Shenzhen Zen

2007-06-20T07:40:00.000-07:00

Son of SZ Zen: Hua Hin Hoo-hah (Thailand Remix)
And so, with the snapping, slavering jaws of the Hong Kong tax hounds and his landlord behind him our fearless narrator finds himself in Hua Hin, Thailand, a locale popularly described by low budget travel journals and airline magazines as an "unspoiled beach resort" 2 or so hours (depending on transportation and road repair conditions) south of Bangkok.

He had last been in the "Land of Smiles" as a tender youth of 9-10 years of age and remembered a curious, friendly, idyllic existence that in retrospect probably depended more on the naive undeveloped Thai economy, three servants, and his father's privileged status at the time as Fulbright Scholar and lecturer at Bangkok's distinguished Thomasat (sp) University than any tourist bureau dogma.

What he finds in June 2007 is himself servant-free, ass down, right leg shredded at the knee and foot and pinned under a rented 120 cc Honda on a dirt road that he has foolishly tried to navigate in an attempt at personal transportation. That he has no more business on a motorbike than he does piloting an F-18 did not factor into his rash decision. Born to be Wild had been thrumming through his head as he twisted the plastic throttle grip and had died as he swerved and spun wildly to avoid hitting a meandering 1/4 ton calf in his path.

Looking up he saw the smirking face of 10 or 11-year-old Thai boy, a smoldering hand rolled cigar clenched firmly in his tiny tight mouth. His leathery cow-herder father was beside him. Both smiled at each other, conferred briefly in Thai, of which he understood one word "farang" (foreigner) -- as in "that witless old foreigner almost hit our life savings; too bad we can't collect and cash in"). Then they heaved the bike off his leg and stood there barely giggling until he wobbbled away in a bleeding, palsied cloud of dust.

Any interested readers can read this again and future SoSZZen posts atSon of Shenzhen Zen: Hua Hin Hoohaw

2007-06-08T21:04:00.000-07:00

Not Fade Away
And so it's time to say goodbye. I was hoping to make 400 posts in nearly four years, but will settle for 397 and the memories. Shenzhen Zen is retiring, and relocating under a name to be announced later.

The Dead's "what a long, strange trip it's been" by-now cliched line doesn't begin to cover my feelings. Mostly gratitude though for the people I've met and the places they've shown me both in their hearts and the occasional bar.

In random order I'd like to thank as many as I can here, beginning as many as I am able to remember from the Shenzhen beginning.

Everlasting thank yous go to foreign-barbarian coworker Jeff (current whereabouts unknown); Peter "It's my fate" the-SZ-Fixer; James "The Temple Guy/Laughing Buddha" Baquet; Gary, Lanni and the long scattered crew at the late, great Moondance; the Shenzhen Daily staff, particularly Helen (the first Communist Party member I ever partied with); Jennifer, Sally, Lan, Alfred, John "Flame" Woo, Mr Tan, Michelle-the-comics-lady, Lulu, Lilly, and most of all editors Alex and Jeffrey who had the mistaken, but well-meanin sense to hire me.

Also gratitude to former (and current) Shenzhen expats, scholars and wastrels, ladies and gentlemen give up the love to Patrick, Isaac, Sam, the Estonian dudes, the drunk guy from Ghana who dressed as Santa Claus one night and a few others I can't recall at the moment. Though he won't be seeing this I also owe thanks to "Skull Man," the corner store keeper who supplied me with noodles, fishballs, fractured English conversations and fireworks during my time at the Lucky Number.

In Hong Kong, John Berthelsen and Lin Neumann who hired me despite the stain on my resume that is Weekly World News and the protestations of a couple of burned-out Pom wanker hacks still cultivating their arse callouses and gin blossoms at The Standard.

On a more positive note, others who enhanced the Standard experience include Wendy, Winnie, William Sparrow, Olivia, Dr. Wu, Chester, Andrea-the-Canuk bombshell, Leslie, Teddy, Chris D., Zach, Zubair, Paris "best byline ever" Lord, Rob G., Tyronne, Mike C., Roger, John, Jonathan C., Doug C., Timothy, Michael, Una, and the Meemster. Dennis N., thank you, if only for the entertainment value your raw copy/HK experience much smoother than I ever deserved include "Katie-Katie," Elaine, Kari, Rose "Pole Dancer" Tang, Jo-Jo L., Albert (and Donna) and Judy at SCMP.
Others in HK whom I owe a debt and more include Roland Soong, Spike, Hamish, Andrew, The Three Simons (Song, World and bc), Lawrence Li, Dee the prosecutor and my faithful, nameless laundress in Telford Gardens. Outside the area but close to my heart, especially on deadline, are Jeremy Goldkorn and the crew at Danwei.org in Beijing, Mssr. Running Dog last-seen-in-Shanghai, and Dave at Mutant Palm.

And most of all thanks to the faithful readers who've mostly stuck with it despite SZ Zen's many downs and woefully few ups, particularly Cristobal R., L. Kim F., amiga Jean, Matt & Deb, Ben and brother Steve, Don C/, Leland, Gillers, Chuck S., Huddle ("Tanya"), Matty Dred, Tomas Fogarty, Sherry-in-Almost-Lost, NM., Rob R. (thanks muchly for the George Strait and more discs), The Dunham clan, mi familia, Nate, Da7e, Ty, and all at daverockstheuniverse, Danish Peter, Fred, Bob, Susan, Michelle, Jeeter and Devil Dog at WX, the anonymous Euro researcher at the Antarctic ice station, a dogged reader in Hungary, and a couple of English-speaking mainland Chinese readers who followed me when Blogspot wasn't being blocked by China's Great Firewall and whose names I've also regretfully lost.

The pictures here are almost equally random. Most probably meant more to me despite a lack of photogenic appeal. Anyone wanting to follow the sequel, tenatively titled "Son of Shenzhen Zen, (or something like it) is welcome to e-mail me at average underscore guy26 at yahoo dot com for a link when I finally get it together.

And yes, thanks to C. Our song will continue, just in a different format. In my life, I've loved you best.

2007-06-06T05:47:00.000-07:00

Song for Simon

If you are reading this blog it's largely due to a Chinese photographer you've likely never heard of.

In July 2003, after a gig shooting the Clinton White House for China's state news agency, Xinhua, Simon Song (Song Xiaogang) was a 38-year-old intern/journalism student from Hong Kong University working as an intern at New York's most excitable tabloid, The New York Daily News. He'd gone from photographing the likes of Bill and Hillary, Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat, Bob Dole, and Socks, the Clinton cat to daily weather pictures, Martha Stewart's court house visits, and various New-York-only style gatherings and protests.

I was in Boulder, Colorado in July 2003 mulling over whether I should take a blind leap to teach English at a summer camp in Shenzhen, China a city I'd never heard of until seeing a "Help Wanted - Native English Speakers" notice on the Internet. I was also reading the New Yorker faithfully and a Talk of the Town item grabbed my imagination. Filed under "Cultural Exchange Department" it was a graceful, witty write-up about a Chinese photographer named Simon Song and an English language blog he was writing about working and living in New York.

Mead described it thusly: "...a transformation of our more mundane comings and goings into exotic objects of anthropology." In particular she reprinted Song's reaction to seeing a black woman reading Sun Tze's Art of War on the NYC subway. "Oh," Song wrote, "Can you imagine seeing a foreigner, a girl, reading ‘The Art of War’ on a NY MTA?”

Well, yes, I could. But Song's sense of wonder as well as his droll observation that "I transmitted three weather pictures to the Daily News system. They like to have weather pictures" both moved me and made me laugh. I'd had an editor at a newspaper in Nebraska for whom The Weather was King. I could relate.

Shortly thereafter I decided to begin a blog about Shenzhen using the story as my inspiration. Fast forward to 2004 and I was working for The Standard and on an assignment with a soft spoken Chinese photographer named Simon. We were making small talk, getting to know one another and killing time. After some prodding on my part, he mentioned his White House experience, as well as the Daily News.

"That's cool!" I said. "You know New Yorker magazine?" He nodded. I kept babbling. "A great magazine! One of America's best! Anyway, I read a wonderful piece in it just before I came to China. It was about a Chinese photographer who was also working at the Daily News and the blog he was keeping. I can't remember his name but it really inspired me...Did you know him?"

Simon nodded slightly, but was silent for an almost unnaturally long time. Then he spoke. "Uh...that was me."

I went mildly batshit. "You? That was you? Man, that is so damn cool. The New Yorker! Do you still have the article?" Simon said he did but had neglected to frame it. He's a modest guy, as I have said. A mellow fellow who relaxes by taking classical Chinese music lessons and prefers to photograph antique furniture and architectural details when in Macau rather than hitting the casinos and bars. (This last observation comes from personal experience.)

Fast forward again to early this week. Simon had long since vacated The Standard for a better position for more pay at The South China Morning Post. We hadn't seen one another for awhile and agreed to short reunion in a small cafe/bar in Wanchai. Typically, he waited until we were about to part to tell me off-handedly that he had had just finished writing his third book, a translation of a self-help/inspirational work by a Chinese Buddhist nun.

"Your third?" I asked. "I know about the nun one now. And I know about the first one. What was the second?"

He happened to have it with him. It was a first-person account of his life overseas covering the White House and later in New York. I thumbed through the Chinese text looking at the pictures and saw one I had never seen before. It was Simon in the New Yorker office with Rebecca Mead. I kept turning the pages and saw the entire chapter was devoted to his moment of Talk of the Town fame, complete with an English reprint of Mead's story.

"Hey! New Yorker offices...what a great picture! Simon, you had hair then! Your blog! A whole chapter! How cool is this?"

Simon smiled and nodded. "Did the publisher get permission from the New Yorker to reprint the story?" I asked. The book was published by Xinhua and I already suspected that I knew the answer. Despite its aspirations to be a world class media empire, Xinhua isn't exactly universally known for high ethical standards, especially when it comes to publishing and copyright issues.

Simon winced just a bit. "No," he said. "That's okay," I replied. "No biggie. I'm just so glad to see this again. You know, we probably wouldn't be together here right now if it wasn't written."

Simon graciously gave me the book, signed it, we shook hands and went our separate ways. I read the English reprint twice while riding home on the MTR. A middle aged Chinese man near me noticed I was immersed in what appeared to be an entirely Chinese book and complimented me on reading it. "Very nice to see a foreigner reading Chinese," he said.

"Yeah," I said, closing it to hide the English text. "Uh...I, ah, actually I don't read it very well. But thank you. It's by a Chinese friend of mine. He wrote about seeing foreigners reading Chinese authors in New York."

Here's an (unauthorized) reprint of Mead's column about Simon courtesy of the New Yorker online archives.

If, in years to come, an average New Yorker is asked to recall the most newsworthy events of June, 2003, he or she will probably be stumped. The biggest story in town was the record-breaking rainfall, which, though significant in the context of global warming and footwear ruination, was soft news. We were not blighted by terrorism, or by political scandal, or even by any particularly egregious celebrity misbehavior, Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher’s hookup notwithstanding.

However, to Simon Song, an intern on the photo desk at the News, June provided a parade of extraordinary sights and outlandish events. Song, a thirty-eight-year-old native of the People’s Republic of China who is enrolled at the University of Hong Kong, has been keeping an online diary of his activities and impressions, along with examples of his photography, at nydailynews.weblogger.com. There, in slightly off-kilter English, he has chronicled his encounters with the city’s justice system (“We went to Court House to cover Martha Stewart. We stood in the chilly wind for nearly 4 hours”); the World Trade Center site (“I was deeply moved by what I saw. It gave me strength and power rather than tears and fear”); and the general cultural richness of the city. On June 4th, he recounted, his assignments included “Policemen issuing tickets, the raining day today and a naked demonstration against the animal leather clothes.”

While Song’s natural readership consists of his friends and his family, the site provides, for the New Yorkers who have stumbled across it, a transformation of our more mundane comings and goings into exotic objects of anthropology. Of the opening night of “Turandot” in Central Park, Song wrote, “It is not a Opera performance. It is more like a after-work big party.” And of a subway ride: “This morning, I saw a black girl reading a book ‘The Art of War.’ I told myself: ‘This is a nice book name.’ Then I saw the author of the book: Sun Tze. Oh, can you imagine seeing a foreigner, a girl, reading ‘The Art of War’ on a NY MTA?”

Song, whose résumé reveals that he was working in the Xinhua News Agency in Beijing during the Tiananmen Square crackdown, in 1989, recounts his surprise at attending an anti-police rally at City Hall Park. “It was a scene that seemed strange to me,” he wrote. “People shouted loudly against the police and the policemen stood quietly beside to keep the order and safety of the demonstrators.” The news judgments of his employer have also been worthy of note. On June 23rd, Song wrote, “I transmitted three weather pictures to the Daily News system. They like to have weather pictures.”

Not every New York moment has been easy for Song, who has been living at the International House, near Columbia University. His wife remained in Beijing, and loneliness has been a problem. After visiting Central Park, Song wrote, “The bad thing is that I don’t have a friend with me there,” and he has reflected on his incapacity for leisure. “No matter in the HKU or here near Columbia, I wonder why I don’t have time to make myself feel easy: sitting in the sunshine, drinking a coke, reading a novel. Or going to a beach, enjoying the breeze. Life is pushing hard for me.”

But Song’s New York is, over all, a place of enlightenment, amusement, and opportunity. Song attended the gay-pride parade, and declared himself amazed. “Thought I might see a bunch of people on streets. But it turned out to be such a big parade,” he wrote. “American people like to find themselves a lot of fun. People standing beside the streets cheered the parade. You don’t need to be gays or gay right activists to enjoy a colorful parade and the happy atmosphere.” Song’s photo of the day showed a parader wearing a rainbow-colored Statue of Liberty outfit, a sight that moved him to remark upon what, even in a slow news month, remains the undercurrent of all our daily affairs: “New York is a city full of surprises and wonders.”

2007-05-30T03:45:00.000-07:00

Tick Tock

A few weeks ago C & I had the pleasure of hosting two, rare foreign Hong Kong visitors in Shenzhen. Not a lot of them are willing to make the plunge, unless it's a quick in-and-out involving the ol' in-and-out and/or a swift trip at the Lohou border to score quickie counterfeit stuff, a massage, some non-Cantonese Chinese food and back again.

Thanks to C's connections and a story idea I had we had a different tour agenda for my New Zealand chum, H., and an English lass, N.

"Hey, kids! Instead of Windows of the World, Splendid China or Shenzhen's Tallest Building, how 'bout we visit a counterfeit watch factory?" The factory in question is run by a first cousin of C's, a cheerful 35-year-old fellow who originally made legit time pieces in their northeast China hometown of Dandong til the lure of more money and competition with North Korean counterfeit watch makers across the Yalu River drove him south to Shenzhen. His current set-up is a slightly scarifying operation; three floors up in a non-descript structure in an older, less-developed Shenzhen neighborhood it contains at least one room reeking of toxic plating fumes where brain jangled teenage employees without masks incur long-term neural damage working 7.30am-6pm, 6-days/wk. while crafting fake designer time pieces for about US$2/day.

First an introduction: N is tall, thin - 6-1 ft, 6-2 maybe? - and blonde. She also speaks fluent Mandarin. Thus in Shenzhen and anywhere else in China she is both an object of basic curiousity (see: tall, thin, blonde, female) and also one of extreme wonder (as in: "How wonderous that a young, exotic foreign female speaks our language so well, while that old, fat, red-faced, hairy barbarian loser squiring this group around and trying to poke into my fake watch factory speaks nothing but broken phrases and babble!")

She and C were the keys to getting her cousin to open up a little more. Mr. Wong as I'll call him (not his real name, but I'd have to kill you, etc. if I told you) was entranced by N and practically crawled on broken glass as he chatted her up while escorting us out of his fake watch sweatshop to the nearest taxi artery. You can read about some of it here. http://www.asiasentinel.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=509&Itemid=32

And if you're in the market for a mass order of fake Thomas the Tank Engine, Mickey Mouse, Validmir Putin (or the Lone Ranger) on a White Steed, Hugo Boss, Rolex, Omega, Fossil, Tag Heuer, Beijing Olympics etc., watches, lemme know. I know a guy who might help. And if N agrees to a dinner date, I bet he'd drop the price even more...

2007-05-24T21:02:00.000-07:00

Gallon of Gas
I love the smell of a flammable liquid in the morning and that's what greeted me when I arrived at the third floor of the mighty Sing Tao Publishing building at about 10.45am today. It reeked of gas fumes and the reception area was crawling with cops.

The third floor mostly houses the Sing Tao circulation department in addition to the temporary office where I'm working on a contract project with five other folks. It does not contain an advertising department or a newsroom, though there are two newspapers, Sing Tao Daily and The Standard on other floors.

But details like that didn't seem to bother the smartly dressed, Mandarin-speaking loonball who'd come into the foyer at about 9am, sat on a red fabric covered chair and demanded to place an advertisement. When he was asked by a receptionist what sort of ad, he didn't reply but instead poured a plastic jar of kerosene, gas or lighter fluid over himself and demanded to see "the editor-in-chief." He didn't specify a newspaper. He was also gripping a box cutter, and, reports vary, perhaps a lighter.

I gotta hand it to the receptionist who calmly told him to wait 10 minutes for the "editor-in-chief" to see him. She called the cops instead who tumbled in shortly thereafter later and hustled him out. I arrived after the excitment to see one of the humble cleaning ladies methodically soaking up the fluid with a wad of paper towels as Hong Kong's finest wandered around photographing the soaked, fume-laden chair which looked as though someone had urinated all over it.

Security guards said gas man had been here twice yesterday but because it was a public holiday (Buddha's Birthday) there was no one to take his ad, hear his demands or to watch him try to torch or cut himself. A former Standard coworker also cracked that he'd have had no luck placing an ad in that paper, even on a working day...

2007-05-22T23:39:00.000-07:00

Lost (in the) Supermarket
When I moved into my Hong Kong shopping center cum apartment complex about three years ago there were two, count 'em, two super markets. As of last week there are none, though Telford Gardens houses 15,000 or more souls, many of them seemingly on the far side of 118 years.

Expired leases and raised rents are the explanations, though the space where the latest one closed is supposed to be reoccupied by another grocer, in, "oh, not sure, maybe ... two, maybe three months?" according to the zombie housing management officer whom I beat senseless with a shovel in order to extract the informaton.

Meanwhile, if old Auntie Kao or I want basics like toilet paper, rice, eggs, chicken feet, fish heads and fresh bovine bronchial tubes the nearest option is either a shuttle bus that runs only between 8.30am-12.30pm -- perfect for the day shift working stiffs! -- to some other super market several time zones away or to hump it on foot up and down over 170-some stairs, through sweaty throngs, monsoons, 90% humidity and an overpass or two to a slightly closer purveyor of expired freshness-dated goods.

I wanted to complain, find a solution, start a petition, rally, organize, march -- whatever it took to change this sad state of affairs. After failing miserably at the housing management office where my Ugly American act got me virtually nothing but blank stares and contrived "apologies" I decided to try my luck with my District Councillor, a fiftysomething grandmother named Winnie Poon. I'd seen her office almost daily but had never ventured inside.

Winnie was thrilled to see me. "You are only the second gweilo to visit this office!" she enthused. What happened to the first? I wondered, but didn't ask.

Winnie has been a District Councillor (the HK equivalent of an alderman) for more than 20 years. She's a staunch liberal who admired the "Support the Tiananmen Mothers" T-shirt I was wearing, and she had already fought the good fight to no avail to keep uninterrupted access to groceries for Telford Gardens residents. She showed me a petition with 10,000 signatures pleading for the management to help keep a store open.

Result? Nada. "No one cares," Winnie said of the management. She also showed me pictures of creaky, wobbling outraged elderly residents picketing and waving Chinese language signs protesting the closure. It was Winnie who arranged for the shuttle bus -- she said the limited hours were the best she could do -- and said she'd also offered to collect money and grocery orders for delivery service if someone wanted to spend HK$400 (about US$50) for a minimum order.

I thanked Winnies for her efforts, declined the delivery option because of potential language/brand name snafus and then learned that she had an American son-in-law.

"Where's he from?"

"Utah," she replied. Then the kicker. "I'm a Mormon!" she said smiling broadly. She might as well of said, "I'm a transsexual Venutian bobsled racer!"

I'd never met a native Hong Kong Mormon, though I've encountered plenty of the white, ever-smiling USA and English LDS missionaries here with their name tags, permanent press shirts, cheap ties and clunky black and brown shoes trying to buttonhole me and others into believing that in 1827 a guy named Joseph Smith dug up some magical gold tablets in upstate New York courtesy of an angel named "Moroni." Joe needed two years and some magic glasses to read and translate them as The Book of Mormon, a work aptly described by Mark Twain as "chloroform in print."

"You know, it just all sounds like a fairy tale to me," I said after I'd impressed Winnie with my minimal knowledge of Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, Moroni, Nephites, Urim and Thummim and Jesus's post-death Tour of the Americas. I didn't press her on why Indians used steel bows in pre-Columbian America or why the Lord took until 1978 to reveal to LDS honcho Spencer Kimball that it was finally okay to allow blacks to be priests. And I didn't make any polgamist or Osmond Family jokes or mention a nasty little LDS secret called the Mountain Meadows Massacre.

"All religions sound like fairy tales," she replied, smiling.

"Yeah, a dead guy comes back to life three days after being nailed to a tree ... waters part miraculously ... Mary's face appears suddenly on the hood of a 1977 Chevy Nova..." I mumbled more to myself. I cleared my throat.

"Maybe you could pray for a new supermarket soon, though," I said more clearly. "A miraculous supply of fish and loaves that we wouldn't have to walk a couple miles to find. That would be a fairy tale I could believe in."

2007-05-13T21:35:00.000-07:00

The Son Also Rises/Smuggler's Blues

Photo by Ty Hart
It was about 10.30am Saturday in Hong Kong when my cell phone rang again for about the eighth time that morning. I sighed. "Another call from the piano smugglers," I thought, almost reflexively handing the phone to C, until I noticed that it was an unknown caller.

For readers faithful enough to recall niggling details of past posts, C's desire for a piano has never abated and to make a long story very short we were due to take possession of one on Saturday, a free(!) 12-year-old English made standup courtesy of a charitable expat pal whose 14-year-old daughter had foresaken it and Chopin in favor of Internet games like Smart Anime Mania's "Lupin the 3d" and "Virtual Joyce's" Lover Personality Test. "Thank you, Jeebus!" I babbled at the time. "You've saved our relationship!" He pried me from his ankle and wiped my drool from his otherwise spotless deck shoes. "Just get it moved, pronto," he replied.

Only one hitch. After several calls to legitimate moving companies I found it's illegal (and prohibitively expensive) for a foreigner to move furniture from Hong Kong to Shenzhen/mainland China without documents that I don't possess nor could ever come by easily. And apparently it's illegal for a Chinese citizen -- i.e. C -- to import furniture from Hong Kong, period. So, C found some piano smugglers in Shenzhen. Initially, the price was right and no paperwork needed. At least that was the initial play. Suffice to say the piano is currently being held hostage in a Hong Kong/Shenzhen border warehouse in the New Territories. But I'm getting ahead of myself. This began as a tribute to my son.

The smugglers had been calling every 10-15 minutes since 9am with excuses with why they couldn't make it on time (or at all). I'd spent the time listening to C forcefully shout, cajole and threaten them and wondering if it would all eventually result in a story reading: "The dismembered, partially decomposed remains of an unidentified foreign man and a Chinese woman were found stuffed in an abandoned, damaged piano in a New Territories warehouse Thursday after nearby residents complained of an 'inauspicious smell'..."

So it was with some trepidation I answered the phone only to hear my sister calling from a Des Moines, Iowa hotel room where it was about 9.30pm Friday and graduation eve for my son, Julian, at Drake University. A mixture of pride, love, shame and melancholy swept over me. I had no financial means to be there and it seemed only a day or so ago that he and I had been at the Drake new student orientation, with me shortly to decamp to Shenzhen for a three week gig; one which has turned into four years.

In the meantime he's gotten a journalism degree which he's about to transmute into a pr writing gig with a Major American Beer Company. I used to look down on pr gigs, especially with mainstream corporate America. But times have changed while I have essentially remained in a state of arrested emotional and professional development, circa 1972. Which is why he's on the way up while I'm without a retirement plan of any kind, semi-employed in a foreign city to which I owe massive back taxes and am worrying about smuggling pianos and writing crapola for hire. My next thought was of me begging him for a job writing press releases for Duff Beer.

"I dunno, Dad," he says in the fantasy. "We do have an opening for an under assistant fork lift driver on the 11pm-8am distribution shift in the Fargo warehouse. Tuesdays off."

Damn. I can't take credit for much good in my life, but raising him is the best thing I've ever done and I wished badly at that moment I'd been in Iowa to see another turn of the wheel instead of sitting out the 6-Party Sino-Hong Kong Piano Removal Talks. I thought about the best - and a couple of the worst - times with Julian. None were exactly Hallmark or Kodak moments, mostly just goofing on the couch as we watched The Simpsons, The Critic or King of the Hill. Or younger times, nursing him through a kinghell migraine, pushing him on swings on an cold, clear and quiet Colorado autumn afternoon, or teaching him the words to The Byrds' Chestnut Mare or Aretha Franklin's Respect. "R-p-e-c-s-e-t-t!" he'd chant, 5-years-old, squeaky voiced and off-key to Sister 'Ree.
I ached. I put down the phone after talking with him, my father, sister and after C had taken her turn.

I went into the bathroom, shut the door, turned on the water and began crying a little. The phone whooped again and C squabbled with the piano mafia and then shouted through the door that it was all a go. I wiped my face and came out sniffling some.

"What's wrong?" she asked. "You're crying?"

"Nah," I said, "Just washed my face. Allergies, maybe. C'mon. We've got a piano to smuggle."

Happy graduation, Julian. I love you. I miss you.

2007-04-15T07:56:00.001-07:00

What Did You Do In The War, Mommy?
(*Photo courtesy of Letters From China)

A few days ago thanks to two China blogs, www.danwei.org and one called Letters from China, I had the honor of watching one of the most harrowing films I've ever experienced. More so than even say, The Stewardesses 3D or Billy the Kid Versus Dracula.

Though I Am Gone is a bare-bones B&W documentary about one of the first victims of China's Cultural Revolution, the insane 10-year collective splatterfest 41 years ago that cost countless lives, destroyed as many historical and artistic treasures, wasted an entire's generation's education and upbringing and is glibly written off today in all Chinese school textbooks as a brief period when "Mao made a mistake."

I have heard that exact phrase more than once from Chinese too young to have experienced it first-hand when the subject reluctantly comes up. The few others I've talked to who experienced it for real and not as a textbook explanation mostly don't talk about it at all. At least not to a foreigner who speaks no Chinese and asks too many stupid, overt, loud, simplisitic questions too quickly.

Though I Am Gone was entered last month in the Yunnan Multi Culture Visual Festival until the organzing committee suddenly suspended the film fest for no apparent reason, though according to Letters from China it was due to the movie.

It centers on the savage beating death (boards spiked with nails) of an respected middle school principal Bian Zhongyun by teenage female students at an elite Beijing girls' school just as the revolution was picking up steam. Imagine Lord of the Flies meets Mean Girls.

Her dignified widower, Wang Jingyao, who occasionally breaks into tears during the filming, kept her bloody clothes and photographed her corpse along with their two daughters in the immediate aftermath. What isn't answered and probably never will be is, why, exactly, did the students beat Bian to death? Where are they now and do they ever regret what they did? Though the answers are fairly clear. All were from elite families, undoubtedly most still in power and/or influence one way or another. It also includes chilling archival footage and recordings of radio and film broadcasts heralding the beginning of the Cultural Revolution.

If you are not on the Chinese mainland and have the patience and Internet connections you can see it here on Youtube in ten parts. (I just discovered it's suddenly blocked in China so I can't link the address. How surprising! If you need to search it, the director's name is Hu Jie and you've already got the title and subject.)

I was watching it on C's desktop recently as she and her mother were otherwise absorbed in the living room in a contemporary Chinese TV soap opera, the title of which is roughly translated as "Love's Fate." Like US soaps it's about love gone bad, romantic missteps, incest, murder, corruption and overdue utility bills .

C's mother was a Red Guard. Also incidentally and perhaps ironically her all-time favorite foreign TV show was a 1980s-1991 LA detective Dirty Harry shlockoff called Hunter. It starred former NFL player Fred Dryer (Rams, Giants, record holder most safeties in single NFL game). C's mom has fond memories of Hunter, and also still has the red and yellow Red Guard arm band which she gave to C who has stored it away as a momento. During her revolutionary heyday, her mother was also sent with hundreds of other hormone-inflamed Chinese teens on a free train trip to Beijing on August 16, 1966 to see Mao proclaim the beginning of the Cultural Revolution in Tianammen Square.

It was there that a giddy looking student from the same school that had just beaten principal Bian Zhongyun to death ceremoniously put a Red Guard armband on Mao's arm. It's captured in the movie and I thought C and her mom might be interested.

(I also know a few people who say they were at Woodstock and will eagerly point to grainy, indistinct bopping blobs in various film and TV segments saying, "See! There I am! The (guy) (girl) in the (pick a color) headband. Hendrix was playing Star Spangled Banner. See! That's me, baked on 'shrooms.")

Not in China, though, of course. Past is past. Didn't happen or if it did it was a "mistake." They begged off -- C briefly viewed about 2 minutes of Though I Am Gone footage before declaring it "too sad. Why are foreigners so interested in it, anyway?" Her mother had no apparent interest either, though after I cranked up the sound commented to C that what she'd heard was "probably exaggerated and invented."

I shrugged it off. But later that night conversation, such as it is between a pseudo mother-in-law and her foreign barbarian faux son-in-law neither of whom can communicate in each other's tongues, turned again to revolution. I recalled through C that her mother had also been a dancer of some sort. She perked up and after a little encouragement began recreating her small role in a revolutionary ballet beloved by Mao's wife/Cultural Revolution Arts & Entertainment Overseer called The Red Detachment of Women.

C was delighted and, though her mother's moves were a trifle studied and suffering from memory lag, she was not without grace as she sang a revolutionary song to accompany the flowing dance. Then C had an idea. She went to the bedroom, dug out the old Red Guard arm band, tied it on and began accompaniing her mother, mimicking the dance moves.

Taken on strictly on mother and daugher level it was charming, endearing even, yes, definitely cute. On another level, perhaps one I live in too often, it creeped me out. I thought of a WWII German parent and child dressing up in old SS or Hitler Youth gear, throwing Heil salutes and goosestepping around the living room for laughs.

2007-04-10T03:31:00.000-07:00

Dim Lights, Thick Smoke

Following that heartning Easter tale, I thought it only fair that I disclose what transpired on Easter Eve, not that it's up there with Christmas or New Year when it comes to the Eves.

One of my few ersatz-soul mates in Hong Kong is a foreigner who goes by the nom de blog, Spike, mostly because his Mainstream American Corporate Overlords would not appreciate knowing that their Asia-Pacific rep loves the Hong Kong nightlife enough to frankly detail his countless sexual misadventures and occasional moments of spiritual clarity in a wonderfully neurotic and witty blog called Hongkie Town. (See link at left.)

Or did. He almost killed Hongkie Town last year citing burn-out and what I sensed was some unjustified self-loathing based on comments taking him to task for his obsessions -- sex, food, sex, music, sex, his two dogs, movies, sex, and movies about sex, music, sex, his dogs, food, sex and sex. Spike's since reconsidered and ratcheted Hongkie Town down from NC17 content to more broadly appealing R and PG fare. More songs about movies, his dogs and food and less sex. Still, more than a little content centers around his stomping grounds, Hong Kong's infamous Wanchai bar scene.

He's also somewhat settled down with a more or less steady Thai galpal, though in Spike's world there are no guarantees. Turns out she has been outta town for a few weeks and he was getting restless. We met on Thursday afternoon by chance, and as it turned out he was up for a Saturday night in Shenzhen.

I was flattered. None of my Hong Kong pals have ever made the leap, though a few have talked about it. The Lord of Wanchai wanted to check out Shenzhen's equivalent, a small, even seedier area in a foreign enclave of Shekou district. Or "Show-koh" as I continually mispronounce it. Spike has been here for almost a decade, had a Real Chinese Wife for 8 years ("three wonderful years, five horrible" as he put it) and despite his wasted expat exterior speaks a modicum of respectable Mandarin and lost no time in correcting my pathetic pronounciation upon his arrival.

"It's 'Shuh-kuh' " he said. "How long have you been here? 'Shu-kuh, Shu-kuh.! Nobody says 'Shoowww-kooohh."

"I do. C doesn't correct me. She doesn't insist that I learn proper Chinese. Or any Chinese."

C wasn't around at the moment to contradict me. She was out with her mother but would later prove me a liar.

We repaired to Shuh-kuh and began searching for food. Nearly four years ago there was precious little western fare available at non-hotel prices in Shenzhen. But Shekou was one of the few places it could be found. An Irish pub, a Euro and American-cuisine place called Casablanca run by a blowsy, hard-bitten French or Belgian woman, and a fake burgers and fries place were about it. (Upon my initial arrival in Shenzhen with my son Julian to teach English for three weeks, we'd been ferried to Casablanca by our pitying Chinese hosts after about a week without dairy products, red meat and steamed vegetables. Julian famously proclaimed the baked potato with real sour cream and butter at Casablanca to be "the best potato I have ever eaten! Anywhere! Anytime!")

Shekou/Shu-kuh/Show-koh has grown enormously since and I steered Spike to one of my faves, Gypsy's -- mostly because of its ribs, wasabi mashed potatoes and Thai salads. Spike had the ribs and wasabi taters and was underwhelmed, I could tell. Gracious, yes, but it was clear if this trip to Shekou was going to make a posting in Hongkie Town it wouldn't be about food.

"Okay, we're going to Chicken Row," I said.

It's my tag -- "chicken" is Chinese slang for hooker-- for the small lane of tiny red light bars outside of the main glitz of the New Shekou where a beached cruise ship and lots of mainstream dining and nightlife are now the norm.

It was drizzling, dark and Chicken Row looked, well, mostly lifeless but we stopped in a place where C and I had been last year when she was mistaken for a Chinese movie star named Li Bing-bing. "I want to see if they hung up the pictures they took of her," I told Spike.

No C-as-Li Bing-bing pics, but a warm welcome nonetheless. "You have been here before I think?" asked one girl, as another began to silently and expertly massage my back. Spike already had three wrapped around him and was settling into his element.

"Christ, they have long memories," I shouted to him through the dim lights, thick smoke and loud, loud music. "No, well, yes, no, maybe I have," I said to her, hoping she wouldn't ask where Li Bing-bing was.

"They never forget a face," Spike said. "Never." He was undergoing a transformation. I swear about 5 years melted from his face and a few more as the admiring throng took our drink orders (two Cokes, 20 yuan apiece or US$2.60 each) and began stroking us for their "special drinks."

"How much?" I knew, but played along. "Only 40 (US$5.20)" one said. "But only a Coke with no alcohol, right?" I replied. "Oh, you have been here before," she said, laughing. I thought of C who said she'd join us later and how much she'd appreciate me laying out the equivalent of five or ten bucks of my rapidly dwindling savings for the Cokes For Chickens Fund.

"It's on me," said Spike generously. I can't recall how many five dollar, six-ounce glasses of "special drinks" enused but I wound up buying a few also. Spike settled in more or less with one fluent English-speaking 20something girl in glasses who I did recall seeing at Li Bing-bing Night. She'd told me at the time she was a "college student" and it's possible she had been. The English was certainly good enough.

Meanwhile, the one attached to me like a remora eel spoke no English, looked about 16 and it was clear that she'd been on the job for about 3 weeks, if that. Sweet young thing, but damn, it's an old, sad story and it's never going to change. I did glean she was from an impoverished province called Anhui and bought her another drink outta foolishness and sympathy, I suppose. Finally C called and I detached myself, motioned to Spike and we were out and chicken-free upon her arrival.

"Have fun?" she asked. "Are my Li Bing-bing pictures there?" No. But can I buy you a special drink? We repaired to a more conventional nightclub where "Singles Night" was in full swing with a Philippino band was playing western and Chinese cover tunes. Spike grew restless, though, I was getting weary and the remaining money was about enough for a cab ride home. He'd gotten the cell phone number of the Chicken in Glasses and had been text messaging her between looking at the less-than-appealing white-collar female singles nursing their watered down fruity cocktails. Actually, it was like singles night anywhere.

The last I saw of Spike we'd left Singles Night and he was on his way back to Chicken Row. But not before correcting me again.

"It's Shu-kuh," he said. Then to C. "Don't you ever encourage him to learn Mandarin?"

"All the time," she said. Spike looked at me mock-accusingly. I inwardly cringed. It just goes to Shu that it doesn't pay to lie.

2007-04-08T03:35:00.000-07:00

Easter -- "Easter Sunday, we were walking. Easter Sunday, we were talking.
Isabel, my little one, take my hand. Time has come."- Patti Smith.

