts and private launches, there are also thousands of little sampans or kaidos – tiny vessels privately operated by the Mrs Wongs and Mrs Chans who live and work close to the water or even on-board. Previously used for in-shore fishing, these keel-less boats can be found almost anywhere where land meets sea and, depending on your bartering skills and/or mastery of Cantonese numbers and times, can be incredibly cheap to hire.

Although there's many a scary taxi or minibus ride to be had in HK, the most interesting journeys happen when boating. Being a little slower than land transport, it's possible to see more of the world at a relaxed pace. There's also something to be said for being rocked by the motion of the waves. I've never suffered from motion sickness, even in the roughest swells, and so I welcome the rough and the smooth that put fun into nautical journeys.

Everyone must have their own scare stories with regards traveling at sea. I have two to hand:

The first involves the chartering of a junk for the Hong Kong Welsh Male Voice Choir end of season party. Leaving Victoria Harbour and setting out towards Sai Kung, the junk sailed into a bank a fog –an unusual occurence in these waters. This coincided with the tricky bit of navigation in Joss House Bay between the rocky island of Tung Lung Chau and the equally rocky end of the Clearwater Bay peninsula. When the captain was asked about his radar, his charts, his forward lights, he admitted he had none. The best he could do was pull out an A5-sized tourist map of Hong Kong. Shaking his head, Vince, our ex-marine policeman, stood at the front directing the ferry captain's course and speed. Most folks would probably have insisted we turn around, but such is the indomitable spirit of free Hong Kongers (read stupidity) that we'd had sufficient alcohol to feel inured to the danger of crag and wave and insisted we go on –into the dark, foggy night past the jagged, pitiless rocks to continue eating and drinking and partying. With the image of Géricault's Raft of the Medusa in mind, the Memsahib and Meself did not make the return journey and got off at Sai Kung.

The other spectacular journey involved getting to a party on Lamma Island. Arriving at Queens Pier, we found we had missed the boat! We quickly taxied to Aberdeen, the famous southern Hong Kong harbour where the floating Jumbo Restaurant is situated, and commissioned a tiny, wooden kaido, complete with pipe-smoking, coolie-hatted little old lady, to take us across the Lamma Channel to the restaurant where all our friends were now seated and on their second beers. Setting out into one of the busiest shipping channels in the world during the day is interesting enough, but at dusk it is terrifying! The biggest supercargo container ships constantly steam up and down this stretch of coastal water to drop off points near the port: they don't even see a vessel as small as ours. The fearless lady piloted the boat through their courses, bobbing like a cork over the massive washes caused by these intercontinental monsters, zipping here, stopping there, the massive bulk of these dark ships hulls towering above us like insensitive giants. I thought we'd all die. The wrinkled, sea-harden lady captain nonchalantly puffed away...

So, although I'm terribly saddened, I'm not surprised to hear that a Lamma ferry collided with a chartered boat approaching the harbour. Such accidents are narrowly avoided on a regular basis. Each year people die using ferries and boats in Hong Kong, either through accident or negligence (see Youtube clip of Star Ferry vs cruise ship near-thing). Feng Shui enthusiasts may point to another example of poor leadership at the top affecting the forces that govern the lives of ordinary mortals, others may question the professionalism of those that make their living ferrying people or piloting tugs. For the relatives of the 38 people killed and the other passengers that narrowly escaped this event will pose painful questions – I would imagine that over the coming weeks and months many of the answers will not satisfy their anger and sorrow. But until the harbour is totally reclaimed and is over 100 stories high, such events will, sadly, always occur.

(Nearly-) Silent Gloating

It's a beautiful morning.

So it's the right time for a walk.

It's good to be alive. It's good to be free.

The air is clear and there's no-one about.

Listening to podcasts on Freedom and the Romantic Movement. Staring at the view of Long Harbour...

...and being able take time to be with the locals.

Gloating was never so wholesome or more pleasurable.

Vegetable Rights and Peace!

There aren't many days I am genuinely inspired to visit a restaurant. Let's face it, we all want to be wowed by plates of the finest fayre, exotic combinations, dazzling culinary creations that prove the worth of the visionary creator, but the compelling feeling to get up and go to visit a restaurant is usually not one of inspiration. It is usually one of mere need for satiety, both of the stomach and posing variety, or of inquisitiveness –testing out the water, assessing for future visits, bragging rights, etc. But although I was inspired for different reasons to have dinner up the Eiffel Tower,  I was inspired by wholesome and healthy vegetarian zeal to visit the Grassroots Pantry. I was not disappointed.

The Grassroots Pantry is tucked away in Sai Ying Pun -the old residential part of western Hong Kong that used to be called Victoria. It has a history going back to the original 1840s British settlement of the territory although nothing from that era remains apart from the street names. Located at the end of the teensy-tiny Fuk Sau Lane, blink and you'd miss it: remember it's on the corner of Third Street and the winding Pok Fu Lam Road and you'll be all right.

Until recently I didn't get into much of a quiver about a load of old vegetables on a plate, however it would be delivered, but over the past few months the Memsahib and meself have become a tad more vetable-ish. That's not to say that meat hath not crossed our lips, but to use an iTunes analogy, instead of it being in the Most Favoured Playlist, it's now relegated to the Country Music section -rarely if at all visited and more often than not deleted. Actually, just as a warblin' suth'n blue grass tune may appeal most when accompanied by copious amounts of Suth'n Comfort, so also does the cooked flesh of dead animals. This, of course, may also occur at the time of the day when one's culinary judgement may not necessarily be at its best and probably accounts for the prevelance of devilish, late-night, aromatic Kebabery throughout the city centres of the world.

Hence, we have taken a little more consideration regarding our food. To be precise, we have taken a little more consideration with regard to where our food has come from. As a teacher, I thought it my duty to encourage children to make informed decisions about the food they eat, particularly the meat many claimed not to able to live without -perhaps the most obvious philosophical decision they will make on a daily basis –thrice-daily, even. So I would start with the housing and slaughtering of chickens and ducks and the treatment of sows and their unfortunate 'suckling' piglets. Those being the most commonly eaten meats of the general Chinese population here, there was not time to mention lambs and cows, although a short description of the contents of most of the sausages they regularly consume was usually enough to end on a high (or low) point of popular revulsion. Chicken Nuggets? In most cases they simply had not given it any thought. They had almost no idea how the animals were raised, transported or slaughtered and knew even less about how their meat was processed. Check it out here.

In fairness, the Chinese have until recently had a pretty good idea about fresh ingredients, particularly meat. Resembling medieval faires, 'wet markets' display their wares for all to see, animal and vegetable, and it quickly becomes obvious what is safe and what is to be avoided. The first exposure to live chickens and squiggly fishies ready to be dispatched may arrest the casual camera-wielding observer, but in a city of high heat and humidity freshness and food safety has always been ensured. Well, nearly always. Unfortunately, the plague of Bird Flu put a stop to the Mrs Wongs of this fair city blowing on chicken's bums to gauge the health of the bird from the... response, and the plague of Swine Flu threatened to put an end to pork and humankind altogether! Not many now shop exclusively in wet markets: as enjoyable as it is, most people simply haven't got the time.

