Hey, you're always asking me where I find stuff...
Saturday, August 11, 2007
Pabuk is gone, and a new kind of vision
Yesterday at about 2.30pm, the Hong Kong Observatory raised the Number 8 signal, which meant that Typhoon Pabuk was going to pass very very close to Hong Kong. Number 8 means everyone should go home immediately - which of course caused chaos, and "Taxi drivers were quick to exploit the situation, with some demanding as much as HK$50 above the meter reading."
Didn't bother me too much - the only thing I noticed was that for about an hour it was impossible to phone anyone at all.
And now - moving on to a new kind of entertainment. Pandavision. There are four pandas at the popular Ocean Park here in Hong Kong, and now you can watch them on the web all day, or tune in to the Pandavision Channel on TV (providing you have Now Pay-TV). 24-hours of non-stop hot Panda action.
Didn't bother me too much - the only thing I noticed was that for about an hour it was impossible to phone anyone at all.
And now - moving on to a new kind of entertainment. Pandavision. There are four pandas at the popular Ocean Park here in Hong Kong, and now you can watch them on the web all day, or tune in to the Pandavision Channel on TV (providing you have Now Pay-TV). 24-hours of non-stop hot Panda action.
Labels: hongkong, pabuk, pandavision, typhoon
Friday, August 10, 2007
Missed us by "that much"
Typhoon Pabuk passed about 50km south of the island early yesterday morning - BUT - apparently it has now turned around and is heading back this way again! (The red asterisk is the position of Hong Kong, the black line is the path the typhoon has already taken, the red line is the path they think it will take.)
Labels: hongkong, pabuk, typhoon
Wednesday, August 08, 2007
It's Coming This Way
Finally! After an entire typhoon season of no typhoons, Typhoon Pabuk, fresh from a successful tour of Taiwan is heading straight towards us. The T1 warning is in force, and it should hit us some time tomorrow.
Labels: hongkong, pabuk, typhoon
Tuesday, July 03, 2007
Hidden Things
10 years ago the British gave Hong Kong back to China. We missed the 10th anniversary celebrations as we were in Thailand, but probably the only really interesting thing we missed was the fireworks display. Oh, and seeing the People's Liberation Army actually outside their barracks (they tend to stay out of sight so as to not disturb the sensibilities of the local population who all remember the Tiananmen Square massacre).
So that's the really obvious thing that's going on, and there's been a flood of articles about whether the 10 year experiment of "one country, two systems" is working. As I said, we were just in Thailand and when I came back to Hong Kong yesterday I got the curious feeling I always get when I have been out of Hong Kong for a day or two that the city had moved on without me. It's the kind of feeling you get when you've been away from home for some time, and you go home remembering it in a particular way only to find that your memory of home has been superseded. But only in Hong Kong do I get that feeling after only 3 days!
It's worth stopping to think about how quickly things change here, especially to the physical environment. A great example of this is the terrible Jean Claude van Damme film Bloodsport, which features footage of Hong Kong's old Walled City. Van Damme's character is in Hong Kong to compete in a bloody fight tournament, which takes place in the Walled City, and the movie actually features some footage of him walking through the city. It's incredible - the Walled City was an anarchic conglomeration of building piled upon building. There was no official running water or electricity, and the police hardly ventured there. There was almost no natural light due to the closeness of the structures. In the film we see the tiny alleys, the filthy water dripping down, the cramped and squalid conditions.
The Walled City was torn down in 1994, and is now a nice park, where families can relax and the only signs of its former past are some reinforced concrete posts near one of the gates and a temple that used to sit in the centre of the city.
The point is though, that unless you get hold of that terrible film, or find one of the few books available about it you would never know that it ever existed. And so all the stories about 10 years of Chinese rule seem to me to miss some essential point - it's all very well to ask about whether the new arrangement in Hong Kong has been a success, but if it's hard to actually compare what you have now with what you had then the question becomes harder to answer. From my point of view, I don't know what the city was like 10 years ago so I can't really say how it's changed. But I am sure it has, and I bet a lot of people haven't even noticed what the changes were.
So that's the really obvious thing that's going on, and there's been a flood of articles about whether the 10 year experiment of "one country, two systems" is working. As I said, we were just in Thailand and when I came back to Hong Kong yesterday I got the curious feeling I always get when I have been out of Hong Kong for a day or two that the city had moved on without me. It's the kind of feeling you get when you've been away from home for some time, and you go home remembering it in a particular way only to find that your memory of home has been superseded. But only in Hong Kong do I get that feeling after only 3 days!
