Archive for the 'property' Category

Hatches, Batten Down The

Published
by
cecilie
on September 8, 2010
in Government, Hong Kong, Injustice, Piles and property
. 0 Comments

When is something “funny”, when is it “ironic” and when is it just “fcuk off and die, damned parasites who don’t want to work but spend their days living off honest people’s earnings”?

Last night I was talking to some people in sleepy backwater Pui O and for some reason the conversation turned to burglary. They were laughing about one guy who had film-noire’ly walked into his bathroom only to see in the bathroom mirror, a guy hiding behind the door with a knife. We had all been burgled at one stage, none of us liking it very much. They commented on how long it’s been since we’ve heard about a burglary, but thought it was because they had moved to Mui Wo, another sleepy backwater here on Lantau.

I said I didn’t think so, and that if there’s one kind of news that gets shared fast on this island it’s burglary news. We hadn’t heard about any burglaries because there haven’t been any.

I think you know what I’m going to say next. Oh, yes. I just shared my taxi with some people I’ve never met before and who, that’s right, had been burgled good and proper this morning about 4, after their son had gone to bed at 3am.

Is that “funny” or “ironic”?

So, Lantau people: I’m immensely sorry and pissed off to have to tell you: The burglaries have started up again. Same MO as always: Early in the morning, everybody asleep, small window flicked open with a screwdriver; two laptops, wallets, phones, cash, all gone.

And what with Lantau being the place where the most inept police in Hong Kong wash up, the CID’s MO was also as always: 12 guys turned up, touched everything in the house, then told the people who had been burgled not to touch anything. The police laughing and discussing where they’ll go to yam cha in front of the distraught people who had lost quite a lot of important things - exactly the same as when I was burgled.

That happening was in fact the very topic of my first blog entry. Ironic? Funny? Or just fuck off and die? The policemen who came to my house that day (only six! Hmph!) had been laughing their heads off over the fact that my dog Piles hadn’t been barking to alert me. They laughed at me when I started crying over having lost my month’s income and my camera with a lot of important photos still in it.

I wrote a letter to the police chief of Lantau complaining about this, and eventually received an answer saying he would brief his staff to be more sensitive to burgled people’s feelings in future. But of course that’s three years ago so you can’t expect everything. According to my freshly burgled neighbours, now it’s evidently back to laughing in people’s faces and blaming them for being burgled, again.

And, presumably, letting some uniformed officers sit around in a fully lit police van for a couple of hours before taking off, safe in the knowledge that all burglars have been well and truly scared off that particular spot forever.

I’m not trying to suggest it’s the fault of the Lantau police that some bastards are too lazy to work for a living but prefer to go into people’s houses to take what they can find. Far from it. But when it does happen, can they, the police, at least try to do their job with a modicum of professionalism?

Dumplings and the URA

Published
by
cecilie
on July 11, 2010
in Environment, Eyesore, Hong Kong, Injustice, food and property
. 7 Comments

Today I had another booking for a dinner at my illegal personal rooftop Sichuan restaurant. Although it’s not strictly winter, I decided to give the people coming all the way from Discovery Bay an extra treat: Dumplings.

I was smiling to myself as I sprinted up Graham street market, thinking about how they would ooooh, aaah and “Can we have the recipe?” as they stuffed themselves silly with dumplings, gan bian tu dou si

and all the other wonderful things I learnt how to cook during my forays into Sichuan province - so much better than your bland Canto-slop. I had all the ingredients for a great meal for six; all I needed now was dumpling skins.

But where was the dumpling skin (and fresh and dried noodles) shop?

All I found was a metal grill with a sign: “This property has been taken over by the URA (Urban Renewal Authority) to do with as it sees fit, namely kick out the present owners and hand the vacated space over to the highest bidder, aided and abetted by the government, to put up a 64 floor building with shiny marble tiles on the outside and luxury apartments featuring chandeliers on the inside , bringing you a Starbucks and McDonald’s to enhance Graham street market and around-lying areas so that no tourist or frequent local user of the aforementioned market will ever again make the mistake of thinking Hong Kong is a poor, run-down place where people have to go shopping on the ground, outside. Because you deserve it! We know what’s best for you. Long live globalisation.”