"We have a holiday tomorrow," C. phoned from Shenzhen to tell me in Hong Kong on Wednesday.

"What holiday? Why?" Maybe the grave sweeping festival -- a "holiday" that seemingly gives license in Hong Kong for banks and government businesses to close in order for people to swamp the hillside tombs to set fire to brush and trees and incidentally picnic and honoor ancestors. But that's a traditional Chinese holiday seemingly only observed in Hong Kong anymore.

No. She had more confident news for me. "Tomorrow is Easter!"

I broke the news to her that Easter is traditionally observed on a Sunday and skipped the part that sometimes it's in March, sometimes April for reasons I can't fathom and don't have the time or patience to Google and then explain.

She informed me that her new Shenzhen-based Russian employers/overlords/illegal smugglers (more on that later) had decided to observe the Hong Kong version of Easter holiday which according to another tradition I don't grasp apparently stretches from Maundy Thursday through post-alleged-Resurrection Monday.

I briefly mentioned and then attempted to skip the part about Maundy Thursday because, again, there were serious lapses in my free-form psuedo-Christian upbringing in Boulder, Colorado. "Maundy, Maundy, just don't get that day"... "They call it Stormy Maundy, but Tuesday's just as bad..." I hummed.

"Monday-Thursday? What?"

"Never mind." I backtracked to crudely explain Ash Wednesday as a day in either March or April (depending on when the Groundhog saw his shadow in February)when some Christians put dirt/ashes on their foreheads for the day and Good Friday as the day Jesus was crucified.

"Dirt on your head all day? They don't clean it off? Why? And why is it 'Good Friday' when he was killed on Friday?"

"Uh, dirt. Yeah. Dunno, really. Sin or something. Hard to clean off unless you've got lamb's blood. Good Friday because he, again I dunno. Rose again on Sunday? So it was good he was killed on Friday. Otherwise the Passover party might've gotten outta control and he would've spent the weekend recovering and crashing at John's or Peter's place instead of taking care of business for the next 2,000-plus years."

"What? And when does the Easter rabbit come?"

Fast-forward to Easter morning in Shenzhen. I was awakened not by church bells or the trills and giggles of tots tearing open Easter baskets but by the 6.30am thump/pound/bash of the multi-story pile driver on the Eternal Construction Site of Our Grasping Real Estate Chinese Lord across the street. It was the fourth straight day of grey, smog choked 50-degree weather so thick that the sun seemed a distant memory. Our kitchen sink was leaking. And C had told me the night before that, incidentally, part of her new duties at Russia R Us included fixing connections and details so shipments of "steel," "asphalt" and "window glass" also included plentiful supplies of counterfeit Nokia and Seimens cell phone parts concealed within.

I was absorbing this all and wondering if I should break into the freezer to unwrap the pitiful remains of a motley moldering yellow Peep that an amiga in Colorado had sent me on my first Easter in China more than three years ago. I'm not big on Peeps, but it seemed like a last link to a holiday I rarely had thought about until deprived of it.

"So what do you do on Easter?" C asked. "What would you be doing now if you were there?"

I lied a little. "Oh, go to a church service. Dress up. Give Easter baskets to children. Hunt for Easter eggs. And a big dinner -- lamb or ham usually with my family."

"We have lamb," she said. Indeed her mother who is staying with us for Eternity it seems at this point was preparing a northern Chinese hotpot brunch of lamb, oysters and vegetables. Had to admit it smelled heavenly.

"And do I have an Easter surprise for you," I leered. "Suck on this!" No. Not what you're thinking. It was a chocolate Easter chick lollypop I'd picked up in Hong Kong on Friday on my way to Shenzhen.

"Couldn't find a rabbit. But bite the head off first anyway," I said. "It's better that way."

2007-04-02T06:44:00.000-07:00

Neighbors
As I write this there has been almost 9-hours of unpredictable plumbing havoc augmented with random shrieks and thumps emitting from one floor above our Shenzhen bathroom. It began like something from the Amityville Horror catalogue; maybe something akin to The Three Stooges Meet the Amityville Horror's Chinese Beverly Hillbillies.

Yes, of course, we have neighbors in this barely 3-year-old Chinese Dream Village ("BoHo Italian Villa Super Villa-Villa -- Home of the Fake Italian Einstein Monolith Bust!") , which, I am increasingly discovering was built on broken promises, lies and at the speed of a weasel with attention deficit disorder on meth. I think what holds it together is not the tons of 6-month old surplus solidified congee (Chinese rice porridge) substituted by the builder for financial self gain in lieu of cement, but only the blind faith of sucker tenants and owners like ourselves.

Directly above us on the 21st floor is a family of three. A man, a wife and their pitifully disturbed approximately 4-year-old boychild. Suffice to say if William Faulkner had created a Chinese version of the Snopes clan, this disturbed trio would've been a prime inspiration.

It is, as far as I can tell, not the disturbed boychild's fault that his parents seem to have no visible means of support and the same cultural, social and educational skills as say, a rabid wolverine or of that Canadian pig farmer currently on trial for killing 26 women. It's not the boy's fault they can afford to own space in one of Shenzhen's newest apartment complexes, as shoddily built as it is, yet not afford toys or the time to find playmates or outdoor distractions and exercise beyond encouraging him to ceaselessly shove chairs and small tables around the place for hours at a time beginning at 6am and ending whenever he decides to meltdown and begin wailing without stop, usually between 9pm -midnight.

It is not his fault either that his familys' toilet and shower began leaking and seeping Satan's foul smelling effluents non-stop two days ago through the floorboards down into our bathroom. But to hear the parents scream at him and us and the apartment managers and developers, to hear their point-blank denials and bizarre excuses one might think he'd planned the entire debacle since he was in the womb.

The fact is the parents decided to build on the cheap in a place where cost-cutting was already rampant. "Why would we need water-proofing?" the father shouted at one point as C, me, C's visiting mother, and three apartment management types confronted them through the chained space of their door. "It is too expensive and needless and our boy's birth already cost more than we had at the time. It is his fault and your fate!" (Roughly translated by C)

The plumbers were admitted to the barricaded and locked hellhouse only after the family was threatened with eviction. Desperate politically inspired pleas drawn from China President Hu Jintao's ceaseless mantra for a "harmonious society" (Hu doesn't have neighbors from hell in mind, fershure, only the mounting civil disturbances sprung from the rapidly widening divide between the haves and have-nots) had no effect. Nor did the sight of me melodramitcally standing behind C and slowly thumping the dull edge of a large cleaver into my palm like some badly cast foreign thug extra in a Chinese gangster flick as she stridently shouted back at them.

Now the plumbers are taking their sweet time, the boychild is still wailing and Satan's snot keeps raining down. I guess it's our fate.

2007-03-23T03:46:00.000-07:00

Open Secret
"Where do you keep the can opener?" I asked C. I'd scored a rare two cans of Italian tomato paste and was beginning the prep work for a batch of psuedo spaghetti sauce, psuedo because ingredients I took for granted back home such as oregano, bay leaves and tomato paste aren't easily found in our area of Shenzhen forcing me into a makeshift mode of substituting say, Chinese catsup and Kraft processed cheese slices for tomato paste and parmasan cheese.

C looked at me blankly, as if I'd casually asked for a 17th century coopersmith's tool. ("Fair wench, has't thou yon stave bejoiner?")

"The what? What?"

"Can opener, you know..." I fiddled my right hand around the rim of the can, miming what was obvious to me. "To open a can."

She still looked uncomprehending, and sincere. "I'm sorry. I don't know what you mean."

C was serious. Then I realized that I'd been here for almost 4 years and had never seen a can opener. Plenty of cans, but, yeah, all that I'd previously opened had pull tabs. Until now. I momentarily recalled the cheap, functional hand cranked can opener I'd left in Colorado. Cost about $2.59 and it was, yes, Made in China.

I described it to her. She professed sincere interest and ignorance. "You've never heard of a can opener? Never seen one? They make them here."

I paused, pondering how one of the world's oldest civilizations had bypassed the humble, utilitarian can opener. "Well, how did your family open cans in Dandong when you were a kid?" I asked. "Before you had color tv, cable and pull tabs?"

"With one of these," she said, reaching for a large, lethal cleaver. She hefted it and mimed splitting open the top of the can with the 90-degree angle of the rectangular blade.

"But my father always did it," she added quickly. She knows I'm as adept with sharp objects as I am piloting a space shuttle or performing a heart transplant and she had quickly deflected my next obvious question -- would she consider sacrificing one or two of her finger tips to open the tomato paste?

"Okay, I'll try it," I said grabbing the cleaver and swinging down. "Like thi...aauuggughh! Fuck."

The next day I went online and showed her pictures of can openers, gingerly steering the mouse with my bandaged, swollen and partially dismembered right index finger. We went can opener shopping the same day. And the day after that. And for weeks to come until she called me excitedly saying that she'd found one inexplicably and randomly stocked at the corner store. Imported from Sweden, it cost the equivalent of almost US$8 -- not bad, actually, and cheaper than new fingers.

2007-03-11T08:17:00.000-07:00

"Had a job in the great north woods working as a cook for a spell, and one day the ax just fell.."
Excuse the long delay, faithful bloggites. A partial explanation is coming. The ax fell, as they say, (assume profound-sounding announcer voice: "suddenly and without warning") about a week and a half ago at VOA my most recent last, best hope for employment here.
Oh, there were some vague explanations, mostly having to do with budget cuts, last hired-first fired, oh, and something about an amateur video leaked to YouTube. Not much, really. Just me or someone who looked a little like me clad in an American flag loincloth and VOA T-shirt who was snorting what appeared to be industrial strength Marmite while flogging the 49-year-old wife of the assistant Uzbek vice-consulate -- herself stuffed in a Tokyo school girl uniform -- with bleeding baby purple squid in an ante room outside the main hall of a US consulate reception ... all in all, just a misunderstanding and a minor one at that.
I was mulling this depressing and untoward turn of events a couple days after getting the hook, wondering what to do next, why it happened, why I am here, why nothing ever matters, think I'll off myself soon -- cosmic self-pity and loathing 101 -- while a Hong Kong Chinese pal I'll call L was telling me about her mother and how her ma arrived in Hong Kong.
I arrived in Hong Kong on a United jet from Los Angeles in 2003 on my way to Shenzhen.
Hong Kong is a city of immigrants, refugees and flotsam. (The Brits had an ancronym: FILTH's for their ilk who came for a second chance. Failed In London Try Hongkong.)
But L's mother arrived in Hong Kong the hard way in the 1974 when she was rescued by fishermen and stumbled ashore with two other people after swimming and floating for two days in the South China sea. The trio were fleeing the Cultural Revolution. She's told her children she plotted and physically prepared for a year prior to making the literal plunge to freedom.
L: "'My mother told me that her feelings were so complicated. She thought about being caught, or dying in the sea, but at the same time she was so disappointed in China and saw no hopes of any future there," L told me."It's really scary when you see nothing in the boundless and dark sea," my mother said.
"She finally made it before the sun rose. Some fishermen saw her and gave her some dry clothes. Then she went to the police station to get her HK ID".
I burned out in the States, impulsively took a 3 week gig in Shenzhen came to Hong Kong got a HK ID and nearly four years later now more or less find myself facing the same situation I left. Plotted? Prepared? Nah. Rescued by fisherfolks? Big jet airliner. Barely thought twice. But that was part of the thrill.
L's mother raised L and two other children. One of the two men who'd helped her mother make the brutal crossing was in love with her, but she turned him down in favor of a Hong Kong guy who fathered L and her siblings. Then he left her when the children were still in school for the oldest, coldest reason -- a younger woman.
I wondered but never asked L if her mother might have regretted coming here at that point. Her life as a mother didn't get exactly get better either. During college L moved out of the famly home and in with a - gasp - foreign! - boyfriend. Not a big deal where I come from but still frowned upon by some in Asia's World City where it's not uncommon at all for children in their 20s and 30s to still live with their parents.
Presumably though her ma is now fine in her dotage. L sowed her wild rice noodles and is back home for awhile. Boyfriends come and go. A younger sister more or less repeated what L had done and mother survived. And the children all have heard the swimming story a zillion times before.
L is proud and impressed but wonders if her mother has embellished some of it. How do you exaggerate swimming for two days, though? The strait between the two areas looks daunting even now, though the distance has diminished with both Shenzhen and Hong Kong's non-stop "reclaimation" projects to develop and build where only ocean was before.
My life has grown some, too. Not exactly reclaimed. No dramatic flight to freedom stories but lots of little tales though that make me glad I came even if the HK Tax Goons are still squeezing me. Where from here, though, I dunno. And there's C most of all.
To be continued.

2007-02-08T01:21:00.001-08:00

Terrapin Station
As I've noted previously on probably too many occasions that in Hong Kong I essentially live in a shopping mall.

Called Telford Gardens (the "Gardens" description is sheer fiction, as there is more greenery in the produce section of its Park n Shop grocery store than in the complex itself) it's a soul-killing combo of 25-year old high rise apartments and shopping center. It's also comfortably numb as one could conceivably spend the rest of their life within its borders and never want for essentials.

A doctors' clinic (western and Chinese medicine), Chinese and western drug stores, a satellite college, primary and high school, dentist, post office, travel agencies, three banks, laundry, tacky gaudy jewelry stores, birds nest stores, opticians, book store, shoe repair, CD/DVD outlet, a neck ties-only store, the usual mall clothing/bling-bling chains, an Ikea, two 7-Elevens, one Circle K, Ruby Tuesday, McDonalds, KFC, Pizza Hut, Chinese, Thai, Japanese, dim sum restaurants, etc ad nauseum world without end, amen, it's all here.

Also inside the mall -- like the rest of Hong Kong's ceaseless efforts to needlessly subsidize its bloated construction industry -- the tear down, build up clatter of jackhammers and drills virtually never ceases as businesses come and go and the mall owner (the Metro Transit Railway; it's also a subway stop) finds new ways to vacu-suck HK$ from shoppers and tenants.

These efforts frequently involve seasonal themes. In November-January it was a Disney Christmas, minus any Christs or Santas or even Mickey. Just large grotesque pastel displays of Assorted Disney Babes amid tinsel and plastic Christmas trees in a co-promotion with HK Disneyland and its attendant charm school, something called "The Academy of Princesses." Young, wealthy HK females ages 3-16 could sign up to learn western-style table manners and make-up skills for the equivalent of one year's college tuition. JonBenet Ramsey would've loved it, I thought.

This month it's become increasingly bizarre. Chinese New Year is looming (Year of the Pig) and the mall has been transformed into an approximation of a traditional Chinese village if it was constructed from gold colored foam and plastic by a schizophrenic. It comes complete with an "outdoor market" set-up with vendors selling overpriced New Year crapola from prefab stalls.

The irony is that an authentic outdoor market selling basically the same goods for about half the cost is only a 10 minute walk from the fake one. But it's not air conditioned, smells funny and there's no FCUK or U2 outlet two steps away.

Which is why I have come increasingly appreciate the Chinese sport of Turtle Gazing. The one natural attribute Telford Gardens sports outside the mall is a large artificial pond, complete with tasteful bridge, stocked with dozens of box turtles.

The terrapins and water are real, though the "rocks" they clamber on to stretch their wrinkled inscrutable heads towards the sun were probably originally the result of an industrial accident or a NASA byproduct.

Save rainy days, the pond is ringed with onlookers, old men and women in traditional padded cotton jackets with their hands clasped behind their backs, children in British-style school uniforms, Filipina "domestic helpers" as the underpaid, exploited nanny/maid wage slaves are termed here, with their young charges, couples -- mostly middle aged -- all watching the turtles do absolutely nothing except sun themselves.

Occasionally one or two will flop off of the rocks for a swim or try to slowly clamber up over its brethren already stacked like upside down plates in a gently sloping staircase arrangement.

It took me awhile to get it, but more often as I'm hustling to the ATM or the laundry I find myself stopping to do nothing but sit and watch the turtles do the same.

2007-01-28T04:02:00.000-08:00

(Ain't It Funny) How Time Slips Away

"Well, hello there, My, it's been a long, long time. How'm I doin'? Oh, I guess that I'm doin' fine. It's been so long now, but it seems now it was was only yesterday. Gee, ain't it funny how time slips away."

Yes, it's been a long time since rock 'n' roll, but I guess I like it fine, so far. Settling into my new gig which is located in Wanchai, very near Hong Kong's Flesh Trade Ground Zero. We're about a bra snap away.

Ricky's Tattoo is a block or two down the line along with a bar that has advertised itself for eons as Where the (1973 007 flick) 'Man with the Golden Gun' was filmed. And across the street next to the "American Restaurant Peking Food" eatery and the "Prince Edward Department of Social Services" (where I saw a large yellow bus for the "Hong Kong Spastics Association" parked recently) is tucked the squalid Crazy Horse bar. Not affiliated in any aesthetic or legal sense with the upscale Paris and Vegas outfits, nor, I suspect as a veneration site for the late, great Native American warrior..

Nah, perhaps the best part besides the upscale Russian hookers sometimes wandering into the ground floor lobby to use the restrooms affliated with the martini bar next door is the public hoops court next door. I go down umpteen floors about once every 90 minutes in an effort to both cut down on and sustain my bad cigs habit to watch the players, such as they are.

Spirited but not especially skillful doing their best Lebron, Carmello and Yao Ming moves. I'll sum it up by roughly quoting a tall, black sailor on leave from the USS Kittyhawk who, along with his shipmates, was awash in booze and Filipina hookers as I exited the building one recent night. "I love, love this court. Everytime we're here I'm on it. Bumping these guys, I feel like Lebron. I am Lebron!"

I don't feel like Lebron most days. Or myself on others. My new digs are great, the work undemanding and I'm with mostly American coworkers whose experience in China and multiplie linguistic skills far outstrip my ability to order ice water in Mandarin and to boast that I've eaten dog and have toured the exotic the Sun Yat Sen Museum in nearby Xujai. Or, uh, a discovered a CD supplier in Shenzhen who sells both John Coltrane and Yiddish folk songs. Sample dialogue from a couple beers- after-work:

Co-worker with mega years and multiple Chinese language/dialect skills: "So I was in (remote province accessible only by yaks or PLA choppers) and I thought she was speaking Shauguan! HarharharI Choke, spit. Turns out she was saying it in Kejia! (Table erupts in sympathetic laughter, more beers for all!) So I replied in Xiang....and then her brother whips out one of those White Storm Discipline Seung Style Long Swords and I spit out my baby panda brain salad and I say...."

Still I have some hopes. The other day the mention of a by-now old murder trial here came up. An American expat wife named Nancy Kissel had laced her hub's milkshake with a load o' sedatives and later beaten him to death, a crime for which she is now languishing for eternity in a Hong Kong prison. On the bright side, I mentioned that I'd been the keen mind who'd coined the term "Milk Shake Murder" for the first headline that had become a catch phrase and slug line worldwide for whatever wires were picking up the story.

A hush came over the newsroom and the guy who knows a zillion Chinese dialects and said quietly: "That was yours? You wrote that? You started 'Milkshake Murder?' That's cool. That's something to be proud of." Eh, maybe he was joking, gently mocking me. But you take what you can get even if you're not Lebron.

2007-01-05T11:01:00.000-08:00

Howl
At the time it seemed like another doomed day in Shenzhen shopping hell. I'd cashed in my chips for a few days making up with C over the New Year debacle and my credit was up.

"Can we take a few minutes visit the outdoor market?" she asked casually midway through an extended trip that had originally begun as a taxi+subway jaunt of 70 minutes to hit Shenzhen's one HSBC ATM machine, buy me a new phone card and us some Western style groceries.

"A few minutes" in C speak is about 90 minutes, give or take 30-40 in real time. Nonetheless there was no mention of malls or new shoes and I sucked it up. "Sure," I said, casually using a flaming tire iron, mace and a spare pitbull to fend off the three guys pushing pirate porno dvds and the foaming, rabid one-armed beggar woman. "Let's rock at the outdoor market, whatever, wherever it is."

Turned out I'd been there before only about 2 years prior to buy bogus Calvin Kline boxers for about 34 cents each that ultimately didn't fit and which now enjoy a place of honor as dish rags in Hong Kong. But the neighborhood had changed and my original focal point, a hotel, was nowhere in sight as we approached the back end. "Hey, wait, is there where I bought the bad underwear?.."

"Yes, yes," she said. "And the two rubber Osam Bin-Laden dolls." I had forgotten about them and the fact that in a weak moment I had wound up giving them to a Thai hooker who had admired them as something her daughter might want. "What did you do with them?" C asked. "Um, er, lost them. Or one of those things, dealies, something, whatever, maybe..hmmm... Hey, look! Shoes!..." I replied.

Subject changed and we wandered aimlessly through the market that was pushing an astonishing variety of crapola ranging from shoddy lingerie to worse jewelry and shoes that could only fit a Hobbit. Until, until we I spotted a half-stall sporting photocopied pictures of Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and John Lennon and from which eminated some of the coolest music I'd heard since hitting Shenzhen. kind of Curtis Mayfield meets the Kazechstan-Cuban Jive Sisters in Frank Zappa's basement. Not your usual Shenzhen fare, pictures, music and all.

Intrigued, I crept in pulling C and found two small walls of Chinese translations of books such as Lolita, Howl. and others about French film, American beatniks, Martin Scorsese, Hindu poetry and one entitled Make Money Like the Jews. "What about the music? I asked C. Do they have it?"

Did they. The sullen kid pulled out four thick photocopied notebooks of CD titles ranging from Klezmer music, Yiddish folk songs, a John Hammond collection, Muddy Waters double disc retrospective, Afro-Franco World Beat, Franco-Afro Beat World, Miles Davis, Ry Cooder, Velvet Underground, Hank Williams, Beastie Boys, Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, Chet Baker, Diane Krall, Iggy Pop, Rolling Stones, Neil Young, Blink 182, Lou Reed, David Bowie, Rosanne Cash. And many, many, many I'd never heard of. There was more diverse music in this near-closet than any chain or indy record store I'd ever been to in the US. Yeah, they were all bootlegged and there were one or two John Denvers, but nary an Eagles or Carpenters or soundtrack from The Titanic, thankyewjeebus.

"Ten yuan (US$1.30) each. Buy ten, get 1 free. But really can we afford it?" C translated and asked as I salivated and began mindlessly checking off names and titles, eating up my dwindling savings and about 2 weeks of our planned grocery money in the process.

"We can live on James Brown Live at the Apollo, and Lou Reed Rock n Roll Animal for about two to four meals, maybe more, I'm sure. The energy alone will keep us going," I reassured her.

2007-01-01T04:18:00.000-08:00

Shoot Out the Lights
"I've been thinking hard about this and tonight has to be number two or three in my Top 3 Worst New Year's Eves," I told C in clipped tones via cell phone at about 10pm that night as I was on the bus from Shenzhen to Hong Kong.

I'd just done the mature adult male thing -- men always leave, doncha know? -- and had cut short what had initially promised to be an uneventful, maybe idyllic Dec 31-Jan 5 or 6 respite in Shenzhen. But following one of those domestic spats that flare suddenly outta nowhere for no apparent reason on -- in this case New Year's Eve -- I was outta there.

Up 'til 8:30pm things had been mostly perfect, too perfect perhaps, for an age and culturally divided couple living on the edge of the guy's dwindling unemployment savings/borrowings. A day of relaxation, slow lunch, reading, some tunes, Prison Break (thank you, PRC pirate video empire) and some separate interests as in I prepared a modest evening's repast of pasta, chicken, (hard to find) artichoke hearts, wine and (equally hard to find) avacado salad while she went to her piano lessons. (Note to discerning playwrights: if a gun or a mention of a piano appears in the first act, rest assured that chaos will ensue by the third).

She even lit candles upon returning, sigh. A night out for dancing, drinks and New Year frivolity was already planned, that is, until midway through her second helping of fake fancy pasta chicken she asked about....

Well, forget about specific details. But theoretically let's say you were unemployed at present, expecting new employment in about 15-17 days, but sucking air financially and with nothing but a half month's paycheck following that and you were already deep in hock, theoretically of course, to the Hong Kong tax leeches plus Visa etc in the USA, how would you respond, in a theoretical sense, of course, to a sudden question over candle light and (hard to find) avacados and artichokes, such as: "When will you buy me a piano? In January or February?"

As we're dealing purely in metaphors, symbols and coded language here, let's not assume that a piano was the specific point of the puzzling question. Maybe it was an F-17 jet. Or a sable-lined BMW. Or a simple request such as "When will you bring the only grandmother who loved me back from the dead?"

No matter. I sucked it in, put down my (rare, very rare to find, much less to savor in Shenzhen) forkful of avacado and without raising my voice said: "You know, it's been a swell New Year's Eve. But no (fill in the blank, piano, jet, sable lined BMW, resurrection) will be immediately forthcoming until I get my taxes and other sundry debts under control. Please be patient. And pass the pasta."

You know the whooha about global warming? Twenty seconds with C after my reply could reverse the whole shebang. 10th Avenue Freeze Out, as Bruce once sang. Big time glacial zone because Santa can't pony up a (fill in the blank, maybe a piano) in a month or two. I retreat to the bedroom to re-read a Brit thriller for the second time and she bolts to sulk on the Internet with her virtual pals. An olive branch as in "Uh, are you interested in still going out tonight for New Year's?" is met with stone, soul ummmph. Nearly silence. Worse, though.

So I thought about it. Do I want to spend this night and probably most of the next day in a stone frozen cold zone or do I want to scamper back to Hong Kong where my warm amiable CD pals Zimmy, Mick and Keef, Prince, The late, great Godfather, Townes, and Warren Z, and, yeah, Neil singing "Why Do I Keep Fucking Up?" will not only reinforce my sense of self-pity and justification but also not talk back to me? Damn sure, they won't ask me to buy them a piano. I'm outta there.

The cell rings midway to Hong Kong. It's C and she's kinda sorry. I'm also one sorry s.o.b., but the train (or bus in this case) keeps a-rollin' and we both do a blahblahblah semi-making up, but not completely dialogue.

And I reflected on the worst New Year's Eve ever for me. One of two, actually, both involving my first wife, but this one in particular whereupon we received an invite from our married Korean insurance agent and "family friend" (who had just firmly broken off a three year affair with me) for a New Year's Eve party at her home. At the time I decided to deal with the ensuing juju in an adult and entirely mature manner by swallowing a load of magic mushrooms that had been steeped in a bottle of Jim Beam for about 8 months.

Not the best decision. Wrong call. I'll spare most details like the towers of flames I hallucinated while driving to the illcit locale of many of our former assignations (she preferred her place to cheap motels) and the eerie facial and verbal tricks (plasto-people from Hell's cafeteria third shift if that makes any sense) that greeted me when my soon-to-be ex and I arrived to ring in the New Year. I wound up holing up with my former lover's 14-year-old son in a study watching reconstituted Aerosmith rock in New Year's Eve on MTV or something and midway through muttering something like: "Your mom was sure good in bed."

"Wha? Huh? Mr Mitchell?"

"Your, uh, I said, "I think, your, I said, I said, mother has a good head. Very smart. A very nice person. And, uh, do you think we can do something about those flames, by the way? Thanks."

2006-12-30T04:12:00.000-08:00

Sign Language
About an hour and a half ago, I had 118 emails in my Yahoo inbox today; 70some percent of which were either spam or stuff I'd rather not respond to immediately, like the bothersome ransom demands for my kidnapped son and overdue utility bills. The ones I wanted or needed to quickly answer, well, that's why I'm writing this rather than sitting and pacing and sitting and pacing and smoking and sitting and pacing while the Web here sl-l-l-ow-ly goes through its paces and not always with any guaranteed results. Of course, there's no guarantee that this missive will make it online at all or, if it does, any faster that my botched attempts at email. Nonetheless here goes.
There was an earthquake in Taiwan on Dec 27, which has severed and/or drastically slowed down most Internet traffic between Hong Kong, much of mainland China and the rest of the world. Apparently HK's Internet traffic depends primarily on undersea cables routed through Taiwan that were damaged in the quake and, to put it mildly, a lot of us are living in the 1980s or earlier at the moment. Internet cafes are vacant, some shuttered. Cell phone text messaging has tripled, Google is a distant memory and local sales of porn magazines have tripled in the wake of the Inernet fix.
JT, a latetwentysomething American pal o' mine whose professional and personal life pretty much revolves around the Internet and who can't recall a time before the Web was bemoaning cast back into the past state we're enduring now.
"I feel helpless," he said, between hurling drunken slurs at the HK bureaucrats on TV who'd been assuring the public that the situation was being resolved "at a steady pace."
"Can't work. Can't play. Just drink. And that gets old fast," he whined between his fourth or fifth Jack Daniels.
"Ever try a 'fax?'" I playfully suggested. "Invented shortly after the wheel, or maybe the 8-track. Hard to recall. I think I was hunting Mastodons with my new Clovis point flint spear that season. Either that or in my cave watching something new called 'color Tee-Vee...."
TJ snorted a little and then paused. "I have been thinking about writing a letter. Haven't done that since a 4th grade assignment. How much are stamps?"

2006-12-17T05:07:00.000-08:00

We once again interrupt our irregular Shenzhen/Hong Kong-based accounts of tedium, domestic bliss, occasional whimsy and travail for a preview of a piece I just finished for Asia Sentinel. And, by the way, I have finally received gainful local employment once again. As of mid-January I will be a behind the scenes running dog mouthpiece for Voice of America-Hong Kong.

Smells like Kim Spirit
Jumpin' Jong-il Flash, it'll be a gas, gas, gas come May in Pyongyang if a Korean French national who makes his home in London and swears allegiance to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea has his way.

Jean-Baptiste Kim is the self-described "man with three fatherlands, very unusual, crazy life" behind a "Rock for Peace" festival scheduled for May 1-4. Sketchy enthusiastic slightly skewed English details are available on his Voice of Korea website (www.voiceofkorea.org) for what he is calling "the 2007 version of Woodstock rock festival in 1969 but in a different location and with a different goal. We welcome every musician as long as they are purely music based without political intentions."

Though the gig is open to any band "even if you are from USA" that has the visas, stamina and currency to fly itself and its gear to Pyongyang there are additional caveats not quite in the Woodstock, or even more modern goth, punk or death metal spirit.

"The lyrics should not contain admirations on war, sex, violence, murder, drug, rape, non-governmental society, imperialism, colonialism, racism, anti-DPRK and anti-socialism," he wrote.

Which pretty much rules out anyone save Barry Manilow, Celine Dion, Canto-pop performers or anyone from American Idol. This from a man who swears allegiance to Led Zeppelin as well as the DPRK, whose first album was Lynrd Skynrd's Pronounced Leh-nerd Skin-nerd, and who says the Animals' version of House of the Rising Sun (about ruination in a New Orleans whore house) as his all-time favorite song. There's also a photo of Nirvana fronting the Voice of Korea site that reads "Unfortunately Kurt Cobain Can Not Participate Rock For Peace This Time. But We Still Do Remember All Good Songs of Nirvana From Aberdeen, USA."

"Rock and roll symbolizes freedom for me. Even though USA was the incubator of rock music, I still love rock music because I believe frontiers must not exist among us when we enjoy music. Music is the greatest took to unify all different people from all different places," Kim said in e-mail interviews from Voice of Korea headquarters in New Malden, a south London suburb that one western blog, North Korea Zone, described as a place "which for some obscure reason has become home to thousands of (South) Koreans living in Britain."

Kim, a 40-year-old father of three and former correspondent for North Korea's largest newspaper, Rodong, said 62 bands from 20 countries have signed on so far, but aside from one Norwegian death metal band he's reluctant to provide any details as yet.

"Too many bands from all over the world. I will release full list of participants soon on the web site," he wrote.

Kim's confident that Pyongyang -- which has also hosted grand spectacles such the annual Arirang Mass Games, international taikwondo tournaments, and the International Pyongyang Film Festival --will have no problem with a rock fest and the attendant messy details most have come to expect from them such as plentiful, clean Port O Potties, lodging, decent sound and lights, drug casualties and fulfilling vain performers' niggling contract rider requirements for Bacardi Anejo rum and backstage celery "to be trimmed, but not peeled."

"DPRK is well experienced for large international events," Kim wrote. "We do have comfortable hotels and reasonable transports everywhere in Pyongyang, though they are not so luxury compared to Las Vegas 5 star hotels. Sound engineering, lighting and filming will be take cared by Voice of Korea's (unnamed) official partner, a Canadian company based in Toronto."

But he provided this disclaimer for any bands expecting limos, groupies and limitless blow.

"Every band is responsible for their own trips to and from and staying in DPRK...DPRK will provide free transport for their music instruments only."

Kim's background is a bit vague and perhaps as seemingly improbable as his plans to rock the DPRK. But as he tells it, it accounts for his devotion to North Korea.

A full-Korean French national born in South Korea, he claimed that his father was a member of a movement in the 1960s and '70s devoted to the overthrow of then-president Park Chung Hee who was assassinated in 1979. "My father was imprisoned many times and myself and my older sister were born when he was in prison," Kim wrote. "My family suffered miserable poverty because my father was a political criminal. Our lives in South Korea were totally ruined by the government."

He said he "fled" to France at age 19 following the death of his father. "When your father is a criminal you cannot expect a life of your own in South Korea. I survived all alone in France and did many hard, dirty jobs including military training as a soldier of fortune."

Kim said a chance meeting with a North Korean diplomat at age 30 led to a change in his fortunes and a succession of jobs for Pyongyang including his gig with Rodong andâ€œlots of behind stories and military trades before it was not under UN sanctions ... I am abandoned by South Korean government because I work for DPRK. My life is a lot more complicated than what most people imagine and there are many things I can not speak out until my death." And while he misses South Korea and considers France his home and ultimate burial site, "DPRK is my fatherland in blood."

While he does shill like a veteran party member for Pyongyang, Kim isn't completely clueless regarding the cultural differences his project entails should he ultimately kick out the jams. He knows it's a long way to the top if you wanna rock 'n' roll, DPRK-style.

"Rock for Peace is a great cultural experiment for DPRK," he wrote. "Rock music and DPRK may be two very different things but I am very confident I can create a DPRK kind of rock atmosphere rather than just follow Western kind of rock moods. It is not a contradiction but a harmonization of two different atmospheres.

Hail, hail Great Leader rock 'n' roll.

2006-12-10T05:40:00.001-08:00

At the Library
A little more than three years ago when I first crash landed in Shenzhen, fresh western reading material was extremely hard to come by. At the time I relied on subscriptions to Sports Illustrated and the New Yorker supplied by my doting father that, thanks to China Post, the mainland postal system, usually arrived 3 -to- 6 weeks late, if at all. And there were several gratefully received CARE packages (eternal gracias to Dad, Mattydred and Janeen) that I fell upon and devoured like a baboon eating its young.

Shenzhen had one major book store. Like all the other large ones in China it was named Book City and owned by Xinhua, the PRC's major news/propaganda outlet. The English language section, such as it was/is was comprised largely of vocabulary and English learning books, some glorified outdated computer/software instruction manuals ("Open BEAGLE, version 0.16.1 (ALPHA) -- It's the Future for Six Months!"), dusty self-help and business tomes (still one of the largest selections in any English section at any book store here) pirated, mangled versions of bios such as The Bills: Clinton and Gates, and a smattering of "the classics," some abbreviated (Frankenstein or Moby Dick in 78 pages) and the others -- save Twain and a carefully combed selection of Hemmingway, Austen and DH Lawrence -- mostly a reading list of The Best of Wheezing, Tubercular Western Lit.

Indeed, I counted myself lucky to find Madame Bovary which I purchased and read halfway through until I went blind and it literally fell apart. Cheap bindings and pages printed in miniscule font on paper that makes tissue paper seem like cardboard are a constant. In between, I relied on yellowing, tattered copies of mostly Brit-published thriller paperbacks passed from expat-to-expat-to-expat like illicit zamizdat before the Soviet Union held its closeout sale.

And so it came to pass that several months ago, a longtime SZ pal o' mine, James "The Temple Guy/Laughing Buddha" Baquet, told me about a new Shenzhen library and Book City. He swore up and down that the selection, while not up to that of Barnes and Noble or Denver's Tattered Cover, at both was miles ahead of what we'd encountered on splashdown. "There's even an English language magazine reading room at the library!" he babbled like a junkie who'd found a reliable, trustworthy source for his Ibogaine habit. "Rolling Stone! Harpers, Atlantic I think I even saw a current Esquire!"

I initially and cynically dismissed his report as delusional. A native Angeleno and theme park freak, born on the same day as Disneyland opened, James is naturally given to illusion and false optimism. Then, prodded by C who was yearning to check out the "new" Book City, I made the plunge today.

What I found mostly astounded me. To whit, at the new Book City English store (a separate store!) while browsing through coffee table bios of Beatles and Elvis, 100 Best Erotic Internet Sites ("All blocked in China," I quipped to C, who replied, "Only 99 of them...") I picked up fresh paperback editions of Carl Hiaasen, TC Boyle and Martin Amis. Sure, sure, I could've also snagged Last of the Mohicans, and Ethan Frome but, hey, a man has his limits. Too much, too soon, too fast, moderation in all things etc. There were a few "typically Chinese" quirks to the place, though, enough to jolt me out of my reverie.

