Starry Lee as spectator sport

More fun to watch than badminton: pro-Beijing ‘politician’ Starry Lee backtracks on her previous criticism of colleague Nicholas ‘Diu Lei Lo’ Muk, who freaked out about a black-shirted – thus evil, unpatriotic – member of the Hong Kong Olympic team.

If anyone thought for a brief moment that the Olympics might heal the rift between the Hong Kong people and the pro-Beijing camps/government, they can relax.

Starry originally distanced herself from Muk’s embarrassing outburst when a public backlash accused Muk of putting the athlete off his game. Now she reverses her stance after ultra-loyalist pro-CCP knuckle-draggers attack her. Meanwhile, police (paid by your taxes) are examining video footage of people at APM Mall allegedly failing to respect the national anthem during the screening of fencer Cheung Ka-long’s gold-medal ceremony. 

Some weekend links…

Bloomberg op-ed on Hong Kong’s Olympics effect

For a few short days, it has been socially and politically acceptable once again to celebrate Hong Kong’s separate identity as part of the People’s Republic. 

HKFP on the weakening of Hong Kong’s civil society under the NatSec regime.

A long ProPublica story on Beijing’s Operation Fox Hunt, pursuing and intimidating fugitives anywhere in the world.

In the ‘it could be worse’ department, North Korea soldiers are mugging civilians for food. (Apparently not a new problem, but it’s getting worse – even after the country has shortened military service from 13 years to a mere eight.)

Your handy, illustrated guide to Xi Jinping Thought Research Centres.

The photos of Xinjiang that Kodak deleted.

I’ve noticed it, but never realized what it was: ‘Prison Gothic’ – the wonky hand-painted/stencilled Chinese characters found on older Hong Kong road signs.

For politico-historical-urban geography fans, Hong Kong, China: The Border as Palimpsest (cool title or what?) from the Made in China Journal. If you like that, you’ll probably also enjoy Embodied Borders: The Sino-British Maritime Frontier, 1950–1957 in the same publication. Indeed, geeky types who use words like ‘liminal’ will be in heaven reading Made in China Journal’s numerous articles on this broad theme – Narrating Mobility as an Achievement on the Shenzhen–Hong Kong Border (about the various travel-permit arrangements across the ‘boundary’); Border at the Centre of Myth: Fishing Village, Caiwuwei, Shenzhen (about the SEZ’s independent urban villages); Politically Correct Masks: Navigating the China Hong Kong Border During COVID-19; and The Enduring Importance of Space Within a Virtual Border: The Hong Kong Stock Exchange’s Trading Hall (about the trading hall, no less). 

Also on history: another interesting illustrated thread. Were Romans in Gansu 2,000 years ago? And did modern-day local governments use horribly tacky ways to claim they did in order to promote tourism? The answers won’t surprise you.

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8 Responses to Starry Lee as spectator sport

  1. Chinese Netizen says:

    And they still say politics have no place in the Olympics. Hahahahaha!!!!

  2. Low Profile says:

    Funny how third-rate politicians like Starry Lee and media morons like Piers Morgan, who couldn’t even win a bronze medal in logical thinking, think they are qualified to tell elite athletes how they should think and feel.

  3. A Poor Man says:

    9 years for Tong Ying-Kit. What punishment did the po po who drove his motorcycle into a crowd during a protest get? A reprimand?

    Anthea Pang sounds like an unpleasant medical condition.

  4. Quentin Quarantino says:

    9 years. This has nothing to do with justice of any kind. It is almost like Uncle Luo and his fellow boneheads insist on creating an underground resistance of angry young people. What that will entail one can only guess.

  5. Low Profile says:

    I am thinking you should change “little by little” in your blog heading to “giant step by giant step”.

  6. Knownot says:

    The Word

    My questing finger hovers. Do I dare
    To type the dangerous word that’s lurking there?
    I do. “Hiberate Hong Kong.”
    Alas, wrong.

    Again my finger hovers. Dare I press
    The key and type the marvellous word? Yes.
    I dare. “Jiberate Hong Kong.”
    Alas, wrong.

    My finger trembles. I wait a bit and then
    I try to type the poisonous word again.
    I try. “Kiberate Hong Kong.”
    Alas, wrong.

    My finger hesitates, as if in fear,
    And will not let the glorious word appear.
    Can’t we use a word we used before?
    Alas, no more.

  7. Mary Melville says:

    At least we will not be burdened with any further tiresome proclamations that the HK government has autonomy in local affairs. The announcement that the Education Bureau will sever all ties with the teacher’s union only hours after a vituperative article in the mainland media has blown that myth out of the water.

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