Rabid Helpers

Ah, Sichuan! The larder of China and with a cuisine that can make a grown man cry and a rabid anti-cooking fiend like me enjoy cooking.

If I don’t cook Sichuan food every day, how will I be able to eat it every day? Eh?
And of course, caring and sharing like our government itself as I am, I also enjoy cooking for people.

I like seeing their little faces light up at the sight of the food, the size of their nostrils increasing tenfold as they try to suck the goodies in through their noses.

I like seeing them waddle out after five hours of non-stop eating, looking like sea lions on the way to a sun-basking convention.

But here’s the rub: Sichuan cooking is precision cooking. Two seconds too long in the wok and you’re wokked. It is a thing that requires intense concentration and some nifty legwork.
And for some reason, while normally mild-mannered and zen-like, so laid-back, in fact, that I frequently tip backwards knocking the back of my head on the ground – when I’m in the kitchen I become the, well, the Gordon Ramsay of the kitchen.

It’s just the way it is – when I’m cooking I have to concentrate 100%. I can’t chat leisurely with people the way they want and above all, don’t want or need help.

Because in Sichuan cooking all the work is done beforehand and the actual cooking is just a few seconds of furious activity where any help definitely is a hindrance.

Therefore when people come to my Sichuan dinners, the rule is: I cook, they eat. What’s so difficult to understand about that?

However, they don’t. Just as I’m in the middle of some gravity-defying, millisecond-counting stir-frying, piff goes a little voice near my elbow: “Do you need any help?”

No. Please don’t be here, I need to concentrate.
“I want to help you!”
No need! Just bugger off, now!
“Are you sure you don’t need any help?” Etc.

It’s funny how people don’t think I really mean what I say. Is it perhaps because they don’t? That when people ask them if they need help and they say no, they’re in fact being passive-aggressive or a little bit insane, hoping that the person will help them anyway?

Like those women when their guy asks them what’s wrong, answer: Well if you don’t know what it is I’m not going to tell you!

I don’t go into people’s offices, sit on their laps and try to help them with their chartered accountancy, do I? No. Especially if they have specifically told me three or four times not to.

So next time you come to my Sichuan Back Garden Gaff Bash, don’t try to help. Stay out of the kitchen and do your job which is stuffing your face.

Now for the recipe of Gan Bian Tudou Si (Dry-fried potato slivers)
Take a good sized potato, peel and cut into very fine slivers. Press with towel to get as much water out as possible.

Heat peanut oil in wok or skillet. Sprinkle with salt and Sichuan peppercorns. medium heat. Chuck in the slivers and press down with a spatula so they form a pancake.

When the underside is golden/brown, turn and fry until outer sides are crispy and underside brown. Put on serving plate and sprinkle with chili powder and chopped spring onions.

So easy even whitey can do it!

Tiles Are The New Black

For weeks I’ve been noticing, while “vigorously walking my dog” from Pui O to Mui Wo, that work has been going on to turn the previously dark brown, timber-made pavilion on top of Lam Saan into a tiled concrete monster, Tuen Mun style.

Yes, I know. Wood: (from rainforest) Bad! Concrete and tiles: Good! Surely the powers that be had a reason for turning something reasonably beautiful into something screamingly ugly, as they always do.

Although the old pavilion, made from non-renewable and politically incorrect material though it was, looked pretty good and blended in well with the over-all environment: trees, I was sure that there had to be a good reason behind suddenly changing it into a fright-fest seldom seen outside downtown Kowloon…

Imagine, therefore, my mild surprise when yesterday I decided to walk in the complete opposite direction to that of Mui Wo, namely toward Cheung Sha, to see the exact same work thing being carried out on the identical wooden pavilion near that fabled beach!

Some workmen were milling around carrying things, so I asked them what the purpose of turning a dark wood, blend-in with the environment-looking pavilion into a concrete-tiled monster eyesore worthy of the worst of government inner-city lack of planning, could possibly be.

“Oh, it was old and leaking. Broken, in fact.”

Oh really? The last time I saw it (about three weeks before) it was brimming with health, looking every inch the sturdy, rainforest-stolen wooden structure it was, not letting a drop of water in.

“No, broken. And anyway, no good.”

So what about the other identical pavilion, the one at Lam Saan?

“Yes, we’ve been told to replace them all. They all got broken at the same time.”

So what did you do with the wood?

“He, he.”