No? You didn’t think it said that? No, it didn’t. But it might as well have done. For “This building has been taken over by the URA” means exactly that.

So what? I could have made the dumpling skins myself, you’re probably saying. That’s true. In my restaurant, I make everything from scratch, and the first time I tried to make dumplings, I did indeed make the dough. It was just that the rolling pin I had bought that day was a little, shall we say, not made by a rolling pin-maker who was proud of his work. As I rolled and rolled the dough (it has to be really thin,) I noticed how tiny slivers of wood were coming off, embedding themselves in the perfectly executed flat dough-lets.

So it was “give my guests an extra helping of … glucose? No, what’s the main property of wood? Carbohydrate?” or abandon the project. I abandoned the project, preferring to buy the skins ready-made from the excellent dumpling skin-shop in Graham street market after that. That way i made the owners of the shop happy as well as saving the customers in my restaurant from the indignity of having to spend the evening picking wood out of their teeth. And stomachs.

Yesterday I had already bought the minced pork, so I saved the day by making dan-dan noodles instead this evening, not mentioning to the happy eaters from Discovery Bay that the meal could have been so much better if it hadn’t been for the Hong Kong government and its insatiable need to tear down and hand over to property developers every single little privately owned shop in this town.

How it must irk them to see Graham and Peel street markets still crawling with people shopping for fruit, vegetables and meat, the money going to small business owners, not Park’N'Shop and Wellcome! How vexed must they be at seeing money not ending up in the pocket of Li Ka-shing! (Which should be written, by the way, Lei Ga Seng.)

People, don’t support the government and their lackeys - or, I should say, don’t support the big conglomerates and their lackeys the government by doing all your shopping in supermarkets. There are people in this town still fighting against the final nails being rammed into the coffin of Graham street market. They need your help. You can google them and do something TODAY.

URA, URA, how many dinners did you ruin today …

URA is the worst thing that’s ever happened to Hong Kong. They even have the nerve to put the word PRESERVATION on the plastic curtains, decorated with FLOWERS!!!! they put up all over town, signifying the death of another Hong Kong building. Preservation my arse! The only thing they’ve ever preserved is the income of property developers.

Shanghai, Whore of the East

Published
by
cecilie
on June 25, 2010
in Beauty, Travel, politics and property
. 3 Comments

I went to Shanghai fearing the worst.

21 years ago, of course, the city was a true wonder of hovelage, of the beyond Dickensian kind. You could see the history of Shanghai etched on those buildings as clearly as if they had been showing newsreel on them.

Afterwards money happened, and now the Expo. Would there be even a tiny bit of hovelage left, I wondered, or would Shanghai have gone the way of Beijing; not a sliver of history left and what little there was, disney-fied to death?

Fortunately, things weren’t as bad as I had feared but also not as good as I had hoped. There were some old neighbourhoods scattered here and there, in which you could still feel feather-light touches of the Shanghai of yesteryear; a place of coolies, courtesans, rickshaw drivers and florid taipans. It was easy to imagine people (in black and white, naturally, they didn’t have colour in those days) hurrying to and fro while in the background could be heard the excited “Kill! Kill!” from the execution ground. Bound feet, opium, secret societies … oh yeah, baby!

Then came the Japanese and ruined everything.

Then came the communists and pulverised the rest, sodomising the corpse. Sic transit!

So I was almost glad to discover, in a wonderful hovelage visible from our hotel (never stay in the Bund Riverside! It’s overpriced, the service is terrible and not a single taxi driver knows where it is) that what I had explained to my friend was spittoons (even that word carries a whiff of debauchery I think) was in fact chamber pots which people take to the nearest public toilet in the morning. Yoo-hooooo, all is not lost.

