This week’s Not Creepy At All Award goes to Security Secretary PK Tang, who says he knows what you are thinking in your heart and (if it’s a forbidden thought) will arrest you for it.
The weird – well, one weird – part is that he is afraid you might celebrate the Double Tenth, the anniversary on October 10 of the beginning of the 1911 revolution that overthrew the Manchu Qing dynasty. That movement was led by Sun Yat-sen, a Chinese national hero for whom a museum, park, heritage trail and vaccination-cum-sports centre are named here in Hong Kong. It sounds like patriots should be encouraged to mark it, but it is (or was) the national day of the Kuomintang-run Republic of China, which was defeated by the CCP in 1949. So long as a remnant of the rival RoC state remains in Taiwan to declare it the national holiday, the CCP will consider the event glorious but refuse to acknowledge the actual date.
Now it gets really confusing. PK Tang sees celebration of the RoC national day as tantamount to supporting Taiwan ‘secession’ or independence. But to true Taiwanese, the overthrow of the Qing dynasty is something that happened in a foreign country which later colonized their island, transplanting KMT symbols like Sun Yat-sen that remain as vestiges today. October 10, like the CKS memorial, is not theirs – it’s a Chinese anniversary. If you support Taiwan independence, ignore the Double Tenth. If Tang’s cops arrest anyone, it will probably be supporters of the KMT, who are the nearest thing Beijing has to pro-unification friends in Taiwan.
Another thing about Taiwan – if you run in a primary election there, you get on TV. In Hong Kong, they put you in jail without bail. And they adjourn your case so you stay there another two months at least.
RTHK’s English-language Twitter account, the station’s last bastion of hilariously sub-subversive headlines and snark, has ceased to update.
A mish-mash of weekend reading and viewing,,,
From HKFP: how Hong Kong’s leaders have changed their tune on Tiananmen. (Part of a series on the rewriting of the past in Hong Kong.)
The ‘improved’ election system – and Beijing’s deep concern for Hong Kong people – mean that the city’s housing problems will soon end, right? But not before Sun Hung Kai release their new project in Sai Kung, including a couple of units that are 88 square feet, or about the same as two king-size beds. A couple of hundred of the other apartments are more generous – roughly the size of a parking space.
Toll-booths of the HK-Zhuhai-Macao bridge in HK, seen from space (a similarly empty place). How many Sun Hung Kai micro-flats could fit here?
Brian Hioe live-tweeted a 10-hour conference held by various tankies (Qiao Collective, Code Pink, People’s Forum) on why the US and capitalism are to blame for everything and – most of all – China is wonderful. Not sure why. But if deranged nonentities are your thing, there’s lots to read…
She’s actually claiming that traditional Chinese medicine has a 90% effective rate in treating COVID, claims this can combat the “colonization of medical knowledge” … She claims that the US “annexed the island of Formosa”…
CCP infiltration of British universities.
The Evergrande consensus forecast seems to be that Beijing will relax mortgage restrictions in order to encourage people to borrow money to buy overpriced apartments that they will leave empty. More on this, for those who like it: George Magnus on the tip of an iceberg; NPR interviews property buyers; and Anne Stevenson-Yang’s video comments from a couple of days ago in the form of quick-to-digest written words.
On out-of-area matters…
Over at Reddit there’s a Herman Cain Award for Trumpist hicks who publicly reject vaccines as the work of freedom-hating Satanic libtards – and then die of Covid. Officially, this is all in very bad taste. Unofficially…
…they have made their ICU beds. Now they can lie in them, and sadly, die in them.
British comedy actor Bernard Cribbins in amusing whodunit Dangerous Davies – The Last Detective, from 1981.
Rick Astley and a band called the Blossoms performing the Smiths’ tribute to Hong Kong’s Security Secretary, This Charming Man.
On one of my occasional inspection visits to Marks & Spencer, I find the US and UK are building on their new subs-for-Oz relationship by expanding cooperation – unwisely – into cuisine…
Rick Astley shoots up in my level of respect. Awesome cover.
Is it going to be 32C forever?