So, with inspirational, high-minded quasi-Buddhisty thoughts of animal welfare, we visited the lovely Grassroots Pantry for our daughter's birthday lunch. It is exactly how a restaurant of this kind should be with the focus on good food and on about as much of a bohemian experience of thoughtful veggy life money can buy. And I must say, it ain't that bad. In fact, I'd go so far as to say it was one of the best vegetabalist lunches I've had. It even smelt right!

Vegetarian food is often of a folksy, home-made quality, where the chef has obviously undertaken a course in macrobiotics and left the paying customer with chunky soups, unadventurous salads and not much more. Unfortunately, it sometimes looks like a pile of vegetably vomit. At the very least, the chefs at Grassroots Pantry have thought not only about the ethics of eating, but also of the taste, texture and even the presentation of their dishes. It's not cheap, but neither should it be.

The hand-made menu is hand-written with cute hand-drawn illustrations of each hand-made dish. The starters were tasty, if a little small, and the mains were rich, if similarly portioned. The smoothies were delicious and filling and the deserts a little heavy and in need of the excellent Ethiopian coffee to make its way stomach-side. I had good reports from Alys and Victor of the Blueberry Cheesecake.

Utilizing their philosophy of local, sustainable and mostly organic foodstuffs, they aim to serve 'nutritious, homemade, plant-based world dishes'. And Peggy Chan (far right in photo), their chief chef, clearly knows her stuff having served in many excellent locations in Canada, Switzerland, Tokyo and Hong Kong. Her love of vegetarian food and of how good it can be is evident in each dish. They also host culinary schools of various hues –I might just take advantage of their next wine dinner. As well as a lovely shop-front patio area, they also have a larger room for hosting parties around a long table upstairs.

I knew it would be an excellent restaurant lunch –even without any sort of alcoholic nuances. We left full but not bloated, thoroughly sated but not soporific. If this is healthy eating, then I'll be coming back for more. And it's not only me that's inspired -check out this lovely girly review. Inspirational!

The Insect Clause (Bugs and Biophobes)

I met a charming lady at a party the other day: we talked about where we lived. She extolled the virtues of living close to the city with access to amenites and services. I extolled the virtues of the life to be had out in the sticks with all the flowers and trees and that... Her face changed and she exclaimed how living in the Sai Kung Country Park would be intolerable. To justify her perspective she invoked the 'Insect Clause'.

I've come across the Insect Clause many times. It is a statement stoked with fear and usually accompanied by misunderstanding and goes along the lines of, 'Oh there are simply too many bugs and other things that bite: life would be intolerable!' But this ain't necessarily so. Allow me to explain.

In both the tropics (Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Southern India, Northern Australia, Thailand and Singapore) and sub-tropics (Northern India, Southern United States, Hong Kong and southern China) the lushious greenery, at least for part of the year, is due to something called rain –in fact, round some parts 'rain' may even constitute a season. This wonderful and varied plant growth then becomes the feed-stuff of all creatures great (cows, monkeys and wild boar) and small (the birds and bugs). Some of these smaller organisms are obviously beautiful –humming birds, for example, feed off flower nectar, as do butterflies who also go for fruit, dung and mud!

Other herbivorous insects, such as cicadas with their massive buggy eyes, may not be everyone's cup of tea, but I love them. Living for years undergound sucking on root sap, they only emerge, make lots of very loud cicadery noises and then mate –once! There are about 2500 species of cicada alone, so they must be quite successful in this... behaviour.

Insects have been around on the planet for quite a long time and have notched up a few able predators. These adept specialists have generally been able to keep the numbers of the more annoying insects down. Geckos should be welcomed as they race about the ceilings taking errant mosquitoes. Amongst the most common of the insectivorous birds here are the lovely Red-whiskered Bulbuls. There are so many of these pretty birds around, they clear up pretty much any insect that comes their way. (They themselves are also a handy lunch for many of the larger predators.)

Other more obvious insectivores are the arachnids –the spiders! Whilst there are plenty of them in the trees, their scary presence belies their role as the good guys. I'm sure that if you have lived in these parts, either in the city or countryside, you have at one time been caught under prepared to meet the huntsman spider: but if it's in your house then it's hunting only one thing –cockroaches!  The large yellowy-spotted Woodland Spider that builds spectacular large orb webs, hence their more common name of the Golden Orb-web Spider (Nephila Pilipes, to be precise). They're clearly successful insectivores round these parts and grow into truly large, beautiful creatures but they also tire easily, so if they are in your path, please don't knock them about too much.

Insects themselves are great predators. One only has to think of a praying matis, or a dragonfly to get the picture. In fact, many dragonflies like the slighty fuzzy Russet Percher below) are adept at catching the much-hated mosquitoes on the wing –they are, in fact, at their most active during high humidity which is when their prey also choose to emerge.

The best insect insectivores are, however, wasps and hornets. These are the only things I am wary of, having come a cropper from an encounter with Yellow Paper Wasps building a nest on our rooftop. They put any European wasp in the shade: the venom felt like I had been stabbed with a red hot stiletto blade! Someone obviously loves them, however, as I recently came across a wonderful Youtube channel of a local chap who has bothered to take the time to get to know these amazing insects and their cousins the hornets. I'm usually far too scared to approach these stripey devils because, as my daughter painfully found out on a walk last summer, the only time it is clear whether these animals are on the hunt, have found prey or are defending a food supply is when they've attacked you! And that really hurts. So, I suppose there is a case for invoking the Insect Clause on this occasion, but one seldom meets these hunters because they spend most of their time clearing out bees nests. And they were so successful last year, there are no bees to be found in the park at all this summer.

One cannot not forget the larger predators; boar, civet cats, shrews and monkeys –especially during termite swarming season. Most bats specialise in catching and eating insects and have even modified their noses to echo-locate whilst on the wing. One of the most pleasant early evening spectacles to be witnessed from our balconies here in the park, glass of wine in had, of course, are our lovely bats emerging from their roosts under our roof tiles in order to go a-hunting. Go get 'em, chaps!

Do we get bitten by mosquitoes out here? Sometimes. Are we bothered by other things like wasps? No, not really, but we are aware of them from time-to-time. If anything, barring the night-time scuttling of the cockroach across the kitchen floor, our interaction with insects is generally pleasant, if not delightful. I really don't know which of these wonderful creatures we will meet on my journeys in the park. Actually, the Insect Clause is probably one of the main reasons we live out here in the sticks with all the flowers and trees and that…

Typhoons and Rain Storms

I know, it's topical because for those of you in Asia's World City, it's belting it down out there right now.The wind is knocking the trees about as if it bore a grudge. God knows how the wildlife fares, but there's nothing like a good old typhoon to remind you who's in control!

