It suddenly occurs to me why Newsweek has the word ‘news’ in the title – the magazine is packed with information previously unknown to me. In just one sentence at the top of an exclusive and shocking story revealing to the world that Mainland companies are listing on the Hong Kong stock market, I learn two fascinating things. First, Hong Kong is an ‘enclave’. Second, there is a race between Hong Kong and Shanghai to become the ‘de facto’ (as opposed to what?) national stock market of China. The writer can disclose that Hong Kong is winning this race.
It sounds exciting. But then – what if there is in fact no such race? What if “the [conventional wisdom] that Shanghai is preordained to rise as a financial hub to rival Tokyo, London or New York,” is neither conventional nor wisdom but simply a fallacy swallowed by Newsweek reporters easily impressed by skyscrapers and unaware of the role of freely convertible currencies, open financial systems, free flows of information, and Anglo-Saxon traditions of law, accounting and corporate governance?
However, this leaves us with that initial stunning eye-opener, namely that the Big Lychee is an ‘enclave’. The word was last used in this region to describe pre-handover Macau, as it was easier than writing out ‘shabby, dilapidated Portuguese dump’. It means a country surrounded by another, like San Marino or Monaco, or part of a country in the same position, like the old West Berlin, Spain’s Ceuta and Melilla on the Moroccan coast, or East Timor’s exciting Oecussi-Ambeno. Either way, this is a major scoop for Newsweek.
Perhaps travellers abandoning Kuta will go to Hong Kong Disneyland instead. Assuming they can find it. Unlike the smoke left by Islamist suicide bombers, the Penny’s Bay haze seems to linger. To help out, the Hong Kong Observatory is training a webcam on the resort from Peng Chau, and thoughtfully identifying the murky, pale, pee-pee-tinted blobs in the lower left part of the scene as the Magic Kingdom, nestling in the warm, golden-hued air. What could be more enticing to Asia’s nervous holidaymakers?
Breakfast of congee and noodles at the Foreign Correspondents Club with voluptuous Administrative Officer Winky Ip. She is moody and possibly about to get snappy, so we eat in silence. I look through the papers and see that the recent agreement between Hong Kong’s two English dailies to divide the news between them seems to be working well, judging by the almost complete absence of any wasteful overlapping today.
The South China Morning Post concentrates on the dirt. A Cathay Pacific cabin attendant is murdered by his ex-crew girlfriend, who then leaps to her death. Is the airline getting a bit rusty? It used to do an excellent job of covering up all its cabin crew suicides. Former High Court judge Miles Henry Jackson-Lipkin and his wife are charged with welfare fraud. The SCMP is showing its amateurishness here, just reporting the dry court proceedings. The Chinese press dredged up the juice on all this last May, regaling readers with tales of HK$7,000 CSSA a month for three years, a place in the spacious China Coast Home for Aging Gwailo Gentlefolk in Kowloon Tong, rental income from overseas property, etc, etc. (Can you dredge juice? Never mind.) The paper does little better with the ever-popular Roderick Murray, suspended barrister, simply stating that he has been remanded to the psychiatric ward at Siu Lam Prison after jumping bail on assault charges. Why don’t they mention anything about the hordes of lonely Western women who have been riding the ferry to Mui Wo on the flimsiest of excuses in the hope – sometimes fulfilled – that the maverick lawyer will introduce himself and display his renowned charm and wit? Lastly, the Post reviews Nana Mouskouri’s farewell tour – “the perfect toast to a lifetime of gentle glories.” Pass the air motion discomfort receptacle.
What is that muffled, abrasive sound echoing along the length of the Mid-Levels Escalator this morning? Is it the dandruff that has fallen through the walkway’s cracks being ground up by the machine’s inner workings? Is it the schoolchildren on the street below, scuffing their hands and knees on the pavement as they drag themselves up the hill, weighed down by the 40 pounds of books in their Hello Kitty backpacks? No. It is merely Hong Kong’s clean-living, disenfranchised, tax-paying middle class scratching their heads and asking, “Wong who?”
Thurs, 6 Oct
Another exciting morning in S-Meg Tower. I have precisely 10 minutes before the Big Boss drags me off to a mystery meeting at which I will play my favourite role – the factotum who proves how cosmopolitan S-Meg Holdings is by silently being white. Just enough time for a quick flick through the paper.
Fri, 7 Oct
As dawn breaks over the deserted concrete plaza of Exchange Square, wild American friend Odell sits at a table just outside IFC Mall and watches me approach. “I’m through with Pacific Coffee,” he tells me as I sit down. “I’ve tried everything – blueberry and jojoba latte, rosehip and cardamom yoghurt, mint-mango-tea tree oil slurpy. There’s nothing new left. So I’ve got this.” He pours a dark purple liquid with small green lumps out of a small bottle into a plastic cup. “It’s netsuke,” he announces. “From that weird shop on Hollywood Road.” I know the place – I walk past it every day. I’ve often wondered what it actually sells. Odell takes a sip, puts the cup down and picks up a smallish cardboard Star Company box in both hands. He shakes it slightly. Small hard objects – pebbles, perhaps – rattle around inside. He puts it down, flips the lid open and invites me to take one of the shiny, slightly yellow, roughly cuboid items. “Hippo teeth! Try one – they’re great.” I place one on my tongue and bite down. It’s hard, but eventually the smooth shell gives way, revealing a soft, meaty flavoured filling. “They’re not cheap,” admits the ex-Mormon as he pops one between his lips. “But they’re worth it. Just try not to think that they were originally in someone else’s mouth.”
He tells me about his latest project. “I’ve decided to start writing a blog. I know most of them are really boring, but what the heck – could be fun.” I assure him that I, for one, will read it avidly. “Well,” he goes on, “I’ve decided to have a character in this blog, a glamorous female civil servant, if you can imagine such a thing. I’ve thought up a great name for her. I’m going to call her Lolly Chiu.” He looks at me with a proud grin. “Isn’t that a great name?”
I shake my head. “No, you can’t do that,” I say. “You can’t call her that. Seriously, there’s already a senior civil servant called Lolly Chiu. Ms Lolly Chiu, JP, Deputy Secretary for Home Affairs.” He bursts out laughing and chortles something about how I’m full of bullshit. “No really,” I insist, “she’s in charge of culture and sport.” More cackling. “She’s a trustee of the Society for Panda Conservation.” He slaps the table in mirth and demands, through a mouth full of half-chewed hippo molars, how I think this stuff up.
WAITING FOR me in the in-tray in my office at the top of S-Meg Tower – the first corporate desk calendar of the season. Normally, I give tacky free promotional items away to the Filipino elves, to whom they are a valuable commodity to be cherished for generations. But this one, with its year-round views of our new Disneyland, is so charming it demands to be kept for a year.