"Staff Selections" read the pre-printed cards pasted to the sides of the book racks, just like in London, New York or even Des Moines. There you get enthusiastic minimum-wage lit major store employees such as "Jason," "Dylan," "Leigh" or "Heather" enthusing about graphic novels like Jaime Hernandez's Love and Rockets series or a lesbo-vampire post-modern western and occasionally something relatively mainstream like Haruki Murakami's Kafka on the Shore. At the new Shenzhen Book City it's kinda, sorta of the same thing, except none of the touted books were available, none of the employees were named Sean, Ian or Bridget and no editions cost "287 pounds."

Next stop: the new Shenzhen Library. Visually it's quite impressive. Kind of Star Ship Enterprise, all blossoming glass and aluminum or steel frame, sloping entrance ways which you approach over newly laid, dipping and already caving-in concrete sidewalks (some with gaping un-barricaded three foot drops into the nether-world of the Shenzhen sewer system). But content-wise, I've been in worse American libraries. The Fort Leonard Wood army library in Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri during my basic training comes to mind as does the Boulder County Jail...that just for research purposes, mind you.

It was jammed, testimony both to the thirst of literate Shenzhenites for reading material and free Internet access, though on the 2nd floor (English literature) and 5th (English periodicals) there was room to move and browse. The English lit section was spotty to say the least. As if 4 years worth of expats had suddenly fled, leaving behind their odd selections, ranging from mucho tatttered John Grisham, Dean Koontz and Judith Krantz to Duke: The Life and Times of John Wayne and Annie Proulx's That Old Ace in the Hole. Leading off the stacks, though, were "Marxism, Leninism, The Thoughts of Chairman Mao, The Theories of Deng Xiaopeng."

"Remember, you are in China," C, reminded me before we headed to the periodicals. There, I found a slew of trade manuals and mags, electrical, software, chemical, engineering and otherwise, but was gratified to see one patron leafing through a current Sunday edition of Hong Kong's South China Morning Post (increasingly a commie boot-licking rag, but still not one deemed safe enough for mainstream mainland circulation) and, though no Rolling Stone or Esquire, fresh editions of Harpers and Atlantic. I settled in to read the Harpers Index as C browsed some more.

"Find anything?" I asked a few minutes later. "There's no American Vogue!" she snapped mock-churlishly.

"Remember, you are in China," I replied.

2006-12-10T05:40:00.000-08:00

At the Library
A little more than three years ago when I first crash landed in Shenzhen, fresh western reading material was extremely hard to come by. At the time I relied on subscriptions to Sports Illustrated and the New Yorker supplied by my doting father that, thanks to China Post, the mainland postal system, usually arrived 3 -to- 6 weeks late, if at all. And there were several gratefully received CARE packages (eternal gracias to Dad, Mattydred, Janeen!) that I fell upon and devoured like a baboon eating its young.

Shenzhen had one major book store. Like all the other large ones in China it was named Book City and owned by Xinhua, the PRC's major news/propaganda outlet. The English language section, such as it was/is was comprised largely of vocabulary and English learning books, some glorified outdated computer/software instruction manuals ("Open BEAGLE, version 0.16.1 (ALPHA) -- It's the Future for Six Months!"), dusty self-help and business tomes (still one of the largest selections in any English section at any book store here) pirated, mangled versions of bios such as The Bills: Clinton and Gates, and a smattering of "the classics," some abbreviated (Frankenstein or Moby Dick in 78 pages) and the others -- save Twain and a carefully combed selection of Hemmingway, Austen and DH Lawrence -- mostly a reading list of The Best of Wheezing, Tubercular Western Lit.

Indeed, I counted myself lucky to find Madame Bovary which I purchased and read halfway through until I went blind and it literally fell apart. Cheap bindings and pages printed in miniscule font on paper that makes tissue paper seem like cardboard are a constant. In between I relied on yellowing, tattered copies of mostly Brit-published thriller paperbacks passed from expat-to-expat-to-expat like illicit zamizdat before the Soviet Union held its closeout sale.

And so it came to pass that several months ago, a longtime SZ pal o' mine, James "The Temple Guy/Laughing Buddha" Baquet, told me about a new Shenzhen library and Book City. He swore up and down that the selection, while not up to that of Barnes and Noble or Denver's Tattered Cover, at both was miles ahead of what we'd encountered on splashdown. "There's even an English language magazine reading room at the library!" he babbled like a junkie who'd found a reliable, trustworthy source for his Ibogaine habit. "Rolling Stone! Harpers Atlantic I think I even saw a current Esquire!"

I initially and cynically dismissed his report as delusional. A native Angeleno and theme park freak, born on the same day as Disneyland opened, James is naturally given to illusion and false optimism. Then, prodded by C who was yearning to check out the "new" Book City, I made the plunge today.

What I found mostly astounded me. To whit, at the new Book City English store (a separate store!) while browsing through coffee table bios of Beatles and Elvis, 100 Best Erotic Internet Sites ("All blocked in China," I quipped to C, who replied, "Only 99 of them...") I picked up fresh paperback editions of Carl Hiaasen, TC Boyle and Martin Amis. Sure, sure, I could've also snagged Last of the Mohicans, and Ethan Frome but, hey, a man has his limits. Too much, too soon, too fast, moderation in all things etc. There were a few "typically Chinese" quirks to the place, though, enough to jolt me out of my reverie.

"Staff Picks" read the pre-printed cards pasted to the sides of the book racks, just like in London, New York or even Des Moines. There you get enthusiastic minimum-wage lit major store employees such as "Jason" or "Leigh" or "Ian" enthusing about graphic novels like Jaime Hernandez's Love and Rockets series or a lesbo-vampire post-modern western and occasionally something relatively mainstream like Haruki Murakami's Kafka on the Shore. At the new Shenzhen Book City it's kinda, sorta of the same thing, except none of the touted books were available, none of the employees were named Sean, Ian or Bridget and no editions cost "287 pounds."

Next stop: the new Shenzhen Library. Visually it's quite impressive. Kind of Star Ship Enterprise, all blossoming glass and aluminum or steel frame, sloping entrance ways which you approach over newly laid, dipping and already caving-in concrete sidewalks (some with gaping un-barricaded three foot drops into the nether-world of the Shenzhen sewer system). But content-wise, I've been in worse American libraries. The Fort Leonard Wood army library in Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri during my basic training comes to mind as does the Boulder County Jail...that just for research purposes, mind you.

It was jammed, testimony both to the thirst of literate Shenzhenites for reading material and free Internet access, though on the 2nd floor (English literature) and 5th (English periodicals) there was room to move and browse. The English lit section was spotty to say the least. As if 4 years worth of expats had suddenly fled, leaving behind their odd selections, ranging from mucho tatttered John Grisham, Dean Koontz and Judith Krantz to Duke: The Life and Times of John Wayne and Annie Proulx's That Old Ace in the Hole. Leading off the stacks, though, were "Marxism, Leninism, The Thoughts of Chairman Mao, The Theories of Deng Xiaopeng."

"Remember, you are in China," C, reminded me before we headed to the periodicals. There, I found a slew of trade manuals and mags, electrical, software, chemical, engineering and otherwise, but was gratified to see one patron browsing through a current copy of Hong Kong's South China Morning Post (a rag, but not one deemed safe enough for mainstream mainland circulation) and, though no Rolling Stone or Esquire, fresh editions of Harpers and Atlantic. I settled to read the Harpers Index as C browsed some more.

"Find anything?" I asked a few minutes later. "There's no American Vogue!" she snapped churlishly.

"Remember, you are in China," I replied.

2006-12-06T04:35:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas, Baby
"I am so sick of that song," C muttered recently as we were grocery shopping in Shenzhen a couple days ago. I briefly abandoned my hunt for a box of eggs with a freshness date more recent than Oct 33(sic), 2003 and tuned into the overhead PA from which a wretched English language version of All I Want for Christmas Are My Two Front Teeth was squawking.

"Me, too," I said. "Sick of it about 45 years ago. It's probably my least favorite Christmas song. Except for ..." Then the tune I was going to name segued into the rasping mix. Little Drummer Boy. "That one. I relocate halfway around the world to an officially aetheist country and still can't escape them."

Still she's expressed hope that we might buy a Christmas tree this year. An exotic wish from her point of view and a complete waste of money and space as far as I'm concerned. Especially given odd slant that Christmas takes in Shenzhen and Hong Kong. Hong Kong is easily more organized, commercial, "western" -- and religous, in that there are easily hundreds - if not more - of various Christian churches and organizations, from store front to full bore mega congregations whereas Shenzhen has one state approved mondo non-denominational church, one large state-sanctioned Catholic congregation, and lots of underground cells. And the mainland in general doesn't recognize Christmas as anything more than a growing curiousity and commercial opportunity, much less an official holiday as in Hong Kong.

Still, at my friendly shopping mall neighborhood/residence in Hong Kong the prominent Christmas displays are, to put it politely, obscene even to my agnostic, Grinch-like sensibilities. Hong Kong Disneyland, which is still suffering from less-than-predicted attendance after a year in business, has rented space throughout the Telford Gardens mall during November and December to promote "The Academy of Princesses." It's Snow White, Cinderella, what's-her-fin from the Little Mermaid and about four others I don't recognize (oddly, no Mulan, the only strong Chinese female character, hell, Chinese character, strong, female or otherwise, period that Disney has ever spun) all in various "Christmas" theme displays.

It's all part of an overall effort by Disney to "educate" the Hong Kong populace about the Disney "story-telling tradition." Mickey, they know. Donald, kinda mostly. The rest...heh. Though Snow White and Cinderella, more so. So build on that; given Hong Kong's obsession with an unrealistic female beauty standard: anorexically thin, vampire white skin, cosmetically enlarged eyes, eternally age 20, mentally about 14, and an equally unrealistic, unhealthy obsession with certified rigid educational standards, and the concept of a pre-fab "Princess Academy" is perfect.

I grumble both grimly amused and aghast as throngs of HK shoppers flock to photograph themselvse and their children posed proudly (flashing the "V" sign, which means not "Peace" or even "Victory" here, only "Hey, I'm having my photo shot and don't know what to do with my hands!") in front of a life size display of a plastic Snow White and the 7 Dwarfs hovering around what appears to be mangercum cottage. No holy dwarf child in swaddling clothes, hell, not even a Santa to be found. He's not a Licensed Disney Character...yet. But the inference is clear. Snow White = Virgin Mary. Just gotta figure out what to do with those troublesome, old dwarf pervs she hangs out with. Seven wise guys?

You know, maybe a real tree -- if I could find one, Shenzhen manufactures about 98 percent of the artificial Christmas trees sold in the USA -- and C and I singing Away in a Manger followed by I Found the Brains of Santa Claus by Jason and the StrapTones ("I found the brains of Santa Claus underneath my bed, They were in a pickle jar, I wonder if he's dead...") as we deck the boughs might put me in just the right holiday mood.

2006-12-03T01:16:00.000-08:00

Naked Eye
Bopping -- although shuffling is probably a more apt description -- back and forth between Hong Kong and Shenzhen is almost always a study in contrasts and not just for the obvious differences such as:

1. Public toilets. Hong Kong (check), Shenzhen (Whaa? Oh, I mean, first bush on the right...)

2. Low prices. Hong Kong (No one here gets out alive) Shenzhen (A copy-cat BMW? No problem! Can I throw in an fake F-17 fighter jet and a phony Prada clutch bag for an extra 25 yuan?)

3. Crowds. No contest. Hong Kong (At about 7 million, Hong Kong is one of the most densely populated areas in the world, with an overall density of some 6,400 people per square kilometer.) Shenzhen (11 million, most of whom are "unregistered." Still, there's still room to move except in nightclubs after 10pm and hot middle class shopping malls on weekends with a paltry 5,500 sweaty souls per square click.)

No, it's the little things I learn when I'm back in Shenzhen that keep me on the proverbial learning curve. C is the source for much of this, of course, as in a recent casual exchange regarding shopping pals.

I've long since boxed myself in as her Most Trustworthy Shopping Partner and it's not due to my wallet. Part of the initial courtship ritual involved a sensitive guy approach -- "An afternoon spent mindlessly staggering like drug addled zombie lab rats through claustrophic, deafening, identical malls offering merchandise available everywhere else on the planet, save Darfur or the Vostok Ice Station in Antarctica?

"To do something as spiritually and intellectually fulfilling as that? Especially with you, dearheart? Instead of swilling low cost adult beverages and mindlessly bullshitting with my licentious, dissolute expat male pals? Aw, honey. You're kidding! Why did you even have to ask?" -- that I've been increasingly unable to convincingly maintain the role and, as such, have begun gently nudging her oh-so-gently towards the concept of galpal shopping. Giggling, flouncing, bouncing like spring fawns through a magical mystical wonderland o' retail blingbling, leaving the guys behind to scratch their butts, fart, talk football and cranking up the AC/DC.

Brief asideAny female readers out there who fancy a new international shopping partner? (End of public service plea...)

"I only have a few friends to do that with and I don't trust their judgement," she said recently. "Except one. And her work schedule is not regular."

This part caught my attention. I pressed further. "She's an accountant," C explained. "But she only does 'fake books.'"

In other words she specializes in cooking the books for Shenzhen businesses. I expressed mild surprise -- much as I would if C had said she'd rather watch ESPN replays of a 10-day old NFL game or have me lead her track-by-track through the new Who or Dylan releases rather than try on prohibitively expensive shoes for 6 hours. She was equally mildy amused at my naivete, to say the least.

"It's very common. Many accountants here do it. Almost every business has fake books. They only trust their family or relatives to do the real ones and hire people like my friend for the fake ones."

It all reminded me of the time she'd told me she needed to help an ex-People's Liberation Army pal lock into some low cost office supplies for the Hong Kong PLA garrison. On the surface China is the world's next super power. Economy growing to the point of overheating. Big inroads into future markets like Africa's energy resources. A couple of manned space shots. Respected international negotiating partner for problem spots a la North Korea. Huge World Trade Organization aspirations. Further proof of international validity? The first McDonald's in China -- long since a staple -- was established, complete with testimonial plaque -- in Shenzhen.

Yet most of the books are cooked down to the most basic level and the world's largest army can't figure out in-house logistics for office supplies in one of the world's most populated, supposedly cosmopolitan locales?

It all looks fine to the naked eye, but it don't really happen that way at all.

2006-11-19T16:57:00.000-08:00

Teach Your Children
The "BoHo" apartment complex in which C and I cohabit is cutting edge by Shenzhen standards. Cosmopolitan, even, with its parking garage, fake mini-Venetian "canals," swanky outdoor pool, badmitton and hoops courts and (inexplicably, as I believe the odds are high that he never lived or slept here) a three-times lifesize bronze bust of Albert Einstein complete with a short Chinese language bio and "E=MC2" inscription greeting occupants and visitors at the south entrance.

Our fellow BoHo-ites are mostly Chinese yuppies with kids, some singles, Hong Kong retirees and a plethora of grandparents -- some of whom look as though they just got off the 38-hour bus or train from the hinterlands of Henan province, one of China's poorest and remotest areas. Think Beverly Hillbillies and you're in the general vicinity.

It's a mini-village of China's upper middle class, urbane sophisticates who presumably mix only the finest Sprite with their 39 yuan (US$5) bottle of Great Wall red. Which is why it's not uncommon to see parents and grandparents alike encouraging their toddlers to relieve themselves from either end in the lush shrubbery or on the polished faux marble walkways within our gated community, often as the bored 17-year-old security guards look impassivly on. The fact that there's also a public toilet about a 20 second walk away and adjacent to the badmitton court/yoga studio, is, of course, irrelevant.

Griping to the managment does nothing but there is a public Internet message board on which anonymous residents such as "Little Devil in Building 5" (that's C) can post on various concerns, like rude security guards, "black taxi" (gypsy cabs) prices and the ones to avoid ("I curse license no. 845 for 7 generations for cheating me on a ride to Shekou and urge fellow residents to do likewise") and lately about pet owners who don't clean up after their shitting Shar Peis. Nothing about children, however.

I urged C to weigh in with a new post. Something like "Control your dogs, what about your children?" She agreed, but was unsure about the subject title. "It isn't good to compare children with dogs in China," she said. "I might be, how do you say it, 'flamed?'"

"So ... I guess 'rug rats' is out of the question, too," I replied. "Not that I've seen a lot of rugs here ..."

She thought about it a little more and then decided to take the plunge. It's where I also got a lesson in Chinese writing styles versus my more heavy blunt instrument approach.

My imagined version: "Hey, Henan hillbillies! You're so frigging proud of your 5,000 years of "civilization" -- now how about discovering a basic concept like public hygene, buying some diapers and toilet training your 'Little Emperors' and 'Empresses!'"

Her's took a circuitous, polite, near poetic and only slightly arch approach that employed a couple of traditonal sayings ("I have crossed more bridges than roads you have walked" and "I have eaten more salt than rice") with a scolding and demand for action, sanitary BoHo courtyard conditions and a free Tibet.

Well, following the post she was just arrested this morning, and .... no, just joshing about the Tibet thing. Toilet training first. Small steps, long journeys, many bridges and lots of salt until then.

2006-11-13T18:48:00.000-08:00

Cover Your Rig, Comrade

I've also been covering scintillating stories such as "Comrade Condom." Someone at AP apparently saw it at http://www.asiasentinel.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=254&Itemid=34 and/or at (warning, Mature Content Ahead, Not Safe for Work!) http://www.asiansexgazette.com/asg/china/china06news22.htm and managed to do an update that China Daily posted, here: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2006-11/13/content_732031.htm

Sad to say, Lei Feng condoms are now verboten, despite what the company rep assured me last week. If you don't know who Lei Feng was and wonder what the connection is with condoms click one of the first two links. The content is the same on both, though the sites have, shall we say, er, different tones.

2006-11-13T05:21:00.000-08:00

The Payback

What follows is an Asia Sentinel piece I just wrote about what Brit-oriented journalists might call a "kerfuffle" at the paper I used to nominally compete against while at The Standard, The South China Morning Post. Though not anymore. The SCMP editor in question, Mark Clifford, recently fired the two respected SCMP staffers for their very small parts in producing a tribute mock front page for an equally respected editor whom he had also canned. The joke page -- which had no danger of reaching the public in any form and which used the "c" word with astericks, offended his sensibilities. "It's not something you would show to your mother" was his moralistic summation.

No, it's not. But, as an SCMP staffer noted, that's not the point. I should add that Clifford also previously hired -- and fired -- the two editors whom I am now freelancing for, but I think it's fair treatment overall. Clifford's obviously clueless, but, no, you can't put that in a story...

No Joking Please, We’re Journalists
Justin Mitchell
13 November 2006

South China Morning Post Editor Mark Clifford fired staff members for producing an in-house spoof. “It’s not something that you would show to your mother,” he complained. Now newspaper staffers have taken their case against Clifford to the owners.

In an unprecedented action, an estimated 80-plus newsroom staffers – male, female, Chinese and western alike – have signed what amounts to a no-confidence vote in Mark Clifford, the editor-in-chief of Hong Kong’s largest English language newspaper, after he fired two senior editors for their small roles in a mock front page farewell gift for another editor whom Clifford had fired.

The incident, which began as a traditional office ritual for a departing employee, has uncovered a sharp divide in the newsroom of one of Asia’s oldest newspapers, essentially pitting a new chief editor against many of the paper’s long-time employees.

“Leaving pages” as British-oriented journalists call them, are a tradition in western journalism across the globe, typically a gentle satiric poke full of inside jokes delivered at the exiting employee’s expense during a farewell office party.

In the case of former Sunday Morning Post editor Niall Fraser, a Scotsman given to the kind of colorful language common in many newsrooms, it was the headline “You’re a c**t, but you’re a good c**t” (written with the asterisks intact on the mock page) that drew Clifford’s wrath when he happened upon a copy of the fake page in the SCMP newsroom following Fraser’s departure.

“Clifford took great exception to the use of the language,’’ said one of five SCMP employees who agreed to talk anonymously about the incident. “He went on a witch hunt, and looked at the page’s history [on the SCMP computer system] and called in every single person who had touched the page, about 10, and with the head of Human Resources sitting beside him, told them that it was totally offensive to the women in the office and would not be tolerated.

“He actually said: ‘It’s not something that you would show to your mother.’ Of course it’s not. He totally missed the point. And at that point everyone was mostly bemused, thinking ‘what a clown.’”

After sacking the two employees on Friday for their role in the mock page, Clifford sent an email to the editorial staff which provoked “fury”, according to a source and led directly to the petition, which will be sent to the Post’s owners.

“If we at the South China Morning Post are to keep society's trust, to keep our reader's belief in our quality and integrity, we must ensure that what we do meets those expectations. We must strive for excellence in everything we do in our professional lives, both inside and outside of the news room every phone call, every photo, every press conference and, yes, everything we do internally,” Clifford wrote in the email.

Clifford referred questions and comments on the matter to Irene Ho, assistant marketing director for the SCMP. “The Post's position is that [Paul Ruffini and Trevor Willison] violated the work ethic,” Ho said. She called Clifford's sackings and his office-wide e-mail “a careful decision for the benefit of the staff and to reinforce the purpose of the work ethic.”

As of Monday morning Ho had not seen the petition and she said she did not know if Clifford had seen it. “I am not sure if Mark will respond further,” she said.

Clifford, an American, has been at the helm of the Post for seven months after his departure from the Standard, Hong Kong’s second remaining English language daily, where he served as editor and publisher for two years. Prior to that he was Business Week’s Asia editor and also worked for the Far Eastern Economic Review. The Standard was his first job in a newspaper.

The irony in what has become a bitter row over a newsroom joke was that Clifford was powerless to lecture anyone who had written the page, which also contained jibes such as a mock ad for the “Amazing Fraser-Fone: Buy It and Lose It!” and a reference to a non-existent story “Why Alcohol and Scotsmen Don’t Mix,” as the page was written by old friends and co-workers of Fraser who were no longer at the SCMP.

Clifford finally acted on his outrage after a month had passed and most employees had likely forgotten about the incident. Around noon last Friday three employees were summarily dismissed for their part in the page: designer/artist Carl Bell-Jones, and two of Fraser’s top Sunday copy editors, long-time Hong Kong journalists Trevor Willison and Paul Ruffini.

According to two SCMP employees, Bell-Jones’ job was saved after veteran sports editor Noel Prentice stormed into Clifford’s office essentially saying, if you sack him, you sack me. Clifford reportedly backed down and a warning letter was issued to Bell-Jones.

“At the time, no one spoke up for Trevor and Paul,’’ another SCMP staffer said. “We were all in shock. What followed was disbelief. People were saying, ‘Is he mad? Doesn’t he get a joke?’ Then he sent out an e-mail that provoked absolute fury in newsroom’’

“The South China Morning Post name is one of our most valuable assets. Thousands of people have worked to build one of Asia's most prominent and powerful newspapers over the past century. The name symbolizes quality, trust and integrity. We are a good newspaper on our way to becoming a great one,” Clifford wrote.

“Unfortunately, not everyone understands what it takes for us to ratchet up to the next level. Some of this I understand. Change is hard. Newsrooms are conducive to grumbling. And excellence takes effort.

“But some behavior I cannot accept and will not tolerate. There is no room here for people who flout journalistic ethics of fairness and accuracy, no room for people who treat the company's name and property as if it were their own. And there are basic standards of decency that need to be respected in any modern company, standards that are enshrined in our code of ethics.”

One long-time staffer with more than 10 years of experience with the SCMP called Clifford’s e-mail “insulting” and “disgusting.”

The feelings were obviously shared by many newsroom employees and what resulted was blowback in the form of a restrained petition to SCMP chairman Kuok Khoon Ean, with a cc to Clifford, asking for Willison and Ruffini to be reinstated.

It was quickly written and circulated over the weekend with delivery scheduled for Monday. As of Sunday, between 65 and 80 staffers reportedly signed the letter as it took on “a life of its own,’’ the staffer said. “It’s unprecedented. I’ve seen the Post through different eras, many sackings but I’ve not seen anything like this.”

Dated November 10, 2006, it reads: “We, the undersigned, object strongly to the decision to sack Trevor Willison and Paul Ruffini, on the grounds of their involvement in Niall Fraser's leaving page.’’

“We personally and collectively strive for the excellence and professional integrity of the SCMP's products and brands. However, we believe that the sacking of high quality journalists is against the interest of the South China Morning Post and that any involvement in the leaving page does not have anything to do with their work for the paper and is not a sackable offence.

“We believe that more harm has been done to the core values of the SCMP by their dismissal without reference to our established code of verbal or written misconduct warnings.

“We would like the chairman to know that the action today has severely damaged morale of the staff. We call for their immediate reinstatement.”

“For Clifford to take the moral high ground and to treat us like children is really insulting,” said a staffer. “It’s the nature of leaving pages. They are simply a good-humored prank which goes on in any [journalism] office environment and it’s ridiculous to take a moral stand on something like a leaving page.”

Clifford, who resigned from The Standard in February 2006, has been an object of controversy since his arrival. Long-time SCMP staffers said that some “Clifford loyalists” brought into the paper were at odds with the SCMP’s existing newsroom environment and created what another staffer called “a divided culture” at the paper.

“The new people don’t mix with the old people and now there is a very divided culture within the Post between his people and the rest,” another long-time employee said. “It’s become a very unpleasant place to work where real professionalism and journalism isn’t understood and promoted. These people who were sacked are characters. Journalism needs characters and he doesn’t understand the character element of journalism. His words about the need for change and standards are really very empty. I don’t he think he understands what they really mean.”

Asia Sentinel Editor John Berthelsen and Senior Editor A. Lin Neumann, were Managing Editor and Executive Editor of the Standard, respectively, during Clifford’s tenure.

2006-11-07T23:32:00.000-08:00

Catch a Fire
We interrupt our normally scheduled low-grade soap opera regarding unemployment, debt, taxes, self-pity and malaise in Hong Kong with a special report on civic action in Shenzhen.

Scene: BoHo Apartments, Nanshen district. Time: 6.10 p.m., Monday. Camera pan of north horizon from 20th floor balcony. Clouds of noxious smelling smoke, a combination of sewage, garbage, solvent and wood, choke an already smogged up horizon and roll into the unit 20-D as well as any other north facing domicile foolish enough to have the windows open.

Below eight scattered fires blaze in two enormous vacant lots, one to the northeast with two fires, and six alight in the other lot -- which contains, not coincidentally, a temporary construction worker barracks unit with no apparent modern waste disposal ability -- directly below the mighty and trendy Boho complex.

Closeup: C scrambling daintily like a tiny dancer to drag the laundry rack inside before four days worth of clothes winds up smelling like a barbecue at a toxic waste dump. Cut to my clumsy, liver spotted hands throwing windows closed.

Various dialogue: Me swearing in English. C muttering irreverent comments in Chinese.

"Call somebody," I pleaded. "The fire department. Environmental control! Someone, please."

"It will not do any good," she replied. "No one will answer or if they do they will say it isn't their responsibility and give me another number who will say it isn't their problem either"

C was right. Though she did call every relevant department except the fire department ("If it isn't an emergency they know my information anyway and can make trouble for us") twenty minutes later she had been through six Shenzhen city government numbers, four of which answered and the best response she received was: "My surname is Wang and it is not my responsibility."

Then I heard sirens in the distance, held my breath, opened the balcony doors and peered thorough the filmy, oily black glop. Sure enough, someone -- probably someone with a high ranking relative or connection -- had called the fire department and they actually responded.

"Let's go down. This is wild," I said. "Shenzhen government efficiency in action and it doesn't involve breaking up a demonstration of eldery, disgruntled PLA pensioners or pissed off karaoke bar owners and prostitutes! Real life positive public service in action!"

We descended 20 floors, hit the north exit under the alert eye of the dozing 15-year-old security guard in cast-off Tajikistani Pirates of Penzanze rent-a-cop clothes two sizes too large for him and joined about 5 other onlookers as Shenzhen's smoke busters went to work in the construction crew lot like Larry, Curly and Moe spraying each other as much as the large trash fires.

I noted several shadowy figures fleeing from two of the fires in the direction of the construction barracks and asked C to ask a grim, stoic looking fire chief (who was smoking a cigarette in nice touch of unintended irony) if they were going to cite the construction company for publicly burning what must have been about a month's worth of sewage and debris

"You are kidding, right?" she said. "No one will be in trouble for this. We're lucky they came at all." I had a brainstorm. "Thank him for coming! Maybe he'll appreciate knowing that he did something good for the public. Creating a harmonious arson-free society and all that..."

She sidled up and said as much in Chinese, I think, although from his mute response, which involved looking resolutely away from her and dragging hard on his cigarette, I think the only response he wanted was a call back to the fire station so he and the crew could resume playing cards and watching pirated Taiwanese porno DVDs.

2006-11-04T17:19:00.001-08:00

With a Little Help from my Friends
If there's an upside to being jobless in Hong Kong, it's realizing how many good friends I've made since arriving here full of promise, hope, charity and optimism two years ago, mirthful warbling bluebirds and frisky chimpmunks on my shoulders under a minature rainbow.

Now nearly broke, under a noxious cloud with weasels ripping my flesh (nod to Mr Zappa) I have found some unexpected support from a lot of kind souls. One has offered financial assistance should it come to that. Another has offered me his home office while he's at work, complete with fax, Internet, two dogs and nearly every cinematic and musical offering of the 20th and early 21st century should I get too bored between crafting cover letters to the likes of East Asia Cylinder Boring Weekly. Others have forwarded freelance possibilities. And some have picked up the bar tab and just listened as I wept and moaned.

It's all good. Thank you.

2006-10-31T02:47:00.000-08:00

Already Gone
I was canned today. No e-mail access for awhile, at least regular e-mail access, so if you need to contact me sooner I'll be at my HK cell: 6071-8474.
We'll see what happens.

2006-10-15T21:57:00.000-07:00

Art Lover
If you've ever been in a cheap motel, following, say an ill-advised adulterous tryst or a kidnapping wherein one of your kidneys was removed with a butter knife by a defrocked alcoholic Columbian surgeon to be sold to a Mumbai cartel, and then, as you mused about where exactly your life had gone wrong and you found your eyes wandering to the wall decorated with a banal land or seascape, or maybe an amateur looking reproduction of Van Gogh's Sunflowers, and you wondered, 'who the hell painted that?' and where did it come from, well, odds are it was someone surnamed Li, Jeung, Hu, Zhang, Wu, etc and that it originated in Dafen, an "artists' village" about 45 minutes east of Shenzhen.

The same for late night and afternoon TV advertised offerings for "starving artists sales of sofa-sized original works at rock-bottom prices!"

Dafen (certfied by the Chinese Ministry of Culture in 2004 as a “Cultural Industry Model Base”) is a place where you can get a Van Gogh to go, in any color you want. Want Sunflowers in red? Blue? Mauve? No problem. US$1.25 unframed. How about a Last Supper? US$5, maybe a little more if you want, say, you, your bowling buddies or maybe Elvis included in the assembly.

An estimated 60 percent of the world's worst oil paintings are spun out within Dafen's 1.5 square miles. Last year, the local art factories exported paintings worth US$36 million.

The fastest of the thousands -- no one knows how many -- workers here, who paint more Van Gogh's in a month than he did in his lifetime (about 800), can crank out 30 a day, said Shi Fei, an artist, gallery owner and art assembly line factory honcho who employs 12 "students" who earn anywhere from US$25 to US$50 a month plus room and board for their art assembly line skills.

But Shi, who went to art school and got his start making copy paintings in Guangzhou, isn't particularly impressed with Van Gogh, though he sells about 20,000 faux 'Goghs a year.

"Everyone thinks Van Gogh was a great artist but a great artist should be rich," he said with a smug grin. "If he couldn't make a living as an artist he wasn't a great artist." But, Shi admitted, "He would be very sad, I think, if he could see this. He should be happy, though, because he can help so many Chinese people make a living."

Thanks to Van Gogh and other masters, Shi -- who, perhaps to his creative credit, also owns a rare gallery that belies Dafen's overall Mc-Art ambiance and features original (albeit stunningly mediocre) works -- makes a grand living indeed. He drives a pimped out white 2005 4-wheel drive Jeep complete with overhead lights, bullet hole decals on the sides, and an authentic blue and gold Lion's Club badge (he's a certified member) bolted to the grill.

The rest of Dafen is similarly culturally alarming. There's the village entrance where an enormous bronze hand holding a paint brush rises to the sky about 10 yards from a lonely moldering plaster of paris Venus De Milo. It's across the street from the "Dafen Louvre" where another plaster of paris masterpiece, Michelangelo's David stands surrounded by flowerpots and where inside you'll find, not a knockoff Louvre but bad art mall, the stairway to which is adorned with a kitsch mix of ancient Egyptian and Chinese seals.

Paint like an Egyptian, or a Chinese simultaneously! As for Shi, whose own works tend toward dark smog-fog choked studies of bleak Chinese urban vistas (much like Dafen on the day C and I went) he said he's sold few of his own works displayed at his "Non-Formula Art" gallery, but wouldn't mind being copied.

"I would be very happy,'' he told C, who translated for me. ''If someone could make a living from my work I would feel like I have contributed to society."

2006-10-11T00:38:00.000-07:00

Shake a Tail Feather
Note: The following will be overly familiar to local readers (all 2.3 of you)but probably not to the other 1.7 who check in from outside Hong Kong. Today my assignment was to cover "the color" of HK Chief Executive Donald Tsang's annual policy address.

Tsang, except for his spiffy bowties, can safely be described as colorless. Bringing color to a corpse would be easier. He's a rather vapid, vacant sounding professional bureaucrat who increasingly spends his time ducking real issues and sucking up to his Beijing puppet masters and who liberally sprinkled his speech with variations on the phrase "harmonious society" (not so coincidentally methinks, also the current buzz phrase of Chinese President Hu Jintao).

One the other hand, thank gawd Hong Kong has its one firebrand troublemaker -- a long haired, chain smoking, beer guzzling self-proclaimed "pure Marxist" named Leung Kwok-hung. He's the naughty school boy in the HK Legislative mix and did his best today to flame Tsang's otherwise empty blather. This is what I filed, though no guarantee that it's the same version that will hit print tomorrow after it's run through the editorial dull machine.

It looked like the set-up for a joke that begins, ``A guy walks into a bar carrying a duck ...''

So when radical legislator Leung ``Long hair'' Kwok-hung, accompanied by independent colleague Albert Chan Wai-yip, strode to his Legco seat carrying a balloon, a sheaf of leaflets and a white bamboo duck adorned with a red bow tie, you could see a punch line or two coming.

A chief executive and a famous duck both named Donald? A lame duck politician?

Even Legco President and disciplinarian Rita Fan Hsu Lai-tai, sitting aloft in her leather-upholstered throne, appeared to crack a brief bemused smile.

As for the butt of the joke, Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen _ in a sky blue bow tie, presumably a sartorial nod to his ``Action Blue Sky'' anti-pollution campaign _ well, he studiously ignored the sight as he readied himself to deliver his solemn ``Proactive, Pragmatic, Always People First'' policy address.

That's when Leung and Chan pulled the proverbial plug. Alternately brandishing the duck, they shouted at Tsang for failing to advance democracy in Hong Kong and called for minimum wage laws.

While Tsang continued to stare straight ahead and legislators, long accustomed to Leung's irreverant antics, either looked on in amusement or barely disguised distain, Fan whipped into action telling Leung to behave or leave.

Leung, in a red and black Che Guevera T-shirt, shouted back that Tsang was ``heartless like a bamboo duck; a man with no heart for Hong Kong people'' before he finally wound down, collected his papers, balloon and duck and voluntarily vacated the chamber alongside Chan.

About 30 minutes and a laundry list of policy platitudes and cliches later, Legco was again enlivened when six undercover minimum wage supporters in the public gallery jumped up shouting slogans and unfurling banners.

Tsang -- who had barely eased into his plan for a voluntary minimum wage for only the cleaning and gardening sectors, denying the hecklers' repeated demands for legislation to force all employers to pay above a set limit -- appeared startled before resuming his ``I see nothing'' pose.

Security guards hustled to remove the protestors, who went peacefully but not quietly, as Fan quickly adjourned Legco for 10 minutes and gave Tsang time to regroup and collect his thoughts.

In contrast, prior to Tsang's speech and at Legco's rear, nine groups of about 100 protestors vied simultaneously behind cramped rail barricades for a variety of issues ranging from equal rights for ethnic minorities to judicial grievances and the minimum wage.

``Keep your promises! No more delays!'' chanted the minority rights group, trying to be heard above the din from the minimum wage supporters who were yelling and shaking ``Donald duck,'' readying him for his Legco chamber debut.

2006-10-07T04:22:00.000-07:00

Moonlight Mile
As burrowed in self-pity, job woes and impending tax debt as I am currently, I wasn't exactly walking on sunshine Friday night when I left my HK digs to meet a pal in Wanchai for some basic adult beverage-based male bonding.