Having said that, I recall blustery days like this in the UK, damage notwithstanding. When we first moved to Hong Kong I couldn't see what all the fuss was about. A bit of wind and people were running for cover. But then I put my hands on the window of the 16th floor apartment we lived in at the time -it was bowing under the pressure. Suddenly, all those warnings about taping up windows and staying away from the glass became a reality. Stories about air-conditioning units being sucked out of their niches and of yachts being dumped up the Nathan Road were no longer the exaggerated myth of dinner conversation. Staring out of the window it was possible to see branches, rubbish and debris racing about in the mad air currents. Staying in became a necessity.

In the past typhoons have been positively deadly. In the 1870s a typhoon killed more than 2000 people in the territory. Much later in 1937 the Great Hong Kong Typhoon killed 11,000. Wind speeds for that particular beauty topped 150 mph! The innocuous-sounding Typhoon Wanda in 1962 dumped 10 inches of rainfall during a tidal surge of 5 metres. You can only imagine what damage that would do to the mostly wooden shacks on the coastline.

'Typhoon Days' are a wonderful thing for the chattering classes. Like everything in Hong Kong, typhoons are regulated (according to windspeed), so a Typhoon 8 signal generally means a day off work. It meant for us that we could indulge in a late get-up, some cake making and bloating out in front of the TV. The next day involved picking our way through the wreckage on the way to work -such fun!

Rain Storms have, for me, been a little more alarming. I think it's fair to say I've never seen so much of the wet stuff as here in the Far East. The heavens doth open and pour out such quantities of water it is difficult to conceive how it got up there in the first place.

What is also apparent is the enormous damage this gentle rain can do: whole hillsides washed away, mudslides dumped onto roads and suffocating the occupants of ground floor apartments. There are even 3 categories of rainstorm -Amber, Red and Black. Having driven in the latter, it is not something to be recommended. In fact, it's one of those occasions where fear engages the automatic propensity for uncontrollable profanity!

During rainstorms and typhoons most restaurants pack up for the night, but many bars stay open. After all, it's not like there's a problem competing for business with those all too desperate for a lil' drinky. Some alcoholics go out especially to 'take in' the typhoon atmosphere in Lan Kwai Fong and Wanchai: that's a disaster visiting a calamity!

 

So as Typhoon Vicente dumps all the water it has sucked up out of the South China Sea onto our roof, we settle down to a wet and blowy evening: turn on the TV and pass round the cake, please!

Hot in the city? Time to sleep!

It's that time of year again –when the body instincitively searches for the cool and the shade.

Here in sunny old Hong Kong, the temperature rarely tops 36° C/96° F –the high humidity rapidly creates thunderstorms and the rain drains the heat from the air. Nevertheless, there are patches of the city, the concrete canyons and street-level sun-traps, that fair cook any poor soul trapped within. In this regard Hong Kong is no different to Bangkok, Manila, Ho Chi Minh and a whole host of other conurbations. Combined with the air-con exhaust blown from passing traffic, there appears to be no limit to the maximum temperature in these heat wells.

There are, of course, oases of cool, if not downright cold places to be found. Hong Kong Cinemas are positively arctic and a sweater should always be brought – one time I even wrapped meself up in newspaper to stop the poor teeth & knackers a-knockin'!

Shoppers in the region are well-aware of these magnificent palaces of pleasure and domains of the dollar and it may be the most likely reason why shopping is Hong Kong's most popular waking past-time.

The heat may, of course, also account for its overall most popular past-time, that of sleeping. If you wish to understand this ever-pervasive inactivity, it is owed partly to the time of day many Hong Kongers are chiefly active and also owed partly to the crowded home life of many Hong Kongers. Commentators have long-argued that late-night eating/mahjong activities are the main reasons the morning buses and MTR trains are full of sleeping souls. Coupled with the cramped conditions of shared apartments whereby sleeping is sometimes a shared experience, and you've got conditions where many choose to kip less at home and make it up elsewhere –on the way to work, lunchtimes under the newspaper, in just about any convenient location.

One enterprising entrepreneur has even seen the profitability of this necessary niche at Shanghai airport by making a sleeping box for flyers to have a kip in between check-in and their flight.

It is no accident that there are no seats at bus stops and train stations and few in parks and public spaces. There's even a loverly little book on the subject that may contain enough photographic evidence to convince you.

But it could also be the case that Hong Kong's effective smothering in heat between July-September means that those without the chance to cool off may naturally experience soporific inclinations. It feels bloody hot and it's best not to go out with your head uncovered, so why not stay in and take advantage of the shady protection.

Well, that's my explanation, being a northern-european whose instinctual inclinations are to 'get on with it' during daylight hours. And that, perhaps, is my problem in all this unending heat: after all, 'when in Rome', and all that...

Celeste-Fashion for normal women UK size 12-20

If life has taught me anything over the years, it is that I should have more than one string to my bow – that is, I should have more than one way to make a living. Teachers have regular incomes that, on the whole, do not vary week-in, week-out. This is a blessing when accounting for outgoings that require regular fixed payments like mortgages, but naturally acts as a disincentive to working extra-hours in the way that 'overtime' or bonus pay might support.

Many teachers seek ways to supplement their income. Some even seek to leave their jobs and start again doing something else. Their financially-focused drinking partners may typically brag about fat bonuses, but for teachers these 6-figure sums remain the elusive fairytale fantasy of the education-free netherworld.

Some of my ex-colleagues from King George Vth school dug their tunnels out of the classroom through interesting means made possible by the very exciting possibilities available in a city at the mouth of the Pearl River. Mike Jackman and the late Peter Hindes took to Midas in order to design and make t-shirts for the local market. Angus Hardern set up Angus International and took to supplying silk by the mile for wedding banquets. The most recent of these top quality ideas has been Celeste Fashion set up by my colleague Jane Angwin.

Like many women in Hong Kong, Jane was not happy with what's in the shops (or perhaps more precisely, with what's not in the shops). Catering for the larger sizes has always been a task too difficult for most high street retailers. The Memsahib remembers being in one shop and not being able to find anything that would fit – she was told to her face by the assistant, "No elephant size!"

With culturally-established stereotypes fimly fixed in the fashion industry from drawing board to outlet, larger-size women have been on a hiding to nothing if they wanted to go shopping in Hong Kong. Jane therefore decided to start from the ground-up, to learn dressmaking skills at night school, to see what worked and what didn't. Then she thought about meeting that need by selling what she knew people would want to wear. And instead of constantly braving the condescending negativity of stick insect adolescent shop assistants, she thought about setting it up on-line to offer clothes direct by mail-order: one-stop on-line shopping where a few simple clicks would enable pain-free purchasing.

And so today Celeste Fashion's wharehouse showroom opened its doors for the first time. Hong Kong fashion for normal women UK size 12-20 is now available through the website. At first sight the collection instantly strikes as a seemless range of ideas utilizing fabrics from all over the world, including some striking Korean prints. What is detected on closer inspection is the quality of manufacturing. The commonest heard complaint of poor quality certainly does not factor with these clothes: each garment is beautifully produced, largley under the auspices of their colleague Joseph Wong. Jane is also selling an exciting selection of jewellery from Indonesia.

