Category Archives: Blog

Big local news today concerns TVB’s Miss Hong Kong contest. A younger (say, 60-something) member of the Independent Police Complaints Council might object to the beauty pageant as outdated or tawdry. But 81-year-old former Education Director Helen Yu says it … Continue reading →

All those farewell gatherings you’ve been going to didn’t happen. A Beijing official says there’s no major emigration trend from Hong Kong, notwithstanding the fact that people here have always been mobile; and the city isn’t being Mainlandized (governments jail … Continue reading →

Life finally returns to normal. In other words, another week of government-by-patriots-only. Or is it government-by-bivalve-molluscs-only? Hard to tell. A veteran Hong Kong journalist does a better-than-average summary of the city’s plight… Hong Kong is on a losing spree. The … Continue reading →

My third and last compulsory PCR test – day six after release from quarantine – is this morning. Hong Kong Covid policies being the gift that keeps on giving, I must still take a daily RAT test for a few … Continue reading →

Professor Michael C. Davis on the vigorous use of Hong Kong’s archaic sedition law… Public advocacy that had previously passed as legal public protests and critical debate has now been branded sedition, with over 60 arrests so far.  …The court … Continue reading →

Any plans for a quick trip out of Hong Kong in the next few months go out the window as the ‘next round’ of hotel quarantine – Nov/Dec/Jan – seems set to go ahead. The government might also plug the … Continue reading →

…of mini- (two days and 10 hours’) quarantine. Not enough time to have finished Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand – a JK Rowling-ish thing lying around on my Kindle for some reason. Trevor Howard would play the lead in the movie. … Continue reading →

…a perfect opportunity to deepen my understanding of the decisive significance of the ‘two establishes’. Including in Korea, have had to sign up to three (or four?) online monitoring/reporting apps with clunky interfaces, all requiring the exact same info over … Continue reading →

Following Hong Kong from afar, you lose any feeling that it’s all a bad dream or aberration and something might still happen to put things back the way they should be. Seen from a distance, you realize: that’s it – … Continue reading →

First time here in 25 years. Despite undoubted strides in living standards, economic/tech achievements and soft power, the place still manages to be backward in odd ways. English signage being an unmissable example. It’s obviously a point of pride not … Continue reading →