But when I hit the exit door and grumped into the courtyard ... damn. I felt as if Steven Spielberg or Frank Capra were filming. It was jammed with families eating, laughing, chatting, screaming and milling with no more purpose than food, fellowship and fun minus the beer and brauts vendors. The most commercial aspect were the glow-lights that young and old alike had wrapped around their arms, torsos, legs, and in the case of one (in US politico-correcto speak) "physically challenged" celebrant, her wheel chair.

It's the Mid-Autumn Festival here, kind of a Chinese Thanksgiving/harvest festival, known mostly to me as "moon cake disposal week." Moon cakes are the Chinese equivalent of fruit cakes except more expensive. Like uraninum and fruit cakes, moon cakes are extremely dense, potentionally explosive and have an extraordinarily long half life (760 million years). No one that I know actually eats them, but instead pass them on like counterfeit money or tainted goods.
But after three years here, earlier in the day I'd seen another side of the Mid-Autumn Festival when a female Chinese coworker had bustled in late afternoon of Mid-Autumn Festival eve with a paper mache rabbit lantern.

(We pause to explain the rabbit significance...viewing the harvest moon is part of the festival, and the legend says that it all began when a virtuous maiden/mondo-babe with whom an emperor was smitten with refused to do the nasty with him and instead ate an eternal life potion he'd planned for them both. Her impulsive pharmacutically-inspired behavior shot her to the moon where she still lives today, chastely attended by the Old Man on the Moon and his pet rabbit. The emperor died unconsumated and was last reported to be ecking out a living as an assistant night manager for a Qwik Lube shop in Minot, North Dakota.)

My coworker, a late 20something English-fluent, college educated Hong Kong Modern Woman, was acting like a 12-year-old anygirl with the latest boy band release as she pulled Mr Rabbit out of her bag. "Every year I buy one and my mother throws it away after a short time! I like the rabbit lantern so much!"

So, apparently did other English-fluent, college-educated otherwise sane Modern Female coworkers who flocked to her desk as if she'd flung out a pair of Robbie Williams' or Edison Chan's used briefs. She ceremoniously hung Mr Rabbit from a rack under one of the newsroom's TVs and for about 8-minutes she and the other women were giddy photographing themselves with cell phone cameras as virginal Chinese maidens snuggling with their paper moon rabbit.

How could I scoff? And the feeling returned and multiplied when I saw the glow light lit families romping and stomping under a perfect harvest moon. Would that it would shine forever.

2006-10-05T03:15:00.000-07:00

Don't Fear the Reaper
I was laboring through a deadly and dull assigned tome on Hong Kong private schools when my editor, an excitable erratic and often irrational chap (as well as something of a bully) signaled me to his desk.

He stutters also, but suffice to say he managed to tell me that a popular Hong Kong film and TV comic named Lydia Shum Din-ha (or "Fei-Fei" which means "Fatty") was dead and he wanted an obit asap.

Another reporter had been dispatched to the hospital for the gruesome details and a press conference, he said.

To anyone outside of Hong Kong or China, her name is meaningless -- as it initially was to me -- but I knew the face. It's everywhere here. Fei-Fei is roughly a cross between Roseanne (fat) and Lucy (immensely popular) and her frizzy haired, black bespectacled chubby face is frequently seen in gossip and entertainment mags as well as endorsing countless products.

I Googled her, found some background and began calling people (four total) who might be able to comment, give me more information about her life or lead me to others who could. "Fei-Fei is dead," I said. "Yeah, this afternoon. Cancer, I think...listen I don't know too much about her, can you...etc."

I also told a startled coworker who wandered up to my desk about 40 minutes later looking less shaken.

"How do you know Fei-Fei is dead?" she asked.

"M--- told me. He said Ch--- was at the hospital for a press conference."

"Why is there nothing on TV?" she said, pointing to our news room TVs which were broadcasting weather or traffic reports at that moment. "It would be big news. Everywhere, everyone talking about it. Why are we the only ones who seem to know?"

I went back to M---. "Um...are you sure Fei-Fei is dead?" I asked carefully. He often bristles if even slightly contradicted and, sho 'nuff, began puffing up like a South American toad.

"I did not say she was dead," he sputtered, lying. "I said she is probably dead. Write everything you can find! It does not matter!"

"It does matter because I've already told four people that she's dead," I said in measured tones. "They will be telling others. Now I have to call them back and say we don't know if she's dead."

"It does not matter! Write everything!"

I left him with one tawdry bit that I had gleaned. "One person told me she gave great blow jobs. That's how she was able to keep that good looking boyfriend and husband for so long."

His face wrinkled, collapsed and puffed up again like some kind of grotesque trick balloon. "No! You cannot write that!"

I called the reporter at the hospital who laughed. "No, she's not dead. She has been taken from the ICU and is better. Her daughter is here and telling everyone she feels much better and that she thanks all her fans."

Then I began calling my Fei-Fei sources, including the one who'd given me the oral sex tidbit. He was gracious and laughed when I thanked him for his insight.

Meanwhile, M--- was in the news meeting, presumably telling our editor in chief that our lead story was the death of Fei-Fei. When he emerged, I told him what I had learned from Ch--- at the scene. More sputtering.

Other Chinese reporters (who also dislike him) began drifting by my desk, shaking their heads and saying things like "unbelievable!" One asked me why I'd called those whom I'd already informed of Fei-Fei's "death."

"I had to," I said. "We are a newspaper. People are supposed to trust us and what we say."

She laughed. "I don't believe it. I don't trust anything we write."

2006-10-04T01:43:00.000-07:00

Lonesome Town
One reason for my recent malaise and yet another self-pitying/self-absorbed post is the fact that I'm increasingly lonely in Hong Kong. Virtually all of the people I considered reasonably close friends - i.e. we could talk about topics beyond hangovers and weather - have left the paper.

After work it's me, books, the CDs, TV and all too often ... my pals Jack or Jim who don't say an awful lot beyond (assume eerie high pitched voice): "C'mon, drink meee! More!!! A little more iccceee, that'sss it, now drink meee...More! Now call an old girlfriend who hates you and who you haven't talked with in 20 years. Or maybe an old boss you always loathed! Let him have it! C'mon! It's only 4:30 in the morning there..."

No. Not pretty. Not too pretty at all.

I found myself mulling this over considerably during the last two days when I had some out of town visitors and was almost ecstatic at the thought of having someone to talk with after work. Fish and visitors stink after three days, goes the cliche, but I had to restrain myself this morning from falling on my knees and begging them to stay

Then, after walking with them to the MTR entrance before peeling off to deliver my laundry I was almost giddy with anticipation at the thought of small talk with my laundress whose comments normally don't go beyond "Hello! Minimum! (HK$27, the usual charge for my sack o' filth) You want tomorrow? Not possible! Thank you!"

Today I knew I had more than the "minimum" and got caught up in a fantasy wherein I would be able to spin that fact into a charged give-and-take 20 minute philosophical discourse on the connections between lesser works of the Roman poet Virgil, Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami and, oh, maybe, the Buzzcocks.

Alas, it was not to be. "Hello! Wha!? WhAAA?! No minimum? Maximum!"

"Uh, yeah. You see I was listening to Spiral Scratch by the Buzzcocks last night, you know while reading Virgil's Book One of the Georgics and I got so excited when I realized that it all mirrored Murakami's obsession with mysterious women who lead him through walls that I knocked a bowl of curry noodles all over my last pair of good pants..."

No. I just paid HK$37 and asked if I could pick them up tomorrow. "No tomorrow!" she said. "Friday! Bye bye!"

No tomorrow, indeed.

2006-09-25T23:21:00.000-07:00

She said, She said
"What's that about?" I asked, bending over C's shoulder to squint through my trifocals at the laptop screen full of Chinese text illustrated with a artsy black and white photo of a nude buff torso and butt of a (presumably) Chinese guy striding manfully up a staircase. I thought of my bloated, sagging physique briefly then snapped quickly back to more cheerful thoughts like the 1918 Influenza Pandemic.

"Ten things a man should eat for better health," she replied cheerfully.
"Like what? Beer and beef jerky?"
"Number one is dog," she said.
"Hmmm...yeah. And what else?"
She ticked through the list. Save for Lassie it was either common sense or too difficult to translate, as in "fish" and "another kind of fish, maybe white?"
"But dog. That's just wrong," I said, mindfully omitting the fact that I've eaten it twice in my life, once unwittingly and the second time because it was Boxing Day/Mao's birthday and I didn't want to offend my Chinese coworkers. "Civilized countries don't eat dog."

"Civilized countries don't invade other countries," she shot back in a not so subtle shot at my homeland. "Oh, and do you think Japan and China will go to war?"

I didn't need to ask why she'd asked that. Not only is the anniversary of the Nanjing Massacre this month -- something that automatically heats up the easily inflamed Chinese Netizens, Japanese makeup has been taking a beating here with reports that some of the best sellers in China are chock full o' toxic heavy metals. Oh, and then there's the new Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, even more of militaristic nationalist than his predecessor, Junichiro "Worship at a Class-A War Criminal Shrine Today!" Koizumi.

C is firm believer in most of what she reads on the Internet, particularly when it concerns Chinese science and Chinese medicine, (or Chinese "science" and "medicine" as I prefer to think of it). And I, except if it's e-mail from "Henry -- All Love Enhancers on One Portal!" or from "Miss Blessing Soke" whose "late father who was killed by the rebels in a recent crisis in Cote d'Ivoire in 2004" and Miss Blessing wants to give me a share of his $3.5 million bequest in exchange for my bank account particulars, well .... I'm a generally a skeptic.

I had decided to give the dog-as-male-health-food argument a pass, though, because C had shredded me earlier that week on the Japanese makeup scandal. She'd called me late on Thursday night from Shenzhen to tell me that one of her favorite Japanese creams and cleansers, made by SK-II and distributed by Procter and Gamble, was "poisonous," contaminated with heavy metals. How did she know? It was all over the Chinese Internet and news.

My Crap Detector needle hit the red zone and I sighed. "Look it's a rumor, I'm sure. A rumor because P&G has a long history of false rumors against it, like devil worshipping. And SK-II is Japanese and this is the anniversary month of the Nan..."

She cut me off. "I know what you're going to say. How come you don't believe anything Chinese news and Internet says?"

"Uh, maybe because they lie, just maybe?"

Wrong answer. As flames from her end began to erupt through my cell phone, I finally decided to submit it to arbitration. I told her I would call an aquaintance who monitors the Chinese Internet for his blog EastSouthWestNorth and translates whatever strikes his fancy. C knew of him through my mentions and occasional links I'd send her. His name is Roland Soong and he's a multi-lingual international class act and intellect, not normally a low level Love Doctor/mediator for a bubbling domestic spat over makeup and Internet rumors.

I called Roland and apologized and explained the situation. He put down whatever Susan Sontag critque of an obscure 17th century French novel he'd been reading in its Farsi translation and gracefully agreed to help.

"Your girlfriend is right," he said. "SK-II is in trouble and it's not a rumor."

"So I have to grovel?"

"Yes, grovel."

I called C back. "You were right. The Chinese Internet and news were right. Roland said I should grovel."

"You should listen to Roland more often and to me all the time," she replied. "Good night. Sleep tight."

2006-09-23T03:41:00.000-07:00

Another Brick in the Wall
When one has to scrawl a picture on a piece of scrap paper for your English language-impaired editor at Hong Kong's No. 2 English language paper in order to explain what a "blimp" is, it's probably a clue that it's not going to work out and your talents -- such as they are -- are probably better utilized elsewhere, like maybe 3rd shift at an Arkansas poultry abatoir.

Nonetheless, I managed to write a fairly decent feature story about the recent Shenzhen Goodyear blimp sighting, though it has yet to hit print in favor of -- oh, here's another one -- a gripping account of a crack in a first floor beam at a Hong Kong subway station. That one wasn't my idea and it grew even staler when after very reluctantly taking the assignment I discovered that the small crack...
1. was reinforced properly with permanent repairs scheduled
2. posed no danger to subway users in general
3. or to people who were using the subway as transportation to ride a nearby newly opened cable car tourist attraction, which, yes, has been bedeviled with problems but sometimes small cracks just happen to structures that aren't directly connected with a cable car.

Nonetheless the story was being ballyhooed by the Chinese language media that day so, despite the absolute paucity of news value as I understand it, I was ordered to "get to the bottom of this coverup!" And do so in 2 hours. They already had pictures of the crack courtesy of one of our sister Chinese publications along with a poorly translated story that hinted at apocalyptic doom for subway and Skytrain riders alike should this travesity continue unchecked. (Meanwhile, in the last six months there have been two cop-on-cop shootings resulting in three deaths and a high ranking former member of the HK triad investigation unit jumped to his death from the roof of his apartment building. Does any HK paper, much less mine, expend any resources looking into this? Nah.)

What I got to the bottom of was my patience for calling Chinese language message centers for Hong Kong bureaucrats and politicians and taking 5-7 minutes to calmly with clenched fists and a skyrocketing blood pressure to painstakingly s-p-e-l-l m-y n-a-m-e three or four times, repeat my phone number, professional affiliation and reason for calling an equal or more number of times and then wait for a call back from a puzzled someone in a packed, Cantonese-squawling karaoke bar/jackhammer test center.

2006-09-16T02:27:00.000-07:00

Led Zeppelin

So I'm sitting on the balcony of the 20th floor of my Shenzhen digs at about 4:50 on a slow Saturday afternoon doing some email business and look up and out randomly to the horizon to see....the frigging - yes, the Goodyear blimp gliding and bumping (slightly, there's some wind) across the smog and phlegm choked northern horizon.

I thought for a moment it was either an optical delusion or maybe some kind of slo-mo Luddite version of a 911 attack or perhaps a US-Sino joint venture reenactment of the Hindenberg inferno, when, for a moment, when it appeared that due to my skewed optical perspective that the Spirit of America might collide with the mammoth ZTE tower about a mile away.

(We pause now for a commercial break: "ZTE, China's largest telecommunications supplier. We'll wire your world ... particularly if you'll overlook paying for slave and convict labor!")

But why is the Goodyear blimp here? I'm almost wondering if I did really see it. It was as nearly as tantalizing as a UFO sighting. So weird. So very, very weird.

2006-09-13T21:48:00.000-07:00

Tax Man
In addition to my Hong Kong income tax, I've had another, albeit much smaller yet incredibly stressful and puzzling government debt hanging over my head recently.

It's called the "stamp tax" -- which as an American is something I normally associate with one of the reasons we rebelled and threw off the weighty yoke of British colonialism. Hong Kongers, except for the elderly men and women who riot yearly when the free rice lines get clogged, have never rebelled with any serious force that I know of and thus the stamp tax lives on.

I know nothing about it except that it costs me money and the little female Goebbels who runs our human resources department kept sending me dictatorial, vaguely threatening and always snippy e-mails "reminding" me to pay it.

She also sent me a link to the Hong Kong Stamp Tax Revenue website where I found screenfuls of incomprehensible bureaucratic Chinglish and quickly clicked off in favor of "Hot Asian Babes Who Can't Get Enough of Old Overweight White Heart Attack Victims Who Smoke, Drink Too Much, Hate Their Jobs and Are Heavily in Debt.Com"

I never asked Ms Goebbels-Ng to explain it herself because asking anyone in HR to explain anything is like asking an epileptic mollusk to explain how gravity works. Instead, I turned to a New Zealander who'd lived here longer than me to explain this stamp tax thing.

"Stamp tax?" he mused. "Oh. That's simple. That's where you take three or four hours out of an otherwise good day to walk 3 meters across that bloody crowded fuck-all walkway bridge in Wanchai to the Revenue Department for the privilege of handing over a thousand dollars or so to some twat of a paper pushing bureaucrat behind a counter so they can put a stamp on your lease while you sit on a plastic chair for an hour or more imagining how much beer, food and good times that money would've bought otherwise."

You know what? He was right. Except I found that there was an element of mercy. Turns out my perception of my deadline (Friday, Sept 15 as dictated by Mistress Goebbels-Ng) was at odds with the official Stamp Tax deadline, which I'd missed by one day. One frigging day. The "twat of a paper pushing bureaucrat" who turned out to be a mild, polite Chinese guy named "Saul" told me that as I'd missed deadline, I now owed a penality fee that doubled my original bill.

"A what? Double? No! Cut me a break!" I pleaded. "It's only one day. I was in the hospital with a heart attack. Human resources lied to me. And basically I'm stupid foreigner who doesn't understand this whole stamp tax thing or what it's for!"

He told me I could write a letter to his superior pleading my case and handed me a blank sheet of paper. "Where do I send it?" I asked.

"I will give it my supervisor after you write it. A decision will be made."

I sat down in a plastic chair and began groveling with my pen. "Dear Honorable Sir or Madame...So very, very sorry...heart attack...ignorant...begging for your benevolent mercy and judgement...so very sorry...heart attack....stupid white guy....didn't know better...will never do it again..."

Feeling like I'd kowtowed to some faceless Chinese emperor with a petition pleading for heaven's mercy, I handed the letter back to Saul who motioned me closer to his Plexiglass cage.

"I will give it to my superior. In my experience you will receive a $500 deduction from the penalty."

Saul was right. I returned to his booth to thank him.

"You're the nicest tax guy I've ever met," I said. "I wish the tax people in the US were like you. It is much harder there."

"Oh?" he said. "Your stamp tax is more expensive in the United States?"

"No, in the US we rebelled to get rid of the stamp..." I trailed off. He was looking at me blankly. "Never mind. Thanks again."

2006-09-11T23:40:00.000-07:00

Tears of a Clown
An old friend, Ben posted a comment recently more or less telling me to get off my ass, update the blog and good naturedly chiding me for ''generally ignoring all of us who depend on your cynic wit to balance our otherwise sensible and sedate lives.''

I replied that I've been in a deep fried funk but provided no details.

But what the hey. Lessee. In addition to the heart attack, my job makes me feel like I'm being skewered daily from eye socket to bunghole and then placed on a spit so that my sagging flesh can be roasted by the searing gale of flatus which issues forth from the spined haunches of Satoshi, Eater of Souls. That's on a good day.

And I recently received an Inland Revenue statement (that's Hong Kong-ese for IRS) telling me I owe HK$81,000 in taxes which is about $10,400 in real money.

Ha. They might as well have demanded US$81 million. I simply don't have it.

Sometimes there's a lot to be said for sensible and sedate lives. I know I could use one at the moment.

2006-09-06T02:54:00.000-07:00

Blather
Recent T-shirt spottings collected from various sources in and around Hong Kong in the last few weeks. All typos guaranteed correct.

"Happy Smell!" adorning an elderly woman.

"The World Would be Better if We All Had a Little Piece of Heart" - wearer unknown.

"Thinr About AIDS/HIV with Sammy" -- wearer unknown. (Sammy is a perky Cantopop princess)

"No Wag at Iowa" -- wearer unknown.

"Fallsoded Success Challenge" -- Worn by a 13 or 14 year-old boy.

"Wated to gml you soweting extra for test BO3111!" -- On a middle aged housewife.

"I'm a No. 1-B Virgin!" -- proud sartorial boast of a fat, sweating guy hauling a 5-foot tall load of bundled cardboard and crushed plastic water bottles on a gurney.

And finally..."Awww, fuck off!" -- Not a T-shirt but an impassioned verbal fund raising appeal by a female middle school student frustrated at being ignored by a foreign couple after she hit them up for a donation. (Thanks to Doug C. for this one)

2006-09-01T01:06:00.000-07:00

Sincere thanks to all of you for your kind words and to Spike for spreading the word. Here's a short version of life in a Cantonese cardio care unit. Currently on the mend with C in Shenzhen...
Stand By Me
Time passes a drop at a time when you're the only gweilo pinned to an IV drip in a Cantonese cardiac care ward.

My five geriatric wardmates in Hong Kong's United Christian Hospital, ward 5-B - an aging structure that according an elevator plaque, came courtesy of Hong Kong film pioneer and philanthropist Sir Run Run Shaw (who, with brother Run Me Shaw was the first to bring talkies to South Asia, not to mention '70s classics such as Monkey Kung Fu and Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold) - are stoic.

Though we can only communicate through smiles, grimaces and occasional farts and belches, I assume that like me, questionable lifestyles and dietary choices -- a steady diet of cigarettes, booze, oily foods, stress and perhaps genetics -- have thrown us together as roomates for a few days and nights.

It takes about 12 hours to figure out the rhythms and customs of ward 5-B, including the distressing news that, unlike hospitals I've been unfortunate enough to be in in the United States, the visiting hours (5:30-8 p.m.) are strictly enforced.

It's also helpful if you packed your own toilet paper and some other sundries such as soap, shampoo, shaving gear and snacks. Fortunately, my first visitor, a coworker and angel of mercy named Olivia has shown up and cunningly talked her way into the ward outside of visiting hours with some of what I need, including TP.

Authorized visitors armed with books arrive a few hours later. The books are especially welcome as a steady diet of Hong Kong TV squawking from the ceiling rack is unintelligible and unendurable, though I am briefly rejuvenated when a bottled water ad featuring a Cantopop singer who goes by the name "Justin" is broadcast. "JUSTIN! JUSTIN! JUSTIN!" fans scream. "I hear you," I mutter. "I'll be better. I promise."

After the pain began shooting through my left arm and shoulder, coupled with heavy sweats and a chest that felt like the late John Candy was sitting on it and daring me to join him, I had presence of mind to pack a few things before hailing a cab. While I was sweating and cursing while fumbling for my fare, it was clear that the cabbie was also stressed and couldn't wait to eject me at the emergency ward entrance. Cantonese are notoriously superstitious and the thought of a foreign ghost haunting his taxi for eternity was obviously distressing.

Inside I went through a battery of questions, forms and tests before being wheeled up to bed 11 and my home away from home for three days. I am introduced to my doctor, a third year resident who looks all of 13-years old. The meals arrive on schedule at 9 a.m., noon and 6 p.m. and while my wardmates slurp theirs down with chopsticks from bowls, I am pointedly served a tray with a fork and fare piled on a plate.

Breakfast marks the biggest difference, though. While the others consume congee, a nutritious, kinda-sorta low fat mix of rice gruel and eggs along with a slice of toast, I am given a traditional American cardio care morning repast of a lunch meat and Velveeta white bread sandwich with a room temperature box of irradiated milk: expiration date December 13, 2017. The "milk" will survive longer than I, I fear. I also wonder what constitutes a heart healthy diet in Hong Kong medical lore? And why do all the medical workers and most of the visitors wear surgical masks? What disease can one contract from a heart attack patient?

(There are other cross-cultural medical puzzlements. At one point following an angiogram for which a very small incision was made in my right groin, I am told that I absolutely must lie still and flat on my back for 15 or so hours so as not to open "the wound." Nature, boredom and my digestive system take their course after 8 hours when I tell a male nurse that I must leave the bed to use the toilet.

("It is not permitted!" Hong Kong's male version of Miss Ratchett informs me sternly. "Do your business in the bed." He hands me a bed pan. Hostility ensues on my part and I insist that there are certain bodily functions I am not comfortable performing with a bed pan. A remedial English speaking doctor is summoned who nearly shouts in his insistence that straining my bowels on a toilet rather than in a bed pan could "open wide wound, break artery and kill you so fast." I reply that Lenny Bruce and Elvis both died on the toilet and that I am willing to take a chance. He is clearly not impressed nor knowledgable regarding Lenny and Elvis's last hours, but finally relents. I am happy to report that I have risked death by toilet and lived to write about it.)

Diagnosis: no damage to the heart muscles, though an angiogram to explore my arteries for clogs, wreckage and the fabled ruins of the Temple of Ancient Cheeseburgers is strongly advised. I agree to it and afterward, find myself recuperating for an hour along with a masked nurse named Maggie in what appears to be a combination storage room and MASH unit. She asks me if I want to listen to some music.

"English songs?" I ask.
"I will see," she says in that robotic English delivery by people not normally accustomed to speaking it. She sorts through some discs and shows me one labeled "TV Music" which contains an, uh...,er, eclectic mix that ranges from drek to almost delightful. "Disc 2, please," I say largely because Ben E King, The Temptations and even Doris Day singing Que Sera Sera are less likely to give me another heart attack than Air Supply, Lobo and Toto.

As King croons Stand By Me my eyes begin unaccountably welling up. I miss C who is away in Shanghai at the moment, but I am also suddenly unbearably homesick and overwhelmed with self-pity.

The past is calling. I want my dead mother. I want my second ex-wife. I want my son, my father, my sister and Stateside friends. I think of a picture in a New Yorker I had seen a few hours ago of a new adddition to Denver Art Museum and want at that moment more than anything to be walking outside it by the Red Grooms cowboy and Indian sculpture on a hard, clear, crisp sunny autumn afternoon to meet them all. I want to kick my way through crackling leaves.

"You are sad?" Maggie asks through her mask.
"I am homesick," I say. "Sorry."

Ben E. King is still singing. Maggie walks closer to the gurney, hands me a folded tissue, stands almost at attention and looks down at me, eyes wide and sincere above the mask.

"I will stand by you," she says.

2006-08-17T03:53:00.000-07:00

Killer
After 10 years it appears JonBenet Ramsey's slayer has been arrested in Thailand. The news has been breaking since this morning and our paper has no space for it - though I'd happily scrap a 30-some centimeter screed I'd been toiling reluctantly on concerning Hong Kong Gurkhas complaining about their problems with their former employer, the British government - in favor of a good juicy JonBenet write-up.
"I know it was enormous in the United States," one page editor told me. "A media frenzy, right? We hardly were aware of it here."
I'm heavily biased, of course. I lived in Boulder at the time, wrote a few pieces about it for MSNBC and other media and was as convinced as most that the late mother, Patsy, was the killer. It consumed the town and ruined some careers, including some investigators and at least one young reporter at the Boulder paper. It also brought the loonballs out - the secretary of my lawyer once unwisely showed me a five page scenario she'd written theorizing that her employer had done it. She was serious, and seriously unemployed shortly thereafter.
My then-wife and I also had some sick fun with it, running a weekly JonBenet trivia column on an AOL community website as part of our Boulder coverage and driving out of town visitors to the death house to pose for photos.
Now it appears that an American teacher and apparent pedophile who'd hoped to lose himself (and, I imagine, like Gary Glitter in Vietnam and Cambodia, indulge in his sickness) in Asia has been run to ground.
Thank gawd it's over. But it's not, of course. The JonBenet media machine, long dormant, is being dusted off and polished, choking and sputtering a little, yes, but it's going to be roaring full-on soon as John Karr is flown to Boulder and tried.
And, honestly, I wish I were part of it again, if only for a little while.

2006-08-16T23:35:00.000-07:00

Everyday People
Throughout my life and partly due to the nature of journalism, I've seemingly been a magnet for nutzoids and the downtrodden, as well as downtrodden nutzoids, and this week has been no exception.

Where to start? Maybe with the phone calls from readers who see my byline and say "Justin Mitchell ... Hmm... If I rearrange the letters it spells: Justice Nth Mill or Lunchtimes Jilt or Lichen Jilt Smut. I'll call him for Justice, Lunch or to see if he can help me Jilt that Smutty Lichen who has been making my life unbearable."

No. 1 was a Filipina named Wilma who called to say that her diplomat fiance has been beating her and forging diplomatic relations with women other than her. I asked her if she'd filed a police report and if she needed a phone number of a shelter for battered Filipinas and Indonesians. No, she hadn't. She wanted me to write a story. No, wait. She didn't want a story. She just wanted to talk. Her ex-husband, a former editor at The Other English Language Paper, had advised her not to go to the press. On the other hand...So it went. I adopted my best crisis counselor voice but lost heart after she told me she still "loved" her assailant and hoped they would reconcile.

No. 2 was an email from a Texan in Guangzhou. She's a teacher at an international school who says her "human rights have been violated" becauase she wasn't paid her holiday wages for the summer of 2005. She has contacted her senator, as well as the State Department, the US counsulate about this outrage and now she was hoping that I would expose it. I begged off politely but she's persistent. The last e-mail I received suggests a covert lunch in Hong Kong with the promise that she has "shocking" details of corruption and scandal at the school. She can't tell me more via e-mail, however, because a "mysterious virus" that she believes was "injected" into her hard drive by "persons unknown" is forwarding all her e-mails to "covert agents who wish to destroy her."

Then there's the New Zealand guy who has been sending me fragmentary e-mails from Yangshuo that read in part: "we have had other spiritual action to remove the demons from the hotel."

2006-08-06T08:36:00.000-07:00

Living dangerously with dwarfs, Angela Lansbury, Lin Piao and Zhou En Lai
There are moments more and more when I wonder what and why the hell I'm still here, but it took a small gathering tonight in a Shenzhen nightclub, restaurant and bar area to keep me hanging on. The occasion was a gathering of Brit and New Zealand business types as well as Chinese Christians and a couple of covert missionaries - a mostly mixed batch - and I was there to try to make more contacts regarding a never-ending story I'm attempting to research on underground Chinese Christians
In the course of it, I wound up meeting two people of minor note, an older British woman who resembled Angela Lansbury and who has been in China, Hong Kong and Macau since the early '70s. She said she was originally attached covertly to the British secret service in the 70s in Beijing as a "business secretary" (kind of a Miss Moneypenny on steroids) who offhandedly added that as part of her duties she'd met the compiler of The Little Red Book and China's first prime minister, Zhou Enlai at an official reception in 1973.
"He was a lovely man," she said. "Very gracious."
The gathering also included a photographer connected with the Christians, a Chinese hunchback dwarf who looked and sounded alarmingly like Linda Hunt's role as a male photog dwarf in a 1982 Mel Gibson movie in which a pre-antiSemite/delusionary Christ figure Gibson played a foreign correspondent in SE Asia, The Year of Living Dangerously. If you never saw it, it's worth a rental. Gibson was good and Hunt won an Oscar.
Anyway, the Linda Hunt hunchback photogdwarf and I were talking with the Angela Moneypenny woman and she mentioned Zhou En Lai again. (Is there a Dylan song in this?... "The motorcycle black madonna, two-wheeled gypsy queen and her silver-studded phantom cause the gray flannel dwarf to scream....")
So the photogdwarf upped the Chinese revolutionary name dropping ante by telling us that as a child he had lived downstairs in a government complex from former Chinese defense minister and one-time Mao heir apparent, Lin Biao. The photogdwarf's dad had been a Chicom revolutionary on the Long March with Lin, Mao and Zhou and later was an sort of aid de camp for Lin. He added that his father also paid the price when he was imprisoned and tortured after Lin's plane was shot down over Mongolia in 1971 on Mao's orders as Lin, supposedly fed-up with the Cultural Revolution and who failed in a conspiracy kill his boss, was fleeing to the Soviet Union.
I asked him what his most lasting childhood memory of living downstairs from Lin Biao was and he replied: "He had a Russian phonograph and he would play western recordings very loudly late at night. It was hard to sleep but we did not complain because he was my father's friend and boss."
What kind of songs, I asked, hoping he'd say something like The Beatles or Elvis, maybe Dylan. He couldn't describe them well, but I got the vague impression they were a mix of European and Russian classical and '30s pop.

2006-08-05T01:00:00.000-07:00

Dear Abby
Funny how one's past can come back to haunt or, just maybe, help you. When I applied for my gig at The Standard a little more than two years ago - back when real journalists were in charge for the most part - I was a bit apprehensive about some spotty points in my work history.
The most worrying one besides the two or three year gap that listed employment such as "Sanitary Maintainence Consultant, Greyhound-Trailways Transportation Depot, Hygene, Colorado," "Psychotropic Researcher," and "Assistant Adjunct Instructor, Special Needs" was the 18 month gig I'd done at Weekly World News in various roles, including a stint as rabid right wing columnist Ed Anger, and two as lonely hearts gals Serena Sabak ("The World's Sexiest Psychic Advisor") and Dotti Primrose who was sort of a cross between Ann Coulter and, if anyone still remembers her, shrill advice shrew Dr Laura, except imagine them sucking up a heady combo of paint thinner and meth before spewing opinions and advice.
I asked the pal (also named Mitchel, except corrupted as a first name and with one L) who'd tipped me to the would-be employer at The Standard what to do about the Weekly World News blemish. Suffice to say that the WWN is one step above pornography and about 119 flights below the likes of the Washington Post or even the (Indianapolis) Naptown Argus in the world of US journalism.
"Tell him the truth. He'll find out anyway," was Mitchel-with-one-L's sensible reply.
"Yes, I confess. I was Ed Anger at the Weekly World News, " I stuttered at the job interview. "Actually, the third one. And I was also Dotti Primrose and Serena Sabak. All three at the same time. My shrink loved the whole tri-personality thing. But I don't know how many Dottis and Sabrinas preceeded me."
Turned out (sort of like my shrink except this time I got paid for talking about it) my new boss loved the concept and my first assignment was to write about working at the WWN.
Fast forward two years. He and and another sympatico editor were unceremoniously canned by a bilge sucking hydrocephalic weasel who, after shatting in the nest he'd nervously created and setting it on fire, then minced to The Other English Language Paper in Hong Kong, his tongue and palms rigidly extended for more HK$ and power.
I hate that when it happens.
So both guys have found some connections, some investors and started a new online publication called Asia Sentinel. http://www.asiasentinel.com/. It's still a bit of a work in progress and some of the old Standard and other venerable Asia English-language pubs loyalists are contributing to it, though it ain't a full-time gig for most of us yet. The goal is roughly an Asian Slate.
My first formal assignment, though, was to revive the advice and column gig a la Ed, Dotti, Serena and here's a sample. As I write this the column isn't up and running yet, pending approval, etc., though there's other better, headier material there now if you're into most things Asian.
Dear Average Advice Guy,
My love interest is working in the Middle East for an oil company. He also has a French girlfriend. As I am in Australia, she is closer geographically than me and I know it will be more convenient for him to take some of his time off with her rather than me. How do I lure him away from her?
Geographically Challenged In Oz
Dear Geographically Challenged,
You're also obviously mentally challenged. You're obsessed with an itinerant oil worker who is himself besotted with a French tart? How sad. How very sad. I can't think of a more pathetic situation that spells d.e.a.d e.n.d r.e.l.a.t.i.o.n.s.h.i.p.
Still, you have hopes "luring" him away? Since he's partial to Eurotrash the solution is simple: stop bathing and shaving your legs and underarms.
You see, after a hot, sweaty day under the punishing Arabian sky wrestling with a greasy slurry and light crude coated 36-inch rotary Tricone bit, there's nothing a roughneck likes better than than some off-duty horizontal exploratory drilling with a gal as hairy and foul smelling as himself and, unless you're Greek or a Yetti, it's hard to beat the French in that department.
Dear Average Advice Guy,
I'm an American expat concerned about my 15-year-old daughter. Despite strict precautions and many warnings, she's been sneaking out at night, roaming Hong Kong's notorious Wan chai district and coming home incoherent and reeking of Madame Pearl cough syrup, cigarettes, beer and something called a "Tequila rock and roll." That's bad enough, but two nights ago her mother and I found passed out in the bathroom with a fresh tattoo on her thigh of a unicorn and a dolphin leaping over what appears to be either a skull or Hong Kong neo-facist Regina Yip. Short of sending her back to the United States to a reform school, is there anything we can do?
Worried Father
Dear Worried,
She is obviously a very, very naughty girl and needs firmer discipline that you are willing or able to apply. As it happens, I run a private academy in Hong Kong that specializes in discipling young, wayward females such as her. Write to me again with your contact information and I will make the necessary arrangements. The substance abuse and tattoo are obvious pleas for help and correction, but until she learns who her master is and the guidance that a proper spanking to her young rosy posterior can provide she will continue to misbehave.
By the way, a "tequila rock and roll" costs HK$140 at the Wanchai bar that specializes in them. But the girl who orders them is supposed to receive a HK$80 commission so she appears to be earning some money on her own. A bit of good news, albeit negated by the fact that she failed to tell you. And that is naughty. Very naughty.
Dear Average Advice Guy,
I am being pursued by a Japanese millionaire nearly 20 years my senior. He's generous and kind but he doesn't attract me sexually. I have told him this but I can see he's living in hope of getting my pants off. What's a girl to do?
Bewildered, Not Bedazzled
Dear BNB,
This is a problem? Lebannon is in flames, a million or so fly-blown human skeletons are starving in Darfur, hundreds of thousands are still homeless following earthquakes in Pakistan and Indonesia -- not to mention many December 26, 2004 tsunami victims all over the Asian ring of fire and water; hundreds of innocents are being slaughtered in the Philippines by government shadow troops, the Taliban running is amok again in Afghanistan, my fourth ex-wife is demanding more child support for a kid who isn't mine and you're worried about doing the horizontal mambo with a dottering generous millionaire?
You obviously need more help than even I can provide.
Plea for help
And if anyone out there feels in need of Asia-centric advice (or even advice in general) drop a line through the comments here or at average underscore guy26 at yahoo dot com and I'll do my best, or what mostly passes for it these days.