So, now Jane really does not have all her eggs in one basket. Her young team of distributors and marketeers, including her daughter Helena (who with her husband Joe has her own business, Hell Models & Champion Entertainment) are set to establish their presence here during Hong Kong Fashion Week where they have a stall. Their next target is the Chinese mainland where it is estimated there are more plus-sized women than there are people in the ole US of A! Because of the prejudice and ineptness of the usual providers of women's clothes, it appears theirs is the Kingdom.

So bon chance, mon bon ami, and if you need someone to help the catwalk girls change in the dressing room, you've got my number...

Things I've seen...

I thought I'd show some of the wonderful things of the park. So, without too much preamble, here are a few of the recent additions within the Sai Kung Country Park that astonish me. At the risk of over-egging the park pudding, I can honestly say that each day I see something new and on each occasion I am filled with a sense of genuine wonder. They're nearly all (sometimes shakily) taken with my iPhone 4.

Red leaves and snail-marks

A great big Mormon Caterpillar trying to hide his snakey head outside out house

Cape Jasmine growing by the stream

Amanita Muscaria boldly standing in the leaf litter

The beautiful Mountain Tallow about to flower

An amazing lost caterpillar rescued from the road to Wong Shek

The fluffy fireworks that are Scolopia flowers

Another rescued beetle -lovely, mustardy-yellow little chap

The massive flowers of the riverside Hainan Galangal

Taiwan Acacia grows everywhere round these here parts

Leaf-nosed Bats resting up in an abandoned house at To Kwa Peng

Flowering Sumac (is a-comin' in?)

Curl Grub beetle larva -quite a few of these this time of year

Cheeky little red fungus popping up beside the paths

It's the time for the first wave of Spotted Black Cicadas

You don't have to look far to find the ubiquitous Camellia

Little Red Bug

Squirty Sea Sponge

Tree fungus

Burnt Tibetans and Wizards

 

The 40th Hong Kong Arts Festival is, as many such festivals must be, a many-headed beast. Some of the greatest current superstar performers in music, such as Nigel Kennedy and Karita Mattila, suddenly appear on a stage before you, do their bit, bow a lot and then bugger off to their snug hotel rooms in order to be up and ready to catch the next-day’s flight to another gig in Shanghai, Seattle or Sydney. Some wonderful surprises have popped up, such as the renaissanced renaissance L’Arpeggiata (previously mentioned) and the Malian performers Tinariwen (who the Memsahib saw and very much enjoyed whilst I was away in Bangkok with an august body of singing gentlemen). And then there’s all the ballet, theatre, quartets, soloists, opera, Chinese opera and choralyness... phew!

 

Anyway, enough preamble. Last night’s concert dubiously entitled The Piano Wizard Hamelin was itself a chimerical beast. What I had assumed to be a piano concert was instead made up of piano concerto, piano solo and orchestra all on its own. [Incidentally, I’m not sure the epithet ‘wizard’ is entirely accurate in that a wizard is a conjurer of primal forces not of his own (e.g. of nature), whereas the 51-year old French Canadian Marc-André Hamelin appears to be quite the product of his own hard work –whether through concerts, recordings or compositions.]

Whoever produced this one (which may not have been part of the actual Arts Fest) had as many hats on, but I was somewhat befuddled by the staging arrangements:

• Fully blacked-tailed massed ranks of the Hong Kong Phil Orchestra, under mystical wavy direction of Shao-Chia Lü, plays Ravel’s La Valse (reasonably well, if a little reserved –see this YouTube of Bernstein getting carried away)
• Warm applause
• Stage hands emerge to move about the 1st violin stations and wheel in grand piano
• Warm applause as Hamelin sits down to play with the Phil the uninspiring César Franck Symphonic Variations –see this YouTube of said work performed in China
• Warm applause (my Mum's favourite composer, but I nearly fell asleep)
• Hamelin exits and audience, shruggingly supposing it’s the end of the 1st half, exit to nonchalantly mingle holding weak G&Ts and potter about the impersonal, vacuous and intolerably boring atrium at the Cultural Centre (who did commission that awful, massive scupture in the atrium?)
• Orwellian ‘bing-bong’ sounds to command audience to return to the auditorium
• Warm applause
• Hamelin re-enters through orchestra to play Richard Strauss’ amazing Burleske, full of invigorating and playful orchestral and piano constructions –wow! One of the best things I’ve hear in this venue by the HK Phil, nobly and masterfully accompanied by Hamelin and worth the entrance fee alone. Someone pay their timpanist James Bonos a few more dollars or leave him an open tab at the bar –each stroke and note of this difficult piece brilliantly performed! Here's more YouTube to give you some idea
• Very warm applause
• Hamelin re-enters and announces that his encore is a short prelude by Leonid Sabaneyev which he completes with effortless finesse. Here's YouTube of Hamelin's performance (with notation)
• Warm applause as Hamelin finally bows and exits (presumably back to foyer bar to finish)
• Stage hands re-emerge to shuffle the piano about, add celeste and re-arrange the strings for the grand finale…
• Shao-Chia Lü conducts the HK Phil through Lutosławski’s astonishing Concerto for Orchestra. Just the best and grandest thing they’ve ever performed –ever! (crossed-fingers, quibbs, no come-back) 5 -yes, that's 5 percussionists, 2 harpists, at least three rows of double basses... Here's a nice YouTube example of the spooky 3rd movement.
• Four curtain calls –except there’s no curtain
• Exit audience, some, it must be said, a bit sharpish –if not rudely so!

 

Could someone please help make sense of all that movement? Don’t get me wrong, this was an excellent concert, but, surely, Hamelin could have made better use of the 1st half by necking a few pints in the foyer and then rolling onto the stage for the 2nd –after all, the biggest superstars always appear last on the bill.

Could someone also explain why so many fidgety little children were in the concert hall? What on earth they made of it all, I'm not sure. Perhaps they were the fruit of the HK Philharmonic's mighty loins come to see whether they really do play in an orchestra? Or maybe it was too-good a discount for kindergarten and primary school parents to ignore? Or maybe the HK public thought the word wizard in the title meant that through a puff of smoke a man in a funny long black robe and a sorting hat would materialise and make a succession of furry creatures disappear whilst hammering out Yankee Doodle Dandy?

We arrived in good time before the concert and decided to wander tourist-like around the ole Star Ferry environs. Ee, by-‘eck! The eternal view; ships in the harbour silently slipping past the backdrop of the eternal day that is neon Hong Kong Island, hundreds of visitors taking thousands of photos –it is the Hong Kong experience, the joyful memories that confirm happiness and fulfilment for millions.

