Ethical Conondrum

Here in hong Kong we’re blessed with something that used to be called amahs. Then they politically correctly suddenly became “helpers” (‘help” apparently being something you pay $50 an hour for) doing the same job.

Some live in, some live in crowded accommodation elsewhere, but the work they do would in any other time/place be called that of servants. Anyway, I have a servant whose main duty is to take my dog, Piles, for walks when I’m not around. I don’t know whether it’s of the goodness of her heart or that she can’t be arsed to drag that pain in the arse (hence the name) around for a whole hour a pop, but whenever she’s been in, I find little proofs of her having been there, like washing up one glass or putting my shoes in a slightly more fascistic order.
This evening I came home to find that she’d given Piles a bath. And not any old bath, but a stinking, brothel-perfumed humdinger of a bath which made me wonder, as I walked in the door to be met with a wall of smell, whether the olfactory version of Liberace hadn’t swung around my gaff and settled for good.
I’m now afraid to touch my own dog.
What if the smell of a thousand whores settles on my hands and in my clothes, repelling all suitors and potential customers?
So here’s the ethical conondrum: Do I tell my servant to stop cleaning Piles altogether or do i just let her get on with it? I’ve told her many times where the dog shampoo (for sensitive skin – trust my boy to have sensitive bloody dog skin as well as, conveniently for boiling hot Hong Kong, hating hot weather) is, and to give the bastard (Piles has at least 16 fathers) a rinse-down on the roof if she must. But she will not listen. I now fear it doesn’t matter what I say – because she wants to be so very kind, my servant insists on taking Piles around to her place and give him a good rub-down with the most over-perfumed shampoo this side of Arabian Nights every other week.

Hurt her feelings? Or save the last remnants of Piles’ skin and also enable me to breathe inside my own house?
I’m now upstairs and Piles is downstairs about 20 meters away. But every breath I take I’ll be smelling… the worst soap ever manufactured!!! It’s now inside my eyes, nose and mouth. No, I’ll go with hurting her feelings. Something’s got to give.

You’d Better Watch Out

Because I hate numbers I seldom know what date it is. But looking at past postings, I can see it’s October. It’s definitely still only October…
So why the flying reindeer do I receive a Christmas card, five, no six days ago!!!!
It’s too much. I can’t… I can’t …. aahrrghhhhh

Thus beginneth the worst time of year in Hong Kong, Christ bloody mas, now officially to be celebrated for two whole months, still far out-sparkling Halloween (which, admittedly, is gaining ground and now stretched out to a little over a month.) Tinsel, Hong Kong-ified snow, reindeer and Santa setups in each mall, schreeching Christmas carol medleys set off when you enter shops, an orgy of naff tackiness with some garish crap taste thrown in – there is no respite.

Home-grown Chinese New Year and the Mid-Autumn Festival, five and four weeks of build-up respectively, pale in comparison with the imported European and US festivities.
Why? OK, so Jesus lived. That’s fine. But how did “Geezer born around 2000 years ago, walked around spouting sound bites doing good deeds, tortured to death by mediocre people, buried, corpse disappeared under suspicious circumstances” turn into “Hello Kitty Santa”? What a “god” send for HK retail. With the only 16 or so Chinese festivals, if Christmas didn’t exist they would have to invent it.

No Mounting

By popular demand, here they are: The grass enhancers of Mui Wo! Of course we can’t have just boring grass and trees. You think people go to the countryside to look at that? No; full exercise for the eyes there must be, everywhere and all the time. But only for the eyes! That’s why we have white plastic fences innit!

There used to be two of these geese, which I now rather think are swans, as one of them has disappeared, or been stolen,I suspect for nefarious purposes.

Stolen are also several ants, and I can see why. I would also have one of these charmers in my living room than the several thousand live but much, much smaller ants I have everywhere now.

Moving on in the insect world, here is a grass hopper, also very lifelike. And apparently not a magnet for thieves. Expect to see a wide variety of animals and insects, not only all over Lantau (Tai O is the next target for government improvitis) but possibly the world! Well, Hong Kong anyway. Depends how high up in the government the person whose realitive on the mainland manufactures them is.

I’ve never liked abstract art, me. I want to see what everything is. So I must commend the sculptor. Yep! Lifelike.

People Against Hong Kong Bureaucrats

Hnnnng! What are they like!

The Hong Kong government, not satisfied with having razed to the ground the Star Ferry and Queen piers, designating prime land in Central to a massive monument to their own incompetence, namely a gigantic government office edifice to outshadow all other edifices, etc etc, the list is so long and dreary that I can’t be arsed to repeat it here (anybody who’s ever been to, cast a glance at or flown over Hong Kong will know what I’m talking about,) have now cast their developing-hungry eyes on Lantau.

The airport, built on reclaimed land on the north side of the island, killing all marine life and creating another black lung of pollution, was the beginning of the end of Lantau as “Hong Kong’s Green Lung, to be preserved for generations to come” as the same government promised in 2000. Now they want to “improve” the rest of the island, starting with the picturesque fishing village of Tai O.