2006-07-29T05:03:00.000-07:00

Desolation Row
Prior to hooking up for about the third goodbye party for a former editor who's leaving for a new gig in Manila soon, I met another former coworker for drinks and catching up in a hooker bar, Neptune II, in Hong Kong last night. As it happens, the USS Enterprise was also docked here for the weekend.
No Kirk, Spock or McCoy, but overall how surreal it was to to see all the 21st century US Navy swabbies and swabbettes cavorting on shore leave. I felt briefly as if I was in someplace like Chicago (my buddy is from Chicago complete with the honkin' accent) or just more or less anywhere in the US, except for all the Filipina, Indonesian and Thai bar girls.
I also felt like I was partially reliving my distant past as a waning Vietnam-era off-duty GI in Korea except now all the off-duty black troops weren't dressed in cheap Korean-tailored Superfly suits with stacked heels, pimp hats and grooving to the Chi-Lites, Temptations and Al Green, but were blinged out in baggy, saggy gangsta wear moving to 50 Cent, Beyonce with Jay-Z, and Eminem. The white guys weren't dressed like short-haired hippie wannabes and crunching to Black Sabbath, Grand Funk or Cream - most of them were dressed like the black guys and bumping to the same tunes.
The only thing that hadn't changed were the girls. Cleavage, rouge, eye shadow, come hither on steroids and for a few fashions that hadn't moved an inch since 1972, pants and white go-go boots.
I also kept thinking of Desolation Row:
They're selling postcards of the hanging, they're painting the passports brown/The beauty parlor is filled with sailors, the circus is in town.
Speaking of which, while I was walking to that bar I passed a group of five 19-and 20-year old sailors outside a notorious clip joint and about to go in. ("Happy hour! Nice girls! One beer free!") I tapped one on the shoulder and said, "You guys don't want to go in there."
He said: "Why not?
"I'm a local, more or less. I know this area a little and that's a clip joint."
"A what? What do you mean? A clip joint? What's that?"
"They'll rip you off. Leave you with an empty wallet and a hard dick and nothing to show for any of it."
"Where should we go instead?"
"I'm going to a place that has two-for-one Jack Daniels and, if you're into it, mostly friendly girls that will charge but won't rip you off."
"Sweet, dude! "Where? Can you show us?" So I did.
So, I thought later as they melded -- two-for-one Jacks in hand -- into the grinding, booming morass of Neptune, I have finally done my part.
I have personally boosted the morale of US troops by ensuring that they can get drunk and laid as economically and pleasantly as possible.
Can Bush, Cheney or Rumsfeld say the same?

2006-07-27T03:22:00.000-07:00

Hawks & Doves
I rarely blog about other bloggers -- which flies in the face of the Intl. Blogger's Code of Conduct, I confess, moreover I virtually never opine on foreign affairs or matters of international importance unless it involves cross-cultural sexual misadventures or loutish barroom behavior.
But a recent entry in one of my favorite blogs, EastSouthWestNorth (link at left) regarding a Hong Kong journalist's run-in with the Israeli consulate was semi-familiar.
Summing it up: Suzanna Cheung is a freelancer for, among other publications a HK Chinese language paper called Hong Kong Economic Journal. She'd written an opinion piece criticizing the Israeli invasion of Lebannon that had obviously been translated into English for the Israel consul general in Hong Kong, Dan Ben-Eliezer.
Mr Ben-Eliezer was apparently not pleased and, according to ESWN, "went to pressure the Economic Journal editor to stop Cheung from publishing essays critical of Israel. ''
ESWN then translated her (polite, passionate and puzzled) response on her personal blog. It can be found here under "Suzanna Cheung speaks out." http://www.zonaeuropa.com/weblog.htmz.
It puzzled me a little because, I too had had a recent encounter with Ben-Eliezer regarding The Standard's coverage of Israel and Lebannon and at no time had he demanded anything.
Here's how that came to be and why I wonder if something got lost in translation between the HK Israeli consulate and Economic Journal and Suzanna Cheung.
(Note: This just in from Roland Soong at ESWN. "Pls note that the report about her is based upon an email sent to her from the Economic Daily editor, so there may be some distortions.she has lived in Canada, England and New York City, so that cannot be any doubt about her English skills.")
Ben-Eliezer's secretary, a woman with the improbable name of Ernie Yeun called The Standard about two weeks ago to ask for a meeting with someone at the paper regarding our Israeli-Lebannon coverage. Since the consulate obviously didn't read our masthead they called the Metro desk, which is manned by two Chinese editors who can't find Israel on the map. Since I'm currently the last gweilo standing on the Metro reporting staff, the call was transferred to me.
Lucky for Ben-Eliezer that:
1. I was desperate for any excuse to get out of the office.
2. I was once married to a Jew.
3. I had a Jewish girlfriend after her and once spent about 5 days there as the lone goy in an unoccupied retirement condo near Boca Raton, Florida owned by her mother where I got my young white bread-and-mayo ass generally kicked in shuffleboard and paddle tennis by 70 and 80-year old guys with names like Saul, Morty and Abe.
4. Beyond that I am reasonably conversant on Israel, Judaism, Zionism etc. I once subscribed to The Forward (a prominent Jewish US weekly) and know what a seder and a mezuza are.
4. I also know how newspapers work or don't work.
Ernie and I arranged a day and time and I dutifully showed up at the consulate's sealed bunker in some tower in Pacific Place. Security, as you might expect, was tight, very tight.
I went through a metal detector and two guards, including one who looked like he was sent straight from central casting as a Mosaad agent. It was to him that I surrendered my passport and virtually everything else on my person except my belt. As the Mosaad agent examined my passport for visas and entry stamps to Syria, Lebannon, Iran etc I was escorted into the consulate general's office, accepted a glass of water and began to schmooze.
Ben-Eliezer was very polite but obviously didn't have the first clue as to how The Standard works. And why should he?
But he'd done some homework. He had several issues of The Standard marked with yellow Sticky Notes. One was an editorial cartoon by our freelance cartoonist Gavin Coates decrying the death of the Road Map to Peace. The others were wire service stories, all of which emphasized the deaths of Lebannon civilians etc, though none could be construed as anti-Semitic or anti-Israeli.
Then I played my "Jewish card," (see above) asked him about his previous work as consul general in Nepal (not many residential Jews, about 15, but hundreds of scruffy, stones Israeli backpackers) and then I explained how The Standard had become a "Chinese paper with English characteristics" since the management upheaval last February and installation of a Chinese Editor-in-Chief with no prior experience on an English language newspaper.
I told him that it's a safe guess that our editor has no interest in or knowledge of Israel beyond the usual Chinese observation that I've heard more than once here that Jews are "very clever and rich." I told him that the editor-in-chief's primary interest seems to be to turn The Standard into an English language version of something like Economic Journal or our sister paper, Sing Tao Daily.
I also told him how wire service subscriptions work, described the personalities of the editors who made the decisions to place the stories, described how limited our wire services are, the difference between an editorial and a news story and suggested that he contact the editor-in-chief for the next consulate event/cocktail party and invite him under the pretext of pushing stories about Israeli business in HK and chat him up that way.
Ben-Eliezer took notes, thanked me and then I listened to his impassioned statement about Israel's right to defend itself. He also told me he was contacting every newspaper in Hong Kong that had printed stories or editorials that he thought were unfair.
I wished him luck.
When I returned I mentioned the meeting to our Focus page editor who said she'd be happy to run anything in the way of an editorial or letter that he'd care to submit. The result can be seen on July 29 on page A29 "Israel as 'unique opportunity' to advance peace in the Mideast."
He's happy, I assume. I was happy to get out and about and explain how things work on a small scale. At no time did he demand anyone print a retraction or be banned from writing or drawing cartoons, so I'm not sure what was really said regarding Suzanna Cheung.
When I mentioned my peace-keeping mission to the lone Jew working here (he's leaving next week) he laughed.
''The part about the Sticky Notes is a little sad,'' he said. ''He obviously has too much time on hands."
Postscript/update: Ms Cheung, in addition to just blogging about being mugged and robbed in Nicaragua while on assignment (brass ovaries, fer shure) has found time to post a clarification regarding her "ban." http://chuiyung.blogspirit.com/archive/2006/07/28/the-truth.html

2006-07-24T20:43:00.000-07:00

Vogue
Among C's (left) many attributes is the coincidence that she bears a vague resemblance to a second tier Chinese TV and movie actress named Li Bingbing (right, below) -- very roughly, perhaps a Chinese equivalent of Jennifer Aniston minus the Brad Pitt factor. On occasion she's been mistaken for her better known doppleganger and usually either ignored the "Aren't you...?" question or good naturedly denied it. She loves the attention, does adore Li due to the resemblance but has never played along as I've sometimes urged her to do.
That is until last night. The trick was about half a bottle of wine before she and I went into a somewhat questionable Shenzhen bar in a district called Shekou last where she embraced her inner Li Bingbing with a vengeance. The place was also one frequented by some "chickens" (Chinese slang for hookers) and within about 10 minutes of our arrival every working girl plus customers, employees and the owner were convinced that Li Bingbing was in town.
She played coy at first and then admitted that, yes, she was "her" and in Shenzhen for about a week with an American scriptwriter (me) researching a role she was going to play for a US-Chinese film about a bar girl who finds ruin, redemption and ultimately love and riches.
We were briefly mobbed -- at least she was, I stepped out of the way to gawk -- as she signed autographs, posed for photos for cell phone-cams and other pics the owner took with a disposable camera in order to have prints made and enlarged to hang in the bar.
Through it all, C mined her Li Bingbing trivia bank to answer questions about various TV series', films ("I never heard of one, but I faked it," she told me) a fiery love affair with some Taiwan actor ("I told them he was bad in bad") and what Harbin (Li's hometown is like). "Lucky that I've been to Harbin once," she whispered to me.
They bought us a couple rounds of drinks and then suggested that Li buy a round for the house. She's a big star, after all. No problem, right?
I had about 200 yuan left and a rough count of the employees and customers showed that I'd need about 500 more just for beers or soft drinks, never mind "specials." I began to see this charade being torn apart in minutes with "Li Bingbing" and her unidentified foreign companion savaged in Chinese gossip mags as thankless ingrates shortly after they were stomped within an inch of their pathetic lives in a Shenzhen house of red lights.
At that point "Li's" cell phone rang.
"Tell them it's a producer. We've gotta run," I hissed.
She did a masterful job of taking the call and signing off in hurry. The best acting I've seen anybody do on short notice.
We shot out with apologies and only regretting the fact that we probably can't ever return to see how they've hung the "Li Bingbing drank here!" photos.

2006-07-23T23:11:00.000-07:00

The Christian Life
Between ass-kicking assignments to rewrite press releases regarding "really good yarns" (my dimwitted assignment editor's phrase) like the Hong Kong Observatory's new web weather cams, I've been trying on my own to research underground Christian churches in Shenzhen.
It's been fitful progress primarily due to the fact that so far my only two primary contacts are essentially right-wing, evangelical foreigners - one of whom who has only been in Shenzhen for about a month and a half and the other a guy with a lot more Asia experience but who also seems to believe that the Vatican is the puppet master behind much of the world's troubles.
"He's a member of Opus Dei, you know..." he told me referring to Lord Christopher Patten, the last governor of Hong Kong and someone I had covered last week between extolling the glories of the new west-facing Victoria Harbor weather cam.
"How secret can Opus Dei be?" I asked rhetorically, praying to any god that might be listening that he wouldn't steer the conversation into a discourse on The Da Vinci Code. "I believe they're listed in the New York phone book, address and all."
He gave me one of those "That's what they want you to believe..." looks and thankfully jump skipped back to the topic I was trying to focus on.
It's all involved semi-clandestine meetings, a fake name or two, sudden whispery phone calls that turn into nothing and me trying to do my best to put aside my viseral dislike for right wing evangelical agendas without compromising my own rapidly growing belief that, maybe, Mao might've been onto something when he established an aetheist state.
China has a long history of religious meddlers from outside and generally it's led to nothing but trouble for the meddlers as well as the powers-that-be. God help the innocent followers. I'm no expert now or ever, but currently - if my Opus Dei fearing friend is correct - you've got the State-approved churches, the "house churches" (split into many camps, some who are politically minded, others who are not and some who are just plain cults with leaders promising instant prosperity and/or saying they are the new Jesus, etc) plus the Catholic camps (State sanctioned vs the Vatican) and baying at the Hong Kong border door are the Mormons, Moonies, and ladies and gentlemen, let's give it up for the Falun Gong, among others.
Between it all C has served as a translator and is becoming increasingly curious about what all this Christian stuff is all about. With as much complete neutrality as I could muster I skipped John 3:16 and gave her a very simplistic, short primer from Justin 10:26.52 as we rode the 5:15 SZ subway train yesterday.
1. They believe that Jesus was the son of God.
2. He died for all the world's sins but rose again after three days so that mankind will be forgiven for its sins and receive eternal life after death.
"So you can be forgiven for anything?
"Well, supposedly, yes. But you have to be sincere."
"But you could live your whole life doing bad things and then say you're sincere and believe in Jesus and you would be forgiven?"
"Yeah, basically, except for maybe someone like Kenneth Lay or George Bush."
"Who's Kenneth Lay?"
(A few minutes and two MTR stops later) "So what is the difference between the Catholics and the Christians?"
"Catholics are Christians, the first ones, actually. But then things got too complicated and other Catholics formed their own churches. Eventually hundreds, maybe thousands of them if you count the ones who play with snakes and the Mormons."
"Snakes? You have to play with snakes if you are a Christian?"
"No, no...it's complicated."
"Why do they make it so complicated?"
"That's the problem. That's the problem... Here's our stop."

2006-07-16T20:35:00.000-07:00

Ten Men Workin'
Whenever I read a dire neo-con op-ed rant concerning the dangers of a More Powerful China (usually with an arrestingly original title such as "The Sleeping Dragon Awakes," "Tickling the Dragon's Tail," "Dragon Rising," or maybe "Nudging the Grumpy Drowsy Vampire Panda" - nah, I made that one up) I wonder if these pundits have actually seen how it really works here. Or doesn't work. Or sort of works. As in, I'm supposed to fret about a menacing world power that doesn't even have the infrastructure to deliver and install an air conditioner efficiently?
More than a month ago, C ordered an air conditioner that was:
1. On sale;
2. A bargain because the sale supposedly only lasted one day.
No 2 was revealed as a blatant lie when she returned a week later to complain in person that it hadn't been delivered and installed (multiple phone calls were to no avail) and found the same model still "on sale" and was told by another clerk that the sale was only for that day.
Complaints to clerks and managers resulted in not much at all because of what is commonly explained to me as the "saving face" factor. Loosely translated: no one wants to take responsibility in case they fail the mission and lose face. I know that Chinese are historically justified in their fear and suspicion of Japan (except when it comes to Japanese cell phones, cars, porn and cameras) but they might do well to take a cue and simply suck it up and learn to save face after losing it by publicly apologizing and then, in extreme circumstances, killing themselves.
Which is what I began fantasizing about after listening to her end of the umpteenth phone call followed by an explanation that we had to hang around the apartment all day on the remote chance that either the air conditioning service people or magic electrical appliance fairies would miraculously appear to make everything right.
It all came to a head on Sunday when she got a call at 9am from, not fairies, but a delivery guy who first said they wouldn't be there because it was raining and, after prolonged negotiations, caved but wanted to know what bus to take to get to the apartment.
"Ask your boss!" she told him. "I don't know. And I am not paid to know."
It's moments like that when I fall in love all over again.
"These guys are hauling an air conditioner and compressor on a bus to get here?" I asked. "Don't they have a delivery truck?"
"This is China. This is how China works," she replied.
"So if Hu Jintao or Wen Jiabao decides to 'deliver' a ballistic missile to, say, Silcon Valley, or more likely Taiwan, they are going to use a bus or maybe a fishing boat?"
"Maybe a fishing boat," she said.
Four hours later, just as she was telling me I was a "naughty, naughty cowboy" and "too big" and tying me up with silk scarv...wait, that's a different blog, anyway I mean, as we were about to give up and leave for lunch the doorbell rang. It was the delivery men with about 112 cubic feet of cardboard, hoses and tool bags.
Chaos ensued as I, a man who counts changing a lightbulb or a roll of toilet paper as a major engineering feat especially when done by myself, retreated to the bedroom with a book. I can bear the sight of blood, but the sight of someone actually installing home appliances gives me the kind of heebie jeebies that only years on a shrink's couch might explain. Maybe it's the memories of my father wrestling with hammers and wrenches as if they were pit vipers, but it's something I can barely bring myself to witness.
Drills, hammmers, clatter of all kinds continued for hours. Occasionally I'd peek out to see C instructing masterfully.
Finally silence. She opened the bedroom door and asked if I had 10 yuan as she only had 100 and the guys had no change.
"What's it for? A tip or something?" (Astute China hands will quickly realize the ridiculousness of that guess, as tipping has yet to penetrate China.)
"No it was for more hose. They didn't bring enough. But it's a bargain. If we want a receipt it's 20."
I didn't even ask but silently handed her a soiled, tattered blue 10 yuan bill.
She smiled wryly as she took it and started to say something. I cut her off gently..
"I know. I know. 'This is China. This is how it works.'"
She laughed. "You are learning."

2006-07-14T01:04:00.000-07:00

Get Back Hongkie Cat
Note: Turns out that Spike has not left the building. Different format, different focus - or should that be 'foci?' as the topics range from Israel to a review of Superman Returns - but essentially same ol' Spike. Nice to know that his fans were able to sway his return. Otherwise, what I originally wrote here stands.
One of my favorite blogs just closed its doors and I'm a bit bummed, though I know the feeling. Written by a guy who called himself, Spike it was Hongkie Town (there's a link to it here, though now it'll just take you to a message that reads: "Comments have convinced me that taking this down is the right thing to do and probably long overdue. I may do something different in a short while but this one is finished") and mostly detailed his agnonies and occasional ecstasies while trawling bars in Wan Chai or his largely fruitless dates with Proper Women.
'Twasn't all hookers and heartache, though. He'd hold forth on music, film, food - all with a sense of humor, a lot of heart and more than a little soul.
I began as a fan and later got to know him some and was glad to see he was as advertised. Funny, neurotic, frighteningly honest with peerless taste in pop culture and a CD and VCR collection that resembled an adjunct to the Library of Congress.
I called him up a few minutes ago to ask why he'd pulled the plug.
Mostly burn out, he said plus the stress of more or less living his life in public. Though he wrote under a nom de blog, I could relate. I use my real name and as a result also do some self-censoring. I have also occasionally deleted posts that I realized would only cause more problems than I already have. What I admired about Spike's Hongkie Town was that he seemingly held nothing back and did it well, even if it writing about being too drunk to fuck or about toting a stool sample through Hong Kong's posh, plush Central district.
"Also dropped off some shit (literally) at the regular doctor. Yeah bad enough I walk the dogs and end up carrying two bags of shit to the trash bin, today I was walking through Central with a bag of shit. Walked into the doctor's office, handed the bag to the woman at the desk, she started giggling and said "goodbye." I said, "wait, do you even know who I am?" She picked up a card from her desk with my name on it. I guess she wasn't expecting any other gweilos to give her shit today."
He'll be missed by most, as comments on his final post The Shape I'm In, showed. Here's one: "Dude - don't stop your blog. Genuinely hilarious, fun and insightful. In fact yours is the first (and still pretty much only) blog I read regularly. Good luck with the relationship and don't stress too much about your situation. In the great scheme of things, you have a pretty good arrangement by the sounds of things. Finally, as a good doctor in Singapore once told me as he was prescribing extra-strength painkillers, "you'll know when you get there." Good luck man, keep blogging and remember that you really do have some people out there who like what you have to say."
Hongkie Town is dead. Long live Hongkie Town.

2006-07-10T23:40:00.000-07:00

Respect
This is gonna be one of those bleating foreigner rants, so bear with me or just click the mouse 'til next time. (Assuming Andy Rooney nasal whine)..."Didja ever wonder why..." so many Hong Kong subway riders find sitting next to a foreigner seemingly offensive, uncomfortable or threatening?
I do. It happened twice today to me and it's not even 3pm yet, though in fairness sometimes I'll go almost a week before sitting down on the train only to have - even under very crowded conditions - a passenger next to me suddenly up and move and it's not because they've reached their stop. I've seen this enough to watch them pointedly move to another seat or simply stand rather than endure the terror of sitting next to an alien with hairy white arms.
I shower at least twice daily in the summer. I possess no open sores nor stigmata. I keep my mouth shut and avoid speaking in tongues. I don't poke, prod, twitch or convulse. I am larger than many of my fellow riders, but I make a point of scrunching up and pulling out a book or magazine and focusing soley on it until my stop. No communicable diseases, sexual or otherwise unless you count the twice-yearly cold sore courtesy of some sleazoid encounter circa 1973 or so.
But I am white. Or I could be black or brown. I've seen it happen to other foreigners who aren't caucasian.
I mentioned this to two Chinese coworkers today and their (separate) theories were: "People are scared you will talk to them and they don't know what to say" and simply: "People are afraid of you."
"But I don't talk to anyone," I protested. "I don't suddenly go 'BWWWAAGGH!'and lunge at them with a bloody cleaver. I just sit there quietly reading."
"It doesn't matter," one said. "They don't know. They don't follow your MTR behavior daily."
"It's not like Hong Kong has no history of foreigners," I said. "They've had plenty of time, like 140 years or more, to get bored with us."
We agreed it was not easily explainable. I suggested bigotry. No, they said. They kept citing simple fear of the unknown or the 'what if' factor as in "What if he asks me directions and I don't know what to say?"
At that point, I resisted the temptation to go into my "Why I'd rather rip my tongue out with rusty pliers than ask directions from strangers in Hong Kong" rant and changed the subject.

2006-07-10T03:19:00.000-07:00

Can't Find My Way Home
What follows is a (lengthy) piece that I wrote last week about a Thai guy who has been trapped in Hong Kong since 1999. He's no angel as the story points out, but surely doesn't deserve to be in the limbo he's in.

Imagine having a home and no way back. And no way to prove that it's your home or to even prove your identity. Then imagine that you never saw a traffic light, stop sign, elevator or skyscraper until you were 29-years old. Todd Salimuchai is such a man.
He is stateless; literally a man without a country who has been in diplomatic limbo in Hong Kong since 1999 when he made the biggest mistake of his life at the behest of his northern Thailand tribal village elders.
Salimuchai freeely admits he came to Hong Kong as a would-be drug enforcer. Born a Lisu hill tribesman in an ill-defined border area of the Golden Triangle between Thailand and Burma, Salimuchai's village -- a place of 200 farmers he calls ``Hazen'' and a locale not found on any known maps-- raised poppies for the opium trade.
As he told the story, once a year for many years a Hong Kong drug lord would come to Hazen to buy poppy seeds and pay in cash. But in 1999, Salimuchai said the man brought a check for US$800,000. The villagers were suspicious, Salimuchai said, but were assured ``any bank'' would cash it. They reluctantly took him at his word.``Check was no good,'' he said.
Salimuchai speaks broken English and some Cantonese and Mandarin; the former he said he learned from American drifters and ``GIs'' as a child and the Chinese from his years in Hong Kong, some of which have been spent in prison.Salimuchai, whose parents are dead but has two older brothers in Thailand, said he and an unnamed accmplice were dispatched to Hong Kong, smuggled as stowaways aboard a boat in March 1999 with instructions to find the drug lord and get the money.
It was a fool's mission. ``Stupid,'' Salimuchai said. ``Very stupid. I wish I never come.''
Upon arrival they may as well have landed on another planet. With no idea of how to find the man who'd stiffed them and in a place where they didn't speak the language or even comprehend elevators or traffic signals, Salimuchai said the pair were taken to a safe house in Wan Chai.
For almost three months they searched unsuccessfully for the drug lord. But in June 1999 Salimuchai was arrested in an ID check in Wan Chai and shortly thereafter jailed for almost a year. Beginning in March 2000, Salimuchai claimed he also spent 40 days in two Shenzhen jails after Hong Kong immigration authorities put him on a bus with mainland offenders.
``I don't know why,'' he said. ``They say I look Chinese.'' But initially he was elated, he said.``(Police) say, `Todd, you go home!' I'm so happy when they put me on a bus, but then I see different uniforms and I say, `Where am I?'''
The answer was ``China.''
Salimuchai said he was beaten, questioned and stunned with an ``electric gun'' during his 40 days in Shenzhen. ``They touch my tongue, my feet, my `here' with electric gun,'' he said pointing to his crotch. ``I want to die.''
As with all questions directed to the Hong Kong immigration department regarding details of Salimuchai's case, a spokesperson replied: ``We do not comment on individual cases It is our policy to remove illegal immigrants to their place of domicile as soon as practicable.
``It is the illegal immigrant's own duty to provide the full and true information about his identity and nationality such that removal arrangement can be expedited.''
Upon his release in May 2000, Salimuchi said he was at his lowest point. His friend had disappeared but had left HK$2,000 for him at their safe house. It lasted less than three months. ``I don't have any friend, I don't have any money for food, I don't have passport. I just want to go home. No one will help me.''
That's when he made the second worst mistake of his life and after obtaining a replica pistol, Todd Salimuchai gained the dubious honor of being the first and only person to attempt a hijacking at Hong Kong International airport.
In those pre-9/11 days, it was easier.
``I know how to use a map real well,'' he said. So on July 31, 2000 he went to the airport and studied a public wall map from which he figured out a way to sneak into the cargo handling area. Shortly after 10pm made his way into the airport's cargo handling area with the ``gun.'' When security guards spotted him, he pointed the fake pistol at them and grabbed a woman cleaner. He then forced his way onto an empty Cathay Pacific Boeing 747 with his hostage.
According to news reports at the time, Salimuchai -- who was then identified as ``Burmese'' -- held police off for 21/2 hours before he surrendered.
His original plan had been even more desperate. He said he had learned to pilot small, one seater helicopters in Thailand and hoped to find a helicoptor to chopper himself home.``I see helicoptors but they are too big and too far. I don't have time. So many policemen! The lady [hostage] is screaming and crying. I say, `Don't worry. I won't hurt you. I just want to go home!'''
Salimuchai pleaded guilty to false imprisonment and using a fake firearm with intent to commit an offense. He was sentenced to five years in prison in February 2001 and released in December 2004.
He's repentant and sincere sounding when describing the hijack attempt and his past as a poppy farmer.``Stupid! Very stupid,'' Salimuchai said of the hijack. ``I am so sorry. Yes, I was a poppy farmer like many hilltribes. But in prison I look around and see much more men than myself serving long sentences for drugs. I couldn't help feel guilty that I have in maybe contributed to their problem.
``No, I am not proud of who I was,'' he said ``I am not a drug user, never have used drugs and if I can help it I'll never grow poppies again. I will tell my villagers give up growing poppies and start a new life. ``I will tell them what's outside the world. It's not opium that pays for clothes, medicine and food.''
His daily routine since has been calmer, if no less frustrating. Though Salimuchai now has documents provided by the immigration department attesting to his identity and must register weekly with them, he is prohibited from working and lives a generally numbing daily existence courtesy of charity provided by a guarantor, local NGOs and a high level government official who prefers to remain anonymous.`
`I wish to work to support myself while I await repatriation to my home village or another country ... and am prepared to accept any conditions or limitations on the nature and type of work that I do,'' he said in a November 2005 petition (as yet unanswered) to Chief Executive Donald Tsang that was prepared with the aid of a supporter.
In a handwritten letter prepared for him by a fellow ex-prisoner shortly after his release from prison, his plea is less formal, if more painfully eloquent.``The immigration department not allowed me to work. This city is not my village. If I am hungry I am getting food from the mountains, or get fish from the Mekong River. Here anything needs pay.''
``His case is unique in my experience,'' said Tim Elwell-Sutton, an outreach worker for the Inner City Mission in Chung King Mansion where Salimuchai has spent much of his time since his release eating free meals, surfing the Internet for pictures of Lisu tribespeople and attending Christian services.
``He doesn't qualify as a refugeee because he's not in fear of going home,'' said Elwell-Sutton. ``The big problem in Todd's case is that no one officially wants to take responsibility for him.''
Indeed, in the petition to Tsang, Salimuchai wrote: ``To date, 17 countries have refused my entry ... I have been waiting a long time for repatriation and given the number of countries that have refused my admission, I excpect to have to wait for a lot longer. The Director of Immigration alleges that I have not been cooperative in telling him where I come from and what my identity is. I deny that; my problem is that I came here without documents and come from a very small village, which does not appear on usual maps.''
Salimuchai -- who said he has been interviewed at the Burmese, Thai and Vietnamese consulates in Hong Kong, but has no idea what the other 14 countries are that the immigration department claimed have refused him -- has another problem regarding his birthplace. Most of the estimated 550,000 Thai hilltribe people don't have birth certificates, which means they have no citizenship, no ID cards and no legal identity as Thai citizens.
``Right now, hilltribes are still regarded as non-people to (Thai) officialdom (and) bureaucracy,'' British Ambassador to Thailand David William Fall said recently in connection with a UNESCO project to gain citizenship for the country's ethnic minorities.
Language is another barrier. The only language Salimuchai speaks fluently is his Lisu dialect and, as human rights attorney Mark Daly, who is working with him, said: ``Who else speaks it in Hong Kong? No one that we know of.''
The Thai consulate in Hong Kong declined comment, though the newest human rights organization in town, Belgium-based Human Rights Without Frontiers, said it recently turned to Thailand in hopes of ending Salimuchai's stalemate.The group's director Willy Fautre hand delivered a plea on Salimuchai's behalf to the Thai foreign ninister on June 20, World Refugee Day at the Thai Mission at the European Union.
``His case is very complicated but we believe with the kind consideration from the Thai government, he could be allowed to return to his village in Thailand,'' said David Rose, of the group's Hong Kong office. ``Perhaps a temporary travel document could be issued in this case. It is not an option for Todd to remain in limbo forever in Hong Kong. He simply wishes to return home and he should be allowed to do so as soon as possible.''
Attorney Daly, who has been working with Salimuchai since the Hong Kong office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees rejected him due to his non-refugee status, said: ``Todd's been in limbo for a particularly long time and the government has had an equally long time to figure out a strategy for him. Currently we are looking at legal arguments to get him some form of regularization in Hong Kong, including the right to work.''
In his office Daly pulled out a copy of the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights written in 1948 and pointed to articles 13 and 15.
``Article 13 says: `Everyone has the right to leave any country (including his own) and to return to his country.' Article 15 is simple, too. `Everyone has a right to a nationality.' That also includes Todd.''

2006-07-06T21:46:00.000-07:00

Rum, Sodomy & the Lash
Among Hong Kong's sputtering attempts to reach the last half of the 20th century has been a Supreme Court (here they call it "High Court") case wherein an openly gay guy had the terminity to challenge the consitutionality of the city's antediluvian age of consent laws.
I'll break it down as simply as I am able. The basic age at which a Hong Konger can can legally engage in sexual activity with another person of the opposite sex is 16. If you're a lesbian or female "bi-curious" 16 is okay, too.
But until Billy Leung challenged the law, if you were a gay guy you had to wait until you were 18 and one could conceivably get life in prison if the government really wanted to make a case out of it. Last year, a lower court judge found for Leung's argument that the law was unconstitutional and discriminatory. Duh.
Then there's what they call "buggery." Really. Most of the rest of us call it sodomy, anal sex or riding the Hershey highway, I guess, but bugger me if it's actually called "buggery" here. That's another weird bunch o' legal crapola. Buggering is okay only at 21 and that goes for everyone. Even in private among consenting under-21 buggerees, buggerettes and buggeroos.
But the government being what it is and hating to lose as it does has mounted an appeal -- the first day of which I covered yesterday.
What interested me more than the fact that the HK Dept of Justice's case was pitifully weak, resting as it does on vague, bizarre ''what-if" scenarios and technicalities, was that it was the first courtroom I'd been in where the lawyers and judges wore wigs. Up close, they are grotesque and crude looking, woven out of what appears to be bleached horse hair or perhaps cast-off twine from an Albanian-Urantian radioactive twine manufacturing joint venture.
Basically you had a lot of self-important looking officials -- the foreigners mostly bloated, florid and reptilian-like, the Chinese who looked as if they were at "United Kingdom Judiciary Dress-up Day" -- in flowing black robes and wearing what looked like prehistoric animal skins on their heads. Some of the wigs, mostly on the older men, also appeared to be stained or dyed with urine, casting a glowing yellow pallor that I've previously only seen in pictures of terminal hepatitis victims or while pissing after eating a lot of vitamins. I was told later by a veteran HK court reporter that it's a point of pride for a long-time lawyer or judge to have an especially filthy, discolored, ratty tangled one as it shows they've been parsing legal matters and using their wig to scour bus station toilets for ages.
But the best part was when they began discussing "buggery" and "gross indecency" in sonorous, solemn Brit/Aussie accented tones -- in particular one government shill, a pompous lizard I'll call "M" whose stained head nest was slowly sliding to the left off his patchy haired head ("Gross indecency is preparatory, if you will My Lord. A stepping stone, as it were, to other acts, such as buggery") -- and I felt as if I was an extra in a Monty Python movie.

2006-07-03T23:18:00.000-07:00

Hey baby, it's the Fourth of July (Dave Alvin)
While Monday was The Standard's official move-in day, I managed to duck it by combining a much needed journey to HK Immigration for a visa renewal and new ID with a late afternoon interview. After sitting from essentially 10am-5.30pm in the immigration building waiting with hundreds of others for our papers to be pushed, processed, stamped, stapled and filed in sextuplicate, it was a relief to interview a lawyer. And that's saying a lot.
The Fourth found me navigating my way via subway to the eastern edge of Hong Kong to a place I'd never been before and a building I'd never seen before. Within two hours of finding the site, I'd discovered there was no smoking room and was hit up for a loan by a near-sobbing coworker who told me he needed it for his wife who is hospitalized in Shenzhen with severe vaginal bleeding. The guy is also a notorious gambling junkie -- supposedly once did time for some bookie related hijinks -- and I'm short myself already this month. But I'm also nothing if not a frigging sucker, so I gave him about the equivalent of US$60, though he says he needs much, much more.
I also learned that a perfectly competent, hard working, part-timer had been suddenly laid off after she'd worked like the proverbial dawg to help move her department. No reason, no pity. No job. And she needed it more than I'm sure my debt-bound coworker needed his loan.
It got better, though. A lunch time stroll revealed that our new neighborhood is a real, honest-to-gawd funky, cozy enclave -- unlike the scabby, rusty soul sucking vacuum we just vacated. And while we have no cafeteria as in the old digs, it's jammed with modest eateries -- sushi, Chinese, yes, a McDonalds and Pizza Hut, a working black smith shop, dessert shops, bakeries, CD and DVD shops, two -- count 'em two -- temples, one Christian church, florists, funeral supply shops -- and very few high rises save our building.
Our office also faces a harbor and the view is spectacular what with the boats, ocean and mountains. But there's a dark current, too, I discovered while dining on a traditional American Independence Day meal of flat noodles, brisket, fish balls, french toast and a 6 oz bottled Coca Cola with two Chinese coworkers and an American intern.
''Two people have also quit already,'' one announced after telling us about the part-timer's savage layoff.
"Why?"
"Bad feng-shui!," she replied. "They say our new building has bad feng-shui. They say that the bad feng-shui will also cause all the employees' parents to die early. But (owner, publisher, tobacco and press baron) Charles Ho's parents are already dead so it doesn't matter to him."
This elicited a grimace and a snort of amusement and disgust from me, something I kind of regretted after the other Chinese coworker looked hurt asked why I'd made "such a face."
"Well, my mother died 11 years ago and it wasn't from feng-shui," I said. "It was from smoking, drinking and wayward genes."
"It is part of our culture," she said.
"I know. But it doesn't mean I have to admire it, believe in it or even sympathize with it." Lifting some instant wisdom from Stevie Wonder, I added, "As one of America's wisest blind sages once said: 'When you believe in things that you don't understand, you suffer. Superstition ain't the way.' "
"We are not suffering," she said. "And it isn't superstition. It is Chinese science."
"That's like saying 'American peace keeping in Iraq.'''
Point taken, she agreed. Then she asked why me and the other American were eating a shared order of french toast off of the same plate.
"Why not?"
"It is so intimate. I have only seen foreigners do it and it always fascinates me. I thought maybe only homosexuals or lovers would do this."
I turned to the intern and faked a deep, soulful gaze. "Nick and I more than friends," I told her. "We are countrymen. And we're declaring our independence from feng-shui and our right to share french toast off of a single plate."