Set back from the harbour frontage, however, was a candlelit vigil for Tibet in remembrance of 53 years of resistance to totalitarianism. A quiet, moving and quite sobering collection of images of people that have immolated themselves to protest the Han occupation of Tibetan lands, it served to show me that young Hong Kong people are not all self-serving rich kids intent on stocking up on quick-return shares or buying their next polished growling Mercedes. That a small bunch of well-meaning people should consider the fate of 26 Tibetan martyrs is testament to the growing conscience in Asia’s World City. Perhaps chanting Buddhist prayers and scripture may seem a futile, even insignificant gesture to you, but it carries a fearless idea –that some here believe that other people matter and are willing to be counted doing so.

Indeed, as if to unwittingly prove the point, plainly visible on the fringes of this small event were plain-clothed security, three from People's Republic of China and on the other side one from the Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong (the bored Chinese were clearly not that bothered by the whole thing and were more keen on having a quick ciggy, the lone HK operative just looked a little confused and angry, probably because of them!). Presumably, no-one from the Tibetan Autonomous Region was able to be present.

Viva Tibet! Viva Hong Kong! Viva live music!

Lovely Camellias, Lovely Tea

 

If you go down to the woods today you're sure of bumping into some camellia sinensis. This is the famous ancient chinese tea bush from which all kinds of lovely chinesey tea is made. There are, of course, a myriad of naturally-occuring camellias in Hong Kong and we even have our very own purply-flowered hongkongensis varietal, but I've yet to spot it here.

I suppose I ought now to blog on about tea and all its marvellous benefits, the growing and oxidation and extraction procedures that enable an unpromising 'erb to discolour perfectly good hot water with the addition of copious bitteryness, but I'll spare you. That is, after all, why Wikipedia is so popular, but you don't need all that: just get walking -it's out there in thum thar hills.

The best tea ever to pass my lips was Sri Lankan. It was more than 10 years ago and I can't remember the name of the plantation, but the tasting occurred using freshly fermented black tea, pure mountain water and no milk -absolute stunning bliss! It needed nowt else (sugar/lemon/milk) and I swore that if I could have that every day I'd need little else in life. Well, It was a nice thought...

Hong Kong has its fair share of tea vendors. If you're passing through, then pop in to one of these venerable institutions for a quick cuppa, but don't expect anything more than a mere sip of the stuff.

If you like your tea strong -and I mean STRONG- then you need to visit your local dai pai dong (that's a local café to you, 'squire) and ask for Hong Kong-style milk tea: it'll cement a few millimetres of plaquey stain onto your teeth enamel and you'll be awake for days (it will also take that long to get the evaporated milky flavour out of your mouth).

The Hong Kong Tea Museum (Museum of Tea Ware) is actually more interesting than it sounds. Those stuck for a half-hour or so or who cannot bear being inside Pacific Place a moment longer may pop up the escalators into Hong Kong park where the delicate late regency Flagstaff House awaits.

Tea used to be grown all over Hong Kong and abandoned tea terraces can be found on some of the higher mountainsides. It is, apparently, still grown on Lantau Island. Just down the road from the Big Buddha is a little shack called the Tea Garden Restaurant where it is served to those wot know. Strange things happen when you drink the brew, as this YouTube link demonstrates, but if you like it enough you may then pick up a packet of the local variety and then rub the strangest tea urn in the world.

All this talk of tea has made me need a cuppa.

Blog of Blogs

I think it’s about time I did the meta-thing: a blog entry to discuss my blog. I know this might seem a little… introspective, but keeping a blog, albeit irregularly, is somewhat fascinating. Perhaps I ought to blog about this blog entry too: Oh, conundrums and mysteries and wheels within wheels!

To be more precise, I want to write about the route by which fresh eyes rest upon the site and the sometimes circuitous route by which this blog page is opened by the curious, not-so curious and (quite probably) the furious.

With a review of blog stats, I can also view the links that have lead General Public to the blog. I do have the regulars, of course  –those that follow and those who directly check on posted links from Facebook. For those folks that haven’t yet, why not click on “follow” –y’all come back regular, ya hear? 

I suppose the real reason I write on this theme today is the last astonishing Search that lead a needy soul here. It was, and I kid you not, “a juicy vagina being nicely fucked by a penis”. Quite apart from the mental image or the fairly artistic phraseology (I’m somewhat compelled by the implication of juicyness/niceness), perhaps the more astonishing aspect is that with the Everest-sized mountain of porn out there my humble blog achieved any kind of hit at all!

Another recent novelty was a traduction Français of the blog entry on the Siege of Malta –the tangled web of the web reaches even those shadowy Gauloises-smoking and mustachioed cheese eating regions. I also get a lot of hits for my review of 1000 Years of Annoying the French! 

Hitherto the most salacious search that ended with ‘Richard Peters in the Country Park’ cheerily pop up onto a screen glowing in the dark was shortly after the bombing in Marrakech. My blog entry irresistibly piqued the interest of someone looking for ‘sexy Moroccan boys’. Hmmm… Perhaps I should be embracing the more corporeally-minded African enthusiasts amongst the general public. Just give ‘em what they want, that’s what I say. Bread and circuses? Free tissues and guilt-free jiggly tits, more like.

Like most ploddy blogs, most hits are from the embedded pics. I admit that many of them are actually mine and I do spend quite a bit of time resourcing the other images for the sake of accuracy. In the true Anarchist spirit that all property is theft, I probably get as many of my images nicked as I liberate. I’m not even going to enter into discussion about intellectual rights or crediting internet image sources –I often feel the need to sleep. Oh, brothers and sisters, oh for a utopia in which the need to freely lift is gone…

My biggest hit for an image is a picture of a human kidney removed mid-surgery. I wrote a quick throw-away entry about a kid in China who sold his kidney for an I-pad and I-phone and lifted the best image I could source. This one pic accounts for about 80-90% of all picture searches, a fact that has led me to a horrible deduction about thems that conducts the searches –people that want to buy a kidney (the desperate, pleading and praying for life) and people that want to sell their kidney (the desperate, pleading and praying for cash). Either way, these searches indicated a lively trade in even-livelier body parts I’m none-too keen on (the issues surrounding Transplant Surgery require a much more tactful blog entry for another time). I suppose I should be grateful that I’m comfortable enough that I can view such astonishing things with incredulity.

My biggest hit on one day has been 78, my least none. And that’s the instant problem with counting pageviews –watching those distracting numbers and… yes… come on… yes… nearly there… woo-hoo… 5000 hits!! Consider the ridiculous millions of hits notched up on something inane such as Cat Face cartoon or WTF Kitty (all hits by puerile bedroom door-locked pre-teens who, from the state of their poorly-spelt, offensive or inane congratulatory messages, can’t be very far along the road to Mental Acuity Town). I see this stuff and want my 30 seconds of life back and despair about humanity.

So has this bloggy stuff taught me anything? Not much, but it is fun; an excuse to rant a bit, to examine something I find of interest and then leave a quippy -30- (that’s American journalistic parlance for the end of a story, don’t ya know), to show whoever is prepared to see the wonders of the Sai Kung Country Park, to wear a bit of my heart upon my electronic sleeve. I hope you will find it's the sort of thing that can be merrily read over a weekend morning cuppa.

