16-22 November, 2008
In the early 19th Century the savage, barely literate, Scots-Irish future President Andrew Jackson led an army of soldiers to drive the Seminole Indians out of their Georgia and Florida homelands to their deaths in the swamps. Years later, surviving members of the tribe took their revenge by buying the Hard Rock Café chain and forcing the portly, uneducated, low-bred descendents of their white oppressors to wear a badge of shame in the form of T-shirts displaying the tacky restaurant’s logo. At first it seemed like a just punishment. But over the years, as the chain opened up in more and more cities around the globe, totally innocent populations in places as far away as Asia found themselves subjected to the sight of these dimwitted damned plodding around their streets advertising the dismal-food-with-guitars-on-walls eatery’s locations in Dubai, Berlin, Tokyo or, in the case of a young and now-disowned member of the Hemlock clan, Myrtle Beach. So the time has come to fight back, and the Big Lychee as always leads the way by driving its one and only Hard Rock Café out of town. Yet more proof, following the highly welcome demise of Krispy Kreme Donuts, of the vital role played by a recession in delivering the divine ruination of the gastronomically unrighteous.
Tue, 18 Nov
When the time comes for the Good Book to be updated, there will be some tempting parallels to draw between Hong Kong’s first two Chief Executives. Tung Chee-hwa started off popular but refused to listen to anyone beyond his own small circle. With no principles or philosophy to guide him, he made it all up as he went along, making bigger and bigger mistakes, panicking and becoming something of a joke. When hard times came, Beijing – who had foisted the crop-haired incompetent on the once-confident community in the first place – added insult to injury in the form of economic ‘favours’ like meaningless trade concessions and conceited promises to support the nation’s richest city. When the pain kicked in and unemployment climbed, extravagantly paid officials helplessly wrung their hands, offering companies vacuous tips on how to avoid layoffs and begging banks to extend credit to near-bankrupt firms.
Another difference is that Tsang is wrapped up in his own self-indulgent mission to throw as much of our money away as possible on white elephant infrastructure projects. When Hong Kong retailers or banks lay off staff, the Government rightly does no more than tut-tut. But when casino projects in Macau stall and construction workers come back to the Big Lychee, officials make a big show of speeding up – for the tenth time – major projects to ‘create jobs’. It is an excuse they welcome with glee. Apart from their own material well-being, the bureaucrats’ only other main concern is property prices, which are being propped up by the old policy of keeping the supply of new land even tighter than usual.
To Macau on a special inspection tour tomorrow.
The aim of yesterday’s trip to Asia’s capital of half-built casinos was to investigate a rumour concerning the extremely tasteful Grand Emperor Hotel, with its gold ingots set into the lobby floor, chandeliers in every Louis XIV elevator and genuine gwailo (or at least Rumanian) red-coated Buckingham Palace-style guards on the entrance. Word had reached me that in every room, on the desk in front of the flat screen TV, was an elegant box. And in the satin-lined magnificence under the lid of the box lay an exquisite Baroque remote control.
Gaining access to a room proved relatively easy – you just stroll down a gilded corridor knocking until someone opens a door, flash a Hong Kong ID card in the bewildered Mainland tourist’s face and march in while jabbering urgently in English. And, to my delight, I find it is true. A regal channel-switching device, as presented by pageboys to nobles in the lounge at the court of Versailles itself. If the hotel were run by Richard Branson, it would be witty. But it belongs to entertainment mogul Albert Yeung and it is aimed at a clientele that wouldn’t know the glamour of Europe’s royal palaces if it walked up and bit them on the nose. It’s closer to genius.
BACK IN the Big Lychee, Secretary for Concrete-Laying Carrie Lam pulls off a bold achievement in the field of Striking a Balance. On the one hand, 7 million people need a habitable urban environment. On the other, half a dozen families want to make billions in easy money by building oversized structures that swamp neighbourhoods with traffic. How to solve this conundrum?
Ms ‘meek-as-a’ Lam’s solution is to urge each side to compromise, and it looks as though – after making threats and/or promises of what must be cosmic magnitude to Sir Gordon Wu and Son – she might have succeeded. It will now be a mere 55 storeys. Assuming the protestors are too browbeaten to go on, the public will now have to put up with some extra air pollution and congestion, but not as much as they otherwise would have, and the developers will gain some billions of dollars, but not as much as they otherwise would have. It’s yet another win-win, brokered by the Hong Kong Government. What other city puts such effort into striking a balance between wrecking the environment and not wrecking it?
Fri, 21 Nov
Taiwan’s decision earlier this week to distribute vouchers worth around US$100 to every resident to get people spending in the shops is ‘harebrained’, in the considered words of the Wall Street Journal. In Macau, I found on Wednesday, locals are proudly convinced that the scheme is inspired by their own territory’s HK$5,000 anti-inflation handout a few months ago (they spent it on trips to Japan, donated it to charity or blew it at the casinos).
In Hong Kong, the Liberal Party couldn’t care less whether it makes economic sense, let alone who first thought of it. They are seeing dollar signs in their eyes and hearing the ‘ker-chung!’ of cash tills ringing in their flabby, waxy ears. Long bankrolled by the tycoons who run the property cartel, the Liberals know that if the Big Lychee handed out such coupons to its citizens, much of the extra revenue rolling into the shops would end up in landlords’ pockets.
One measure of consumer confidence in Hong Kong is the popularity of the Mass Transit Railway’s Fare Saver machine – also known as the cheap scumbag magnet – on the Mid-Levels Escalator above Hollywood Road. After waving their magic Octopus stored value cards over the device, Central’s secretaries and clerks enjoy HK$2 off their train ride home that evening (the discount only applies out of Central MTR Station on the same day). The line of people waiting patiently to use it at lunchtime has grown noticeably in recent weeks and now stretches down as far as the walkway over Lyndhurst Terrace, maybe 80 yards away. Including the trip from their offices along Queens and Des Voeux Roads, people are taking at least 20 minutes out of their midday break every day for two bucks (some carry a clutch of workmates’ cards).