2006-06-26T01:43:00.000-07:00

Sail Away
Not your usual weekend. Courtesy of a friend -of-a-friend and the mainland's largesse in allowing one of its citizens (C) a pass so she could visit Hong Kong -- "one country, two systems ... and myriad difficulties if you're emeshed in either and want to pass back and forth" -- she and I spent Sunday on a chartered junk with 20-some expat mostly children and their Aussie and Brit moms sailing to a very thinly populated small island called Po Toi, south of Hong Kong. It once about 1,000 residents, most of which seem to have left a life of fishing and subsistance farming for the bright lights and big city to the north.
The cruise was wonderful - soothing scenery, calm ocean, an unusually bright blue sky, blue-green sea, the junk stocked with wine, beer, homemade rum cake, chips (or "crisps" as my Anglo-centric shipmates refered to them) but a tad weird in some other ways. It's a crowd I don't hang with normally, mostly lawyers or law or education connected, one male judge (the only other adult male) and wives of lawyers and all have which been here for many, many years.
I felt at times as if I was an American yokel in the sketchy outline of a failed Graham Greene or Paul Theroux novel. The small Po Toi harbor was crowded with yachts and the ramshackle open air covered restaurant where customers sat on small plastic blue stools was jammed with members of the Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club and Aberdeen Marina Club ("The most prestigious private club in Hong Kong" according to one blurb I've seen) -- mostly all very old school, ''pip-pip" kinda guys and their wives/girlfriends who had docked to tuck into 5-inch broiled prawns, fried rice, scallops, sweet and sour pork and lots of grog before casting off back to their lives as bankers, developers and investors.
The walk from the boat to the restaurant was another world, too. Abandoned small shacks and mud brick homes nearly overgrown with sub-tropical foliage flanked the winding, hilly path. C and I paused in front of one that was papered with torn, faded handwritten Chinese signs.
"What does that one say?" I asked her, pointing at one that was still mostly intact and legible.
She studied it for a minute, cleared her throat as she always does before reciting a written translation and read: "I wake up in the morning and look up at the beautiful green mountain and ask her: 'How old are you?' She replies: 'How old are you?' "
Lovely, we both agreed. And, I thought privately, much better than cornball notices I recalled outside of cabins in the States like: "Wipe your paws here," "Camp Run-a-Muck" or "An old gopher lives here."
Onboard, my shipmates reminded me how political correctness -- or just plain common courtesy/sense -- still has a way to go here in some quarters. They kept referring to the 40something Chinese skipper - who also doubled as waiter, wine steward, tea and coffee maker along with his wife - as "the boat boy" as in: "Boat boy! We'd fancy a little more tea if you please!"
He spoke little English -- indeed C, as the only non-hired Chinese person aboard went beyond the call of duty as a occasional translator though she speaks virtually no Cantonese and he little Mandarin -- and referred to the women collectively as "Missy," like Hop Sing, the servile Chinese cook on Bonanza.
There was also the budding conspiracy freak. One late-30something paunchy Aussie mom told me about some 911 conspiracy video that her 13-year old had recently downloaded. Lulled and stuporous as I was by wine, digesting monster prawns and the gentle sway of the boat, I initially thought she was talking about United 93 and finally realized that her teenager's Internet quest had her completely sucked into theories that the whole 911 affair was all Dubya and Co.'s doing. A missle hit the Pentagon, the WTC bldgs were dynamited, Flight 93 was shot down by an F-16. etc blahblah. Not that I wouldn't love to blame The Smirking Chimp for that as well, but he's already got enough innocent blood on his hands and what she was spouting was sheer tripe and nonesense, of course. The last thing I wanted to do on a lazy Sunday afternoon rocking on the South China Sea was debate 911 aluminum foil hat jive, so I kept my mouth shut.
That is until she said:"If it's true, it's one the most heinous crimes ever committed against humanity-- more than 2,000 people died, you know!" I almost mentioned the Holocaust (or Pol Pot, or Mao's 38 million victims...) but then she did it for me. "How many Jews were killed by the Germans? 10,000?"
"Six million," I said.
"What? Six million? Really?"
"Yes."
"Why, that's a lot! That's almost the entire population of Australia!"
At that point I said, "It certainly is," and excused myself, politedly declined "boat boy's" offer and helped myself to another glass of wine and another chair where I had a view to savor with no blather.

2006-06-21T03:29:00.000-07:00

You Got to Move
The Standard and its parent company, Sing Tao publishing, are moving to a new building soon and the memos have been flying. Squirrelly and burly small men in sweaty T-shirts with hand carts stacked with boxes, chairs, desks, computers and file cabinets block the aisles and shanghai the elevators. It's a cluster f*ck anyway you cut it.
Reason no. 112 why The Standard's future is not, as they say here, auspicious. An initial directive/memo telling us when and whatfor etc has a breakdown of every publication in this building and what furniture they can expect to find at the new digs. Every publication -- three Chinese mags and one Chinese newspaper -- except The Standard is assigned "new" furniture. The left-handed red-headed barbarian stepchild gets "existing" chairs and desks.
Reason no. 321 why when the Chinese bureaucrats take over the world, the rest of us are doomed. Another memo states that we're to have items not essential to the paper's production packed, sealed and labeled about 4 days in advance of the move. Among the items listed as non-essential to the paper's production are telephones (huh?!) ... and "garbage bins." Admittedly, trash cans are not "essential" to putting out a paper, but where the hell are we going to throw our trash for the 4 days we're still here?
Which reminds me of another item for "when the Chinese bureaucrats take over the world..." C and I were having lunch last weekend at a Chinese-run Korean restaurant. I'd ordered a side dish of rice to go with the kimchi and some other appetizers. After going rice-less for about 20-minutes I asked her to remind the waiter to bring it. Waiter summoned. Long conversation in Chinese ensues.
Waiter shrugs and walks away.
"What did he say? Where's my rice?"
"He said rice only comes with the soup. The soup is not ready. If you want rice now you have to order another one for more money."

2006-06-16T04:47:00.000-07:00

Now I know why a caged bird sings
Or something like that. It's been a weird week of extremes. Three days covering The Stephen Hawking Experience and watching the HK media go ga-ga. His lecture (pre-recorded) was nearly incomprehensible due to bad acoustics, a distorted over-cranked sound system and his eerie Mr Roboto voice. Plus though it was pitched at the "physics/cosmology for dummies" level I was lost nearly before he began. Other parts resembled a low-key rock or pop show. People lined up as early as 9am for good seats for the 3pm show and a 20-minute video loop - a kind of "Hawking's Greatest Hits" including bits from The Simpsons and his appearance on Star Trek: The Next Generation - played to the auditorium prior to him being wheeled onstage.
All that were missing were hawkers hawking Hawking t-shirts, baseball caps, posters and mini-wheel chairs.
Another night was spent at a filthy, sweaty "cage home" where elderly impoverished men shell out more about US$125 a month to sleep stacked three high in 6ft x 3ft cages in one room. The one I went to had 12 guys from 57 to 74. Two toilets and one hot plate completed the interior decoration. As me, another reporter, a photographer and a social worker left bidding cheery good-byes, one cage resident could be heard telling others (in Cantonese, it was translated for me), ``Anything they write won't help. Nothing will change.'' Unfortunately, he's right, of course. I did draw a chuckle from some when I asked them if the guy who had a caged pet cockatoo inside his man cage had to pay extra for the bird's lodging. "No," one said through a translator. "But probably later he will."
Then there was most of a day wasted fruitlessly trying to meet with political/religious refugees only to wind up in a Christian street mission in a former whore house pretending to pray and sing hymns in English and some African dialect with (mostly) down and out Africans and Nepalese in a service conducted by a chubby Indian pastor who looked like a tailor and preached with a lisp in the typical sing-song Indian accent on Paul's letter to the "Philippines" (he meant "Philippians," of course). Jesus just left Chicago and he's bound for New Orleans, I know, but I never realized that Paul was a thrilla in Manila.
I'd say I'm glad it's Friday but I gotta work tomorrow and Shenzhen and C never seemed so far away from so close.

2006-06-12T04:36:00.000-07:00

Fame
I just got back from covering Stephen Hawking's arrival at the HK airport. What a grotesque moment, in that HK's paparazzi nearly crushed and ate the celebrated quadriplegic scientist.
They are celebrity starved here and there was a moment or two that I feared for what little remains of Hawking's life, though he's apparently fit enough to deliver a lecture on Wednesday.
"Hong Kong photogs stomp, devour paralyzed scientist"
"...after tearing shreds of the whithered flesh from the remains of the celebrated physicist, the frenzied shutterbugs were seen devouring it with their bloody, bare hands, while exclaiming: 'It will make me a genius person, also!' Remains of Hawking's computer operated wheel chair and bits of his broken spectacles were also fought over by the rabid press pack."
In real life there was one nice moment. As Hawking disappeared under the media crush, I saw a young Western guy watching the scene and he asked me
``Who's that? Someone famous?"
When told it was Hawking, the guy, a 22-year old San Diego college student here on vacation, paused a minute.
``Stephen Hawking? The scientist on The Simpsons? Sweet!''

2006-06-11T20:48:00.000-07:00

What's New Pussycat?
"I've got news!" C phoned to tell me.
This in itself was nearly unprecendented. Her phoning me, I mean. While I faithfully check in like some lurveblind fool at least twice a day from Hong Kong, she abides by one of the many, unwritten, unspoken Chinese Girlfriend Rules - most of which I think they make up as the voices in their heads dictate and nearly none of which I have yet to fathom - though in this case it's the one that says: "Girlfriends Don't Call Guys or Otherwise Overtly Express Any Sort of Positive Emotion Regarding Your Relationship (The Guy Just Has To Figure It Out) Subsection B: "But If The Guy Doesn't Call Daily With Positive Strokes, He's 9-day old Porcine Afterbirth and Will Duly Suffer the Unspoken, Unwritten Consequences."
Her news was that she'd been fired. She also sounded thrilled for someone who'd just been canned, which (see last entry) gives you an idea of how fulfilling her work had become in recent months.
This however, came almost immediately on the heels of us giving up our rescued cat, Gato, for adoption. Her work and travel schedule combined with Shenzhen's paucity of catsitters/lovers - cats are considered generally by most Chinese to be good for 1. an appetizer 2. minor vermin control 3. a status symbol only if it's a Persian and you can parade around with it - had finally led us to a long search for a new home for Gato, a slinky white and dark brown street cat and in no way a status symbol. We'd had her for about 2 years and I was unable to bring her to Hong Kong short of having her drugged and trying to sneak her across in a back back while worrying that the drug dogs at the border would suddenly forget their sensory mission for cocaine, blunts, E, hash, Special K, etc and revert to their primal roles as cat-mauling hellhounds.
After using an Shenzhen expat Internet ad service, we'd finally given Gato up - complete with some tears from C followed by too much wine - to a New Zealand guy who wanted one so his "2-year old son could enjoy growing up with a cat" as he did. I hope his 2-year old son also enjoys growing up with a cat that considers scratching, biting and occasionally pissing on the couch and bed as expressions of affection, though even those disclosures didn't dissuade the dad.
Now we had a quandry, though. C's suddenly free. I returned to Shenzhen for the weekend where the sight of Gato's lonely food and water dish had become unbearable momentarily. We considered calling her new owner up and asking for her back when the Kiwi text messaged C with an update.
"Gato is sniffing around and settling in. The boy loves her! A little trouble with urine control though. But so far, so good. Many thanks!"
He didn't say if it was Gato or the boy who couldn't hold it. But we decided to control ourselves, wash the old pet dishes, store them and buff up C's resume - after another bottle of Great Wall.

2006-06-04T23:31:00.000-07:00

Back in the Saddle Again (briefly)
C's had a raw deal at work wherein several weeks ago her Chinese overlord (she works for a Sino-US joint venture but her US imperialist running dog masters stick mostly to headquarters in Indiana) suddenly told her that her duties had been increased to include teaching a two hour English night class (7-9 pm) for employees of the company's plant.
For no extra pay, of course.
The plant happens to be about an hour's drive by van/auto outside of Shenzhen and until she raised hell she was expected to either: A. Take a bus (two hours one-way) or B. Take a taxi and pay for it herself - a very expensive option. She wangled a company van and driver but still wasn't exactly thrilled with the prospect of her Friday nights being eaten up as an unpaid school ma'arm. C was originally trained as an English teacher in college but quickly wised up after 6 mos. of what she described to me as "hell, never stopping" and quit. However her diploma and fluency skills continue to haunt her when it comes to stuff like this. She's managed to eke out about three lessons - most due to the superb teaching tips and lesson plans provided by my old SZ pal James "The Temple Guy and USDA Certified Teacher/Principal, Not Your Usual Expat Slacker" Baquet - but she's recently been running on fumes and ennui, not a superb combo.
I happened to be free last Friday due to a scheduling quirk and thought I'd, hey, why not help out?
It turned out to be better than I expected in one sense and a little behind-the-scenes bittersweet as well.
It swept me back to the shallow roots that brought me here almost three years ago - facing a room of Chinese faces varying in age and happy and curious to see a foreign face. Their skills varied wildly from reasonably conversant to numbly tongue-tied. But they all wanted to learn and after they warmed up, weren't too shy about asking questions.
I'd forgotten how much I loved the questions.
"Do all Americans eat meat?" Which launched me into a short explanation of vegetarianism, vegans and how one of America's premier tofu - a Chinese word - manufacturers is in my hometown.
"Is Brokeback Mountain true?" Um...well, it could be. Though when I began trying to gingerly step into the realm of the "G" word vis a vis US and what little I've learned of it in China, I noticed the raised eyebrows of the plant supervisor and segued awkwardly into how much Ang Li is admired in the US.
"Are there many Chinese in the US?" Ever since the transcontinental railroad in the 1860s etc etc.
They all called me "Mr Justin" and one 19-year old named "October" begged me to sing Yesterday Once More, a song and China syndrome that I've blogged about more than once here. However this time, I felt a strange brief affection for it - like a sudden crush on the picture of an old schoolmate - however the delusion passed quickly. I begged off on the request.
I was urged to return as quickly as possible and the plant manager presented me with a crystal paperweight inscribed with the company's logo as a token of his gratitude.
On the long drive back, C thanked me too for bailing her out of another barren Friday night. And she also told me one reason for my popularity. I was a much needed diversion. Most of my one-night pupils earn about 600 yuan (US$75)a month, work 6 days, 10-12 hours a day and live in spartan company dorms, most without TVs much less VCRs, DVDs or CD players.
I winced a little at that last detail as one had asked me how to improve his English outside of the classroom and I'd grandly suggested a diet of English language DVDs, CDs and also-popular-in-China TV shows such as Sex and the City or Friends.
"Most of them don't even have TVs," C said. "No cable, of course. But it's okay. You were good. They liked you."
I liked them too. "Tell them thanks from me the next time," I said. I meant it. It had been a long time since I'd felt so fresh.

PS Two recent T-shirt sightings in Hong Kong: "He went went out with momma's big shoes. Full sugar and a dream stuffing." And this in upper case letters: "JESUS IS A CUNT." (Worn by a middle aged guy toting a small child.)

2006-05-30T00:57:00.000-07:00

Yer Blues
I just read another HK expat blogger's account of her blahs concerning doubts about living here, why she left wherever it was she used to live (North America, I think) how she's repeating the same behavior she came here to change etc etc and damn if I didn't want to make contact and form a support group or something.
I could relate. She's got apartment problems and is having a 3am juju moment. Me too! Me too!
1. Apartment woes. In my case it's two broken air conditioners (crucial to my comfort) that the landlord won't repair because he's ignoring multiple letters and either won't answer or has non-working numbers for the 10 -- yes 10 -- phone numbers that I've been able to compile.
He speaks no English and has two postal addresses, but one is on the mainland. I've had to enlist the apartment management office, the real estate agent who found the place and C to help, but nada. My lease is up in July. Except for the AC snafus, I like the place and am loathe to move. But I've withheld one month's rent as a protest so far and will probably withold the next month's but even if he ignores that it means I'll eventually forfeit the two month deposit I made to get the place.
Meanwhile rent prices are screaming higher and higher for apts that only roaches and colonies of parasitic ringworms would be proud to call home.
2. Pretty soon I'll be the only gweilo on the paper's metro desk as people -- Chinese and foreigners alike -- are fleeing the place like Circle Jerk fans at a Wayne Newton concert.
Speaking of Vegas, did you know that one of the two editors to whom I report is an enormous, long and bushy haired Sri Lankan who wears gold chains and his black Rayon shirts open to his hairy belly and who smells like he's rotting from within? It's like working for a Las Vegas cannibal. And he's the good one. He's quitting soon and going back to Sri Lanka (where there's an endless civil war) to export shirts. Or import arms. Or something.
The other one is a profane, bantam-like strutting Chinese/Portuguese mix who apparently learned the craft and his management style from alkie Aussie hacks circa 1977 and hasn't progressed much since. He's a lifer and will probably die at his desk in fits and spasms and coughing up chunks o' lung while foaming at some hapless newbie to cover a press conference in which a special commission established by the Hong Kong chief executive has confirmed that today is Tuesday, there are 12 months in a year and the sun will probably rise tomorrow.
My career options are pretty limited here and nonexistent back home. But what's out there? Well, one of the best editors I've ever had who was fired in the blitz that began The Standard's current decline is currently considering a job offer in East Timor, which looks remarkably like footage from Baghdad or this week's latest Indonesian disaster the last time I checked BBC TV news.
3. Did I mention that HK income taxes are due soon and my most recent medical insurance claims have been rejected and there's this weird boil on my...ah, never mind.
The sun will probably rise tomorrow. Though due to a winning combo of weeks of omnipresent smog and the monsoon season ("The sky looks like sperm," C quipped recently in one of her better and more poetic traditional Chinese moments) you'd hard pressed to tell. But that's another rant for another time.

2006-05-25T10:02:00.000-07:00

The Pretender
At first glance of the many press clippings and self-written PR releases he carries Zhou Tao seems like a western journalist's dream come true.
1. Sticking it to The Man by speaking out? Check. Since April Zhou's been railing publicly via the Internet, TV and Chinese newspapers against rising housing prices in Shenzhen where indeed they're climbing with no end in sight. Example: Since two years ago an apartment in the Sunny Bay neighborhood of the district I rent in, purchase and rental prices have nearly doubled. He's gained fame with a grassroots movement urging people to buck the housing binge buying trend and boycott home buying until prices fall. Though few here know the image, imagine him as the lone, anonymous citizen standing up to the tanks of real estate developers and government officials selling them the land in a modern day Tienanemen Square situation.
2. Persecuted by authorities? Check. He says he's been detained by police and received threats from developers and shadowy mystery thugs for his bold action. His phone is tapped, he claims, and he's constantly followed.
3. A man of the people; acclaimed as a modest "hero" by the masses? Check. Ask him and he'll show you screen full after screen full of cell phone text messages sent by admirers. "You speak for us. You are a true hero" is typical.
4. A man of action? Check. Zhou says that not even being snatched by plain clothes cops at the airport and detained for 5 hours prior to a flight to Beijing stopped him from eventually getting there in order to deliver his message to prime minister Wen Jiabao.
5. Following his own example? Check. "I rent a two bedroom apartment for 1,500 yuan (US$187) a month. I cannot afford to buy one and wouldn't even if I could unless prices fall," he told me via C's translation. He claims to eke out a modest living as the owner of a golf supply store. (Golf? Red flag! Red flag! Definitely still a rich man's pastime in China. On second thought, hold that "check)
The trouble is is that his story -- while being lapped up by the Chinese press and hotly followed on the Internet -- doesn't exactly stand up to even cursory scrutiny.
He arrives an hour late in a 200,000 (US$24,000) yuan car for an interview in one of Shenzhen's hottest real estate markets. Strangely, though stopping the runaway apartment buying train here is his mission and though he says he's lived here for 11 years he calls 3 times enroute to ask for directions claiming that he's never heard of the neighborhood.
He's sporting a Titleist cap and a spiffy Sport brand golf shirt, carrying a sheaf of publicity materials and within 3-minutes of meeting casually mentions that the Asian Wall Street Journal has just done an interview with him. His golf handicap, a question I ask in order to break the ice? "Ninety." Huh?
These guys who detained you, what did they say? "Nothing. I asked why have you taken me and they never said." He goes on to embellish the story with an account of being driven to a neighborhood he never recognized where he sat in an apartment with his captors who again asked him "nothing." No threats? Nothing? "Nothing. Then they let me out of the apartment and I still didn't know where I was. I finally realized I was in Louhou." Louhou is a district in Shenzhen where he said earlier he'd lived for the past 11 years. "How did you get back to your car at the airport?" "I can't talk about it."
Direct questions about his missive to the prime minister reveal that he actually didn't get the message to Wen but to an anonymous official whom he can't name. What did it say? It was on my Internet site but it's been blocked. He adds, apropos of nothing that before he began selling golf ware he was in the People's Libration Army special forces and produces a black and white photo of a younger self in civilian clothes aiming a pistol at the camera as proof.
Then he says his cell phone is being tapped. "How do you know?" "Government officials call and tell me but don't tell me their names."
"The government officials call you to tell you that they are listening to your phone calls and don't leave their names but they leave their numbers?" C wisecracks to me in English, referring to the fact that the majority of cell phone calls one receives here have caller ID. He also claims to have been banned on the domestic Internet, though his website is still up and running. He clarified that observation by saying that his more "controversial" interviews and statements have been excised but are still available here courtesy of "foreign" Internet sites because "the government cannot block foreign Internet sites." Right. Tell that to someone without a proxy server or anonymouse savvy trying to read this blog, much less something about the Dali Lama from the mainland.
It gets worse. I go to the restroom in order to let C chat him up, Chinese citizen-to-Chinese citizen style. After returning she says he's told her that he amassed a fortune of nearly 1 million yuan after leaving the army and being recruited to head an unnamed PLA department as a 21-year old civilian. He used that to start his golf business. Oh, and by the way, an (unnamed, untitled) "American government official" is coming to China to talk to him about his cause.
And oh yeah, he did buy an apartment in Shenzhen in the late '90s. But sold it a few years later because it was too far from work. And then he bought the car. Which costs him 3,000 yuan a month for gas etc. And he's just quit his golf business in order to volunteer his time for an "international charity." Which one? "I don't know yet. There are so many."
"My parents are poor farmers. I only want to help people like them."
So...why don't you sell the car and ....?
"It's all here in what I wrote. Didn't you see me on CCTV? On Phoenix TV? Why are you asking all these questions? Just put what I wrote here in your newspaper."
As we're leaving he says something to C in Chinese. "What did he say?" I ask after he drives off.
"He wants me to read your story before you write it make sure it's all positive."
Check.

2006-05-18T04:14:00.000-07:00

The Message
Two inexplicable T-shirt spottings while walking to work today, both within about 20 seconds of one another.
1. Elderly woman with the proverbial "crone's hump" shuffling along in a white T with red lettering and heart that proclaimed: "I love hookers!"
2. A young athletic looking guy in trendy red rectangular specs followed her in a grey T with large bold-face black lettering: "PALSY"
I told two coworkers of these and one mentioned a sevelte and trim young woman he'd seen recently in a tight T and "Tweakers" across her breasts. But the prize went to the other guy who'd recently been served by an old waiter in a Chinese noodle shop whose T labeled him: "World's Best Bum Boy!"

2006-05-14T21:05:00.000-07:00

Peace Frog
One of the small blessings of relocating from my old Lucky Number abode in Shenzhen to our current, newer and less-crowded apartment complex were the frogs. Designed by some Chinese architect's idea of a Venice canal theme, there are tiny quasi-canals and lots of foliage within which until recently one could hear the sonorous boom, blatt, belching and occasional melodic croaking of frogs within the greenery.
At night sitting on one of the tiny benches outside the entrance to No. 5, I'd simply soak it all in. The acoustics are such that the exotic booms and belchs would echo a moment, sometimes so much so that one couldn't distinguish between real-frog and echo-frog.
But the residents complained. "They hate the noise," C said. She maintained a neutral stand on the frogs, at least when talking with me, but I sensed she secretly sympathized with her Chinese neighbors. She is vocal however about mosquitos. She hates and fears them and treats a single bite as one otherwise might react to being mauled by sack load of rabid ferrets.
"Frogs eat mosquitos, you know," I said. "They help control the mosquito population."
"Then why are there still mosquitos?"
"There'd be a lot more if it weren't for the frogs. And even less if the management here cleaned out the standing water in these fake canals once in awhile."
I've found that basic science, biology and general environmental cause and effect/circle of life stuff is foreign to most of the average Chinese I've encountered. At least our western ideas about these things. They do have a concept of environmental/health cause and effect -- just not anything we learned in junior high science.
To whit: She and other young, college educated Chinese women I've talked with firmly believe that going outside with wet hair - whatever the temperature -- will make one ill. It gets worse, though. C believes (because her mother told her) that going outside with wet hair will ultimately cause senility. She also believes that sleeping with her legs uncovered while the air conditioner runs will cause her bones to "get soft."
There' s also the belief that after a woman gives birth she will run the risk of becoming gravely ill if she washes her hair before 30 days is up. This one I've heard from women of child bearing age in both Shenzhen and Hong Kong.
Then there's the whole "hot" and "cold" food thing, something I don't even pretend to understand though it's based on a concept of balance like yin/yang, Sonny/Cher, Keef/Mick, J.Lo/Ben, Cheney/Rumsfeld/Satan. It's not hot and cold like we think of temperatures or spices. Each food is imbued with a mystical "hot" or "cold" property - bananas are "hot", watermelon and chicken is "cold" and, for instance, if C drinks more than one can of herbal tea daily it will make her stomach "cold" and give her pimples. Or leprosy. Or cause a crippling stroke when she's 78.
So the idea of frogs as natural mosquito controllers was as nonsensical to her as "hot" bananas was to me. Saturday night I noticed the frogs were silent. Sunday C was buying mosquito repellant devices while outside some apt workers without masks were busy spraying the bejeezus out of the bushes and shrubs as small children frolicked in the chemical mist while their parents chatted oblivious to the insecticide their offspring were absorbing.
"They killed the frogs last week," C said. "There are still mosquitos."
"You mean 'more' mosquitos," I said. "Why else would they be spraying?"
"Maybe the manager's office has a cousin or important connection who has a spray company," she replied. On that she's probably right.
But I miss the frogs and fear a little for those kids.

2006-05-14T04:23:00.000-07:00

I Knew the Bride When She Used to Rock 'n' Roll
A slow, mostly hot and humid Shenzhen Sunday so C and I decided to hit a coastal park that features acres of manicured rough grass, fledging trees, a seaside view of Hong Kong across the water and a promenade. She and others call it "Red Wood Park" though there are no red woods as Californians and others in the US understand it.
But I've always enjoyed it if not just for the lengthy list of "Temporary Regulations" which greet visitors and have been there at least since I first visited it briefly on my 51st birthday three years ago with a SZ Daily coworker and her friend and her friend's apparently autistic 4-year-old son. At the time I asked about the kid but was told only that he "never talked" and the mother was reluctant to take him to a doctor because "4 is an unlucky age."
But signs, yes...mostly it's a standard list of universal "don'ts" with this final pronouncement: "Whoring, gambling, drug taking, feudalism and superstitions or other illegal activities are strictly forbidden."
Whoring, gambling, drugs...yes, hell, even "superstitions" - though that's a real reach, fortune telling I suppose and I kind of comprehend -- but can someone tell me how, exactly, one commits feudalism in a public park?
They were committing commercial pre-matrimonial rites though, arguably superstition, which C and I found after picking out a select shady spot and beginning to chow down on fresh peaches, spicy KFC wings and bannana chips. We'd staked it out but were soon outnumbered by seemingly throngs of nearly identical brides and grooms in rental dresses and white tuxes accompanied by photo crews.
It's big business in the new China and this was like seeing a Sunday afternoon dream factory cranking it out full bore. Presumably each couple had shelled out as much as US$900-$2,500 to stand around in the same park assuming the same poses and wearing pretty much the same wedding costumes for what would, depending on their budgets, become full blown photo albums (large and/or small), and various sized and garishly framed prints to decorate their love shacks until reality set in.
With the exception of one groom whose jacket looked like it was taken from a white quilted mattress pad, all the guys were in the same stock white tux. Not even a paisley cummerbund to revive the eyes.
All were heavily made up, causing C to comment that "all the girls look the same" and indeed it was startling how interchangable, except for the length of the bridal trains, veils and some small color details, the women looked. Even their busts looked identical -- all enhanced with the same 36-A padded bras.
"Did you have your pictures taken when you were married?" she asked.
My first was an assembly line service at the US embassy in Seoul for which my first one-and-only wasn't required to attend. The more formal union to my second old-time-used-to-be, I explained, was documented by a photographer from my then-newspaper who shot some great black and white candid photos.
"Do you still have them?"
"No. I think she did."
"Where are they?"
"I think she probably destroyed them." I didn't mention the video another newspaper pal had shot and how much I had enjoyed watching it in the months following the marriage and how it would make me cry now. Like how the sex was or the funny little moments and quirks that still make you smile remembering, there are some things one doesn't share.
At that tender moment, one photog began shouting "hello! hello!" and some Chinese at us. Another Replicant Couple -- number eight -- had arrived and we were in the line of fire for a shot that would later presumably show them sharing a blissful solitary moment in a Chinese Eden.

2006-05-07T20:39:00.000-07:00

Suicide Motel
That's where I woke up Friday morning. Actually, "Suicide Motel" is the nickname of the Bella Vista Villa, the very un-Chinese official name of a macabre lodge in which I was sharing a small, hard, cramped bed with a male reporter from a communist paper, China Daily. It was about 6.30am. We'd been asleep only about 3 hours and was startled awake by the clanging and banging of incessant gongs, drums, and the infernal shrill blatting of Chinese trumpets.
It was then that I briefly felt like taking advantage of the motel's reputation. Not that anything untoward had occurred between me and Teddy, the commie paper reporter. I haven't sunk that low. But I had a headache and had slept poorly having arrived on short notice and a late hour via ferry to a small island off Hong Kong called Cheung Chau to cover a "bun festival." Accomodations were hard to find and strings had been pulled by another Standard reporter - a young woman, W, who was shacking up elsewhere with a friend on the island -- and Teddy and I were thrown together at the Suicide Motel.
It faces the sea as befits a melancholy lodging where lovers and others go to die. It's also - a no brainer - reportedly haunted, though I found it haunted only with the silent, mournful spirits of toilet paper and towels, of which there were none.
W had told me the Suicide Motel was a popular last stop for Hong Kong young people who were stressed out over love, money, examinations or parents as well as just-curious types there to scare themselves.
The most popular method? Carbon monoxide poisoning and a charcoal burner. I wondered if the clerks (of which I saw none, not even a front desk, W's friend had prepaid for us and had given us the key which we returned to him) frisked the guests for hibachis and charcoal before check-in or if they just took note and scheduled an ambulance and extra cleaning staff for the next morning.
The bun festival itself is the island's two-day cash cow. A population of mostly 40,000 fishing families nearly doubles with an influx of tourists to watch parades, worship at temples and at midnight on the first night watch 12 young men scramble up a huge tower of steel scaffolding covered with 8,000 plastic wrapped buns. The winnner is the guy who can collect the most buns while climbing the highest and returning soonest. This year it was a 27-year-old Hong Kong firefighter who bagged 705 of them.
The bun scramble - which dates back more than 100 years and originated as attempt to ward off the plague -- was banned from 1978-2004 after the (then-bamboo) scaffolding collapsed and hundreds were injured. Purists griped in 2005 when steel replaced bamboo and climbing safety harnesses became manditory, as well as climbing lessons, but it hasn't seemed to dampen the enthusiasm for the spectacle.
The next night features a huge paper effigy of a god set ablaze to ensure good luck. Kind of like Burning Man in the US minus the bacchanalia.
I found the parade more interesting for two reasons. There was the weird cultural mix and match which, in addition to unique and traditional Chinese garb, floats and displays included things like a group of islanders dressed in Japanese robes, beating Japanese taiko drums and sporting Peking Opera masks followed by a Hong Kong marching band, complete with drum major, blowing out a rousing brassy version of Get Ready, a 1966 hit for The Temptations. And there was the fact that a criminal organization -- with help from Coca Cola -- lead the whole parade. Thanks to W's friend who is a Cheung Chau native, I learned the large group of men heading the march were the island triad, called Tai Pan Shan.
Hundreds of largely menancing and sullen tattooed guys and their more cheerful looking wives, mothers, children, girlfriends paraded and waved, dressed in identical white T-shirts with Chinese script and dragons on the front and Coca Cola logos on the back.
I wondered if Coke's Atlanta headquarters knew it was the festive corporate sponsor for the Tai Pan Shan mafia. I can't imagine them doing the same for say, the Gambino or Bonanno families for the Annual Feast of San Gennaro street festival in New York but maybe it was pitched to them as a pure, exotic religious and cultural event and Coke saw an opportunity for a cheap plug in the already saturated Chinese market.

2006-04-23T21:23:00.000-07:00

"You men eat your dinner, eat your pork and beans. I eat more chicken than any man's ever seen..." Backdoor Man/Willie Dixon.
Sunday evening had me thinking I'd either been here too long or feeling like I'd just arrived. It began when I slipped on a large, unmarked area of slick just-swabbed tile in a Shenzhen grocery store and went crashing as slowly and gracefully as I could beneath a fly-blown dripping table full of thawing ice and chicken feet.
C and I were shopping for dinner and in a breakthrough moment she had offered to cook. This was unprecedented. C does not cook, so we either order-in, dine out (Chinese) or I throw together something approximating chili, spaghetti sauce, seafood or fish fit for sauteeing or boiling, or the fried flesh of a farm-raised quadruped together with potatoes and fake salad. As such C's offer of chicken wings with ginger, green onions and corn sounded groundbreaking from someone who is normally ecstatic to announce that she's just successfully boiled an egg or poured hot water into a foam cup of instant noodles.
Unwrapping myself from beneath the trickle of defrosting ice on my head and from the floor which planted a large wet spot resembling a distorted map of China on the butt of my khaki shorts, I assured her I was fine and quelled the immediate urge to go into one of my Ugly American rants about how if China had something resembling OSHA and this was a Safeway we could retire comfortably to the south of France on the proceeds of a personal injury/negligence lawsuit.
Then I perked up. As she scrutinized the chicken wings, I noted a unusual assortment of chicken parts next to them. Not the feet, of course. Those are ubiquitous. Nor randomly hacked and flayed bits of broken ribcages flecked with meat, also not uncommon. Those are primo, the good stuff as any right-thinking Chinese chicken eater knows.
No, I saw drumsticks. Complete whole drumsticks. In almost 3 years in Shenzhen I had not caught as much as a glimpse of a complete single drumstick. The KFCs all sell wings and something resembling breasts, but no drumsticks. Ditto for the KFCs in Hong Kong. After the nutritious, savory and oh-so-filling precious feet are removed, I'm not clear on what is done with the utterly worthless legs they were attached to. At the banquets, where the bird is served whole it's a con job. It has been chopped up crossways from the neck to the rear and then reassembled.
So I suddenly found myself craving the feel of hefting a complete drumstick, gnawing, ripping and sucking on the meat until the bone was bare. My inner-medieval castle banquet knave or maybe the inner-Austropithicus before him was slobbering to be released.
"Those!" I blurted pointing a shaking index finger. "Drumsticks! Get those. Now, please."
C looked puzzled at my fervor. "Chicken legs? Okay," she said slowly, in a tone that suggested she was dealing rationally with an completely irrational individual in a hostage situation. "How many?"
"Four!" I hissed. "Those four there." They were the largest, fattest ones available.
Satisfied and salivating in anticipation of the feast to come, I generously offered to hobble with my aching, wet back and butt to the produce section for corn, ginger and green onions while she dealt with waking up the butcher who seemed oblivious to a growing line of consumers clutching plastic bags of stuff that mostly resembled offal. (At the grocers here foods such as meat and produce are usually weighed and priced at the source, not at the checkout line.)
I returned to see carnage. Horror. Culinary blasphemy. The butcher was applying the final few cleaver strokes to what had been four intact drumsticks before he wrapped, weighed and priced them.
"Why?" I pleaded to C. "Why didn't you stop him?"
"Stop him from what?" she said. "We always chop up the legs."
My mood turned ugly and sullen, but I kept mostly silent as we trudged from the store to another block where she said we had to visit our pirate DVD supplier who had promised to replace a faulty Sex and the City disc. At least that's what I thought she said. I would swear to it even now but ....
I stood with two Chinese families swarming over and picking through the illegal DVDs and watched without comment as the children, all about 6 to 8 years-old, got the beaming parental seal of approval for selecting wholesome family favorites such as Freddy vs Jason, Santa's Slay and Witchhouse 2: Blood Coven.
C was meanwhile locked in one of those incomprehensibly long conversations with the DVD pirate boy that looked and sounded as if they were discussing North Korea's nuclear threat and what to do about it.
I sighed and sat down and finally C returned with an Audrey Hepburn 8-movie box set and asked me if I thought 120 yuan (US$15) was too much.
"No, I guess not. But what happened to Sex and the City?"
"What? We have that already!"
"But you said one disc was broken and ...."
"No! I said I wanted the Audrey Hepburn movies."
"Uh, no, you. I mean, not really, right? Maybe, I ... or you....But never mind. "
Ain't it grand when couples communicate openly and honestly?
Back at apartment 20-D, C cooked up her debut dish and it wasn't too bad. Delicious actually, though I was still stewing about the vandalized drumsticks. I decided to cut my losses though, took a shower, retired to the bedroom and lit some candles. Romance. That' s what we needed tonight.
C finished showering, opened the bedroom door and sounded irritated.
"Why do you have candles?"
"Why do we ever have candles in here?"
"Turn on the lights, please. I want you to put lotion on my back."
That's normally another signal, like the candles, but at the moment it was clear she had nothing but lotion and only lotion on her mind.
I blew the candles out as hard and loudly as I could, snapped the lights on and slathered the lotion on her as if I was doing it for my 118th client in 2 hours at a Florida retirement home. Wham, slap, rub. Next!
Then I turned off the lights. rolled over briefly, got up and went to the balcony to smoke a cigarette alone while she lay silently in bed.
I watched the lights of Shenzhen and mulled about couples, botched cross-cultural communications, bad DVDs and drumsticks.
C came out after about 5-minutes.
"What are you doing?" she asked.
"Smoking a cigarette and thinking about world affairs, why I'm here, stuff like that.."
"Come back and light the candles."
I did.
"My favorite position!" she sighed a few lovely minutes later.
"Better than drumsticks," I whispered.

