…on annual inspection visit, to confirm that the city is maintaining its standards of semi-medieval architecture, African chicken and other delights…
Main conclusion: if Hong Kong is to meet its target of an extra 100 million tourists per year, it could learn two things from Former-Portuguese-Enclave-ville.
First, if you insist on hosting yet another Sun Yat Sen Museum (does anyone so unaccomplished in history have so many memorials?) make it a wacky one…
No stuffed goats? Forget it.
Second, you can’t attract the really classy hordes we know you have in mind if your idea of a cruise hub doesn’t involve on-board Thai transvestite dancers and Filipino dwarf boxers…
…all in the best possible taste.
Incidentally: why do TurboJet booths in both HK and Macau ferry terminals now only sell tickets for departures 2+ hours in advance, while tour-company/scalpers openly offer ‘next-sailing’ tickets yards away at a 10-20% mark-up (and this is not a peak time and the boats are filling up with stand-by passengers)?
Possible that the Ho-ho-hos are choking supply on the ferries to drum up business for Pansy’s new minibus shuttle across the Bridge Too Far?
The scalpers buy up all those next-sailing tickets. But, not always all of them! Use the automated kiosks, they often work where the manned ticket counters don’t…
I wouldn’t call overthrowing centuries of imperial rule over a massive country being “unaccomplished in history”.
@ Old Newcomer
I think Hemmers has a point:
Sun Yat Sen “led” the overthrow centuries of imperial rule in the same way Benny Tai “led” the student occupation of Admiralty.
Both had an idea that they singularly failed to implement, and then someone other revolutionaries ran with it while the “leaders” were — as per their track record of failure — caught completely by surprise and totally unprepared for the actual event.
Sun was in the US during the actual revolution, his fellow “leading” revolutionaries turned up to “lead” the revolution a month after it had already succeeded in Wuhan and had started to spread elsewhere. Benny was still threatening to plan to possibly occupy Central when a whole bunch of students actually occupied Admiralty.
Sun took the reins as president for all of 3 months before resigning and giving the job to the guy who made Pu Yi abdicate (thus actually overthrowing centuries of imperial rule) — the warlord Yuan Shikai. After that the country descended into the chaos of warlordism (surprise) — much like Libya and Afghanistan before the Taliban and today.
Indeed I suspect the fact that Sun was ineffectual and vague is why he became such a famous figure. Like Trollope’s quote on another insipid ideology — “The Church of England is the only church in the world that interferes neither with your politics nor your religion” — Sun Yat Sen could be safely adopted by all sides without fear of ideological clash. Furthermore, to misquote Stan Lee: “with no power, comes no responsibility” — having done very little leading, he is also blameless.
LRE: Very astute summation