While Hong Kong waits to see which impossible/unthinkable/grotesque Chief Executive option Beijing goes for, the city enjoys a little diversion in the form of incumbent Donald Tsang’s newly revealed habit of hitching rides from the region’s high net-worth, if low-class, individuals. Touchingly, Donald laments how dwelling on this story is stopping us from focusing on the economy and the aging society – those riveting subjects we just can’t wait to get back to. And, as if detailed plans of Henry Tang’s basement haven’t satisfied our architectural voyeurism for the month, we also get a peek at Sir Bow-Tie’s luxury Shenzhen retirement pad.
It would be a great pity if we ended up remembering the police sergeant’s son who rose to CE and attended Catholic mass every morning as a petit-bourgeois social climber who fell in with a bunch of toothpick-sucking, cognac-swigging nouveau-riche Mainland property shysters. It’s not just the tawdry, peasant-evicting, asset-bubble-dependent business his new friends are in. It’s not simply the tackiness of the transport (private jets are passé; Nina Wang’s lothario Tony Chan had one, for heaven’s sake). No, it’s the destinations Sir Bow-Tie chooses. I mean – Phuket? Eww, please… Why not Dubai, while you’re at it? Next it will be the Maldives, the favourite characterless non-place of the mindless moneyed.
As for Donald’s apartment in Shenzhen, some people are going to be fascinated by the apparently cheap rental, while others will try stirring up trouble over the (allegedly) unauthorized bear-bile farm on the top floor. What intrigues me is the ginormous ‘wardrobe’, best considered in comparison with the size of the maids’ bedrooms. 
My rough guesstimate is that the elves each have about 9ft by 5ft, which is fine; they are no doubt small of frame and, with a 6,500sq ft home to clean, won’t need even that. But the bow-tie collection gets around five times as much space. No wonder they couldn’t squeeze a wine cellar or Japanese bath into the place.
Will Donald and Selena be bringing their Filipinos with them whenever they go to Shenzhen? We must hope so. It’s such an authentic Hong Kong middle-class thing to do, and it would make up for the hideous travel-related lapses in judgment and taste. Phuket and Gulfstreams, indeed.
Meanwhile…
I wonder how many HK’ers will wake up this morning asking questions about how far $12 million would go in HK in buying a property when compared to the bang Don is getting from the same bucks in purchasing his stately pleasure dome.
It’s always a shock for people who have lived rent-free most of their adult lives to have to get out into the real world and confront the hideous housing market they have created.
Even more traumatic is breathing the air of all the detritus of all the wealth of all those tycoons…in Shenzhen, the biggest black cloud in the planet.
Spare a thought for poor benighted knights like Sir Donald and how sad they essentially are.
Retiring to Shenzhen! I’d sooner have Scunthorpe!
Leader-in-charge didn’t do squat to defend the majority of people in HK, except for his little-rich club friends. When retired leaves the very territory behind he was supposed to give a future. Nice example there, Donald, the captain leaving the sinking ship.
“Regarding the recent media reports on my personal trip to Macau at the weekend, I am deeply saddened as these reports have questioned my integrity and SUGGESTED THERE IS COLLUSION BETWEEN THE GOVERNMENT AND THE BUSINESS SECTOR ”
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
” In Britain, Prime Minister David Cameron was close to media tycoon Rupert Murdoch ”
“In the USA Bill Clinton had close relations with American billionaire and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein”.
….TSANG SAID (all quotes as per the HK Standard link in today’s Hemmers)
This is just surrealistic…..
I can just see some future CE , whoever he may be , if he is caught on a junket private jet trip to…. ( the Maldives? Pattaya ?? ) defending himself with exactly the same words, but adding:
“Our previous CE, Donald Tsang, had close personal relations with multiple-mistress/ affair monger Henry Tang, who was also his previous FS and CS and who doled out billions of dollars of freebies to the now discredited property cartels, and who even allowed his wife to build an illegal underground basement pleasure dome cellar and then refused to prosecute her when he became CE”
_________________
History repeats itself
Don the Con ……. guess you had murdoch and epstein on your mind all last weekend off the shore of Macau to come up with those nasty examples off the cuff. Was your guilty conscience troubling you? Better see your priest quick and confess to him, not to the whole of HK !
Isn’t it the governments job to focus on the economy and the aging population? If we should do it, does this mean we (the people) are the government?
You’ve always maiintained that Tang will be the next CE, so one side of you is delighted at “news” of others coming round to your view.
What Tang’s palace and Tsang’s near-slum have in common is a floorplan that reflects the power structure: perhaps the elves, in their windowless and labyrinthine domain, will be happier than the bow-ties, with their airy access and dominant view of hell on earth aka Greater HK?
My bank manager waxed ecstatic about the Maldives a quarter of a century ago, a sure sign of its impending Phuketisation.
“Tang support still growing”?
A friend this morning asked me about the slogans she and her uni classmates are preparing to make for signs (for the near inevitable demonstrations that will follow) if/when Henry gets “elected”. She had specifically told me in the past never to mention anything about politics as it bores her. Now she & her classmates want to join protest marches. How quickly things can change, let the Jasmine Tea Party Revolution begin (in a few weeks time).