A(nother) Sad Day for China

Published
by
cecilie
on February 10, 2010
in China, Environment, Government, Pollution, Uncategorized, communism, corruption, politics and property
. 2 Comments

Here we go again. Another man has been sent down, this time for a surprisingly lenient five years, for “inciting subversion of state power” for donating blood in a commemoration of the Tiananmen massacre, as well as publishing an essay about said commemoration. Oh, and he investigated the shoddy work of school buildings that led to hundreds of children being killed in the Sichuan earthquake. I think that was the hardest thing for the authorities to swallow. 

They are, after all, the Chinese Communist Party, and when they’ve said a building is erected according to the law, it is erected according to the law, and anybody who questions it poses a direct threat to the supremacy of the communist party. Worst of all, he,Tan Zuoren, talked to foreign journalists about the immoral greed entrenched in the Chinese system, which allowed all those children to be killed just to let some unscrupulous builders (inevitably with links to the government) earn a little extra money.

Okay. That other guy, Liu Xiaobo, who was recently jailed for a more standard “counter-revolutionary”  11 years - he must have seen it coming. He had after all pointed out that freedom of speech is stipulated in Chinese law, so asking where the hell that freedom of speech is, must clearly be treason of the highest order. Everybody knows that. 

But to get jailed for disclosing that greedy bastards have been building death-traps to skim money off building materials - one would think he deserved a medal for helping the authorities to avoid similar scandals in future? No, it’s off to jail he goes. 

Countries with economic ties to China; pretty much any country which has ever imported anything in the last 20 years, are falling over themselves to praise China for its new “openness” and “willingness to get on board.” Look at how the Chinese government single-handed has lifted millions out of poverty with hardly any help from those millions! Look at how Wen Jiabao is kissing children and visiting poverty-stricken farmers in their homes! Why, Chinese government officials even speak English and wear suits now. We must do business with them.

Actually, the ideology has hardly changed since the cultural revolution. 

Apart from the token corrupt government officials who get arrested or sometimes executed to scare others off being just that little too greedy (should have been satisfied with just a few millions and known better just whom to suck up to) - look at who gets in trouble with the law (hauled into police stations and beaten senseless, often jailed) in China today:

Parents who complain about their children being stolen

Farmers who complain about their land being taken from them

People who complain about their lakes/rivers/farmland being poisoned by factories

Parents who want to know how their healthy sons suddenly died from unspecified diseases in police custody

People who complain about being relocated to make way for infrastructure programs without compensation 

Anybody who complains about any official transgressions in general

Parents who complain about their children being killed by tainted food products

Relatives who question the safety of mines where hundreds are killed each year

Women who complain about being forcibly sterilised or have their children aborted well into the ninth month

Nomads who complain about being forced off their grazing land and made to live in factory-like compounds without any chance of making a living

People who complain about being forced out of their homes to make way for flower beds to welcome the sacred Olympics 

… the dreary list goes on and on. 

Make no mistake: Black is still white and white still black in the new, shiny, “modern” China.

These Suspicions … Where Do I Get Them From?

Published
by
cecilie
on January 20, 2010
in Environment, Eyesore, Government, Hong Kong, Injustice, Pollution, Uncategorized, corruption, politics and property
. 3 Comments

Hm. What’s going on? Walking around the great city of Hong Kong I see local people - about my height or shorter, weighing not very much, not bulging with insane muscles or dragging hundreds of kilos of excess flesh around. But, as usual, my eyes are lying. For it appears that Hong Kong people are huge, enormous mastodons one and all, and also worrisomely unsteady on their feet.

And aggressive? Why, they just can’t see for example a fence before they want to throw themselves on it and rip it to shreds. Or how else would you explain the photo above: This huge production has been going on in a tiny little stream in sleepy backwater Pui O for about eight months now. I thought there must be some major drainage works or laying of huge underwater cables to Cheung Chau or beyond - (yes I know CLP did that five years ago but they are always digging up the same bit of road so why not lay the same cable?) however yesterday I found out from a worker that it has all been to exchange this type of railing:

with this concrete wall:

“It’s for safety!” the worker, amazingly working for local triad construction company Yick Hing, added helpfully. Of course. The government must have been panic-stricken at the danger to all those lives walking on that road, feeling compelled to throw themselves onto that flimsy metal railing only as thick as my arm and at least two years old, and blasting through it, crashing to a certain watery death.