A remarkable coincidence? Yes! The government has in their (its) infinite wisdom foreseen that all the wooden pavilions in Hong Kong’s country parks, made of the best and hardest wood imaginable, are now leaking and not fit for human usage.

These dubious structures, thank god I never sat under them at the peak of their water-leaking danger, have now been replaced with something looking suspiciously like the key features of Hong Kong’s every new town.

Who says that just because you live in the fabled green lung of Hong Kong , otherwise known as Lantau Island, you shouldn’t enjoy the aesthetic benefits of living in Mong Kok or Tuen Mun?

Tiles are the new black. All new village houses under construction are covered in them, as well as wrought railings, faux columns and Disney cake-icing style decorations. Yes! We are firmly ensconced in the bosom of the motherland and the mainland is now well and truly established in Hong Kong. Or vice versa.

The Truth About South China Morning Post

A couple of days ago, in the middle of reading yet another dreary SCMP article about boring old Edison-boy and his many consorts, I found the truth about SCMP at last.

It is written entirely in Chinese and then translated by computer, just like those pirated DVDs some people buy in Shenzhen. You know, those films where when the actor says “Frank, come here!” the subtitles read: “Across come, law orchid can!”

Now the SCMP has thrown itself on the compu-translating bandwaggon. Or how else would you explain that, when Edison says he hopes the public will “give him a chance”, it’s translated as “offer him an opportunity”?

Downsizing, downsizing. It really works. Now I have to spend HK$ 95 every Tuesday to buy The Sunday Times, because I hunger so to see some sentences in a newspaper that don’t look as if they’re put together by chimps – and, of course, the computer translation machine.

Again With The Edison!

Is anybody else tired of reading (and writing) about the sexual exploits of a not very talented man named after a lightbulb?

Hong Kong’s English language South China Morning Post, priding itself on being more highbrow than the Chinese newspapers, writes about this tired story on the first page every day; mostly, it seems, to comment on how obsessed other newspapers are with the “scandal.”

Me, I’m wondering why Hong Kong people have this obsession with using surnames as a first name. Mandela Wong, Einstein Leung and, yes, Edison Chen, is the order of the day here.

I know they probably think that some of the greatness of the scientists, matemathicians and what have you will rub off on them (I still haven’t come over someone named Shakespeare Cheung) but really? You never meet any Europeans called Edison Hanson or Johnson Thomson, do you?

The best “surname as first name” I’ve ever come across was in IKEA in Causeway Bay. The surly, dumpy, spotty checkout-girl with greasy hair who unenthusiastically served me when I wanted to pump another few dollars into the swedish economy, bore the name tag SMITH.

But back to Edison. What’s with the saying sorry? Excuse the pun but what the fuck’s he done? So he likes to see his own scrotum in extreme close-up. What’s wrong with that? It certainly looks better than his face.

I would really have respected him if he’d immediately called a press conference saying: Yes I filmed myself in bed with … some people whose names I’ve forgotten. Do you have a problem with that?

And as for the writhing bints, if they’d given interviews saying: “Yes we did it with Edison. It wasn’t much because he was too busy checking his hair, but hey, we’re on TV innit! You have a problem with that?” I would have applauded them.

As it is I despair to live in a town where adults have to apologise to the public for having had sex in the tasteless comfort of their own homes.

But I think old Thomas Alva will be proud knowing that somewhere there’s a man who’s named himself Edison, and who has made the ultimate sacrifice to atone for the sin of following his biological urges: Leaving the Hong Kong entertainment industry forever.

New Face Of Communism

Hello what’s this? I found it in Guangzhou, on the wall of some government department or other.
I’m just wondering: Is this the new face of communism – a hammer and sickle wrapped in something looking suspiciously like a … heart, to show how caring and sharing the Party has become, for example by letting a journalist out of jail after three years instead of five, although he’d been spying for Taiwan?

Or is it just national AIDS day with Chinese characteristics? I’m riveted!

Ghastly Defeat

Forget about the new year storms in China and the lives and billions of yuan lost. Forget about the not very handsome Edison Chen and the way he lures women who have promised to stay chaste before marriage into his bed by means of a gigantic teddy bear (or similar toy. but gigantic.)

No, I have more pressing concerns, namely the terrible choice I have to make every morning: Should I or shouldn’t I wear tights under my trousers?

Tights – in Hong Kong! What a defeat. I thought tights under trousers belonged firmly in the freezing hellhole of Norway category, but now I find myself wearing the same kind of clothes in Hong Kong in 9 degrees as I did in Norway in minus nine degrees.

