From HKFP, Hong Kong stoic pragmatism on display in the face of the Japanese seafood scare…
Several Hongkongers who spoke to HKFP said they were not entirely convinced by the IAEA reports but would continue to eat Japanese seafood anyway.
Tang, a secretary in her late 30s who usually ate Japanese seafood once a week, said she believed the water in the South China Sea was not much safer.
“They’re probably dumping [nuclear wastewater] in the Greater Bay Area too,” she said while piling a shopping cart high with sushi at a Japanese supermarket on Tuesday evening. “You would never know.”
In the Mainland, all Japanese seafood has been banned, and people are attacking Japanese-themed retailers.
It says here that a ‘dormitory’ for imported construction workers at the former Yuen Long isolation facility will provide ‘2,000 flats for 8,000 workers’. Which means four burly guys per prefabricated unit, which sounds pretty cramped.
Note concerns about traffic congestion – assuming they can find enough bus drivers to operate the hundred shuttles that will be needed. And the hotel and retail sectors want another 30,000-40,000 imported staff. We must cram Hong Kong with imported workers to cater for the millions of Mainland tourists, which we started to let in in the mid-2000s to… create jobs.
More population figures just in: even the sparrows are leaving.
It’s obvious that more Mainlanders equals fewer birds. They eat them. I never saw a bird in China. The feathered variety I mean. Luckily I had my shitty stick with me to beat off the others.
Cramming construction workers in such a small place is clearly a ploy from the Environment branch to experiment with methane gas. It can be collected easily but it’s still a dangerous operation. Tofu is probably banned as are all other bean-based foods.
How are the new genetically modified bus drivers getting on? “Welcome aboard Sir”, “I’ll slow down a bit while you get seated”, “Of course I’ll give you change, honoured foreign visitor, wait a minute”” Even though its meal time I’m in no particular hurry”, “Let me help you with that pushchair, Madam”.
Kimmy Robinson is leaving too. Is this a divine omen?
Any excuse for a bit of Japan-bashing. With the world’s fisheries in rapid decline due in large part to East Asian fishing fleets, I had a fleeting hope that this nonsense may give the seas a momentary respite. Silly me.
@Joe Blow: Who?
We must import more workers to boost the population figures so we can justify Lantau Turd-morrow and Northern Gotham so we can import more workers to justify etcetc
Chris Maden: I am shocked at your lack of cultural awareness. Kimmy has been the hair stylist extraordinaire of Hong Kong for decades. Ever since the time that Derek Currie was still a soccer star-playboy (think George Best), Kimmy has looked after the “tai-tais of Central” and “the ladies who lunch”. He is best friends with Bonnie Gokson (don’t ask “who is Bonnie Gokson?” or I’ll slap you). Many years ago, in a famous fitness club far far away (in Admiralty), I once saw Kimmy in the shower: he is the only person I’ve ever seen who looks completely orange. Once in a while I also saw “Englishman” Mike Rowse hopping around in the buff and that was not a sight for sore eyes.
The Yuen Long triads are no doubt engaged in a parallel ‘worker’ import drive to satisfy the recreational needs of said workers and busy converting real estate into short stay hotels.
Ah they havent had a good two minutes hate against Japan up north in ages!
Hong Kong please note: when the hairdressers of the glitterati are running for the hills, take heed.
The stuff we hear while we’re applying the black rinse to the tai tais, ooh lah lah.
The Kim Robinson story is one of the most interesting things I’ve seen in the SCMP for a while. Although I’ve never had the full Kim shampoo and set, he was a bit of a late nineties icon, along with the louche Pino Piano, and Tom Turk when it came to gweilos making something of themselves in the then freewheeling Hong Kong. He also never took himself too seriously. Of course not in the same league as Christine Loh’s husband Craig Ehrlich, foreign legionnaire Simon Murray, or Allan Zeman. But definitely a notch above the guy in the green suit and his wife who had a sex shop near the escalator (their names escape me), and the Australian ballroom dancers who managed to charge a Tai Tai, who worked for HSBC wealth management, millions of dollars for dancing lessons. Oh and there was the American masseuse who got beaten up by triads.
All of those I remember too! Wow, what Murray dinked out of Li Ka-shing with his Legionnaire bacchanalia, surreal, and Zeman. He would have been over-promoted owning a hardware store on the plains of Alberta, or Saskatchewan or from whichever hicksville-au-Canada he hailed. A couple of fluke Lan Kwai Fong property deals that no gweilos wanted as it was ‘a bit murky’ and he hit the zeroes. He’s been peddling himself off as a genius ever since – and has the dumbest claque to agree.
Ah, Hong Kong, glory days.