Only good old reliable concrete can save those gigantic fence-tearing maniacs from an untimely demise. That must be why workers from the same company and at the last minute are now also replacing the railings on this death trap:

with concrete. When I asked the workers why they were removing these railings, they said they were “broken.” Really? Risking my life for investigative journalism I shook all four parts of the railing. Nothing. Then I threw myself on them with a not inconsiderable force. Not a millimetre of budging.

This raises the interesting question: Is our government now psychic, on top of all its other admirable qualities? Can it predict that in some unforeseeable future, for example the day after I don’t see any signs of a length of railing being broken, that it will be?

Or could it be that all the destruction work, concreting, digging up the same bit of road, putting up of ludicrous, unnecessary railing, cutting down of trees, dumping of construction waste, useless so-called improvement work and the relentless march to turn Pui O and the rest of Lantau into Tsuen Mun is because this government is so damned corrupt, pouring unlimited money into the pockets of the same two corrupt local construction companies?

Don’t know, really. It’s hard to tell.

A Note of Reassurance

Published
by
cecilie
on January 13, 2010
in Beauty, Environment, Eyesore, Government, Hong Kong, Pollution, corruption, politics and property
. 9 Comments

Perhaps you were wondering what the government’s been up to recently when it comes to spending your tax money on meaningful stuff? Here’s an update:

Well. Not really an update as this stuff has been in place for a while, more of a reassurance that our dear government is still pouring out the dollars, creating jobs for boys.
A couple of years ago, the government wanted to “improve” the Chi Ma Wan road by … cutting down all the trees lining it. I went to the meeting with the engineers and asked why they had to cut down the (40, 50 year old) trees that shaded the road so deliciously. They said: But we’ll plant new trees!

That’s right, new is better than old, also when it comes to trees. Above are 12 of the 17 trees they planted on this little stretch of road: All dead. Well done, civil engineering or whatever department; now you can plant another 17 trees and replant them when they die. 1. Jobs for boys. 2. Keep that budget huge.

Needless to say, railings feature prominently along the new and improved road. Here is a section, two meters long, to (I assume) keep all those crazy pedestrians from crossing the road in a completely wild manner just there? Because, as we know and must obey, crossing the road along which at least five cars per hour (15 on Sundays) drive, can only happen here:

You see? Where the yellow tiles are. There and only there can you cross this country road in sleepy backwater Pui O. And if you get any rebellious ideas about road-crossing, why, I think those four little slivers of railing on all sides of the crossing should discourage you plenty.

That was the “Wonder what your tax money is spent on?” of this week. A big thank you from Tiger Woods! Sorry, I meant to say: Yick Hing construction company!

Interaction! Community!

Published
by
cecilie
on December 11, 2009
in Beauty, Beer, Cantonese, Cantonese, Cards, Dudes, Environment, Eyesore, Government, Hong Kong, Pollution, food and property
. 27 Comments

Wei wei, everybody everywhere. Now I’ve been writing this blog for two and a half years and the only time I’ve really felt like I’ve interacted with “the community” is when I wrote something criticising pilots. A shitstorm rained down and I’m still reeling from the aftermath,  but at least I got some reactions. So now I’m asking you, my readers, to write in on these simple terms:

Tell me ten things you love and hate about Hong Kong. Yes it’s been done before hundreds of times, but not by me. 

