The United Front never lets an Orchestrated-Mouth-Froth Opportunity go to waste – thus Hong Kong is rocked by the Great Evil Pan-Democrat Vicious Phone-Snatch Mayhem Massacre Horror.
Chief Executive Carrie Lam knows she is supposed to join in, but has no clue about nuance, so she describes opposition lawmaker Ted Hui’s seizing of a civil servant’s phone as ‘barbaric’. Apparently after some pleading from the South China Morning Post, pro-Beijing lawyer Ronny Tong manages to list 95 reasons why Hui deserves the death penalty. The Democratic Party dutifully grovels and self-flagellates. No-one asks why the government sends junior administrative officers to prowl round the Legislative Council building shadowing members.
The SCMP’s last surviving outspoken columnists Jake Van Der Kamp and Peter Guy seem to be taking a very, very long time submitting their pieces these days, but at least maverick Andy Xie occasionally gets onto the op-ed page. Today he asks why the Hong Kong Monetary Authority is so reluctant to raise the city’s interest rates to maintain the dollar peg – as the currency-board system requires. You know the answer, but it’s worth reading anyway…
Some amusing or thought-provoking diversions…
Here’s a blog all about places in Hong Kong used as movie locations. It includes a link to a TV cop series (Australian? British?) which looks dire except for a faintly surreal feel courtesy of its 1990s Hong Kong setting – several days’ binge-watching if you’re curious or desperate, or in need of some quick exotic oriental stereotype clichés.
For China-watchers, an update on the United Front Work Department from the Jamestown Foundation, Foreign Policy on Beijing’s snooze-inducing propaganda push, and a Sinica podcast on how to tell your New Left from your Bo Xilai fans from your Neo-Maoists.
I declare the weekend open with perhaps the most amazing video clip you will see all day/month/maybe year – a close-up of a comet.
What ? No “Shanghai Surprise” ? (Madonna + Sean Penn) A truly awful POS. Even more awkward than Yellowthread Street.
One of my favorite movies is “The World of Suzie Wong”. The nightclub scene was shot in a real life nightclub that stood where is now the Empire Hotel in Wanchai, just round the corner from the Luk Kwok Hotel, where Mason wrote the novel.
Re movie/TV link:
I appeared in an episode of ‘Dallas’, shot in Hong Kong. 1983, I think.
Here’s a 4 min vid https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOmJ0WJgQ_0
I play man-in-bed, my voice dubbed. Up close and personal with (then) the 2nd most recognizable woman on earth. Mother Teresa lacked the pulchritude of Ms Principal.
It was shot in the, by then, de-commissioned British Military Hospital in Kowloon.
Alas, I never shared the bed with Victoria Principal. However, I did share a bar counter with Larry Hagman. He sat at one end and I sat at the other end, drinking my San Mig. JR drank OJ. It was in the Gun Bar, in the lobby of the Hong Kong Hotel. The Gun Bar closed in 1986 to make place for yer another fucking shop. So, yes, it has been awhile.
The total project cost of the Rosetta mission is 1.4 billion euros in today’s money.
The HK-Macau-Zhuhai bridge has cost the equivalent of around 4.5 billion euros.
Get your head around that.
I was in ‘Noble House’ with Piers Brosnan in 1988, though somehow I wasn’t credited..
In a party scene at the Taipan’s house I pointed at a prawn.
Been pretty much downhill since.
Enough apologies – time to put the government back on the defensive. Ted Hui should formally complain to the Data Privacy Commissioner that an unknown woman was recording information about him without his consent. Let them explain.
So, does this mean that Ted Hui didn’t bite a baby’s head off?
I thought sure he had – or something akin to it.
It is not only legislators who are being monitored. Every minor gathering of law abiding citizens for any and every innocuous purpose – like objecting to the vacated pier at Kennedy Town being fenced off for a community garden instead of left open for the enjoyment of families and pet owners – is now duly recorded by the police via cameras and notebooks. When asked what the purpose of this monitoring is and what use is being made of the materials, the response is a shrug.
Every day dozens of officers are allocated to this activity. This is the same force that says it does not have the manpower to tackle illegal parking and other law and order issues on our streets.
Ted probably cracked. Hopefully some good will come from his foolish action in the form of an awakening of the public to the insidious erosion of our rights and the manner in which more timid folk are being intimidated into relinquishing the pursuit of a more equitable society.
My husband played a “Cuban assasin” in Yellowthread Street. The character got bumped off on one of Allan Zeman’s LKF nightclubs…
“…insidious erosion of our rights and the manner in which more timid folk are being intimidated into relinquishing the pursuit of a more equitable society.” ~Mary Melville
Sorry but being intimidated into relinquishing ones rights is a Chinese “virtue”
“The nightclub scene was shot in a real life nightclub that stood where is now the Empire Hotel in Wanchai”
Not true. All interiors were filmed at MGM studios in Borehamwood. Which is why Lional Blair and Bernard Cribbins suddenly turn up.