Inspired perhaps by chefs who lure suckers to special feasts of caviar with truffle and gold flakes, Ocean Park is offering exclusive VIP opportunities to ‘meet’ its baby pandas. Expect to pay…
…HK$1,500 each for a special, 30-minute visit before the park opens each day
…Each session will start at around 9.30am and can accommodate up to 40 people…
Perhaps wisely, considering how special tickets to see stars sometimes flop, the park’s chairman is managing expectations…
“For the sake of animal welfare, there will not be any activities for people to interact with or hold the giant pandas.”
The pair of panda cubs might not appear at the same time to meet the public because they are still young, Pong added.
Or maybe they find the whole concept offensive. “We feel like we’re living in a zoo sometimes,” one told me by phone this morning.
HKPORI will suspend its self-funded surveys and perhaps close down for good…
Pollster [PORI CEO] Robert Chung has been taken in by police to assist with investigations twice since PORI’s former deputy CEO Chung Kim-wah, currently in the UK, was added to a wanted list last December over alleged violations of Beijing-imposed national security law.
Robert Chung was first taken in for questioning on January 13, the same day the PORI office was raided. He was taken in a second time later that month.
PORI will “suspend all its self-funded research activities indefinitely, including regular tracking surveys conducted since 1992, as well as all feature studies recently introduced,” the polling organisation said in a statement on Thursday.
“HKPORI will undergo a transformation or even close down,” while CEO Chung “welcomes interested parties to take over the Institute,” the statement said.
As with David Webb’s superb on-line database, PORI’s opinion polls would ideally be adopted by Hong Kong U or some other university. But HKU actually cut ties with the polling group in 2019, leading Robert Chung to pretty much predict what is now happening.
Maybe the government should take it in-house. Who wouldn’t want accurate data on what citizens think?
A few more things to read…
From Quillette – at the site of protests over a planned new giant Chinese embassy in London…
A war is coming to Britain’s streets—a war that pits those Hongkongers who have made the UK their home against a Communist Party that wants to make the UK its vassal. This war has nothing to do with the Woke/DEI propaganda that seems to constitute modern police training (if either of these new combatants were to shout “Racist!,” the police really would be in a position of some difficulty.) Things are about to get a lot more complicated, and Britain is not ready.
The Globe and Mail on Hong Kong’s Four Trails ultra-marathon – a 300km torture for only the fittest (and perhaps borderline insane), subject of a surprise box-office hit documentary.
For Valentine’s Day
Hold my hand, my love.
No need to speak.
We are going to see
the prisons, the Peak.
We will see Asia’s
most brilliant hub,
and a panda cub.
Come to a bookshop, a library,
but do not linger here.
Do not ask about books
that disappear.
What’s wrong, my love?
Don’t pout like that.
I’m going to show you
a subdivided flat,
and a panda.
Pandas originate from Sichuan province. Sichuan could claim them as mascots or whatever. Hong Kong turning itself into a “panda economy” makes no fucking sense at all. There are cities all over the world that host pandas from China. Hong Kong could as well use kangaroos or llamas as mascots. So, the civil servants committee who brainstormed this nonsense into reality deserves a Grand Bauhinia Medal and a pay raise for all involved plus an all-expense paid dim sum lunch with Carrie Lam.
I could almost cry Knownot. More than moving (on).