It's worth stopping to think about how quickly things change here, especially to the physical environment. A great example of this is the terrible Jean Claude van Damme film Bloodsport, which features footage of Hong Kong's old Walled City. Van Damme's character is in Hong Kong to compete in a bloody fight tournament, which takes place in the Walled City, and the movie actually features some footage of him walking through the city. It's incredible - the Walled City was an anarchic conglomeration of building piled upon building. There was no official running water or electricity, and the police hardly ventured there. There was almost no natural light due to the closeness of the structures. In the film we see the tiny alleys, the filthy water dripping down, the cramped and squalid conditions.
The Walled City was torn down in 1994, and is now a nice park, where families can relax and the only signs of its former past are some reinforced concrete posts near one of the gates and a temple that used to sit in the centre of the city.
The point is though, that unless you get hold of that terrible film, or find one of the few books available about it you would never know that it ever existed. And so all the stories about 10 years of Chinese rule seem to me to miss some essential point - it's all very well to ask about whether the new arrangement in Hong Kong has been a success, but if it's hard to actually compare what you have now with what you had then the question becomes harder to answer. From my point of view, I don't know what the city was like 10 years ago so I can't really say how it's changed. But I am sure it has, and I bet a lot of people haven't even noticed what the changes were.
Labels: anniversary, handover, hongkong, kowloon, walledcity
Monday, April 23, 2007
Three Day Forecast
This little image sums up one of the things that I really like about living here in HK - the rain. Growing up in a very dry place, I remember it was always very exciting when it finally rained, and always disappointing when the rain stopped. Now I get it a few months of the year in massive quantities.
Of course there is a downside - umbrella fear. It rains so heavily that of course everyone has an umbrella, which makes walking along the crowded footpaths a very tricky experience. A lot of people here are slightly shorter than me which puts their umbrellas at my eye-level, so I keep having moments where I nearly get the spoke of an umbrella pushed into my eye.
But the rain makes it worthwhile.
This little image sums up one of the things that I really like about living here in HK - the rain. Growing up in a very dry place, I remember it was always very exciting when it finally rained, and always disappointing when the rain stopped. Now I get it a few months of the year in massive quantities.
Of course there is a downside - umbrella fear. It rains so heavily that of course everyone has an umbrella, which makes walking along the crowded footpaths a very tricky experience. A lot of people here are slightly shorter than me which puts their umbrellas at my eye-level, so I keep having moments where I nearly get the spoke of an umbrella pushed into my eye.
But the rain makes it worthwhile.
Sunday, April 15, 2007
Bumping into things
It's always a good idea in Hong Kong to go back to places after you havent been there for a while, because things can change quickly. Shops come and go, festivals are held, and you never know when the Urban Renewal Authority will decide to change a neighbourhood forever.
So it was nice to go to Cheung Chau with my parents on the weekend - we wandered around, got lost, ate some seafood and then bumped into a massive Cantonese Opera stage - a giant construction of bamboo, wood, and sheet metal, shoehorned into a basketball court for a season of performances. As it was during the day there was nothing happening so we could wander around it as we pleased looking at the way it had been put together and spotting interesting objects in the rubble of post-performance. Pretty good for a temporary structure eh?
So it was nice to go to Cheung Chau with my parents on the weekend - we wandered around, got lost, ate some seafood and then bumped into a massive Cantonese Opera stage - a giant construction of bamboo, wood, and sheet metal, shoehorned into a basketball court for a season of performances. As it was during the day there was nothing happening so we could wander around it as we pleased looking at the way it had been put together and spotting interesting objects in the rubble of post-performance. Pretty good for a temporary structure eh?
Labels: cheungchau, hongkong, music
Thursday, January 18, 2007
Learning Cantonese via Learning Cantonese
When we first came here one of the first things I did was find and sign up for Cantonese lessons. (Quick note - Cantonese is a Chinese dialect, spoken in Hong Kong and Guangdong, which is also known as Canton.) I was glad I did - after completing the 2 stages of the beginner's courses I've found that incredibly I know more Cantonese than most other Westerners that live here. Which is to say most Westerners don't bother to learn any at all.