For me the most ominous of their plans is this: A “theme fountain” and “sculptures.” Anyone who’s been to Mui Wo this year will have noticed some unbelievably ugly and incongruous glass fibre figures scattered on the “you’ll be shot if you walk here” grass lining the beach promenade: Garishly coloured likenesses of chicken, geese and ants, with huge signs saying: Don’t climb.

Somebody in the government must have a relative in China running a glass fibre factory, for suddenly Mui Wo is crawling with these, even in a Hello Kitty society, affronts to anything resembling taste. Apparently these “sculptures” are put there for the sake of children, but if so, why the “No Climbing”?

Because we can! Crow those unbearable bureaucrats of the Land Department, the Engineering Department and the other departments which together form an umbrella group called the Help Property Developers Put Food On The Table Department. Make no mistake, when Tai O is improved to death, neon-coloured likenesses of wasps, snakes and cockroaches, fenced in by white plastic picket fences and with signs whose size rival those of the sculptures saying Don’t Climb, Don’t Sit, Don’t Look At etc. is what the put-upon residents of Tai O will be given to liven up their dreary, undeveloped village, formerly full of boring grass and trees.

I don’t even dare to think about what the Theme Fountain will look like, but I’m willing to bet a large amount of money that not a few Disney characters will be involved.

Don’t get me started on the Tourist Walk, the Shopping walk and the Walk Walk – and the Easy To Walk For Tourists Bridge. What is certain is this: When those goverment engineers get their slimy hands on Tai O, it will be no more.

For details about this the latest onslaught, please go to and sign a petition at

http://www.gopetition.com/online/14483.html

Having said that; no matter how many people sign on, government officials will never take notice or indeed read the complaints anyway. So here is what I think: Instead of fighting for the tiny remaining pieces of Hong Kong village by village, building by building, why don’t we start a mass movement: People Against Hong Kong Bureaucrats? It is those government officials, safely ensconced in their air-conditioned offices in Central with their drivers snoozing away in air-conditioned cars outside, who are the root of this evil. Looking at maps of Hong Kong, (all those empty white spaces to DEVELOP!) contemplating their next move to help property developers make more money, they want to leave no stone unturned to cement, or rather concrete, their legacy as the new rulers of Hong Kong; the dynasty which finally succeeded in destroying our city beyond recognition.

When The Donald complained about democracy being like the Cultural Revolution, his biggest objection was that if we have democracy, officials can be voted out and removed, like in that hotbed of cultural revolition -style anarchy California.
Doh… ish? The geezer, obviously not the sharpest knife in the drawer though he is, must be feeling something like an uncertainty (deep down though; very deep down) in the popular support of his abilities and ideas. So let’s hear it for:

PEOPLE AGAINST HONG KONG BUREAUCRATS!!!!!!!!!!

A Bag… Is Just A Bag???

Evidently not. Here are otherwise sane, upstanding members of Hong Kong society queuing to get into a shop to look at, possibly buy, a bag. When I saw the red barrier or velvet cord or whatever it’s called, I thought Wah! There must be a celebrity in there, some movie star or celebrated author or something. Turns out people were queuing, god knows how long they’d already been there when I happened to walk past, to look at women’s handbags. I mean, this is supposed to be a society whose members can’t even wait a millisecond for a lift door to close before they start hammering on the “close” button.
But apparently when it comes to handbags they have all the waiting time in the world.
All I’ve ever thought of HK people being impatient I must now rethink. Or maybe they’re just rich mainland tourists.

You know, come to think of it, it could well be shoes they’re lining up to look at. I stand corrected.

A Brush With Death

And here at last, it was: The mysterious hermit kingdom: North Korea in all its pollution-less splendour. This photo is taken from the top turret or whatever it’s called, of a Great Wall that I didn’t even know existed before I went to Dandong on the NK border: A Ming dynasty extension of the Wall, complete with museum celebrating the “War to resist US aggression” with lively displays of Chinese soldiers staring stolidly into the distance, with a Christmas tree put in for effect. One presumes.

At the bottom of a long vertical descent was a small cardboard sign saying One Step Leap, with a arrow pointing down a narrow path. Here the Chinese have been considerate enough to make a hole in the fence separating China and North Korea, allowing visitors to stand upon North korean soil. Which I duly did. This was the goal of my journey.
Birds and insects were humming away in the balmy October sunshine and the place reeked of pastoral peace. It seemed so incongruous knowing that a few meters away, hiding in the bushes lining the river bank, there were Korean soldiers pointing at me with AK 47s.
In the distance I could hear a radio going at full blast; probably Radio Pyongyang’s morning programme: “Well hello there all you movers and shakers, we’re talking to you from the red-hot capital of the world!! Aaaaan d we’re gonna play some groovy tunes this morning, to take you through the traffic jams!” Or maybe not.
If I’d understood Korean I would have been able to hear the whole programme, but all I could make out was that most words ended in “…sumni-DAAAA!!!”

