Old colonial Hong Kong and t-shirts

Today I spent four hours walking around the older parts of Sheung Wan, Central, and Soho, finishing in the Ling Heung tea house. A nice treat.

I notice more and more the beggars, the young people with profound disabilities, the young with Downs Syndrome who are being led around by brother or sister, and the men and women in their forties who have suffered a stroke; they walk delicately with walking stick, with one side of the face and body melting to the ground in a sad smile.

You also notice the inappropriate English proudly out front across the breasts or chest. Not quite Chinglish. But nearly.

Hand up my hand

Room up my room;

ARMY: Fingercroxx;

10 finger girl;

Nothing lose, nothing gain;

Sunshine happy day;

Smile happy day.

And the mature women wearing the bright pink Disney Ariel t-shirt. Shanghai is now asking all people not to wear pyjamas while outside on the street.

In the older part of Hong Kong Central -- Sheung Wan, Central and Soho -- the older markets will be gone in a few years. Old tea shops, shops selling stamps carved in stone, locksmiths, metallurgy shops, fresh wrapped hairy crab. And fruit and vegetables, with small restaurants offering meals of every style. Wonderful and fragrant. There are a good number of growing artist's venues in the Soho area. Very chic, with wine and cheese shops too. Imagine enjoying a runny Pont l'Avec with a fragrant white from Saint Emilion in Central, Hong Kong. Globalisation at its best.

Two images today. The two German students are enjoying a look at the fresh vegetables in the street market in Sheung Wan. And the second: sui mei, har gau, fresh shrimp with a quail egg, and pork liver. And strong cups of pu'er hong cha. At the Ling Heung tea house in Wellington Street, Central, Hong Kong, this is an extraordinary way to finish the historical walk of older central Hong Kong.

two lovers kissing

There's something delightful in a bowl of comfort food - a cassoulet from Carcossonne, the irish stew from a mum or grandmother, or the bowl of zhou, 粥. We call it congee. I found a small place in Tsim Sha Tsui, called Chui Fat, where the zhou is sublime. Thin slices of ginger lie at the bottom, sliced shallots on the top, hardy pork balls and a small sliced fish in a salted dish. Wonderful. And it's next to a comprehensive English book store, Swindon in Lock Road, Tsim Sha Tsui. Where I picked up a good copy of Geremie Barme's, In The Red: On Contemporary Chinese Culture.

I'm contemplating going back again, for the zhou that is.

These lines are from Paul Weller in about 1971. They are in response to the young Hong Kong students, who at 20 years, still all dress in pink t-shirts and try to march in unison to cheesy songs with their hands in the Lou Reed, I Wish I Was A Sailor, And Lived A Thousand Years Ago, salute.

Two lovers kissing amongst the screams of midnight,

Two lovers missing the tranquility of solitude.

Get in the cab man, travelling on buses.

We don't care about slashed seats on buses,

I say,

That's Entertainment.

The two young guys were circumspect but they had style in Festival Walk, Kowloon Tong.

不听我的，看

Festival lanterns

Yuanxiaojie, Lantern Festival, falls on the first full moon of the lunar month [22 September]. Families and children visit a park to hold lighted lanterns and view the lanterns on display, and answer lantern riddles written on the lanterns.

Many of the children held plastic lanterns in the shape of the car from Toy Story, or the little battery powered lady beetle, with flapping wings. The lanterns on display are elaborate and complex, weith rotating internal designs of tigers, and figures from Chinese history. The acrobatic troupe from Hebei province put on a classic acrobatic and flexibility display in the main park at Tin Hua, Victoria Park. Also the boys from the juggling school, showed off their improvision of switching hats as the Marx brothers did in their classic films.

These two shy festival goers had lanterns like an octopus. With their Dad they were quite boisterous and fun, then I asked to photograph them.

The round glutinous moon cakes, yuanxiao, are wonderfully sweet and filled with duck egg yolk. They are quite filling, haochi, delicious.

Followed by a brief meal of octopus, dried shrimp, garlic chives, cashews, and choy sum. With the obligatory Hanjing, the premium Beer of all China. Or so the label says. And who am I to argue.

This poem is titled, Parting at a wine shop in nanjing, by Li Bai.

A wind, bringing the willow-cotton, sweetens the shop,

And a girl from Wu, pouring wine, urges me to share

With my comrades of the city who are here to see me off;

And as each of them drains his cup, I say to him in parting,

Oh, go and ask this river running to the east

If it can travel farther than a friend's love!

Comrades and village life

I've been brushing up on the ideologies swirling through Mao Zedong's life at the time of the Cultural Revolution in China - 1966-1976.

Life was miserable, nasty and cheap for millions in all stratas of the Chinese life during the years. At one stage all staff members, more than 2,000 people, were sent to the provinces of Jiangxi or Hunan for remoulding their cultural ideology. Or when you had the Premier and Vice Premier of the State labelled as "revisionist" and they needed to publicly apologise for they did not understand the intricacies of cultural revolution. These moves paralysed China's foreign affairs and embassies abroad.