I was talking to an Australian woman a few weeks ago who has been here for 12 years and doesn't know a single word of Cantonese. "But", she said, "you don't really need to". In a way she's right - you can get everything done here in English, lots of Cantonese people speak English in Hong Kong, and there are English translations of menus and signs etc everywhere.
Except that I can't help feeling that if you don't know any Cantonese, then really there's about 98% of Hong Kong that you miss out on.
And as proof I offer you Learning Cantonese, which is a wonderful blog written by an American journalist who speaks and reads(!) Cantonese very well. Reading the entries I immediately get more of a sense of what non-Cantonese speakers are missing out on.
Aside #1: A lot of Westerners complain that because of the use of tones Cantonese is a hard language to learn. Which may be true, but it doesn't seem to stop all the Indonesian and Filipino maids from learning it, and Bahasa Indonesia and Tagalog are nothing like Cantonese.
Aside #2: For various tedious reasons I'm not learning Cantonese at the moment, but I have resolved to find an Intermediate class and start again.
Aside #3: Make sure you read this great little article (found via the blog I mentioned above) about how people in Hong Kong have adapted Western food to suit their tastes.
I was talking to an Australian woman a few weeks ago who has been here for 12 years and doesn't know a single word of Cantonese. "But", she said, "you don't really need to". In a way she's right - you can get everything done here in English, lots of Cantonese people speak English in Hong Kong, and there are English translations of menus and signs etc everywhere.
Except that I can't help feeling that if you don't know any Cantonese, then really there's about 98% of Hong Kong that you miss out on.
And as proof I offer you Learning Cantonese, which is a wonderful blog written by an American journalist who speaks and reads(!) Cantonese very well. Reading the entries I immediately get more of a sense of what non-Cantonese speakers are missing out on.
Aside #1: A lot of Westerners complain that because of the use of tones Cantonese is a hard language to learn. Which may be true, but it doesn't seem to stop all the Indonesian and Filipino maids from learning it, and Bahasa Indonesia and Tagalog are nothing like Cantonese.
Aside #2: For various tedious reasons I'm not learning Cantonese at the moment, but I have resolved to find an Intermediate class and start again.
Aside #3: Make sure you read this great little article (found via the blog I mentioned above) about how people in Hong Kong have adapted Western food to suit their tastes.
Thursday, December 28, 2006
Tremors
I have to say, I really don't like the sensation of sitting in a room 17 floors above the ground and feeling everything start to sway back and forth. But that's what we felt on Tuesday night - twice! We've already had an earthquake this year in Hong Kong, but I didn't actually notice it. These two tremors were very disconcerting. By now of course you'd have heard of the earthquake off the south coast of Taiwan - that was what we felt in Hong Kong.
I have these awful visions of apartment buildings toppling like dominoes all across Hong Kong...
I have these awful visions of apartment buildings toppling like dominoes all across Hong Kong...
Labels: earthquake, hongkong
Tuesday, October 03, 2006
The New Territories
On the weekend we went for a brief trip to the New Territories. The what? Yes - the New Territories. The bit of China that got handed over to the British in 1898 - 57 years after they took possession of Hong Kong. Hence the name "New Territories".
These days the New Territories are the remnants of the rural areas of Hong Kong - a conglomeration of old Hakka villages and new urban high-rises. It's quite an interesting place. The pace of life definitely feels slower than on Hong Kong Island or in Kowloon, and the residents look a little less well-off. (But there are still a lot of BMW's and Benz's zooming around.) Piles of wrecked or disused cars and shipping containers are lumped next to old temples, ancestral halls, houses and farms, all lined up along tiny winding roads. And then suddenly there'll be a sleek modern KCR railway station, conveniently located near a dozen or more towering apartment blocks. The whole place has a faintly transient quality - it's the buffer zone between Hong Kong and China, and buffer zones always feel a bit looser than other places.
I had the feeling that everyone was waiting for someone else to come along and tidy it up, but that no-one was particularly anxious for that to occur either. Unfortunately I don't really have any photos - for various reasons we ended up seeing most of what we saw from the inside of a public minibus, and when we finally did manage to get out and walk around we'd ended up at a Buddhist temple that seemed to be in a transitional state itself - moving from being a monastery to a theme park.