Can any mathematician, physician or other pedant please explain? And no, it’s not the humidity. My hometown, Trondhjem (home of the moustache) is as damp as a beggar’s dishcloth (as “they” say.)

Tights! The scourge of, well, most things.

Not only do they make you look hideously fat the way they bulge out here and there, as well as make the trousers cling to them in an unbecoming fashion, but because they are made of tiny little metal (or something) threads, they create static electricity.

Thus not only does my hair stand up after any decent length walk, but every time I touch something vaguely connected with metal or electricity (like an escalator railing) I get a not insubstantial electric shock.

Damn you, the law of physics! (Or is it chemistry? Whatever it is – I hate the sciences!!!)

Another Day of Forced Emotion (Warning! This posting contains pictures of a lewd nature not condoned by the Royal Communist HK Police Force)

The poor things are at it again.
Thousands if not millions of put-upon Hong Kong guys trudging aimlessly around Central clutching the requisite flowers, (show your girlfriend you love her in a completely new and creative way: By propping up Hong Kong’s Useless and Tacky Gifts industry and leaving yet another huge and indelible carbon footprint! Yee-ha!) showing off the fact that they can afford to spend $1000 on something that actually costs $15.

Another victory for lemmings.
Another opportunity for shopping malls to cover their shop windows in useless crap; a couple of weeks ago all red and gold, now pink. There’s no need to rant on about how ridiculous Valentine’s day is and how it forces poor mugs to part with even more of their hard earned cash to satisfy the three or four geezers who own Hong Kong.

No, I want to draw your attention to an interesting little aspect of the other big seller of the day apart from imported flowers (apparently the militia had to be called in to guard the export of roses from Kenya) – chocolate.

What better way to tell your girlfriend you love her than making her fat and setting her up for a heart attack and diabetes? And what chocolate could be better than the one I found in the over-priced, packed to the rafters City Super, (Hong Kong people are so brand conscious that they are willing to pay four times the price of a normal household product just to be able to carry it home in the feted City Super bag) called
“romance chocolate:”

Romantic, wouldn’t you say? I mean, what woman wouldn’t get all warm, fuzzy and in the mood by watching other women undress?

Don’t get me wrong; I have nothing against porn. Many of my closest relatives are porn stars. Still, although chocolate is supposed to be wildly erotic, as a heterosexual woman I kind of think the wrappers take away most of the joy eating a $150 piece of chocolate, if any, I would have felt.

Yeah yeah, sour grapes. Yes, nobody bought me one rose wrapped in so much paper a street sleeper could have lived under it for years, nor any chocolate costing the monthly budget of a Hong Kong family. But if anyone should attempt such a thing, what’s wrong with March 23rd? June 7th? October 17th?

Or just any day of the year, as long as it wasn’t dictated by cynical, money-grubbing, faux emotion-inducing HK industrialists that he should do so?

China Drool (Beautiful Dudes … XI?)

Ah, the China Drool! That series (world) has been dormant for far too long. I see beautiful dudes everywhere, especially on my forays into the motherland, but by the time I get my camera out they’ve gone, or I hesitate too long thinking: “Are you really blogworthy?”

But then I had a look through my archive ( a file named Beautiful Dudes as it happens) and re-found this, a man surnamed Li whom I made come out of a hairdressing salon in Ningxia province where he was doing cool and happening things to the hair of another dude, so I could ask for directions.

But ha ha, I already knew where the place was so didn’t need directions at all! Crafty, eh? But when he obligingly hopped out, I found him so devastatingly beautiful and with such a sonorous voice, that I could hardly drool, let alone speak.

So instead of asking him out for a beer I just melted down the road, kicking myself with weak limbs. Another day in paradise.

De Gustibus Non Est Disputandum

That’s right, I speak Latin like a native of Latin America, in our friend George W’s memorable words. Or was it his soulmate, what’s his name again, the guy who couldn’t spell “potato”?

Anyway, I think the old Romans were wrong when they said “Taste is not debatable.” It so is! Namely: There’s good taste and bad taste and good taste is beautiful and bad taste is ugly and that’s definite.

Take this dress for example. Who in the innermost blackened-down hell came up with this design? I found it in a shop window in Shenzhen (yes! it’s for sale!) and when I stopped laughing enough to be able to hold the camera, a shop assistant came running out shouting not to take photos. She evidently thought I was engaged in industrial espionage or something, stealing the design to make my own dress out of cardboard and old beercans, making shitloads of money.