“SHKP keeps revising the General Building Plans,” it said in a text message on Thursday. “The one currently filed with the Buildings Department does not reflect the latest design.”
Translation – we have an approved plan but are still finding ways to squeeze in a few more units and will in due course be back at Town planning looking for MINOR RELAXATIONS (the most abused term in our planning lexicon) as this will resolve the ‘housing crisis’.
Meanwhile check the estate agents, there are hundreds of units for rent, but with a one bedroom unit renting for the equivalent of the medium monthly salary they are not being snapped up.
Lament
Lament in rhyme, lament in prose,
With salt ears trickling down your nose.
Turn off all your radios,
Lament your losses.
For Chiverton in silence goes
To please the bosses.
For RTHK in the past
Could speak of, cover, and broadcast
The news that happened, freely, fast
To old Hong Kong.
In new Hong Kong it couldn’t last
For very long.
Lament in English or Chinese.
Watch the sun set by degrees.
Consider moving overseas,
But stay a while:
Eat your bitter Big Lychees
And try to smile.
[ The first two lines are from ‘Poor Mailie’s Elegy’ by Robert Burns. ]
About the micro-flats. It may be hard to understand, but open-minded people can live happily, it seems, in such places. There are quite a few videos on YouTube in which young foreigners living in Korea or Japan happily “tour” their tiny homes. For example, search on YouTube for “Korea apartment tour rent-free housing EPIK teacher”.
Knownot, a superb adaptation of Burns. Bravo!
according to the man is wrong about the Jim Jones cult, very few people drank the flavorade willingly… that, along with lemmings rushing over cliffs are inaccurate truthy metaphors that need to be replaced with something more timely and verifyable like ‘buying a flat from Evergrande’
@Knownot – the typo in the second line (ears for tears) conjures up some truly weird images.
Serious Q.
IF this administration collapsed, which supposes ‘changes’ up North, who would be a credible candidate for CE?
Someone who would seriously tackle need for public/subsidised housing, tax reform, time-serving civil servants and iron rice-bowlism, curtail infrastructure vanity. Get us humming and with a light government touch again. To free us from ideology and concentrate on citizen welfare and the economy, promote untrammelled entrepreneurialism and the arts. And garner trust.
Another serious Q?
Now that we have confirmation from no less an authority of the Public Intellectual Ms Ip and acknowledged be the various so-called experts that those early-birds jabbed with the Sinovac vaccine no longer have antibodies in their system:
1. Can such people legitimately claim to be fully vaccinated and, if not, will they not be committing a criminal offence if they so claim?
2. Our beloved leader, She Who Must Obey, is currently on a holiday tour of mainland cities with her side-kick, the Over-promoted Policeman. Given that both were early Sinovaccers, they are highly likely to have no antipbodies and are now unvaccinated. Can they legally re-enter HK after their holiday either at all or without 21 days quarantine (preferably at Pennies bay)?
Old Mind Doctor – having lived through the past several decades, does anyone down there still harbour illusions about good governance anywhere in the world, never mind the pool of incompetents available as potential candidates for CE? Faith is indeed a miraculous thing.
The virus varies
The virus varies.
In a street or mall
You are not safe at all.
Who knows what danger lurking there is?
Don’t associate
With other humankind
Or you’ll be fined.
Above all, do not demonstrate.
But step into a train,
A tram, or bus:
Suddenly, there is no fuss.
Here, it seems, we are safe again.
Though we’re close as bodies in bed,
The virus, so dangerous outside,
Is harmless while we ride.
Here, it seems, it will not spread.
Something is strange here
And I am in doubt.
Is the virus in or out?
Does it vanish, then reappear?
“There are quite a few videos on YouTube in which young foreigners living in Korea or Japan happily “tour” their tiny homes.”
Until the romance period ends and they realize they fucking HATE living in a sardine can and Asians only tolerate it because they have to. Social media “happiness”…the same phenomenon that gave us the “perfect, happy couple” of Gabby Petito and her boyfriend.
https://apnews.com/article/gabby-petito-social-media-tiktok-investigation-d2e9a5d627c2f39b5633174239c3beaf