Now, all I can presume is that if fresh eyes have reached this page it’s likely their search has has been concocted from, “juicy vagina”+ “penis”+ “porn”+ “sexy Moroccan boys”+”jiggly tits”+ “images”,+“pre-teen” + “kidney”. Now producing THAT sort of heady webpage gets you a visit from the Feds!

The Most Dangerous Animal in all Hong Kong

Nearly home after another successful performance with the Hong Kong Welsh Male Voice Choir, Steve slammed on the brakes: "Did you see the size of that snake?" We reversed back up the road to see a 2.5-3 metre python (perhaps a juvenile?) very slowly inch its way off the tarmac of the Pak Tam Road and into the undergrowth. This unhurried beast exuded strength I could sense even within the safety of Steve's Toyota Prius. Venomous it may not be, but a mean and muscley snake is best avoided, especially at night. Last week one took down a calf in our village! So a python must be the most dangerous animal in Hong Kong, surely?

Actually, the answer to this question is not immediately obvious. Consider the 'dangerous fauna' that inhabit the territory: mammals, reptiles, fish, amphibians, insects and spiders -at least all of those that are not extinct like the poor pussy above.

Mammals -these are, of course, our lovely furry cousins. Other than pets, cows seem to be the most obvious of this classification, but the cows in Hong Kong must be amongst the smallest, cuddliest and most docile in the world. When walking elsewhere through a field of Friesians it has often felt prudent to have the gate in mind -they've been known to take sudden bovine umbridge with walker, dog and even the farmer: being trampled by half-ton Bessies, Daisies and Buttercups might really mess up your day!

These bovine beasts have bigger cousins on Lantau and Yuen Long -bubalus bubalus the Water Buffalo. Having been used well by farmers in these here parts for generations, their spectacularly impressive horns demonstrate a serious-and-slow attitude to life. You're unlikely to get on the wrong side of these beasts unless you stupidly tease them -they're too busy wallowing in the mud that protects them from biting insects.

In addition, the other mammalian potentials for most dangerous beasts are wild boar, porcupines, foxes and macaques. I've written about charging boars elsewhere, but they are mostly harmless unless piglets are around. And if they charge it's likely you'll be up a tree before you know it -that self-preservational instinct is a wonderful thing! The Memsahib was once doing the late-night taxi run with the girls in the back and one massive boar charged the Mini denting the driver's door. The massive porcine somersaulted madly in the air and furiously ran off into the dark. It's unlikely he was attacking: boar are impatient pedestrians and are a bit sharpish when crossing roads - they don't even wait for the green man/pig/boar...

Lovely waddly porcupines' musky pointy spines are their most obvious rattly feature and you often find them discarded on tracks through the undergrowth. They only appear late at night (unless there's a problem) and silently pass through villages. It's not uncommon to see the village dogs sporting a mass of protruding spines on their faces and looking a bit sorry for themselves, so they're definitely more dangerous to unthinking woofy canines than to us.

Rhesus macaques are sometimes a bit skittish and will only approach us if we are obviously carrying easily-obtainable food. They can obviously identify lady humans carrying shopping, but, apart from our friend Sean, I've yet to hear of simians going for anyone of the male persuasion. When we lived in Tai Wai one dominant bushy male with extra-huge cahones came swaggering in from the balcony, took one dismissive look at me and proceeded to leisurely scan the kitchen for some free human food. Despite my defiantly picking up some sort of kitchen appliance and menacing waving it at him he was fearless against my angriest of protestations and simply swung around to nonchalantly return to his jungle -the cheek! The cahones! In view of his sizable incisors, I'm not sure I'd want to repeat Man vs Monkey any time soon, but he was clearly not that life-threatening.

Although they are suppose to exist here, I've yet to see a fox (apart from the dead kind draped on stupid women).

And I think it's fair to say that marine mammals (otters, crab-eating mongooses and pink dolphins) also pose no threat.

Reptiles a-plenty fill Hong Kong's wild places. Some of the turtles, such as the Mud Turtle, are aggressive and might give you a really painful nip or worse, but you really have to be stupid to put your fingers or toes anywhere near one. It's also unlikely you'll ever bump into one of these protected beasts in the countryside -indeed, you're more likely to encounter it, or one of it's poor cousins like the endangered Box Turtle, in a 'healthy' soup somewhere dodgy. 

Snakes are the most likely wild reptile with which you might have difficulty (and only if you live near their food source). Let's think about this for a minute; snakes hunt fairly basic animals such as frogs, invertebrates, birds and small mammals. It's likely only the latter (rats and mice) will be near your home because they are taking advantage of your badly-discarded food waste. In other words, no matter how much you might not want to meet a serpent, you are the most likely indirect cause of your own snakey-humany interaction. They really don't like humans, they cannot hear us, may not be able to see us coming unless they sense our elephantine footsteps and generally give us good warning of their location by hissing in defence (here's a lovely BBC page explaining it further). In general, they have a lot more to fear from us than the other way round. There are quite a few venomous snakes in Hong Kong, but it'll be a rare sight when a snake crosses your paths (I see but a handful each year) and if you do spot something Slitherin-like skeeting across your toes then it's likely you'll only know about it when the last of it's back end has disappeared off into a hidey-hole.

Cobras make a habit of appearing near houses, but they're looking for vermin. In effect, they're clearing up disease-spreading animals for us and should be welcomed. Unfortunately, cobras are also very defensive and will attack anything -I saw one vigorously attacking a dustpan (see above)! In our time living in the country park we have lost three cats, cobras being the most likely cause. Pythons only appear to be really dangerous to dogs caught off-guard: a woman in the nearby village lost her dog to a python and in a later case the python was beaten off.

Sometimes snakes make their way into the house. If they're really small we put a towel over them, quickly pick them up and take them back outside. If they're a bit too big for that, then we call the police and then Dave the Snake. Dave, who lives nearby in the village of Pak Sha O, humanely captures and releases snakes back into the wild. If the police are called, it's likely they'll dispose of snakes in two ways -stamping them to death or putting them in a bag to be added at a later date to the Chief Inspector's soup. A recently caught Hong Kong python (an internationally protected species, ya know) that was due to be released somewhere safe in China ended up dead -quelle suprise!

Many sea snakes are poisonous, but are actually quite sweetly inquisitive with divers they meet. They will only strike if really threatened: why would anyone want to hurt them?