It made for a decade of unwholesome public madness that enveloped entire communities, villages and towns. To also understand the times, you could look at Red Scarf Girl by Ji-Li Jiang. It's an interesting look at how people who go through extraordinary communal madness adjust to life after the subsidence.

Today I discovered a Marxist writer, Michael Hardt. He quotes Herman Melville, Frances Bacon, and Joseph Conrad in his tale of Empire. And Coetzee. He's also a fine and easily read writer. Very rare in philosophers on Marxism and national identity and empire.

Today's image is from the garden joining the old campus in hong Kong's Baptist University and the basketball courts.

Marriage, milk tea, and John Donne

Studies of families in Boading show that after 30 years of socialist principles in societal planning and structuring family life through acts such as the Marriage Law and the dissolution of ownership of property, the family structure was of better quality for people aged 50 and above than for their counterparts in Taiwan.
Taiwan broke away from China and pursued a more capitalist form of society. In measures of family networking, contact with children and extended family members, men and women aged 50 and above rated their satisfaction higher in all categories than those people in Taiwan.
All of those surveyed in Boading, a city of about 600,000 near Beijing, would have had their families before the introduction of the One Child policy in 1979. The survey was conducted in 1994.
The sociologists who conducted the survey now wish to survey again following the imposition of people who have been subject to the One Child policy and the move towards more capitalist approaches and the ownership of property and business enterprises.
Anyway Hong Kong is also an interesting case where the British colonial structures that were imposed since the 1860s have greatly influenced society and people's expectations. I only wish they could get a good cup of tea right, Twinings' Russian Caravan, with milk and a good sugar. Very hot. A Hong Kong Style Milk Tea is just not right. Neither is the Thick White Toast liberally doused with Peanut Butter and then criss-crossed with
sticky sweet Condensed Milk. Something is gang aft agley.
This is from John Donne, from nearly 400 years ago. it is good to hear again. Read the whole work aloud to someone. It's a good tale.
The Sonne Rising

She is all States, and all Princes, I,

Nothing else is.

Princes doe but play us; compar'd to this,

All honor's mimique; All wealth alchimie.

Thou sunne art halfe as happy'as wee,

In that the world's contracted thus;

Thine age askes ease, and since thy duties bee

To warme the worlde, that's done in warming us.

Shine here to us, and thou art every where;

This bed thy center is, these walls, thy spheare.

Vacuum packed sports shoes

This morning I saw Frozen, a US film by Kevin Green. three students scam a free ride on an uphil chair lift inthe ski resort and are then left on the lift [which closes down for five days before the next weekend]. It's a well-paced story of how things can go wrong and the wrong decisions that will affect you later in your life.

Then on to lunch at the popular Tai Hing Everyday restaurant in Mong Kok. The lunch was pork shin, goose, and soy chicken with rice and the ever popular bok choy. The ubiqituous Hong Kong Style Milk tea is a nice reminder that the English "adminstered' the territory for nearly 155 years. Three pictures today. One of the plastic vacuum packed sports shoes on display, one of the Mong Kok railway station and another of the mackerel at Genfuku, in Kowloon Tong.

9/11 is Nat's birthday. 他是我的第二个儿子。He is my second son. When he was born he was a smiley baby.

Walking home with Emmy I asked about her home town. She's from Sweden, but her parents are originally from China. She speaks English, Swedish, Vietnamese, and is studying Mandarin. 我嫉妒. I'm jealous.

I haven't heard any news from the US on 9/11.

Shellfish and Asahi

Today was a full day -- two hours of Mandarin, two hours of China and Politics, and an hour of Understanding Mainland China and Hong Kong. Also time spent in the library with other students who will presenting on the ideologies of China and nationalism and how these have influenced China's foreign policy.

I'm going to have a quick Japanese meal and an Asahi before retiring. Although not on campus as the univeristy is dry ground.

I also spoke with my second son, Nat. He's deliberating over whether to spend time in Finland or Sweden on an international exchange. A real dilemma.

Two pictures today - one of me with the Soong Hall students. I don't think I stand out that much. I didn't wear the yellow shirt. And one of shellfish and slowly drowning scampi at the Night Markets in Temple Street. Despite the fragrant surrounds, the shellfish is fresh and the dishes are quite flavoursome. The beer, Yanjing, the Premium Draft Beer of China, has a light flavour of hops. Not bitter at all.

And then it's to bed. To be woken at about 2am by the returning domestic students. And my 10th floor mosquitos. I'll buy the repellant tomorrow.

This is from ee cummings. an American poet.

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows

higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

He never used a capital. Like Cormac McCarthy doesn't use quote marks.