I guess the next thing to do is head north a few more kilometres and visit the ultimate human intertidal zone - Shenzhen.
tags: hongkong | newterritories
These days the New Territories are the remnants of the rural areas of Hong Kong - a conglomeration of old Hakka villages and new urban high-rises. It's quite an interesting place. The pace of life definitely feels slower than on Hong Kong Island or in Kowloon, and the residents look a little less well-off. (But there are still a lot of BMW's and Benz's zooming around.) Piles of wrecked or disused cars and shipping containers are lumped next to old temples, ancestral halls, houses and farms, all lined up along tiny winding roads. And then suddenly there'll be a sleek modern KCR railway station, conveniently located near a dozen or more towering apartment blocks. The whole place has a faintly transient quality - it's the buffer zone between Hong Kong and China, and buffer zones always feel a bit looser than other places.
I had the feeling that everyone was waiting for someone else to come along and tidy it up, but that no-one was particularly anxious for that to occur either. Unfortunately I don't really have any photos - for various reasons we ended up seeing most of what we saw from the inside of a public minibus, and when we finally did manage to get out and walk around we'd ended up at a Buddhist temple that seemed to be in a transitional state itself - moving from being a monastery to a theme park.
I guess the next thing to do is head north a few more kilometres and visit the ultimate human intertidal zone - Shenzhen.
tags: hongkong | newterritories
Labels: hongkong, kowloon, newterritories
Sunday, August 20, 2006
The Future
The future is happening. I’m looking out from the top of No.1 Peking Rd, looking north, towards China. Sulphurous light renders the roofs and towers of the New Territories ominous and silent. They stretch in front of me for miles. The future is definitely happening.
The moment of reflection is lost. I head back upstairs to the bar, where a fifty-something expatriate makes a fool of himself, passionately embracing a young Cantonese woman he’s sharing a seat with. The past happens at the same time as the future.
Later the rain starts again, splattering the tilted windows. Rain, rain. In the taxi on the way home I can’t get the skyline image of the New Territories out of my mind. I know what the New Territories are like. Old houses, old people, poor people, decrepit buildings, public housing. The small factories that turned out anything you can imagine have all gone across the border. Soon the people that worked in those factories will follow them across the border as well. But the image seems more real than my knowledge.
The future is still happening. I’m standing in the middle of the Convention and Exhibition Centre. Thousands of people, children, teenagers, parents are excitedly chasing down the objects of their obsessions. Online games that require special printed cards to be bought so as to open up new areas of the game. Foot-high metal statuettes of Japanese robot-suited action heroes. Young women dressed as lecherous maids. Comics. And, incongruously, a series of DVD’s detailing how to perform such prosaic skills as card tricks and making a coin appear out of someone’s ear.
Life is lived online – games are more real than daily life. These obsessions will last all their lives. I can sense how something is changing. I wonder what a happy grandfather makes of it all as he leads his grandson through the crowd. He talks in Mandarin – he must be from the mainland. From the Cultural Revolution to this. The future is happening.
tags: china | hongkong
The moment of reflection is lost. I head back upstairs to the bar, where a fifty-something expatriate makes a fool of himself, passionately embracing a young Cantonese woman he’s sharing a seat with. The past happens at the same time as the future.
Later the rain starts again, splattering the tilted windows. Rain, rain. In the taxi on the way home I can’t get the skyline image of the New Territories out of my mind. I know what the New Territories are like. Old houses, old people, poor people, decrepit buildings, public housing. The small factories that turned out anything you can imagine have all gone across the border. Soon the people that worked in those factories will follow them across the border as well. But the image seems more real than my knowledge.
The future is still happening. I’m standing in the middle of the Convention and Exhibition Centre. Thousands of people, children, teenagers, parents are excitedly chasing down the objects of their obsessions. Online games that require special printed cards to be bought so as to open up new areas of the game. Foot-high metal statuettes of Japanese robot-suited action heroes. Young women dressed as lecherous maids. Comics. And, incongruously, a series of DVD’s detailing how to perform such prosaic skills as card tricks and making a coin appear out of someone’s ear.
Life is lived online – games are more real than daily life. These obsessions will last all their lives. I can sense how something is changing. I wonder what a happy grandfather makes of it all as he leads his grandson through the crowd. He talks in Mandarin – he must be from the mainland. From the Cultural Revolution to this. The future is happening.
tags: china | hongkong
Labels: china, future, hongkong
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