 

TEN THINGS I LOVE ABOUT HONG KONG:

1. Beautiful dudes speaking Cantonese 

2. Yam cha

3. Tong Lau (Traditional HK style pre-war tenement buildings, especially with rounded corners)

4. My gaff

5. And everything around it: Pui O beach, Lantau nature

6: It never snows and it’s always summer, even in winter

7: Extreme funkiness in the old parts of town pre-destruction (see point 3)

8: It’s so easy to get everything done; phone repairmen etc turn up two hours early, not three weeks late

9: Honolulu restaurant in Stanley street

10: Total freedom (so far)

 

TEN THINGS I HATE ABOUT HONG KONG:

1: The way everything is engineer-driven (most of the following points spring from that)

2: Property developers

3: Concrete

4: Railings

5: The incessant public announcements on the Lantau ferries

6: Screechy bints shouting “ha-lou well-come” “can I helchtio” and breathing on my arm in shops; being patronised every day

7: The government’s 1972 mindset (see concrete, railings etc) and the increasing nanny-state 

8: The way the “real Hong Kong” part of Hong Kong is being destroyed, thus taking away almost all of the ten things I love

9: Signs

10: The “Hello Kitty”-fication of everything. Everything!

Please write in with your views.

Groggy Nogs

Published
by
cecilie
on November 12, 2009
in Beauty, Environment, Home, Hong Kong, Norway, Pollution, politics and property
. 0 Comments

Early this month I had some Norwegian friends visiting and they were of course wildly impressed with Hong Kong, living as they do in a small town with wooden houses and cobble-stoned streets.
It was good for me to see HK through their eyes, through the adoring eyes of a newcomer. I could see how scenes like the one above could appear beautiful to them - it did to me! I think it looks like one of those views from a medieval turret: “One day, son, all this will be yours.”

I should appreciate the Hong Kong skyline and outstanding features more, instead of always trying to find fault with our excellent Chief Executive Sir Donald Tsang Excr. Excr. and the way he seeks to root out and exterminate every building older than ten years.
Yes, even post-annihilation Hong Kong can be beautiful in a certain light:

These two were taken from the 55th floor of The Center. I tell you, if the windows could be opened and I fell down, I’d seriously hurt myself.

One thing the Norwegians said again and again was that Hong Kong is so clean! So very clean! Well that’s hardly surprising. After all we have about 300 000 servants to pick stuff up for us almost before we’ve dropped it. What surprised me is that Norway is now so dirty.

But it’s the opposite of here really; here the city is kept spotless and rubbish free while people bring sacks and sacks of crap to the countryside (notably sleepy backwater Pui O, Lantau Island) and leave it there. What’s the problem? Nobody lives there anyway!
In Norway the countryside is kept clean and the “city” full of rubbish. But they don’t have servants of course. Call themselves a rich country!

The Noggie visitors also praised highly Hong Kong’s tap water. That’s right! Norway has fantastic tap water it has to be said, and now I feel vindicated after these 20 years of drinking from the tap here in Hong Kong while people around me recoil in horror - IT’S DIRTY!!! spending thousands of dollars a year on bottled water. I mean - buy water? What a scam!

So yeah, I love Hong Kong. Again. But I will still keep an eye on that nasty little bow tied rodent, just in case. He’s still hellbent on making his mark as the one who single-handedly generated the most cash for Hong Kong’s property developers, and don’t you forget it.

Guangzhou Leads The Way

Published
by
cecilie
on November 3, 2009
in Beauty, Cantonese, Environment, Eyesore, Hong Kong, communism and property
. 5 Comments

I love Guangzhou. Many people who frequently go there on business, from the airport to a hotel, then back, tell me they can’t see why this should be. They have decided Guangzhou “Is just a big ugly city full of skyscrapers.”

Oh, but it’s not! In this old and gallant town, you can see what HK could have looked like if its leaders have had any vision and pride. Take for example a new feature of Guangzhou, already full of trees of all types and ages: all concrete flyovers are groaning under bougainvillea.

Going by taxi from the AiQun Hotel on the banks of the Pearl River to GZ East station was like driving through a lush garden with some elements of concrete in it, the concrete being only the road itself; everything else was green, green green with the trees some places forming a canopy above the road and the bougainvillea-covered flyovers weaving in and out of the trees like lawns in the sky.

Lovely! Then there’s the promenade on both sides of the river - no gimmicks and star walks and Hollywood this and that, just benches, trees, little watering holes and restaurants, just like river walks (and harbour walks) should be.

Outside the main thoroughfares and away from the shopping centres and banks, the street-life is hopping with, well, life.

