Category Archives: Blog

The South China Morning Post reports that its (and Alibaba’s) owner Jack Ma is offering to help Hong Kong become a cashless society, thus ‘more fashionable, modern, and efficient’. EJ adds that Tencent also wants to introduce its e-payment systems … Continue reading →

My Typhoon Hato war-story from yesterday involved a fearless early-morning struggle against driving wind along streets ankle-deep in torrents of water. The 200-yard trip to the local Circle K yielded sufficient emergency liquid supplies to enable me to spend the … Continue reading →

The Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce is where the city’s different Big Business sub-cultures come together. They are all there, from venerable former opium traders to modern-day property developers – all our favourite tycoons, cartels, conglomerates and financiers, with … Continue reading →

The Hong Kong government is doing its whiny defensive best to freak out at the suggestion that last week’s re-sentencing of Joshua Wong and other activists was political. The extreme official panty-wetting reflects the big names who are pointing fingers … Continue reading →

To no-one’s great surprise, Hong Kong’s Court of Appeal sends Joshua Wong, Nathan Law and Alex Chow to prison. This follows the tougher re-sentencing of 13 other activists on Wednesday. The Hong Kong authorities will indignantly deny that these appeals … Continue reading →

Hongkongers reel in shock at the news that their city was (up until yesterday) more livable than Singapore. Although the Chinese Communist Party has (arguably) still not quite dragged Hong Kong down to Singaporean levels of authoritarianism, censorship and general … Continue reading →

The South China Morning Post goes into a painfully contrived and disproportionate democrat-bashing frenzy today – devoting the front-page lead, laborious backgrounders, in-depth blah, a tedious editorial and pliable hack-columnists #1 and #2 to the Howard Lam saga. At best, … Continue reading →

The glory days of Cathay Pacific are ancient history, an analyst says.  Others are forecasting that Hong Kong’s major airline faces more financial losses and further cost-cutting. The ‘glory days’ would most likely have been the mid-80s to mid-90s. During … Continue reading →

…a quick update on the mysterious Maison de Paris that now graces the neighbourhood around the Mid-Levels Escalator. The proprietors have placed a board outside listing what the business sells, and the teddy bear in the window is now sitting … Continue reading →

Next to the Mid-Levels Escalator around Rednaxela Terrace, before you get up to the Mosque, is one of a series of humble storefronts. It used to be a Dutch pickled-herring-and-Edam bar called the Orange Tree, popular with the clogs-and-Heineken crowd … Continue reading →