But I mean, who would wear such a thing?
People with bad taste, that’s who.

I’ve just come back from another foray into the hinterland of Guangdong province, and as with most of China, bad taste rules the roost big time. Formerly the most beautiful country in the world, China has in an astonishingly short period of time become if not the ugliest, so at least right up there in the top five. (Don’t know which ones the others are as I only travel to China these days, but I’m sure there must be other countries having succeeded in razing everything beautiful and interesting to the ground and replacing it with soullessness, dullness and excruciating bad taste the way China has.)

When Mao stood on that balcony in 1949 saying the Chinese people had stood up and that he wanted to see a forest of factory chimneys in the middle of Beijing, he set in motion a relentless drive towards bad taste put into system which today has more or less reached its goal.

Now even the villages of China all look the same, with garishly tiled monster houses, wrought iron railings, fake “grecian” columns and gardens complete with statues of Napoleon on his horse and writhing nymphs.

The Chinese have taken the worst aspects of European culture (think faux Louis XIV with a generous dash of Liberace and welded plastic chairs – Las Vegas with Chinese characteristics in fact) and resold it as the epitome of taste.

The result is a whole country, instead of embracing the beauty of this house

or this house

go all out to live in this house

Yeah yeah, so people don’t want to live in hovels, fair enough. But what about picturesque? What about gentrification? What about gutting the interior of a house and modernising it, keeping the general unique layout of a village and town?

It’s the same in Hong Kong. Raze entire neighbourhoods to the ground and fill them with one ghastly 400 storey mirror-encrusted monument to the wealth of Li Ka-shing, is the order of the day. Soon there will be nothing left of anything that makes China and Hong Kong unique, and bad taste will truly have won. And because everyone will by then have been brainwashed into thinking it’s actually good taste, it will be good taste. And everyone will be wearing that dress, being complimented on it.

Kill Christmas!

I’ll risk antagonising the two readers of this blog by saying: Hong Kong has too many holidays!!!

I mean – now that Christmas is finally over (although you wouldn’t think so with all the “Xmas” decorations still knocking about) and the 2008 celebrations well and truly in the box, along comes another new year hot on the heels of the last one.

As soon as Chinese New Year, the decorations for which started appearing in early January, is over, bugger me if we won’t have Easter, another Christian/pagan holiday, to contend with.
Then it’s Ching Ming, the grave-sweeping extravaganza, and after that the sacred celebrations for the return of Hong Kong to the Motherland; and before you know it, it’s October 1st again and time to prostrate oneself in front of the Great Hall of The People (to which The People have no access) to celebrate that most important event in the history of the world: The Communist revolution.

Where will it end? Now that the British have buggered off and the people of Hong Kong (Li Ka Shing) are masters of their own house in the memorable words of former Beijing puppet Tung Chee-hwa, isn’t it time we did away with the Christianity-based holidays here in Hong Kong?

Yes, yes, I know: Every expat on a salary with or without perks like free housing, schooling and so many trips “home” a year, welcomes each little opportunity to take a week off. One week for Christmas if not two, one week for CNY, one for Easter … the list goes on.

But how about us poor self-employed bastards? Now that one or two weeks of every month are dedicated to our clients buggering off, how will we live? Eh? And Easter – don’t get me started! What a ludicrous holiday. Celebrate Jesus’ death?

If Jesus was born on the same day every year, how come he died on completely different days – last year it was some time in April, this year in bloody March?!?

One thing is that my income and work routine suffer major upsets almost every month. But do we really need the entire city covered in awful Christmas decorations ( I seem to remember a giant pumpkin carriage complete with blinking deer in IFC in the Christmas of 2006) shortly followed by every MTR station, shopping mall and restaurant groaning under empty lai see packets and other paraphernalia, the decorations changing every year. I presume the old ones end up in landfills.

The waste! The expenditure on special lights, buildings festooned with 2 million lightbulb decorations, the fireworks… I’m sure the Christian and Chinese decorations in HK alone take up 20% of the global total in waste of electricity alone.

It’s time HK set an example for the world in saving, not spending. Get rid of the bloody holidays, save heaps of money and carbon footprints and let people have an undisturbed week of work a couple of times a year at least.

Well, I’m off to China to freeze my arse off hitchhiking around Guangdong province. Snow or no snow, at least I won’t have to hand out lai see packets to spoilt little shits who have too much money anyway.