It’s funky, wild and village-like yet with a big city edge; just brimming with all the stuff the HK government egged on by their good friends the property developers and aided and abetted by URL have almost succeeded in removing: Markets, geezers walking around in their pyjamas, people having a shave on the pavement,

shops without doors, cycling vendors, hawkers, bicycles in general, streets of tong lau (traditional tenement buildings with overhanging fronts resting on columns), enormous, ancient trees, laundry hanging to dry above front (beautifully crafted) doors,

people doing what they want (Yes! Lying down on park benches!!!) - in short, humane, fit for human life and always unpredictable.

But it’s not to be expected that our administration will take a leaf out of Guangzhou’s book where whole streets of old buildings are actually renovated and restored to former glory. Our glorious geezers, now “masters of their own home” are still living in 1972, proud of being owned body and soul by Hong Kong property developers. These relics’ heroes are the urban “planners” of for example Beijing who are mostly former Red Guards and still hellbent on destruction for the sake of it and whose idea of natural beauty is a flower bed with “Resolutely Fight For National Harmony” spelled out in carnations. Our administration will not rest before every last inch of our city is taken up by buildings at least 50 storeys high and each pesky pedestrian has been made to see the light and get a car to choke up all the gleaming new four lane highways hurtling forth between the tower blocks. Or rather, power blocks. Only then will they know we have finally entered the future.

And as for covering concrete flyovers in luscious blooms - dream on! Greenery belongs firmly in manicured sitting out areas and you know it.
But do swing around the areas just north of Shamian Island in Guangzhou when you have the time. Then you’ll see what Hong Kong could have looked like if our leaders weren’t so terribly proud of never having been elected.

The Power of One. One Little Revengeful Prick.

Published
by
cecilie
on October 15, 2009
in Government, Hong Kong, Injustice, corruption, food and property
. 4 Comments

The Forum, Exchange Square, Hong Kong. Until last month one of the few places in the city where it’s possible to sit outside without swallowing the outpourings of ten thousand bus and car engines with your coffee. High above the traffic and with a charming fountain and sculptures of a water buffalo and an tai-chi performing fatty, it was crawling with office workers at lunchtime, soaking up the rays and engaging in that increasingly rare HK sport: Alfresco scoffing.

Now it is no more. The outside tables and chairs have been taken into La Fontaine, the Japanese restaurant next door, Starbucks and the upmarket fast food restaurant  O something, filling these already full places to bursting. Why? Here was a place where the dreaded alfresco was unlikely to irritate that most sacred of HK’s many sacred cows, the private car driver. There was no pavement to obstruct. No, apparently, “for your own safety” crap.

 So why? Why?

According to one of the waitresses in La Fontaine, a diner at O something had brought his own fast food to sit and eat outside this fast food restaurant. Told off by staff for this transgression (the fool should have gone to La Fontaine instead; the famously lax staff at this establishment don’t mind if you bring your own three course meal eaten off your own dinner service) he decided to get revenge by complaining to Hong Kong Land (or whatever Li Ka -shing company that currently owns Exchange Square) about people engaging in alfresco dining. This civic-minded company then does the right thing after receiving one complaint, and pulls the plug on the entire outside dining “experience.” 

But of course. We can’t have one pissed off customer, now can we?  (Again, this is all according to one waitress. It does coincide, however, with the threatened ban on outside dining which the government announced in July following a complaint about Times Square so could be part of the whole grand plan of taking away the last little remnant of what’s good and enjoyable.)

So if one alleged complaint is enough to shut down a whole square, does that mean that I, as one seriously disgruntled citizen, can stop for example  the tearing down of the Graham and Peel street markets? Can I lodge a complaint and stop the building of that ridiculous white elephant, the Zhuhai Bridge? The vandalising of Central’s waterfront to build a six lane highway to nowhere? 

One would think so. But no. Not one, not ten thousand complaints will do the trick there.  Also the government seems to have no power at all when it comes to many people complaining about illegal dumping of rubbish and road building in the New Territories. It makes one wonder … and wonder. But doesn’t surprise one.