So that was my North Korean experience; until they start letting people go there without guides, I probably won’t enter the country itself. But that sunny day, all I wanted was to keep walking into the beautiful countryside, breathing the fresh air of a place without cars.
North Korea is a country our own dear Leader The Donald would probably enjoy – no insane Cultural Revolution-style democracy where “everybody does whatever they want” there, but a well-organised, governed society, free of “elements.” Shall we have a whip-round for a one-way ticket?

A Huge Moment

Waaaah
I’ve been away from the blogoir for a while. Believe me, it was for a good purpose: I went away in order to stand upon the sacred soil of North Korea.
I had been planning it for quite a few years and… suddenly there it was. A little piece of earth on the bank of a stream with a poster next to it, saying “don’t throw things to the other side of the river, don’t take photos, don’t use your mobile, don’t laugh or make fun, don’t create a furore…” and on and on. Being a foreigner and beige I could of course have pleaded ignorance saying I can’t read Chinese, but for some reason I followed orders this time. perhaps it was because North korean border guards, none of whom I could see but could have been lurking, wouldn’t have known whether…

Still, it was a huge moment for me.
Huger in fact than coming home to Hong Kong only to find that our great bowtied leader Donald Tsang has felt free to draw comparisons between “Democracy” and “The Great Cultural Revolution.”
Yes, those two entities are more or less inseparable…
But I’ll get back to it. Hoi hoi, what a fantastic time we’ll have here in Hong Kong for the next few days!!!! democracy, cultural revolution… democracy, cultural revolution… yes, I can see how he absolutely can’t separate the two. After all, it was because China was too, too democratic in 1966 that the Cultural Revolution happened in the first place.
back to The Donald shortly! He is a man worth going back to again and again.

An Enormous Disappointment

Ahhrghhhhh! Life is terrible sometimes. Sometimes also good, but GHAWD! so disappointing sometimes. I’m in a hotel room in Beijing and although I can access my blawg without problems; strangely enough considering some things I’ve written, I can’t get onto my hotmail account.

However, that’s not the disappointment about which I’ll write. If it were, I would indeed be a sad bastard. No, it’s like this: Last year I travelled for three weeks in the northern provinces with a Norwegian guy who wanted to make a documentary about me. It was a lot of work but the docu ended up not being shown on Nog TV. Disappointing. However, it’s not that either. On that trip I took a series of what I thought were great photos, and the Norwegian guy gave me a great idea for a book, which I’ve written. Great! One of the chapters is about English in China, in some quarters known as Manglish. Whether it stands for Mandarin English or Mangled English doesn’t matter; the fact is it’s there and it’s great.
“Beware of nipping hand.” “Do not stretch head outside the elevator.” “No parapeting.”

One of the photos I took on last year’s trip was a sign outside a huge shopping center in Beijing saying: To take notice of safety. The slippery are very crafty. That was so going in the book!
However, technology got the better of me. For when the computer guy came to clean up my harddisk a few months ago, I accidentally deleted every bloody picture from the trip and many others besides, due to techno idiocy. If I didn’t need me for other purposes I would have killed me.

However, today I found myself again in Beijing, 90% of the reason for which trip was to get the photo back, and driving down to Beijing Station to buy tickets away from this car-choked hellhole I saw the same sign outside the shopping center! I ran up the street and up the ramp where the yellow sign proudly stood, only to find that the English translation, as part of China’s big cleanup for the Olympics, now said: Warning, slippery ramp.

I travelled on the train for 24 hours to get that photo. DISAPPOINTED!!!! If anyone has a picture of The Slippery Are Very Crafty, could you please send it? I will credit you in the caption and buy you a meal…

Tibetan Evildoers

Interesting tidbit in the South China Morning Post today: The Chinese government has decided to civilise, I mean settle, 10 000 Tibetan herders in new towns (white tiles, blue windows) in Tibet and Qinghai province. The reason? They are a terrible source of pollution.
Yes, with their livestock and questionable personal hygiene these people are apparently stinking and pooing out the whole Tibetan plateau, whereas the millions of Han tourists and hundreds of thousands of Han settlers flocking to Tibet each year live demurely at one with nature, bringing nothing with them and leaving nothing behind but footprints. Congratulations to China’s government for finally nailing these eco-bandits.
A question though: With China’s recent inexplicable and relentless push to get people to drink cow’s milk, presumably to further catch up with the Americans in obesity and disease rate, where is the vile drink going to come from if they stop people from raising livestock? There was no over-grazing of neither the Tibetan plateu nor Inner Mongolia before the Chinese had the insane idea that forcing children to drink cow’s milk would make them taller; indeed before they had the money to eat meat with every meal.
Anyway, well spotted, Chinese government, now there will be even more space for those eight lane highways going into Tibet, and those aquaducts going out, carrying the trickle of Yangtse water that’s left, into the eastern provinces.
Nobody can say the Party isn’t omnipotent and visionary.