The CCP is keeping Hong Kong officials busy. The local administration will now require non-civil servant staff to sign a loyalty oath (meaning they can be fired for attending protests, voicing wrong thoughts, or being reported to the NatSec Police hotline). And it is suspending operations at its office in Taiwan, amid whiny accusations that Renegade Province has interfered in Hong Kong affairs blah blah by setting up ‘so-called’ things.
HK Post is issuing a special set of stamps to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the CCP. It will be interesting (ie stomach-churning) to see how much of Beijing’s overblown and even gory Red revolutionary centenary rhetoric seeps into Hong Kong official communication in the run-up to July 23. (The stamp blurb says ‘the 56 beams radiating from the logo signify the CPC’s endeavour of striving for advancement that shines all over the country’. They actually represent the PRC’s officially recognized ethnic groups.)
Maybe HK Post should have asked a kid. A school apparently asks its students to complete a questionnaire (update: deleted) asking them to rate every aspect of their own blind patriotism on a scale of 1 to 5. (Not the first time.) Details are murky, but it looks like the school wants to pre-emptively present authorities with a glowing report of how loyal its kids are to the motherland, to avoid suspicions to the contrary. There are good reasons for principals to do this.
Which brings us to middle-class flight to the (UK) suburbs. In his Escape the Commies series, Bob’s Your Uncle checks out UK residential areas being pushed in real-estate ads in Hong Kong media. In this episode, we visit a swampy place in East London called Thamesmead – which seems to be a sort of Tin Shui Wai, but with high crime, no mass transit and a sewage plant.
Kevin Carrico looks at the latest NatSec Regime developments…
…we can see that the “small handful of people” Carrie Lam told us would be affected by the National Security Law … expanding to literally hundreds of thousands who have attended the Tiananmen Massacre vigil in Victoria Park over the years.
Speaking of small handfuls, Frederic Choi was recently caught patronizing an unlicensed massage parlor.
Also in the ‘small handfuls’ department: Nury Vittachi’s latest project. An attempt to ‘tell the other side of the story’ through content too earnestly vapid to count as propaganda. Two items, on rents and 2047 (error-filled), seem curiously angled at puffing up property prices. Then there’s a warning for white guys that ‘while East Asian women may look younger for longer, by the time they have reached retirement age, their age advantage disappears’. Can’t help wondering who the site’s donors are. Worth a read in emergencies when you can’t get hold of Mogadon.
Back at a real news site – HKFP has an interesting contribution from a Civil Aid Services worker ‘telling the other side of the story’ about conditions at Penny’s Bay quarantine centre.
Latest from Art Basel HK: seditious exhibits on display, if you look carefully.
And a rare plug for a restaurant: Africa Coffee & Tea, on the 15th floor of a Wong Chuk Hang commercial block. Clearly a popular and not-very-quiet drinking place for local office workers, but the piri-piri chicken, lamb curry and other East African food is seriously good.
suddenly i have a hankering for chicken in East London.
Some “unpatriotic” people may decide that boyctotting the new propaganda stamps would be a good way to express displeasure with the Party’s actions in Hong Kong. If so, it will be interesting to see how the government paints not buying stamps as an offence againstc national security.
I don’t really understand the point of the Civil Aid Services worker to the HKFP, it just reads as:
1) Criticism is unfair (because?)
2) Thank you government
3) Sure there were teething problems (in February?) but thanks to higher ups they’re also solved except for those that are not (in May?)
4) It could be worse, think about refugee camps in Darfur
@Casira
Stop making sense.
#92. In order to protect the employment situation in China, we should buy products made in China.
Tell THAT to all the “heavyweights”, “tycoons”, LegCo members, civil servants, cops, establishment political party heads and other assorted ass lickers in HK. Would LOVE to see public shaming by social media of motor vehicles owned by the above mentioned being posted on a daily basis driven on roads, legally parked, illegally parked, at a brothel, ad nauseam.
Ref Thamesmead. According to Wiki:
“In October 2014, 25 year-old Olamide “Trigger” Fasina was stabbed to death on Wolvercote Road.”
But that could happen anywhere in the UK. If I knew that there was going to be an influx of HK Chinese into the area I’d buy there.
I note that the school questionnaire has disappeared. I saw this on Friday, courtesy of Old China Bland, and the tweet has been deleted.
Can’t bring myself to trawl through the Vile Vittachi’s latest reinvention of himself. But HK’s least funniest “humorist” has recently moved into another house, so him publishing spiels related property values would compute. Must be a nice little earner alongside his tours of schools to recite his other literary gems; the reptilian tw*t
Thamesmead is in the landing path for London City airport… should be good for those missing the CLK days?
*Kai Tak… Monday brain fog
HKJC Irregular – I believe his ESF teacher wife has reached retirement age, so there goes the housing allowance.
I find Bob’s translation of “chavs” is particularly inspired; he calls them “Mong Kok boys”. The bleached-haired, heavily tattooed, garishly dressed denizens of Mong Kok are probably the closest cultural analogue Hong Kong has to chavs, but in the end, are still much less likely to stab you.
RTHK’s report of the commemorative stamps noted that they “display the anniversary’s official logo printed in simplified Chinese”.