2006-04-21T07:22:00.000-07:00

One Reporter's Opinion
Occasionally I have to cover a press conference here, a task I dread due to several prevailing conditions.
1. The press release exhorting the event often does not contain adequate information, such as a recent one which said it would be held at 4 Harbour Road, Room 307, 3/F. Note that a specific building is not specified. Harbour Road is a very busy, main thoroughfare and it's not uncommon for multiple businesses and organizations to contain the same address. Nor was there a phone number/name for contact information in case one wanted to call and ask what building at 4 Harbour Road contains Room 307 on the third floor.
2. The press conferences are overwhelmingly conducted in Cantonese. An English speaker of uncertain ability is usually available for niggling details like: A. What did he/she/they say? {"They say everything is fine/not sure. Maybe good, maybe not so good.") and B. Who are they? But elemental Journalism 101 followup questions and details like "Her name is 'Miss Hui?' Okay, so, what's her first name? And what's her title?" are often met with blank stares.
3. I get lost easily and possess the map reading skills of a tape worm.
Giving myself at least an extra 45 minutes to get lost and reoriented, I arrived at 4 Harbour Road about 5 minutes before the hype was scheduled to begin. The location appeared to be a hotel. But there was no room 307. Indeed there was no third floor - though there were second and fifth floors. A desk clerk studied my inadequate press release and figured out that Room 307, 3/F was probably in the YMCA job training center next to the hotel.
Indeed it was, though the press conference had nothing to do with the YMCA or job training.
Here are some verbatim notes: "Four speakers, left to right: 1. "Mr Lai, no tie, dark hair, (need first name, affliation/group) 2.Mr Mak, gray hair, dark tie (see need info Mr Lai) 3. chairperson of HKJA Cheung Ping-ling 4. Mr Hui (striped tie, see Nos. 1 & 2 info needed).
"Miss Cheung speaks first in Cantonese. Mr Lai speaks second in Cantonese...at length, great length. Mr Mak speaks third in Cantonese and at length. Miss Cheung again - reads Cantonese press release, mercifully short. Mr Hui again...Cantonese, not suprisingly mondo length - 6-minutes and counting....Miss Cheung asks for questions in Cantonese..."
They also took them in limited English, but I could tell from their longer, more excited sounding Cantonese responses and the back and forth, give and take with the Chinese reporters that the Standard's readers -- all four of them -- probably weren't getting the good stuff.
Suffice to say I managed to rely on the sympathy of friends and eke out a meager account, largely thanks to two former Chinese Standard colleagues who had jumped ship for Chinese language news organizations but who took pity on me and gifted me with me names, titles and pithy quotes like "We don't know. We do not have the data." I filled in the rest courtesy of an AP report by another former coworker who filed before I was able to find my way back to the office and write the first two paragraphs.

2006-04-17T06:04:00.000-07:00

Legalize It Pt II
Guest dispatch from across the border in Shenzhen courtesy of my compadre James The Laughing Buddha/Temple Guy.

''I just read your blog about the T-shirts in HK. I am unfortunately unable to comment through the usual channels; China has me locked out.
''But I wanted to tell you there has a been a recent surge in T-shirts with large graphics of marijuana leaves amongst my students. Nothing from SoDakNORML, though.
''I have photographed two. One reads: 'Marijuana Pickers / Local No 13 United Grass Workers'
''The other says: 'God Made Grass / Man Made S-Live / Who do you trust?' A Google of S-Live turns up a student radio station in the Netherlands.
'' When questioned, both students knew what marijuana was (once I had pantomimed the rolling and smoking of a joint, and the woozy, eye-rolling stereotyped reaction).
"Both were likewise totally unaware that said substance was the subject of their shirts until I told them but neither seemed particularly elated or disturbed by the news; both rather shrugged it off. "Oh. Yeah. OK." That kind of response.
''Of course, college kids aren't HK fashionistas; your sightings are much more jangly. But I still found this interesting.''

2006-04-14T23:16:00.000-07:00

Tommy Can You See Me?
So I'm in a hurry trying to catch a subway and late for a Friday night drink and dinner with an Aussie journalist-turned-academic who has promised to show me the wonders of Hong Kong's vaunted Foreign Correspondents Club -- or "the FCC" as journos in the know smugly refer to it here. Despite its rep and legendary cheap eats and drinks, I'd previously never darkened its doorways because I'm not a member and memberships are outta reach, unless you're extremely well-heeled (or took advantage of the cut-rate membership special for hacks under 40 - and I'm about 12 years over that line - which expired last year) or know a member who will dain to treat you, you're nada, verbotten, a nonperson.
But I'm getting ahead of the story. Though it has an economic/social/political infrastructure that largely resembles The Rest of The Civilized World circa 1890-1959, Hong Kong has a few late 20th/early 21st century innovations, not the least of which is the Octopus Card. It's a wide-use debit card used primarily for subway travel but also handy for shops such as 7-Eleven in and around the (not coincidentally, subway company-owned -- Metro Transit System/MTR) property. One recharges in two amounts at machines for either HK$50 or HK$100 bills.
I'm standing in line at one behind a Chinese fellow who is somewhat overweight, carrying a thin cane, slinging a bulging backpack and having trouble pushing a HK$50 into the machine. He pushes very slowly. The machine does not respond. It's like someone trying to do subtle slow-motion foreplay with a robot. Tick. Tock. I look at my watch. It's 7:25 and it takes about 45 minutes to get to the rendezvous where my new FCC journo pal has said he'll exit at 8pm if I don't show on time. He's also seemingly the only soul in Hong Kong without a cell phone which makes sudden messages like "Hang on, I'd be there in 10 minutes but someone has thrown themselves on the tracks in a suicidal fit" unrealistic.
"You fat fuck, get it together," I mutter regarding Mr Fumbling Dude Who Can't Work the Octopus Recharge Machine after another 3-minutes of feeble push and shove as a line builds behind us. I am, of course, convienently ignoring the fact that I could also be described in exactly those same rude terms after a steady diet of cigarettes, alcohol, fried noodles, sloth and chronic ineptitude manipulating simple mechanical devices that aren't pop despensers and even those give me fits on occasion.
I watch him put the HK$50 back slowly and a little awkwardly back into his wallet and even more slowly extract another. Then I study his face which is three-quarters turned from mine and note that his eyes aren't tracking his hands. They are clear and look seemingly normal but he's staring vacantly ahead at the recharge machine. No focus. I look again at the thin cane and - trained, professional observer that I am - now note that it is white.
I am suddenly one fat foreign fuck who is fucking ashamed of himself. Here's a guy who is navigating the complex HK MTR system blind. I can barely do it with my trifocals. In Shenzhen, with the exception of hideously disfigured beggars, the sight of a blind or disabled or retarded person is rare to nonexistent -- my theory is that the mother-mainland govt just shoots them or shunts them into hidden, hideous 'tard-storage warehouses. But it's not uncommon in HK to see someone with Down Syndrome, in a wheel chair, with a walker, 02 tank, blind, deaf and using sign language etc, out and about just like in the good ol' USA.
So as he begins painfully pushing the alternate HK$50 into the slot, I reach over and gently keep pushing it until the Octopus machine's electronic tenacle finally seizes it. He hears the click and I withdraw my hand. He fumbles for the button to extract his card and I carefully touch his right index finger and push it.
He's startled briefly and then smiles as if embarrassed. I just say, "It's okay, you're done" and hope he understands and hope I haven't dented his pride because I was pissed that I might be late for a beer and burger at the FCC.

2006-04-13T20:04:00.000-07:00

Legalize It
In the past two weeks on two separate, unrelated occasions I've seen two rather frumpy Hong Kong housewives on the subway sporting new, black T-shirts with white lettering framed by four tastefully rendered small marijuana leaves. The print says: "South Dakota NORML" followed by a brief statement in perfect English extolling the cash crop virtues of hemp for South Dakota farmers.
(For the uninitiated, non-American readers out there, NORML stands for "National Organization for the Reform (repeal) of Marijuana Laws. " It's America's oldest pot legalization group. South Dakota is - much like its sister state North Dakota - a largely bleak, enormous (75,885 sq mi./196,542 sq km), underpopulated (about 771,000 people) state whose main industry is farming and a man-made tourist attraction for which a perfectly good mountain, Mt Rushmore, was defaced and dynamited into the likenesses of four US presidents. Currently in the interests of fair play and honoring the original residents, another mountain is also being vandalized for a likeness of Sioux warrior Crazy Horse. The other principal tourist attraction is "The Corn Palace" -- an entire complex built out of, yes, corn. Besides Crazy Horse, S Dakota's most famous natives were a polka accordionist named Myron Floren, a senator and vice-president named Hubert Horatio Humphrey, B-movie/Charlie's Angel TV star Cheryl Ladd and NBC newscaster Tom Brokaw. To be fair, though, South Dakota doesn't lack for raw excitment. Sturgis, SD is the site of an enormous annual biker rally that will see its 66th year of mayhem and rolling thunder this summer.)
I think it's safe to say that neither HK housefrau had any concept of NORML, South Dakota or hemp as a cash crop. It's also a safe bet that they probably don't care a whole lot about saving South Dakota farmers and are only familiar with marijuana in an abstract "Reefer Madness" kind of way.
It was also notable that the NORML blurb was perfectly grammatical. Not a hint of the Chinglish that one sees daily on so many other "foreign"-looking T-shirts.
Where did they get them? Did someone from South Dakota NORML over-order a batch for a fund raiser that fell flat and then decide to cut his losses by dumping them on Hong Kong fashion fatalities?
I'll probably never know. After seeing the second one, I tried to ask her but she didn't speak English and more or less shrank back in horror while clutching her toddler to her lap. "It's okay," I tried to assure her. "I'm normal. Normal! Get it?"
********************************************************
UPDATE!
I wound up Googling South Dakota NORML, found no T-shirts resembling the ones I'd seen but did find an e-mail address to which I dispatched a query titled "Weird Question from Hong Kong."
A couple days later I received this reply from the SD NORML honcho, which both deepens and explains part of the mystery.

Hi Justin,
Thanks for the news. Another traveler told me of similar sightings in Bangkok.
It is, indeed, strange. The graphic you describe was that on the back of t-shirts we made in 1999, the first SoDakNORML shirts. We printed 100 of them. That's all we ever made of that graphic.
Apparently it appealed to some pirate who marketed the graphic in Asia. I'd really appreciate a photo of the shirt with visual references that tell us where it was shot.
Thanks, Bob Hermosa SD USA

2006-04-06T19:45:00.000-07:00

Of Toilet Seats and Disgraced Barmy Judges
Through no fault of my own I seem to have become The Standard's temporary defacto No 2 court reporter following my Annie Pang inquest coverage. Which is all by way of saying that I've found myself recently at another courthouse reporting on another "only in Hong Kong" kind of case.
It involves a former Hong Kong judge, an 82-year-old Brit named Miles Henry Jackson-Lipkin (whom I'll refer to as MHJ-L) and his 81-year-old Chinese wife, a former lawyer named Lucille Fung. Both are charged with three counts of fraud in connection with welfare housing and medical aid applications. Basically, despite telling social services that they had only about US$323 to their name it appears they owned property in Canada, had a slew of investments, hidden savings and somehow were able to fly to Beijing three times and the UK twice in the same year that they were applying for public housing.
MHJ-L is a character straight out of a Paul Theroux Hong Kong novel. "Eccentric" is a polite term. He was at his height in the '70s and '80s here, a time when he needed the assistance of two chauffered automobiles to simply get to the office. The government provided one which he used to ferry his briefcase. The other was his personal Rolls Royce in which he rode.
He and his wife now use public transporation and rely on the kindness of old friends for their wheels. Though MHJ-L still sports a nicely trimmed white beard, wears tailored three piece black pin-striped suits and an honest-to-gawd bowler, he is no longer bedecked with the British military medals which ultimately led to his decision to retire from the judiciary "for health reasons" in the late '80s.
Sharp eyed UK vets here noted that he would have had to have been about 14 years-old to have been awarded several of them and it was later confirmed that he, in fact, never served.
Last year in preliminary hearings for the current trial he made more news by flashing a handwritten sign at the omnipresent HK press papparazzi pack -- a living, swarming predatory organism whose native habitat is courthouse steps and entry ways -- that said "Barbarians" in Chinese. A nice touch, actually, and somewhat apt.
He's mellowed some since and as I've been covering his trial he's glommed on to me as the only white, male, native English speaking "barbarian" in the press gallery. He also sits about 10-inches in front of me 5 days a week, giving me more time than I really need to contemplate a continuing series of small nicks and wounds on his bald, freckled pate and his right ear. He dabs white cream on the head injuries and keeps the ear bandaged in white gauze. (Speculation, fueled by me, is that it's the result of rough geriatric sex with his wobbly wife, a woman whose face appears to be melting. The gals in the HK court press corps found the concept hilarious and shocking and continue to giggle and whisper madly when he appears with fresh ear gauze and a new dab of ointment gleaming on his head.)
MHJ-L's grasp of the world outside of Hong Kong is antiquated and somewhat tenuous at best. A typical exchange with me begins outside the court room when he approaches, cane in hand, bowler jauntily cocked and asks in very posh, upper crust tones: "Say, who is this political fellow in your country (it's clear he can barely restrain himself from referring to the US as "the colonies") who seems to be in trouble?"
Me: "Which one?"
MHJ-L: "A French name. De-something, I believe."
Me: "Oh! Yeah, Tom Delay. One of many corrupt Republican scumballs."
MHJ-L: "Corrupt is he? Is he French?"
Me: "Uh...no. No. Actually, he's from Texas. "
MHJ-L: "A French name, though."
Me: "I guess. Maybe French ancestry. We're a nation of immigrants, you know."
MHJ-L: "Yes, a pity that. A pity also that so many governments have elected leadership. It only leads to trouble."
Me: "You'd prefer a monarchy?"
MHJ-L: "Yes, of course."
****************************************************
But toilet seats. Yes. The Kowloon City courthouse in which the MHJ-L legal saga is proceeding at glacial speed is also one of the newest in "Asia's world city." It was also dedicated on my birthday: October 26, 2001. As such, one might reasonably surmise that a modern 10-floor courthouse dedicated on Justin Mitchell's 2001 birthday would have seats on the public toilets.
One would be mistaken, however.
Two or three days into the assignment I began to note that no toilet in any men's room on any floor (and I checked them all, intrepid investigative journalist that I am) had seats. Only the bare, cold and often filthy porcelain rims. All seats had been removed.
Occasionally I had to sit to do my business and it wasn't pretty or comfortable. I eventually and gingerly then asked the queen of HK court reporting, a woman I'll call CH, who has been doing it for about 8 years, what the deal was for women who, of course, have to sit more frequently.
"Ai yah! (Cantonese for "Oy vey!" or "Ay, yi, yi!")" she replied. "No seats. Very bad. It's not comfortable, not clean." She added that it had been that way as long as she could recall and that some other courthouse restrooms were even worse -- no seats and so filthy that the reporters and employees would go to other buildings or else hold it and suffer.
"So who do we complain about this to?"
She gave me the name and number for an office called "Judiciary." I called a Chinese guy named Mackenzie who expressed surprise at the topic but asked me to email a list of questions.
Here are the questions.
Dear Mackenzie,
I'm Justin Mitchell, a reporter at The Standard who contacted you on Thursday morning at about 11am regarding a story I'm planning soon about why a "world class city" such as Hong Kong (with a proud judicial tradition) has no toilet seats in any of the men's or women's washrooms in the Kowloon City court house.
They have all been removed. The situation is similar, but not quite as dire in the Eastern Magistrate. A few stalls in mens and womens rooms have seats, but not all.
I spoke with long-time Hong Kong court reporters, both male and female and they told me that the only court house in Hong Kong where none of the toilet seats have been removed is High Court. Why is that so? Some of the reporters - even though they are from different newspapers - are currently providing me with a list of other courthouses and a total of removed toilet seats.
You may think this is a frivolous topic. You may wish to ignore the fact that there are toilets in mainland bus stations that are in better shape than in many modern Hong Kong courthouses. Nonetheless, here are some preliminary questions.
1. Why were the toilet seats removed, particularly in the relatively new Kowloon City court house built in October 2001?
2. What purpose does it serve to remove toilet seats?
3. It is obviously uncomfortable and unhygenic for anyone - male and female - to try to sit on a bare toilet rim in order to do their business. Why has no one in the judiciary taken this into consideration, particulary concerning sanitation in a city that still wrestles with the memory of SARS and is currently under threat for bird flu.
4. Whose decision was it to remove the toilet seats? I'd like a quote from whomever it was justifying their decision. Does this person or persons themselves routinely sit on a bare, cold filthy toilet rim when nature calls? If not, why not?
5. Toilet paper. Yes, that too. Why are the toilet paper rolls communal and outside the toilet stalls in all the courthouses? Is the logic behind this that it will save paper? Guess what! It doesn't because people routinely take more than they need rather than risk the embarrassment and discomfort of having to emerge for more if needed. I have quotes and personal experience to back me up on this one, also.
6. Do the judges use toilets with no seats? Do they have communal toilet rolls outside their stalls? If not, why not? Because they are judges and the rest of us aren't?
Mackenize called me late on Friday begging for time. No problem. He begged for more time on Monday. I told him I couldn't wait too much longer but, yeah, sure.
Tuesday was a public holiday.
Wednesday I went to court, checked the men's room on the 10th floor and - though I still hadn't heard back from Mackenzie - there were, VOILA, seats! Gleaming new toilet seats!
Same situation on the 4th floor and two others I checked randomly.
I asked CH to scout out some women's rooms. She returned grinning, gave me an awkward high five and then began speed dialing her delighted colleagues on her cell phone with the news.
"You are the toilet king!" she said. "Thank you. But what about toilet paper?"
One thing at a time, CH. Today the seats, tomorrow individual Charmin despensers.
It's just nice to know that the press can still make a difference.

2006-04-03T19:53:00.000-07:00

Love and Happiness
D and J are a couple I've known for about 20 years, though I knew D before he met and married J. D was a stellar editor -- probably the first truly great one I ever worked for, a guy who could make chicken salad out of chicken shit for a weekend section based on nothing more than an vague idea like ''We should write something about martinis. Yeah, maybe martinis and Al Green."
They showed up in Hong Kong this weekend. D, who now works for a major news organization on their website side, was wrapping up a two week 17 or 18,000 mile business trip that began in Mexico City and bounced to Tokyo, Beijing, back to Tokyo and then to Hong Kong. J, the online editor for a US old time leftist publication whose politics she mostly favors but whose political correctness makes her wince and laugh, joined him here for the trip back to New York where they both live in the Village.
I hadn't seen them since the end of 1999 when they were working for MSNBC in Redmond, Washington and they kindly put me and my son up for an evening as he and I waited out a seemingly eternal layover for a flight to Homer, Alaska where we were going to ring in 2000 with an old high school friend who also happened to be Jewel's aunt. Somewhere in a box in someone's garage in Boulder rests a unplayed copy of Apocalypse Now that I ''borrowed'' from D that night and had vowed to mail back promptly.
It was the first visit from truly close, old friends I'd had since jumping here and after two days of extraordinary dining, drinking, nostalgia and thinking about roads not taken and the many missteps that eventually led me here, I found myself crying alone a little when I got back to my apartment Monday night.
''Do you realize it's been 19 years since you flew to Bellingham (Wash.) for our wedding?'' they asked after several martinis - a constant in our relationship - and listening to Sunny Afternoon on a jukebox in the Globe bar.
Damn. Hit the Way-Back Machine, Sherman. I was still married then, soon to be divorced from my first wife. My son was 2. I'd begun courting my second wife and I used a little to much force, I'm afraid, though it had good run for awhile until I grievously, unforgiveably screwed it up. My second wife and I had used the vows from D and J's wedding as a template for ours, but the juju just didn't take.
Theirs did though. World travelers, grandchildren, fairly prestigious jobs and a solid marriage that's weathered a few strains as all the best ones do.
I envy them, though they said they admired the blind leap I'd made and said they couldn't believe that 19 years later we three would be looking out a 56 floor window of the Conrad hotel as the sun set on a freakishly mostly clear and lovely Hong Kong Monday evening.
I've built a pretty good life here -- tenuous and shaky as it is at times -- but for that moment and for sometime later later my only wish was that it had been we four.

2006-03-21T03:16:00.000-08:00

The End
"So your reason for living and working here is over?'' a newsroom wag just cracked. Yes, the Annie Pang inquest is over. Here's the main story for anyone out there with insominia problems. Me? I think a stiff drink or four is in order, but I've no one to share and shmooze with about it. Hong Kong may be "Asia's World City" but at heart it's just another lonely town. Just ask Annie.
Accidental death or misadventure.
After deliberating for about four and a half hours Tuesday that's how Annie Pang died, according to the four woman, one man jury who heard evidence in the coroner's inquest which consumed 19 court days.
Whether she may have overdosed on sleeping pills (an empty blister pack of 100 was found on top of the trash and below her detached skull in her bedroom rubbish bin) or choked to death while vomiting or met her end after 31 years through some other accidental way, will never be clear.
Coroner Colin Mackintosh had earlier said that the law will only allow the jury to decide that the circumstances of Pang's death in the summer of 1995 in a Waterloo Road flat owned by her ex-lover lawyer John Fang were due to ``natural causes, accident or misadventure,'' or to render an ``open verdict'' -- which included all possibilities, including murder and suicide, but no single, definitive cause.
He had ruled out murder and suicide as specific causes due to insufficient evidence during the inquest which last seven days longer than originally scheduled.
Pang's family which had enlisted the pro bono services of solicitor and former Hong Kong film starlet Mary Jean Reimer -- who acted under the name Yung Ching-ching in 1980s epics such as Little Dragon Maiden and Holy Flame of the Martial World -- was unhappy with the verdict. In a post-verdict press conference two sisters, Pang Ngor Vee and Pang Po-yuk said they and their mother vowed to continue pressing for more information in a case that was officially closed in March 2001 and first came to lurid light in October 1999 when Pang's decapitated skeletal remains were found in a Yau Ma Tei apartment owned by Fang, brother of former chief secretary of administration Anson Chan.
It was determined by a pathologist that Pang lost her head after the tissues attaching it to her shoulders decayed after she died in about July 1995 alone, unmissed and slumped against a pink litter bin in a messy flat so small that it didn't contain a proper kitchen -- only a gas burner atop a washing machine in the bathroom.
Reimer repeatedly and unsuccessfully ``chased shadows,'' in the words of Mackintosh, in often wildly speculative attempts to tie Fang and others in Pang's sad, sordid world of drug addicts and small-time boyfriends to her death.Mackintosh patiently reined Reimer in daily and even occasionally rephrased her questions for her in an attempt to steer the non-criminal proceedings toward what he called an ``open and thorough'' result.
``No one is on trial, facing charges or being condemned, directly or indirectly,'' Mackintosh said during his instructions to the jury.
Pang's sisters and mother however clung to their belief that Annie -- from whom they were largely estranged during the last years of her life -- was not the heavily indebted, sexually promiscuous, near-suicidal drug and gambling addict described in court. They have maintained that she met her end at the behest of Fang whom they also believed tried to cover up his relationship with her following her death.
Supported by legislator Leung Yiu-chung at the press conference, the sisters repeated points that Reimer had tried to use as legal launching pads, including why a discarded condom found in the infamous litter bin wasn't tested for DNA, why a set of keys photographed by police at the flat were lost by police and minor inconsistencies in witnesses' memories who often tried to recall events and details stretching back more than 11 years.
``Words can't express how I feel at the moment,'' Pang Ngor Vee, Annie's elder sister, said. ``The verdict does not reflect the truth.''
It wasn't all harsh words, however. In a back-handed compliment, the sisters and Leung said the inquest was ``useful to reveal the extent of police investigation inadequacies'' and that it gave them more leads to pursue.
Pang's sisters reopened the case with a petition to the police and the Legislative Council in June 2005, which led to another inquiry. At the time they said they feared for their safety as a result of reopening the case. In September 2005, the coroner's office and the police concluded again that a public inquest was unnecessary. However Director of Public Prosecutions Grenville Cross SC made the first application in the history of the SAR for the Court of First Instance to order an inquest because ``it is in the public interest that evidence is presented and tested in light of suspicious circumstances.''
Pang's love affair with the married, older Fang began when she was about 19. The apartment in which she died was one of several he installed her in throughout their tumultuous relationship. Athough their relationship declined and she took a series of boyfriends, Fang also transferred more than HK$58,000 to an account accessible to Pang a few months before her estimated time of death in mid-July, 1995.
While Mackintosh said that the inquest had ``robbed [Pang] of her dignity'' he told jurors that he was ``sure that you will join me in expressing condolences to the family of Annie Pang.''
But even with an official cause of death to consider there was uncertainity as to how to formally describe Pang's profession at the time of her death. Media reports referred to her as a model, though except for many photographs it appeared that her catwalk career was limited at best.
Reimer once described her as ``quite wealthy'' and emphasized Pang's also brief stints as an insurance agent and stock and property speculator. There was also Annie Pang the pet store owner and dog breeder. Tax correspondence found in her deserted, dusty flat said she was unemployed.
``Choose whatever you think is appropriate,'' Mackintosh told the jury.
In the end, aspiring model, dog breeder, insurance agent and jilted lover of John Fang, Annie Pang Chor-ying, date of birth 25 November 1965, who died due to accident or misadventure at flat 1-A, 15th floor, Wah-Tak building, Kowloon, on or about July 1995 was listed as ``unemployed.''

2006-03-20T03:36:00.000-08:00

Blinded by Science
A roughed out version of an interview with John Fang I did on Saturday. The interview will run along with the jury's verdict (they've been instructed to return a verdict of "natural death, accidental death or death my misadventure'' or an "open verdict'' which is a catch-all). Coroner/judge has said they cannot return a verdict of murder or suicide because there isn't enough evidence for either. I tend to agree with him on that, though I'm not sure about the suicide part. Anyway, due to the arcane and weird Brit press laws here no interviews with people connected with trials can be published -- or conducted -- before the trial is over.
The best part of Fang's interview if you want to fast-forward through it is how he described doing his own "scientific" test at home to prove to himself and friends why he never saw Annie's bones.
While he may not be particularly modest, John Fang is a good guy. Just ask him. He'll tell you repeatedly just as he told the coroner's inquest into 31-year-old Annie Pang's death that he's ``nice person, a generous person.''``You've told us that already,'' coroner Colin Mackintosh said at one point.
He picked up the self-promotional thread again in an interview with The Standard. ``I'm a good chump, a buddy-buddy kind of guy,'' Fang said.
His self-proclaimed generosity -- Fang admitted to depositing more than HK$58,0000 in an account set up for Pang in the name of another woman from January-July 1995 despite the fact that their physical relationship had ended long ago -- makes it hard for him to believe that others might question just exactly how he avoided seeing his old lover's bones on the floor when he went to the flat on October 6, 1999 to shut a window in response to water leakage complaints from a occupant on the floor below. A day later others tapped to go clean out the flat had no problem at all almost immediately spotting the grotesque tableaux.
Doubting Thomas's may also wonder why he never bothered to actually enter the flat until 1999 and why he seemed not to be curious about what ever became of Pang after her pleas for money stopped.
In coroner's court Fang said he was so busy avoiding injury -- and perhaps dying -- on the room's debris that he never saw Pang's remains as he scampered nimbly and quickly to close the window.
``It was very unhygenic and like an obstacle course and I remember climbing over something to get the window closed,'' Fang said.Out of court he said he even conducted a home-test.``I now have a better version,'' Fang said. ``This is it. This is scientific. I had people with stop watch with me at my home. I measured this equivalent distance and ran in, shut a window and then came back and said `stop!''
No skeleton or skeleton model was used, he said, but he swore that if anyone -- including Pang's survivors -- tries it in the privacy of their abode using a stopwatch and a few friends they'll find that ``if you concentrate you will have no time to see what is on both sides of you or below you.''
Fang blamed Pang's siblings and mother for some of his bad publicity because he has rejected what he called financial ``compensation'' demanded by them.
Pang Ngor Vee, Annie's sister and the last famlily member to see her alive in April 1995, denied in an interview with The Standard with ever hitting Fang up for anything except information as to her whereabouts. He said he refused because Pang had told him she was on bad terms with her sister and mother and didn't want them to know where she was living.
``Annie never allowed me to see them when she was alive because she insinuated that her mother is very greedy and would want money from me,'' Fang claimed. ``In 2005 [a daughter] wrote me and said, `if you don't pay we'll go to the press.'''
He said he almost caved in to their alleged demands but his wife -- the same loyal woman from whom he had concealed the relationship after he met Pang when the 20-year-old aspiring model and pet shop owner drifted into a bachelor party Fang was at in 1986 -- urged him to stay the course.
``Of course my wife doesn't like it. But she is solidly behind me and does not believe I should pay them. Two sons are really grown up and very supportive too,'' he said.He said he preferred not to comment on what his famous sister, former chief secretary Anson Chan might have said.
Why did he keep giving her rent-free lodging and continue to give her money, despite the decline of their physical relationship and what he said was an increase in friction between them?Well, he's a nice guy, of course.
`` I'm not the guy who cries over spilled milk. And I help everybody, men and women, who needs it and who comes across my path. Of course maybe I'm a bit of a sucker and stupid, too. Maybe I should have reported her missing to police. I wasn't so much interested in her anymore but I never kicked her out of my life. I helped her because she's a human being and she had all kinds of problems.''
Which lead to another explanation for not seeing her remains: Annie's cosmic gratitude for his generosity.``There is a Buddhist saying that during your life if someone owed you a lot of favors that they won't ever shock you by letting you see them in skeleton form.''

2006-03-15T04:08:00.000-08:00

Handyman
No more calls from John Fang, but there was some interesting testimony today by the fix-it guy who "discovered" Annie's bones. I had no room to add that much of his testimony consisted of "I don't remember," and "no" -- though when his memory was refreshed with earlier statements he gave police he grudgingly agreed that those were ''probably'' what he'd told them. And although he took five others to clean the filthy place, the only "cleaning" materials they brought were work gloves and jumbo trash bags...
The man who reported Annie Pang's skeletal remains to police a day after her former lover John Fang had been to same Yau Ma Tei flat and claimed to notice nothing amiss was heavily in debt to Fang at the time, the non-criminal coroner's inquest investigating Pang's death heard.
Yeung Kwai-choi, a former employee whom Fang earlier described as a ``jack of all trades, a handy man who was unluckily available to clean out the flat,'' admitted Tuesday under questioning by coroner's officer Dee Crebbin that Fang had filed a HK$2.5 million writ against him and that he had once borrowed HK$900,000 from Fang.
``After you went to the premises [Fang] didn't pursue the claim against you,'' Crebbin said.
``Yes,'' Yeung replied, but added ``the writ is still there.''
``He's never pursued it,'' Crebbin said.
``I did repay him,'' Yeung said.
``HK$2.5 million?''
``No,'' Yeung said without elaborating.
``Did [Fang] ask you to clean out the flat and to find the skeleton in exchange for not pursuing the writ?'' Crebbin asked.
``Not at all,'' said Yeung, who maintained he had taken up that task and others involving Pang when she was alive for free after he had left employment at Fang's former law firm in 1992.
Pang is believed to have died in the Waterloo Road apartment in July or August 1995 and her decapitated skeletal remains were reported by Yeung on October 7, 1999, a day after Fang said he and a locksmith entered the chaotic, grimy flat which Fang owned but claimed never to have entered until that day.
``You were prepared to do any jobs he wanted free of charge?'' Crebbin asked.
Yeung agreed, and called the task for which he took five other men whom he said also agreed to work for free, ``too trivial.''
Yeung said Fang had told them they could have electrical appliances and a television in the flat.
In describing his discovery, Yeung said he was ``shocked'' after peering into Pang's bedroom and seeing bones on the floor beside the bed. He said he called Fang who told him to notify the police.
Fang's fix-it man also said he had no idea and that Fang didn't bother to mention that the remains Yeung found might be those of Pang, whom he intially met in 1991 or 1992 when Fang sent him to check out a suicide threat she had made.
At the time Pang was living in a Sai Kung Spanish-style villa provided by Fang, though he rarely saw her there after beginning their relationship in the 1980s.
Yeung said Fang was ``too busy'' to deal with a lover who had cut her right wrist with a fruit knife and was sitting nude on her bed letting the blood drip into a glass when Yeung arrived.
``Had you ever been asked to do this sort of dirty work for him before?'' Crebbin asked.
``No,'' Yeung said.
Fang, who had described Yeung as the man he exclusively used to ``entice [Pang] to be a good girl'' when she was ``being mischevious,'' tapped him due to familial connections Yeung had in Sai Kung. Pang's neighbors reportedly called Yeung and Fang with complaints about her erratic behavior, including drug use, swimming nude and cutting other people's flower gardens.
Yeung also described himself and ``colleagues'' he had called from Sai Kung trying to calm Pang in a conference room at Fang's behest in Fang's law office in Central where she had torn wallpaper and damaged pictures. He claimed she scratched him and threw a heavy ashtray at him in the row which eventually ended in the Waterfront police station.

2006-03-10T03:58:00.000-08:00

Big Bad John
Guess who called me at home at 1am Friday? My new best buddy, millionaire Hong Kong maggotweasel and Annie Pang's former paramour, John Fang. Turns out though that as with Annie, Fang is faithless when courting the press.
When I compared notes with my Chinese media peers at court later that morning I found he'd called them all with the same request. I was also crushed to learn that I'd been apparently last on his list. Fang, whose spoken English sounds unnervingly - both in accent and delivery - like Kahn Souphanousinphone, the wealthy insufferable Laotian neighbor of Hank Hill on King of the Hill, wanted copies of our notes regarding Coroner Colin Mackintosh's daily patient but increasingly weary sounding warnings to lawyer Mary Jean Reimer to focus her questioning on relevant matters.
He's upset because she pulled one of her "I submit to you that you caused the death of Annie Pang'' numbers on him last week and seems to believe if he can document that Mackintosh doesn't approve of her (hapless) attempts at pinning it on anyone who sits in the witness stand that she will fail.
I turned him down, of course and asked him never to call me again, at least at 1am. What I didn't have the late night/early morning clarity to tell him was that if he wants a transcript of the inquest complete with Mackintosh's pithy reminders to Reiner, he only has to request and presumably pay a small fee for it.
I also didn't have the presence of mind to tell him that he and Reimer are two ego-bloated clowns made for each other and if he wants a new mistress he might consider making a move after the mess is over.

2006-03-10T03:48:00.000-08:00

Head and Shoulders
This just in...and no, she didn't take it off and toss it in the trash....
Annie Pang lost her head naturally, a forensic pathologist told the coroner's inquest looking into the cause of her death and the mysteries as to why it took four years for her skeletal remains to be found after she died apparently alone in a Waterloo Road flat owned by her married lover, lawyer John Fang.
While her skeleton was lying on its right side on the floor next to her bed, her skull was found in a rubbish bin that was lodged next to a wall and the bed.
Dr Hau Kong-lung told the inquest Friday that the skull was found upside down in the pink plastic trash basket but that he believed it was because Pang died with her head resting on the bin's lip. As decomposition took its course from the summer of 1995 until the remains were reported to police on October 7, 1999 the ligaments and tissue that held the neck to the body decayed and the head toppled upside down into the waste basket.
``The layer of hair had separated from the skull,'' Hau said. ``When we removed the hair we found the top of the skull on the bottom of the bin.''While he said a conclusion of how she died was ``unexplainable due to skeletalization'' he couldn't exclude that Pang died due to a natural disease, a drug overdose, a heart attack, poison, or during an epileptic fit.
Her hair contained traces of morphine and a syringe and packet of heroin were found in the disheveled, filthy flat. Coroner's officer Dee Crebbin has said Pang was epileptic and others, including a psychiatrist who saw her, said she admitted to being hooked on sleeping pills and to using heroin and meth-amphetamine, also known as ``Ice.''
Hau said there was ``nothing unusual'' about Pang's posture when found and said he found no evidence of any foul play. He also noted that an earlier mystery, two very similar photos in which Pang's right shoulder blade appeared and then disappeared could be explained because a photographer documenting his recovery of the bones was taking step-by-step photos as bones were removed.
``There was no evidence from the layout of her skeleton that the bones had been moved,'' Hau said. ``[Her posture] doesn't raise any suspicion to me. To me it looks natural.''
In a riveting display, he used a sketch, a life-size cloth dummy and a plastic rubbish bin to show the court how he believed the former model was lying and how her head separated from the body.`
`Unfortunately this rubbish bin is not not as large so you have to use your imagination,'' Hau told the five jurors. ``When the decomposition set in the bones began separating and when the neck and spine separated it naturally proves that if the rubbish bin is large enough the skull will fall like this upside down into the bin.''
He said Pang's bones showed no sign of damage, breakage or cut marks and that two right finger tips that were missing probably decayed.
However solicitor Mary Jean Reimer who is representing Pang's family was out for blood in repeated questions that focused on whether or not stains on a sheet, the rubbish bin lip, a wall and clothing found under Pang's remains were due to injuries. Hau attributed all the stains to fluids due to decomposition as did Joyce Kwok Ngan, a scientific evidence officer who collected evidence from the scene.
``Do you want a detailed lesson in the decomposition of a body?'' Coroner Colin Mackintosh asked Reimer at one point.
In another grasping effort to unearth chicanery behind Pang's death, Reimer also asked Hau if it was possible that the skull and skeleton were from two different individuals.
He assured her that the two were an exact fit when joined.

