Beautiful Fruit

I have grown so fond of cabbage of late.

No, not because of the roughage, you understand; I get that from eating gravel. No, I love cabbage for purely aesthetic reasons, something about the way it looks in a certain light, in the afternoon light on a Chinese train.

There they were, the old cabbages, just lying around waiting to be consumed by the ungrateful.

And I thought: When the last beautiful building in China has gone to the great olympic scrap heap in the sky; when the millions of eight-lane highways criss-crossing the country have been filled bumper to bumper (we hate America but worship on the altar of the American dream: Two cars for each man)  I always have this to fall back on: Photographing beautiful vegetable matter imported from China’s new buddy Africa, since all her (China’s) vegetable fields will have been concreted over.

A strangely comforting thought.

Mayday! Mayday! Work Ahoy!

Happy 1st of May, the International Workers’ Day.

Now that Hong Kong is communist with some social skills, I mean some psychopathic tendencies, no I’ll say that again, communist with decidedly un-communist characteristics, we of course, like the rest of the world,  celebrate this momentous day by not going to work.

In fact, the only people working in Hong Kong today, are workers!

Is that irony, a strange twist of fate, or merely, as I have learnt from The Donald is the correct response to tricky questions, chuckleworthy?

Oh, the bowtied one has been such a mentor to me, sadly without him knowing it. I’m sure there are hundreds if not thousands of people all over Hong Kong, not to say the world, who owe their whole careers and outlook on life to Don.

Husband holding up another man’s socks, stinking of cheap perfume, demanding to know how they got into the toaster?   Chuckle and walk away.

Flat filling up with gas fumes and family members starting to drop like flies?  Say a government survey has showed that the flat’s indoor air quality is in fact better than that of many mainland sewers and mines.

Living under a Wanchai flyover with only a six month old copy of SCMP for cover, your meagre income from begging being stolen by triads and fake buddhist monks every day?    Set up a committee to see if this is in fact happening. Then say it isn’t.

Happy 1st of May!

 

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!!!!!!!!!!