You can't discuss dangerous fish without mentioning sharks. Hong Kong has a rich shared history with these piscine predators. Leaving aside ethical issues connected with their slow death after de-finning, human-shark interaction was perhaps at it's height during the Cultural Revolution. Many poor refugees attempted the swim to freedom from the guarded coasts of Red Guangdong to the freedom of nearby Hong Kong's Ping Chau island only to be unfortunately picked off by these opportunist hunters. More recently, sharks headed to Hong Kong waters for a quick human snack, but in June 1995 three swimmers were taken and this led to the government setting up shark nets at 32 gazetted beaches. Even the stupendous Vic Hislop was employed to remove the territory's waters of Great Whites. Newspaper headlines every now and then warn of sharks being spotted from the air, but they're usually small specimens that are completely lost: they don't stay long in Hong Kong's fish-less waters. The most common species are Black-tip Reef, Sandbar and Tiger Sharks and occasionally the odd Great White will turn up. Unfortunately, the last large shark spotted in Hong Kong waters was a juvenile Whale Shark netted by some fisherman in Aberdeen. Not willing to part with their catch for less than $20,000 or so, the poor creature languished in their care until a well-intentioned local hawker paid for its release. It quickly died thereafter -which is, one ponders, what might be a suitable resolution for this sort of behaviour.

Of all amphibians only the Asian Common Toad has poison glands on the side of the head and I fail to see how you could possibly come into serious contact with what's inside them.

There are actually very few insects, invertebrates and spiders that are dangerous and the ones that are may not be immediately obvious. Centipedes are aggressive buggers that can give you a nasty nip with their toxic fangs and if things went really badly you might have to take a trip to hospital. Some have really long legs (illustrated), but these look more scary than they really are. Millipedes may not bite, but their bodies exude acidic toxins so keep well away from them.

Everyone thinks spiders here in Hong Kong must be poisonous: after all, spiders use venom, have big fangs, jump on their innocent prey caught in their foul webs and then suck the life out of them -eww! Well, we have three quite large species with innocuous-sounding names which folks may happen across from time to time and I don't think they're the hideous monsters of popular imagination (unless you're a fly). Indeed, they do a lot of good for us.

1. The Large House/Huntsman Spider is the one you find scuttling across your walls late at night and they hunt cockroaches and may take geckos. They will bite, but wouldn't you if someone was chasing you with a broom? My advice is to leave them be: once they've got rid of your roaches they'll either move on or starve.

2. The Large Woodland/Golden Orb Spider may have a legspan of up to 15cm and will occupy a lovely big orb web somewhere where light and shade are mixed. It's an occupational hazard to walk into a web if you go traipsing through the woods anywhere in Hong Kong. Look scary, but I love 'em! Here are more pics.

3. The Banded or Yellow Argiope Spider is also a biggy and probably does not cohabit well with the Orb. They make amazingly fine orb webs with a large patterned silk X or zig-zag. Beautiful to see.

I could have included things such as cockroaches and rats for their contaminating qualities, but we seem to be able to cope with these fairly well these days. I've also evaded discussing stinging jellyfish and other marine animals because they are usually out of our way in deep sea waters. Perhaps the second most dangerous animals in all Hong Kong could be mosquitoes. They continue to spread very serious diseases that kill more people than all the other animals combined (Malaria, Dengue Fever, Japanese Encephalitis) and seem impossible to eradicate.

Of all the animals in Hong Kong, there is really only one contender for the 'most dangerous in all Hong Kong' accolade. This fearsome animal is so unbelievably dangerous that nearly all other animals fear it and run away as fast as they can for this animal will kill or consume pretty much anything it comes across, either by design or accident. This animal also kills it's own kind. This animal is, of course, humankind.

TCM and all that...

At last it's school holiday time, so you'd be forgiven for thinking that for a teacher such as myself early mornings are customarily snoozed through, but you'd be wrong. Just as in term time I'm up at anything from 4.30 a.m.-onwards. And that's not out of choice: I suffer from terrible morning back aches.

And before you ask, we've changed the mattress and re-orientated the bed according to best feng shui advice (from venerable feng shui master Brenda) to align with the chi -whichever way you understand it. Going to sleep for me is not a joy because I know I'll wake up in terrible back pain. And the lack of sleep/rest has had an increasingly adverse effect on my energy levels. Oh woe...

So, feeling that enough's enough,  I popped into Sai Kung yesterday to see a traditional Chinesey doctor in the old town (at the Sai Kung Therapy Centre no less). I bemoaned my miserable lot to the poor doctor in his newly decorated clinic. He listened patiently, read the pulse on my left wrist (I think there are at least 8 different types, ya know) then my right wrist and asked a few of the usual questions about my lifestyle and work, etc. His suggested treatment was for me to have acupuncture, an acupressure massage and a course of herbal powders.

I'm not averse to unorthodox medical treatment. I once went to see a shaman in Causeway Bay -yes, a proper North American medicine man, but he blew his didgeridoo all over my body (stopping at various chakra points) and it took all my will power not to roll about on the floor laughing. I've got a lot of time for shaman and shamanistic approaches to life, but this didn't quite meet my expectations.

I've never held much with a reductionist approach towards medicine. We are undoubtedly more than the sum of our parts. Much wisdom has been overlooked by blind devotion to cherished orthodoxies. Western medicine undoubtedly is largely successful, but Chinese folk (and others across the globe) have been successfully going about their healing work for innumerable generations using that which is at hand -massage, acupuncture, herbs, etc. It has, therefore, been long about time I took steps down this path.

The acupuncture was interesting -quite nice to begin with. I didn't feel the needles enter my skin until the one over the left scapula region which didn't feel right. The ones in my lower back put my muscles into continuous spasm and a shooting heat sensation down my legs. I was relieved the needles were finally removed after the required 15 minutes of so. The acupressure massage was quite different to the usual Thai massage, less about relaxation than a bit of intense fore-arm back ironing. It hurt, but not as much as I experienced in a therapeutic series of massages after a touch of sciatica a few years ago (a great success, by the way, and highly recommended).

I left after about an hour feeling somewhat better, but also knowing that it may take days for a therapeutic massage to have the desired effects. He gave me sachets of herbals mixtures and an admonition to not drink cold things like beer or iced water. This morning, I slept (albeit fitfully) until about 7. Was it the good Italian wine drunk at the Ashley and Françoise Tranter's Friday night party? Was it the rest and peace of a day spent lolling about reading? Or... was it the mystic effects of Traditional Chinese Medicine.

Oh and by the way, the herbs taste absolutely revolting!

How much for your kidney?

Having just watched the long-awaited and fairly well acted X-Men: First Class, the Memsahib and meself visited the Festival Walk Broadway (one of the few big chain of Elec/Tech stores here not in the all-pervasive octopus-like grip of Li Ka Shing) and spied many-a gleaming Appley product. All these things are much cheaper now than even two or three years ago and, although Apple maintain that they are clean and green, it's no secret that this is down to Foxxconn's questionable labour practices: employee coercion, suicides, explosions and other horrors have been frequently reported. How much is too cheap?

Anyway, I 'needed' to buy an expensive cover for my new iPhone 4. This product is, of course, precious-ish and I want to keep it from acquiring scratches whilst in my pocket (I'd still like to know how that bloody happens). But I'm not sure I'd go as far in my desire to have such things as a youthinasia (not euthanasia -ha, that's my hilarious little GCSE jokel) wot sold his kidney for an i-Pad and iPhone. I cannot think of a reason to sell my kidney for anything, but then I've never been that desperate. A few years ago I was deeply moved when a friend donated one of his to an old military buddy. I probably speak for many when I say that I would most likely do the same for a loved one. Gratis.