There are some smart cookies in Beijing that must be wondering WTF is going on in Hong Kong.
The current situation in Hong Kong are what happens when you let the tycoons guide Hong Kong policy. They are only interested in stuffing their pockets & now the general population in HK have had enough.
No way that ‘Enry can govern now, any small problem & protesters will take to the streets.
The CCP should be worried about the future, its not looking good working with the same clowns that they relied on before.
Time for a change?
Yes yes yes, but the alternatives! Ye gods.
Come on guys, we need the Horeseman as the new CE. There will be an ongoing backlash from the incensed public with daily criticism and marches, so just imagine the budget giveaways we could expect next year.
Then we will all be able to retire in the glorious green haven of Shenzhen.
@FB3 “Time for a change?”
No chance. The PRC is cracking down on regulations for tourist visas (like its a huge threat) because they are worried about disruptions for the up-coming meetings and their own power handover later this year.
Giving any ground in HK is unlikely and I do fear what will happen when hundreds of thousands of HK’ers do take to the streets to protest Henry’s coronation.
CY Leung is no political risk for the CCP. There will be no one man one vote nivana and we can look forward to many many more years of the functionals. However, he may widen the franchise (like Patten) did all those years ago.
What I am looking forward is seeing him put the boot up the Tycoons and colluding civil servants. I am currently on a short term gig at Cyberport complete with its major residential component. This is lasting testament to what happens when you let self serving Tycoons run amok, as they have unhindered since 1997. They were hoping, under the Horse, it would continue. Wrong Horse.
This morning I was allowed sight of a document “ Clean Government – A Practical Guide for Senior Managers” issued by the ICAC in 1995. In a section entitled “Golden Rules” it states amongst other things ‘do not accept excessive amounts of entertainment from persons with whom you have official dealings’ and ‘do not accept free service if it could lead to embarrassment in performing your duties or bring the public service into disrepute.’
I wonder if the CE’s office has a copy of this document. Perhaps the ICAC could send a copy over when they have finished arresting supermarket staff for peddling milkpowder to Mainlanders.
It’s not really about private yachts is it? It’s not even about what Donald may or may not have had for breakfast, incredible as that might seem. No, I think we may be sniffing up the wrong trail.
Consider this;
1. The Donald goes to Macau without informing anyone and doesn’t put the CS in charge, so the trip was intended to be very low-key, if not ‘secret’ (and he’d have gotten away with it if it wasn’t for those meddling photographers!)
2. Whilst there, he happens to share a table with a friendly HK tycoon for a bit of informal face-time. Which tycoon?
3. Enter Charlie Ho, purveyor of death to the smoking classes and, co-incidentally, proprietor of a large media organisation.
4. That media org is the Sing Tao group, which includes the Standard, and is virulently pro-Beijing, pro establishment and pro Tang and has been busy doing a hatchet job on CY Leung at every opportunity.
Are any of these events related? Was Charlie looking for inside dirt on CY? Was the Donald asking for more poison pen work? Was it a strategy meeting? Is Charlie the real Mary Ma? Was Sing Tao the media org that asked for info on CY & Henrys’ ‘conflicts of interest’ that prompted those press releases? Will Batman escape from the jaws of death? I think we should be told
Bow ties get windows and good view of SZ ( for what it’s worth)
Seems the elves get no windows – and certainly no views
Donald my dear ( “Christian” ) man : why the F don’t you just BUY a nice place in China for your retirement , like I have done with lovely view, clean air, rivers, mountains : HK$2 Milllion for 2,000 sq feet ( or HK$12 Million for 12,000 sq feet if you really need that much space) . HL$2 Mil would buy me a shabby 2 x elf-room sized apartment at podium level in HK ( oh sorry – I didn’t read the fine print : “podium level” for one of superman Li’s new buildings means street level . Silly me. Clever Mr Li… yet again )
You know, I actually am beginning to feel good about the fact that I pay my taxes ( a LOT of taxes), obey the law, don’t throw custard pies at politicians, and and actually SUPPORT HK’s economy, instead of milking it dry. You can’t buy a clean conscience : remember that tycoons- all when you meet your Maker. And if you don’t believe God, well never mind, because history has an uncanny habit of revealing the truth… eventually.
(There was once a man who lived in HK called Harry Parkes in the mid / late 19th C. A sort of don-the-con/enery-tang of the day in the colonial administration. Quite a local hero at the time , as judged by the opium traders who were the tycoons of the day . Super collusionist / tycoon-brown-noser / big-time and loyal stooge of the British who were THE big power of the day . Guess most of you on the Big Lychee have never heard of our local lad Harry. Well neither had I until I read Julia Lovell’s most excellent “The Opium War” where Harry’s epitaph is written in tones that make hitler sound like an angel. One day, 100 years from now, don-the-con, enery, and the tycoons will get the same epitaph from a future Ms Lovell, and that epitaph will live for EVER … bit like Nero’s and other horrible people in world history )
@ So So Thirsty
Interesting theory…….. and I think I buy it
In other news: Gloria Arroyo pleads not guilty to a fraud charge!
Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
more importantly Pierce Lam was back in the paper today baiting gullible gweilos — he is a funny little man.
@Rinky Dinky
There’s nowt wrong wi’Sunny Scunny!