The full BBC report says that you too can give your kidney to a worthy cause for a mere $3,392, even though the practice has been made illegal in China since 2007. Always ready to exploit an opportunity, kidney purchasers (apart from the Hannibal Lecter liver-loving kind) have been doing the world a great service in freeing the people of Nepal, India and other impoverished places of their unwanted kidneys and exchanging them with these vast sums of cash (as far as the recipients are concerned) -sometimes even as much as the lucky Chinese chap currently in the news. This link to a peculiar 'blog' (part-Russian/part-Indian) puts you in contact with unlucky Indians who have opted for cash over kidney.

Of course, trading human kidneys in China has been a long-profitable trade often sanctioned through the complicity of corrupt officials. This trade, however, is not limited to wealth-challenged countries, but also includes the far-flung reaches of Lancashire. 

So there you have it, some people think electronic products are better than their own urinary system. I suppose it's all a matter of values -it's legal in Iran! It's unlikely this trade will ever disappear altogether and some say the process should be legalised and monitored. Should we be allowed to do what we wish with our own bodies? What price could we put on our various parts? How much for one of your eyes, your lungs, your other choicest inner parts? Would cannibals be allowed to bid? Perhaps we should harvest them as a matter of course, hand out iPads and put the objectors in a Chinese jail...

The Madness that is Noah's Ark

Sometimes I'm really quite proud of my tolerance threshold. There have been occasions when I am certain lesser mortals would be ranting and raving, raising excessive and damnatory expletives, thrashing their arms about and gnashing the teeth of their frothing mouths, but I try to be calm and see through situations that even St Francis would be spluttering over.

Not so very long ago a student on the tennis courts (on the roof of school) decided that it would be a great idea to play cricket/hockey/football with his friends. What he had not foreseen, when he whacked the football against the nets with the hockey stick, is that the said stick would leave his sweaty paws and sail through the air only to teeter precariously on the edge of the net to stunned silence before toppling over and crashing through the rear window of my car. (They then attempted to make their quick getaway only to see Liz Muscroft in the doorway at the top of the stairs awaiting them with terrifying and withering raised eyebrow!)  When told of the incident, I simply gave a shrug. The astonished Lin Burt who told me the bad news said I took it well, but no anger on my part would mend a broken window!

My patience over les questions religieuses was severely tested today. I honestly had to resist the urge to leave and run...

Noah's Ark Hong Kong is an attraction that has only recently appeared on the Hong Kong scene. I had assumed that it was run by evangelical Christians and it is indeed so, but perhaps not in quite the way I had imagined. Brainchild of the Kwok brothers, the theme park is situated on an island (which itself is situated under the expressway to the airport) and houses one of their swankiest developments, Ma Wan Park. This new Sun Hung Kai housing development  has been accompanied now by many attractions that are supposed to be self-funded. I wonder just how the Hong Kong IRS viewed the theme park in relation to the highly profitable SHK development...

Dear, dear Lucie had arranged a Professional Development day at KGV School. After all the fun and frolics of the morning, we hot-footed it to Noah's Ark: an 'alternative' attraction.

Our first problem was taxis. Ours wouldn't take us, no sirree -apparently they can't go there and the only way is by a bus service from Central or Mong Kok or by ferry from Tsuen Wan. An empty bus in Mong Kok did not bode well, but upon arrival at Ma Wan we were amazed to see the theme park packed with pensioners and lil' tiny kiddy-winks.

Once you get over the $100-a pop entry fee, you realise that the Ark itself is truly massive. 'Life' size, it dominates this peculiar parcel of land over a very sandy beach and beneath the wonderful Tsing Ma bridge.

The attractions, however, were unbelievably infantile, the English translations laughable, the sentiment trite and philosophy unbearably shallow if not plain wrong. In fact, it was this last detail that had my temple veins haemorraging. It wasn't the wrongness of what was said so much as the astonishing combination of unashamedly un-thought through ideas, one upon another. Do bible stories edify through the establishment of 'proof' or through contemplation and reflection? Does a story about an angry deity wiping out the entire world bar one family and a bunch of precious animals create nice warm fuzzies or engender fear? Does the message of planetary destruction make us keep caged animals or create good future environmentalists? 

A computer-enhanced film entitled Countdown from 30 envisaged the end of the world by meteorite and served only to depress and scare. At the end we were to write down our thoughts to those who have left us behind. What on earth are you to do that for? Does it help value our loved ones? I wrote, So long and thanks for all the fish (perhaps this version is better)!

Other attractions included pouring water over people sat in a box wearing raincoats, making cakes out of towels and a journey in your own coffin -I mean, who thought of these?!

It was at the time my patience was beginning to fragment that we met one of the assistants from the St James' Settlement who explained that there mission was to entertain and enlighten 'without a Jesus'. The organisations involved in the spreading of all this confusion each paid for the privelege. The spaces in which their particular evangelical messages could be divulged were their own affairs and run on fixed-and-finite terms. We did not press our questions too far, but one wondered exactly who, if anyone, checked on the validity and efficacy of their messages or the means by which they were made.

Moving on to the 180º Great Flood Theatre experience, we were then treated to a cinematic extraveganza that incorporated visuals, flashing lights, dry ice, quaking seats and wooden actors including a delightfully sombre Chinese Noah. The only thing worse I have seen in Hong Kong is Monkey's Tale Theatre up at the Big Buddha -stick that in your Buddhist pipe and smoke it!

To cap it off, an exhibition that presented a truly disparate collection of bits and bobs to do with Noah's Ark; tools middle-eastern folks used at-the-time-of-Noah, information and exhibits from expeditions to Mount Ararat, the presentation of Noah-like legends to support the idea of a flood, a collection of Noah's Ark memorabilia and tat, LIVE and CAGED animals, the most bizarre amorphous chimera of animal parts that expressed the organizer's disapproval of Genetic Engineering and a platitudinous examination of all God's creation... My head nearly exploded!

The others in our small group were willing to soldier on. Perhaps they luxuriated in the Tree of Life in the Ark Garden, swung around on the high rope course of Noah's Adventureland or simply went to the Harvest Restaurant to eat some of God's wondrous animals that obviously made it into the ark as consumables. I hopped on the nearest bus and high-tailed it back to work and from thence to the sanctity and sanity of Bacco's in Sai Kung. There's more than a little wisdom in San Miguel...

I don't know whether I'm more annoyed with the lazy thinking, inadequate philosophy or the shoddy presentation. Maybe I shouldn't expect too much from such an attraction, but not once did it take itself in any other way than seriously.

 

Or maybe I'm looking at it in entirely the wrong way. When you remember that this is an investment it all suddenly makes sense. As Francis Leung, a one-time investor in the markets, commented, "When you go to Disneyland, there's really no message there, but at Noah's Ark, there is such a strong message that life goes on." 

Perhaps that message should interpreted, 'buy shares in Sun Hung Kai Properties'!