2006-03-08T03:37:00.000-08:00

A Legal Matter
There have been moments in court during the headless Annie inquest where I've felt briefly like I'm in the middle of a Grade-B Hong Kong crime flick.
First there are her two sisters who -- because the HK tabloid and TV papparazzi are seemingly camped 24/7 outside the courthouse waiting for them and others connected with the case -- wear surgical masks to protect their identities. This is not unusual in Hong Kong which has what I've dubbed the ''surgical mask culture fetish'' meaning that even a sniffle or a sprained ankle seemingly triggers the compulsive urge to don one and look like an intern on Scrubs or a makeshift bank robber. But they wear theirs even in the privacy of the courthouse and courtroom where supposedly someone was trying to sketch them from the public seats during the start of the trial.
Despite the masks, they clearly enjoy the attention from the HK press and basking in the light of their wildly incompetent, though quite famous (and possibly clinically insane) attorney. More about her later. It all makes me a little queasy though, thinking that they're essentially exploiting the sad, lonely death of a wayward sister for whom they now demand a measure of justice (and no doubt a lot of money in a civil suit later) but from whom they were estranged at least two years before she vanished. The family never even bothered to file a missing person's report.
The court building is also a haven for "nutters" as the Brits say. I was buttonholed last week by one guy who'd been watching the case who told me he had an "important" law suit that my paper might be interested in. Turns out he's a disbarred lawyer who is suing the HK legal establishment for (it's from his suit) ''exposing their private parts, to whit their full assholes, to the bright sunshine of Hong Kong.'' Two days later he showed up in the court gallery decked out in full Arab regalia -- a burnoose, robe and Raybans. None of us dared looked him in the eye and fortunately he had apparently decided to let his costume speak for itself, though its message was known only to him and the little men who live in his fillings.
Then there's the lawyer for Annie Pang's family. She's an Amerasian named Mary Jean Reiner who is a former HK child and young adult TV star. She got her law degree about four years ago, about the time that she made headlines when a man she was having an affair with jumped out the window to his death from an apartment the two had rented in which to ''study. '' She was -- and is reportedly still -- married to a man two or three times her age whose claim to fame is choreographing, directing and acting in chop sockey flicks. He was the one beating on the door when her lover, with no place to hide and no kung fu skills, jumped.
Though now a lawyer she apparently still believes she's performing on TV and is given to daily courtroom drama accusations such as ''I put to you that you arranged the death of Annie Pang!'' without a shred of evidence and despite the fact that it's not a criminal trial. She has told the Pang family that her solutions come from Annie's ghost who visits her regularly with updates on her demise.

2006-03-02T03:17:00.000-08:00

Johnny B Bad
Headless Annie's married lover Hong Kong lawyer and politically/socially-well connected sleazemeister John Fang didn't show to testify today and the coroner/judge was plenty pissed. Fang keeps playing the "but my mommy just died" card and hizzoner is fed up.
Read all about it below.
If lawyer John Fang is a no-show Friday at the coroner's inquest examining the cause and circumstances of the death of his former mistress Annie Pang, coroner Colin Mackintosh said he will issue a warrant for Fang's appearance.
``I am extremely disappointed that Mr Fang is not here,'' a visibly irritated Mackintosh told the court and jurors Thursday afternoon following three days of testimony by Pang's last known boyfriend, truck driver Sit Ping-hung.Fang was scheduled to testify following Sit.
``If Mr Fang is not here tomorrow I shall use my powers to compel his attendance,'' Mackintosh said. ``He must be here. I take a very dim view of the situation.''
By ``powers`` Mackintosh meant that he can issue a warrant to compel Fang to appear. Fang would conceivably face a comtempt charge if he ignored the warrant.
Fang, the brother of former chief secretary Anson Chan and son of artist Fang Zhaoling who died nearly two weeks ago, has repeatedly asked that his testimony be delayed since his mother's death. On Wednesday he sent a five page letter to Mackintosh asking for another delay until March 6. Mackintosh denied the request and asked him to be prepared to testify on Thursday and Friday.
A senior inspector of the Organized Crime and Triad Bureau said he made several unsuccesful phone calls to Fang's mobile and fixed line numbers on Thursday in order to determine whether he would appear.
``I got voice mail each time,'' said Almerick Cheuk. ``I finally reached him at home. He said he would be here tomorrow but I think I need to call him again.''
The non-criminal investigation will be in its tenth day today. It was scheduled for 15 days but Mackintosh has recently expressed concern that it may run longer than planned.
The 31-year-old former model was missing for four years until her decapitated skeletal remains were found in October 1999 in a Yau Ma Tei apartment owned by Fang. Fang and a locksmith entered the Waterloo Road apartment to close bathroom and bedroom windows that had caused water leakage into the flat below. Both claimed they never saw Pang's uncovered skeleton surrounded by maggot casings, nor her skull in a waste basket on the floor beside the bed in the 300-square-foot flat.
The following day Fang sent a former employee to the flat to clean it. He reported the remains to police after phoning Fang.
Sit's longer-than-expected testimony was primarily drawn out by solicitor Mary Jean Reimer who is representing Pang's family. Using mostly minor inconsistencies in two interviews that Sit gave police in 2000 and 2005 and during his three days on the stand, Reimer tried to bolster a theory that Sit was never Fang's live-in boyfriend and that he was taking financial advantage of a woman whom others and Sit have described as deeply in debt to loan sharks, suicidal and addicted to drugs and gambling.
Reimer on Thursday described Pang as ``quite wealthy'' and said that her apparent interest in trading futures combined with a 1994 debt of about HK$80,000 to Inland Revenue was proof of her financial success and acumen.
However friends and acquaintances of Pang have testified that she appeared to primarily depend on Fang's largesse for living expenses and shelter in flats he owned after she became his mistress at about age 18.

2006-02-28T04:45:00.000-08:00

Annie's Song
The latest...
The ``fattish'' mystery man with a dog whom neighbors of dead model Annie Pang described earlier had a name and a face as a witness in the ongoing noncriminal coroner's inquest into the cause and circumstances of her mysterious death in 1995.
Pang's decapitated remains -- skeleton on the floor, skull in a waste basket -- were found in her cluttered, unkempt bedroom in an apartment owned by her former married lover, lawyer John Fang, in October 1999.
Sit Ping-hung, a truck driver described by coroner's officer Dee Crebbin as Pang's last known boyfriend, said he met Pang in October 1993 when he was introduced to her in Macau by a friend who was dating her at the time.
About a month later he said went with another man at Pang's invitation to her apartment in Sai Kung which previous testimony has shown was also owned by Fang. It was over cocktails of narcotic cough syrup that night that Sit said he and Pang went to bed and consummated a relationship that would become increasingly fraught with melodrama and angst until they agreed to break it off near the middle of 1995.
``I was high,'' Sit said of the cough syrup, which he said Pang poured from a ``big bottle, almost a gallon. Annie became delirious and from that day on we were together.''
While Sit minimized his own drug experiences, he said Pang become addicted to cough syrup and Halcyon sleeping pills and finally turned to smoking heroin in the year she disappeared. Heroin traces were found in her hair.
He described quarrels, and several suicide attempts, including one in which Pang climbed out a 26th floor window and threatened to jump from a laundry rack and another mutual pact where both were in a bathroom and he severed the gas line.``I switched on the gas and we waited for death to come,'' Sit said. ``I passed out but Annie called the police.''
The pair had moved from Sai Kung to share an apartment with Sit's sister, who eventually grew weary of the ambulances and firetrucks and neighbor complaints and told them to leave.
Suicide reports were made to authorities in March, April and July of 1994, Crebbin said. Sit said that non-reported attempts were also made ``too often.''
The pair then moved into the Yau Ma Tei apartment on Waterloo Road where Pang would later die. While there they owned a pomeranian dog named Bobo for several months until Pang sold it, Sit said. Sit initially claimed he knew nothing of Pang's long relationship with Fang, but admitted to Crebbin that his former sister-in-law, who had opened a bank account for Pang, told him that the two had been lovers. He also said once accompanied Pang to Fang's law office where he waited outside while she went in to ask Fang for money.
He said Pang's refusal to give up drugs led to his decision to leave her. In the summer of 1995 Sit told her he was going to the mainland to find a wife and asked her for money.
She told him she had none but he claimed she gave him two gold bracelets and a ring which he pawned for about HK$1,500 and took to China where he found no wife but instead ``found some fun because I felt bored.''
Sit said he never saw her or went to the apartment again.
When Pang's remains were found in 1999 there was a message scrawled in lipstick on the bathroom mirror, one that Sit said he had seen following a 1995 suicide attempt. It read: ``I have gone to Kalong Wah hospital.''

2006-02-26T01:29:00.000-08:00

Metal Machine Music
Two or three or even a year ago, this would've been nearly inconceivable in Shenzhen. At least to my shot-full-of-Swiss cheese-holes brain. What I'm talking about is a sound art/ambient music performance in a Shenzhen warehouse that C and I caught part of last night courtesy of a guy named Lawrence Li. It's the first time I've met him, though we've corresponded via e-mail and talked on the phone a couple times.
He's a former reporter and critic for what was once one of the the most respected papers in China, though sadly what made it respected also got it neutered and its editors jailed on bogus corruption charges. Lawrence was the music and art critic and I'm unclear as to why he's no longer there though I'm fairly certain it had nothing to do with his beat -- the paper was either famous or infamous depending on your political affiliations (or lack of them) for its investigative stories.
So I'm in Shenzhen calling Lawrence with a freelance tip and he mentions the sound art show and about 4 hours later I'm in a time warp. A warehouse with feedback and drone coming from the stage with a small Chinese guy twisting a guitar and flipping a phase-shifter doing his best Hendrix-squallfeedback Lite imitation A rapt mostly reverent or merely curious virtually all-Chinese audience -- about 500 give or take 100 or so of Shenzhen's cutting edge artistos I'm guessing -- is at a respectful distance not sure what to make of it all, while others crowd and crawl around the stage with cameras and video gear.
All that spoils the illusion that I could be in Denver or New York circa 1972 it is the lack of dope smoke, no happily chemically addled tie-dyed souls doing the amoeba dance and the lines of sullen, very skinny, some very pimpled and very young security kids in identical cammo fatigues, some with their hands over their ears. I think of the 18-wheeler sized T-shirt and/or wind breaker glad security goons and goonettes at the US concerts and, as they say, chuckle wryly. Not even close. Getting into what passes for backstage I just keep walking and smile and say 'thank you' in bad Chinese as one makes a token and very polite attempt to halt me. I haven't felt this cool since I snuckered my way backstage briefly to gape at Neil Young and Warren Zevon working out arrangements for a brief impromptu gig in Winter Park, Colorado summer of 90something or when Eddie Van Halen ... aw, never mind. Suffice to say that I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now.
Anyway, there's no light show but there is a video screen that is utilized with striking force later for other performers.
It's all kinda strange and wonderful at the same time. This is not new in Beijing or Shanghai, I'm fairly sure. And blase in Hong Kong where the featured Shenzhen act last night, a Polish-born, Tokyo-based world citizen of sorts named Zbigniew Karkowski told me he'd performed for an audience of 30 last week.
''Tonight I've seen about 500 coming in and out,'' said Karkowski, who like the artists who followed the opening act used programmed lap tops, not guitars. Not as sexy but sonically and creatively more effective, though I joked to another expat there that I'd love to see someone douse their HP Compaq Nc6000 with Ronson lighter fuel and set it ablaze. I didn't know it until I googled Karkowski later but I'd been talking to a sound art legend and godfather -- a revered, respected artist who does things like make field recordings of Kyoto temples and warps and morphs them into what a writer named Marc Weidenbaum wrote, "something one suspects the locale's elders would be hard put to recognize."
Lawrence told me that this avant garde sonic explosion was officially sanctioned by the SZ authorities, which given the cammo kids I kinda figured though I was still slightly shocked and awed at being at something so, so, so . . . damn almost cutting edge here even if the blade was mostly only slicing through a lot of old stale air. But the rent-a-cop-kids grimacing and holding their ears after failing to stop the crowd from rushing the stage at Karkowski's exhuberant invite gave me some hope.
For an informed and knowledgable write-up, complete with pics check out Lawrence's blog at
http://www.chinesenewear.com/gno/.

2006-02-24T01:40:00.000-08:00

That Smell
You'd think that the scent of a rotting corpse next door -- a stench one security guard told the coroner's court yesterday was so strong that he and his partner ''walked faster'' when they were patrolling that area -- might attract some attention, especially when it goes on for 10 days.
Not so at the apartment where Annie Pang died in July 1995 and where her skeleton with the skull in a bedroom trash can was found in October 1999 -- one day after her former lover had been in the small bedroom and claimed to have seen nothing.
Some testimony so far as bordered on absurd. The apt building honcho in charge of complaints and who had some dealings with Pang's lover John Fang has more or less lied regarding things like the smell (smell? what smell? nothing here folks, move on...) and at about least one phone conversation he and Fang had about selling the place.
Some has been comical. The next door neighbor, who along with his son said the odor wasn't enough to warrant a complaint: ''It was not extremely strong, like dead cockroaches -- not as smelly as a dead rat. ''
(What exactly does a dead cockroach smell like? I was dying to ask him about the subtle gradients of scent between a rotting rat and a rotting roach and how he knew.)
Some people did complain but why their complaints were ignored and now denied by the building's ombudsman is unclear at best. No one bothered to even knock on Annie's door or apparently put much thought into where she might be. ''We thought she'd moved,'' was the common song, though no one saw any furniture or other belongings hauled out and no one, it seems bothered to track down Fang.
One thing is clear, though. More than 10 years gone and it still stinks.

2006-02-22T04:10:00.000-08:00

Annie the Headless Ack-ack Gunner
Folks, the colorful legal character assassination of the helpless-to-defend herself headless model Annie Pang continues. What follows has something for virtually everyone. Sex, probable lies, obscene videotapes, flamboyant suicide attempts, drugs - no rock 'n' roll - but it does have a quick guide to Cantonese drug slang.
Enjoy.
Though the coroner's investigation into the 1995 death of decapitated model Annie Pang is to officially determine when, how and why she died, Pang's youngest sister said Wednesday in Eastern Magistrate Court that police investigators have already told her family that she died of a drug overdose.
No official cause of Pang's mysterious death has ever been established ever since her skeleton and her skull in a waste basket were found in October 1999 on the floor of her bedroom in a 300-square-foot Yau Ma Tei /Waterloo Road flat owned by her long-time married lover John Fang. Fang, a lawyer is the brother of former former chief secretary of administration Anson Chan and son of renowned artist Fang Zhaoling, who died Monday.
``What did police ask tell you about the cause of her death?'' attorney Mary Jean Reimer who is representing the Pang family in the inquest asked Pang Po-yuk.
``The police said she died because of taking drugs,'' her sister replied. ``Police said they found white powder in her flat.''
``White powder being heroin?'' asked coroner Colin Mackintosh.
``Yes,'' said Pang Po-yuk.
No autopsy results for 31-year-old Pang, who smoked heroin at least once, according to two drug addicts who also testified Wednesday, have ever been released.In other testimony a bizarre and wanton portrait of a lonely, desperate, suicidal Pang was painted by a man who once bought dogs from her while she was living in a Sai Kung flat in 1993.
Pang, whose modeling career was essentially over by then, was attempting to breed and sell pomeranians at the flat owned by Fang, whose visits to her were declining at the time.
Siu Hong-wah said he was 19 when he received a phone call from Pang in response to a dogs/puppies-wanted ad he had placed in Oriental Daily News. He drove to Sai Kung and paid her HK$10,000 for three dogs but calls and invitations from her escalated after the transaction and ultimately took a sexual and morbidly melodramatic twist.
Siu told the five jurors that when he returned ``three or four'' more times at her invitation, Pang habitually greeted him in the nude or clad in sheer silk pajamas ``with nothing underneath.''
``I didn't pay any attention to this,'' Siu claimed, though he also described her as ``quite sexy, somewhat reckless and a very nice person.''
``I thought because she was a model that she wouldn't feel shame so I didn't pay attention.''
Furthermore she begged him to stay saying she was lonely and twice tried to kill herself in front of him when he refused to linger.
``She cut her wrist deeply to the bone with a paper cutter,'' said Siu, who denied any sexual relationship with Pang. ``I held her, helped to stop the bleeding and called 999.''
On another occasion Siu said Pang swallowed an estimated 50 blue oval tablets he believed were sleeping pills as he left.
``She was treating me like a boyfriend. She took all the pills in front of me and began shouting like a psychotic patient and running around naked,'' he said.
``In response to that what did you do?'' asked Reimer.
``I drove off. I did return to take a peek at her. She was making phone calls and seemed normal so I thought she was okay.''``Did you have any thought that they weren't sleeping pills? Maybe vitamins or something else?'' asked Reimer.
``I didn't care,'' Siu replied. ``She looked like she was safe.''
According to previous testimony from family members an increasingly depressed, insomniatic and insecure Pang left the Sai King flat in 1994 at the behest of Fang who told her he wanted to rent it out. He moved her to the smaller Yau Ma Tei flat where living expenses from him declined and her debts to loansharks escalated, ultimately forcing her mother and older sister to break off contact with her.
Two former junkies, described also as Pang's ``casual friends'' told coroner's officer Dee Crebbin and Mackintosh in often contradictory and occasionally unintentionally humorous testimony that they had smoked heroin at least once with Pang after she visited their illegal porn videotape business on Temple Street in 1994.
Chow Wai-chung described Pang as a ``rookie'' heroin user who needed assistance in ``chasing the dragon'' and using the ``ack-ack gun.''
That term as well as more Canto-drug slang ``the harmonica method'' had Mackintosh patiently asking twice for definitions. Chow explained that ``harmonica'' and ``dragon'' were the same term for smoking or inhaling burning heroin fumes off aluminum foil and that the ``ack-ack gun'' was smoking heroin mixed with tobacco in a hollowed out cigarette.
Chow's and fellow user Ka Kong-tin's versions of events were both often self-contradictory and contradicted each other regarding the number of times they'd visited Pang, where and how they met her and the number of people she'd smoked with. They both agreed however that she had incessently begged them for as much as HK$100,000 to pay off loansharks and appeared to be virtually penniless.
Ka drew chuckes though from court observers and officials when he corrected a reference to their obscene ``DVD'' business.
``They were tapes,'' he said. ``DVDs weren't on the market in 1994.''
'The inquest continues today with testimony from Fang tenatively expected for Monday after the Friday funeral for his mother.

2006-02-21T03:49:00.000-08:00

'Dem Bones
More here than most of my readers will probably want to know about the decapitated skeleton that was Annie Pang but I'm posting two stories -- the one that ran Tuesday and one that will run Wednesday as well as a link to a great site, ESWN, that gives you an idea of how the Chinese language press and our English language competition, the South China Morning Post is covering it.
Basically, most of the Chinese papers and the Post went with an angle that the judge/coroner told the jury to disregard as hearsay. It was a very vague statement from Annie's mother that unnamed lawyers had threatened her family due to Annie's lover's (John Fang) high falutin' Hong Kong connections. She claimed that they linked the family (Anson Chan is Fang's better known sister, a pro-democracy HK politician, their mother was a famed artist who died Monday at age 92) to underworld/triad connections.
The judge cut this rambling accusation off and instructed the jury to forget they'd heard it. But most of the other papers went with it.
Here's the link to ESWN post. (Thank you Mr Soong!) "The case of Annie Pang"
http://www.zonaeuropa.com/weblog.htm
And here's story one followed by the second day.

Annie Pang, the 31-year-old former model who was missing for four years until her decapitated skeletal remains were found in a Yau Ma Tei apartment owned by former chief secretary Anson Chan's brother, had three abortions at his demand over a 10-year period, Pang's mother told a coroner's inquest Monday.
Pang's mother, Lam Mui, told coroner Colin Mackintosh and five jurors that her daughter had been sexually involved with Chan's married brother, lawyer John Fang, since about 1985.
She described their relationship as "like husband and wife" and said Pang told her that Fang's marriage was a union "in name only."
Lam said: "I scolded my daughter and told her she's so young. How could she be with such an old man? But she told me his marriage was broken and that he did not share a bed with his wife."
Under questioning by coroner's officer Dee Crebbin and Mary Jean Reimer, a lawyer for Pang's family, Lam described a kept-woman relationship in which Fang provided flats and living expenses for Pang, who worked as a model and later tried breeding and selling dogs.
"They had had an ongoing intimate relationship soon after they met but it seems that the relationship had deteriorated somewhat a year or two before [Pang's death], although the deceased kept in contact with Mr Fang and became involved in other intimate relationships," Crebbin said.
Lam - who said she had never met or spoken with Fang - also said that after he had Pang move from a flat on Jaffe Road to another in Sai Kung in the early 1990s, her daughter complained that he did not see her as often and missed payments for her living expenses.
In a bid for his attention, Pang made a superficial attempt to slit her wrists, Lam said. "She told me she slit her wrists in order to scare Fang so he would visit more often," Lam said.
She denied that her daughter had health problems such as epilepsy or used any drugs other than sleeping pills, though Crebbin said a packet of heroin and a partial syringe were found in the abandoned flat.
Statements from as many as 49 witnesses, including three described as "casual friends/drug addicts" may be heard in the investigation which is expected to last 15 days.
"You will hear evidence that she was involved with others in taking heroin, that she was a model and also loved breeding dogs," Crebbin said.
The coroner's investigation is not a criminal proceeding but an "inquiry into the cause and circumstances of the death [of Pang]," Mackintosh told the jury.
There are many unanswered questions, beginning with why Pang's body remained undiscovered for so long - the last time she was seen was July 1995.
In about August 1995 neighbors complained of a smell they described as "dead rats," Crebbin said.
Also, why, in October 1999 when Fang and a locksmith entered the Waterloo Road apartment to close bathroom and bedroom windows that had caused water leakage into the flat below both said they never saw Pang's uncovered skeleton nor her skull in a waste basket on the floor beside the bed in the 300-square-foot flat.
"Mr Fang said he had to step over some things to reach the [bedroom] window and did not look at what they were," Crebbin said.
The next day he sent a man named Yeung Kwai-choi, who also knew Pang, to clean up the flat which was "in a terrible mess. Extremely untidy, dirty full of dust and cobwebs," Crebbin said.
It was Yeung who saw the skeleton and called police after he notified Fang.
Yeung is said to be the same man who Pang's mother said threatened and beat her daughter when she had visited Fang's office in an attempt to get money.
However, under questioning Lam admitted that she had not mentioned the alleged beating and threats to the police in one interview last year, only to report them a month later.
When asked why, she said, she was "too sad I didn't know what to say. I was so sad I didn't remember." High Court Justice Michael Hartmann ordered the inquest last December because of public interest and "genuine concern" over Pang's death.
In ordering the inquest, Hartmann reversed decisions by both the police and the coroner's office not to investigate the death.

Second day:
Photos and references in decapitated model Annie Pang's diary to her married lover John Fang were missing when they were returned to her family by police in 2001, Pang's eldest sister told a coroner's investigation Tuesday.
Pang Ngor said photos she and other family members had previously seen of her sister vacationing with Fang were not returned; pages had been ripped from Annie's diary, including one with Fang's Chinese first name repeatedly written on it, and a woman's watch with Fang's name engraved on it was also not returned to the family.
The 31-year-old former model was missing for four years until her decapitated skeletal remains were found in October 1999 in a Yau Ma Tei apartment owned by Fang who is the brother of former chief secretary Anson Chan and son of renowned artist Fang Zhaoling who died Monday.Fang had been expected to appear before the coroner's inquest Tuesday but his testimony was delayed due to his mother's death.
The investigation is not a criminal proceeding but an ``inquiry into the cause and circumstances of the death [of Annie Pang],'' coroner Colin Mackintosh said.
Pang's sister said that when the police investigation into her sister's death was originally closed in 2001, some possessions found in Annie's filthy flat were missing or in worse condition when police returned them to the family.
In addition to the diary pages, photos of the couple and watch, she said other photo albums which had been in good condition in two boxes when originally taken by the police were returned damaged.``When the photos were returned to us there were much less than before. The photos were completely damaged with wet and mold,'' Pang said. ``They were stuck together.``When I first saw the diary it was intact and I had seen a page with Mr Fang's name clearly written repeatedly on one page. When it was returned to me that page and others were torn away,'' she added in response to further questions by Mary Jean Reimer, a lawyer representing the Pang family.
Mackintosh had the damaged diary examined by the five jurors and asked that the remaining contents be translated for further investigation.
Some pages are blank and others contain only a few lines of writing, he said.
Pang said police told her that possessions belonging to Fang were returned to him and gave her ``no clear explanation'' for the mutilated diary or damaged photos.In other testimony, Pang's sister painted a picture of a wayward sister hooked on sleeping pills whose life was spiraling out of control amid gambling debts and fears that her long relationship with Fang -- a lawyer who had set her up as a mistress in a series of flats and paid her HK$10,000 to $20,000 a month for living expenses -- would finally end.
``In the beginning it was good. She said she wanted to have Mr Fang's child. Later she told me that she and Mr Fang argued about money and she couldn't sleep because he wouldn't come see her,'' Pang said. ``Sometimes when I asked her why she had no money she said it was because Mr Fang had financial problems.''
Pang said her sister told her that she was HK$40,000 in debt to loan sharks after gambling in Macau and had begged her unsuccessfully for a loan. Their mother also complained of receiving threatening calls about the debt, Pang said.
Annie's financial woes and demands finally led Pang and her mother to change their phone numbers and cease contact with her in late1994 and 1995.
However, Pang said the last time she saw her sister was in March 1995 at the Tai Hing police station in Tuen Mun where she went to bail her out for HK$2,000 following an argument and physical confrontation with a boyfriend who was not Fang.
Annie Pang is believed to have died in July 1995, the last time she was seen. In about August 1995 neighbors complained of a smell they described as ``dead rats'' coming from her flat but no investigation was made.
In October 1999 Fang and a locksmith entered the Waterloo Road apartment to close bathroom and bedroom windows that had caused water leakage into the flat below. Both claimed they never saw Pang's uncovered skeleton surrounded by maggot casings, nor her skull in a waste basket on the floor beside the bed in the 300-square-foot flat.
The following day Fang sent a former employee to the flat to clean it. He reported the remains to police after phoning Fang.
Pang's sister said the family did not know where Annie had moved and that later attempts in 1995 to reach her through Fang were unsuccessful.``I spoke to him once and he said she did not want me and my mother to have her phone number,'' Pang said.
She said later attempts to reach Fang were fruitless. She also said that they believed Annie might have moved overseas.
Another, younger sister Pang Po-yuk began crying Tuesday when she recalled the last time she saw Annie.
``She came to our mother's house but my mother was not there,'' Pang Po-yuk said between sobs. ``I told her I would visit her later but I didn't ask for her address. If I'd known this would have happened I would have asked her for her address and all this would not have happened.''

2006-02-19T03:01:00.000-08:00

Headless model found in topless bar (or the Lonesome Death of Annie Pang)
I've always loved that first headline from the -- I think, NY Post -- sometime in the '70s. Gotta Google it later for the specifics but nonetheless this week I'm covering, sort of, the HK equivalent.
There's a week long coroner's inquest that begins Monday to try to get to the bottom of why the separated skeletal remains of a 31-year-old former HK model named Annie Pang apparently languished for about 4 years in an apartment rented by a wealthy businessman named John Fang. It's further complicated by the fact that Fang's sister is a prominent HK politician named Anson Chan. Lots of high level connections which explain why although Annie died in 1995 and her remains -- skull in a waste basket, body on the floor -- weren't discovered until more than four years after she died, in that "Mr Fang failed to see the skeleton when he entered the flat (in 1999) to close some windows the day before Pang was discovered; and that the windows had possibly been open for more than four years yet the flat remained free of obvious water damage."
"The owner stated that he never saw the skeleton of the deceased lying, uncovered on the floor beside the bed," said a prosecutor who kept pushing for an inquest.
Oddly though Fang found the apartment in such a mess otherwise and ... "instead of trying to find out what happened to Pang," whom he had not seen alive for four years, he "ordered an employee to go to the flat the next day to clear it out."
Surprise, surprise. When the hapless cleaner arrived the first thing spotted was a headless skeleton on the floor and the head in waste basket. "A gold tooth and two digit bones were missing," read a coroner's report.
Annie's mother and sisters through the years have claimed that she had received death threats and been beaten by a so-far undentified law clerk associated with Fang.
Fang himself has said "I wanted to help Ms Pang after I got to know her, so I provided a safe haven for her, but it is so surprising that I wanted to say away from a drug addict? People like to equate money with sex and power--nobody believed why I wanted to help her. She used to cause trouble at my soliciter's firm and also at the police station ever time she tried to kill herself. I'm generous to men, too; does that mean I'm gay?"
Um, no. It doesn't mean you're Hong Kong's answer to Mother Teresa, either. And it especially doesn't explain why you continued to pay rent on the place for more than four years until one of your toadies got the thankless assignment to "discover" her bones.
Until now there had been several attempts to unravel this mystery, all previously blocked by a coroner who "decided not to hold an inquest for fear of exposing Pang's drug habit, gambling habit, medical conditions, suicidal tendencies, complicated love affairs and casual sexual attitude."
Why sure. Of course. Explains it all. Thoughtful fellow that he was, he was simply looking out for Annie's reputation which was already -- literally -- garbage.

2006-02-17T03:45:00.000-08:00

Mohammad's Radio
The Islamic outrage over the 12 Danish cartoons finally trickled down into Hong Kong today when about 2,000 of the 70,000 Muslims here marched and shouted "Allah akbar!" for about an hour. There was a lot of energy in the all-male, no-Chinese (though the majority of Muslims in Hong Kong are Chinese) parade but all was ultimately peaceful.
Their goal besides getting on the evening TV news and in tomorrow's newspapers was to present a petition to a UN worker here calling on the Danish government to apologize for the cartoons. ``The UN is the head of world and we are asking them to teach [the Danish newspaper and cartoonists] a good lesson or put them in jail or something,'' the march organizer told me.
This rather shaky grasp of world affairs and how-things-work was also displayed by a few other protesters. My fave? A fellow with a hand-scrawled, five-line screed proclaiming that Jewish mobsters Meyer Lansky and Mickey Cohen and the CIA were responsible for the 1963 assassination of John F Kennedy.
And there was the geographically-challenged pair of outraged protestors brandishing signs topped with brown plush toy dogs representing ``the prime minister of Norway.''

2006-02-10T04:13:00.000-08:00

Great Speckled Bird
Bird flu fears are mounting in Hong Kong where it seems virtually every day brings a report of clueless school kids playing catch with dead wild birds which later test positive for the H5N1 avian virus or seizures at the China border of illicit, ailing live chickens stuffed into Auntie Leung's suitcase.
Chinese love their chicken blood fresh and many will risk their lives for it rather than lose face and serve a frozen fowl purchased from Wellcome or Park N' Shop, our two leading supermarket chains. Imagine the shame!
But Hong Kong is cracking down and on Monday Poultry SWAT teams will be fanning out to the rural areas to seize and destroy illegal chickens from backyard farmers.
As The Standard reported: ''Agriculture officers may break into private homes to seize contraband chickens after a prohibition on neighborhood poultry farming comes into effect next Monday, warned Stella Hung, director of the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department. The threat Friday comes after villagers voluntarily surrendered just 240 chickens to AFCD officials, who visited 116 villages over the past week. ..." The story ended on this upbeat note: "Funeral parlor aassociation chairman Ng Yiu-tong said Sunday that religious ceremonies for the dead will no longer use live chickens and instead will use the clothes of dead persons in rituals."
So in addition to wondering just how a dead person's clothes can adequately substitute for a live chicken at a funeral, one imagines squads of ominous-looking men covered head to toe in orange or white haz-mat hoods and suits with universal "No chickens" logos on the backs, clutching automatic weapons, flame throwers and shotguns bursting into a rusty corrugated metal and weathered wood shack as Second Uncle and Fourth Auntie clutch squirming contraband fowls to their breasts and wail.
"Just. Put. Down. The. Chicken, ma'am. Slowly...slowly -- that's it -- and no one will get hurt..."
Or defiant screaming toothless crones awkwardly flinging infected chickens at the officers who shrink back momentarily in reflexive horror before pumping the birds and their withered owners full of shotgun rounds.
"I'll give up my chickens when they pry them from my cold, dead fingers," vowed 72-year-old Fok Lwok-hung, a weathered life-long backyard Tai O poultry breeder. "Remember, when chickens are outlawed, only outlaws will have chickens."

2006-02-08T04:55:00.000-08:00

Strange Days
A sudden, unexpected shakeup at the paper on Friday has left me fairly shaken. While I can't go into details, suffice to say that the two men I admired most -- senior editors and two of the finest editors I've had in almost 30 years in the business -- were abruptly canned by the paper's executive editor two hours before he formally jumped ship for our competition.
He more or less shat in the nest, burned it down and fled. A former boss of his heard about it and reportedly e-mailed him with a succinct message: "What you did was evil. You will not be forgiven."
I second that emotion.
One of the fired editors got the word in California where he had gone for a month to give stem cells to his ailing twin. The other was here and a wake/goodbye party that lasted nearly 12 hours in Wan Chai bar ensued. It began about 9pm and I staggered back to my apartment at 7am Saturday.
Kids, don't try this at home.
I sense also that my days at The Standard may be numbered also as the two who left were my most ardent supporters, especially during a time last year when I came under fire for....for? For exactly what, I'm not sure. Backstabbing mofos abound, it seems, no matter where one lives.

2006-01-28T20:46:00.000-08:00

Free Falling
Last night was Chinese New Year's Eve. As such, C and I had holiday dinner next door with a friend of hers whose parents, sister and the sister's spunky 6-year-old daughter were in Shenzhen for the holiday. The dinner was fine, lots of salty spicy fish, chicken and pork dishes and some vinegary cucmbers. I toasted with a vodka and tonic while the others raised modest glasses of cheap Chinese red wine mixed with 7-Up. For reasons I've never been able to pinpoint, red wine with Sprite or 7-Up (or scotch mixed with green tea) is considered the height of sophisticated drinking by many middle class Chinese, though I've long since disabused C of that notion and she now admits it tastes lousy.
She only bent her Absolut on the rocks rule last night last night in order "to not be the bird that flies away from the flock." As a foreigner, the flock rule doesn't apply to me though and I take advantage of that, particularly when it comes to matters like mixing with wine and Sprite or Johnny Walker and green tea.
We returned to our place and before we slept she told me she was leaving the balcony light on for the night.
"Why?" I asked.
"It's so our ancestors can find their way to where we live tonight." She cleared her throat and laughed self-consciously. "But I don't know how mine are going to know where I am in Shenzhen...'' (Her hometown, Dandong, is more than 1,000 kilometers north of Shenzhen).
"I don't know how mine are going to find me either," I said. "Most of them probably never thought of coming to China -- except maybe my mother's father. He was Irish. Before she died my mother told me he loved reading stories about Asia, particularly by a British writer named Kipling. Something about a 'Burmese girl,' I think, too. Though I don't know that story or poem. Maybe if he had a thing for a fantasy girl from Burma he'd have enjoyed knowing about us."
"Maybe."
We slept as the balcony light glowed through a night punctuated by stacatto New Year fireworks and omnipresent smoke. And I dreamed.
I dreamed that my grandfather Knox who died when I was 2 and my mother Mila who died 12 years ago were told I could be found in China. If they desired, they could leave whatever realm the dead inhabit and join others who were visiting their descendants here for one night.
I've no memory of grandfather, though I'm told he was fond of me and that he died peacefully napping on his couch after lunch as my mother, dad and I were visiting him and my grandmother. "You played on his body until the ambulance came," my mother once told me. "You didn't know he was dead and thought he was pretending to sleep. It was a game you'd played with him before."
Now I am sleeping and my dead grandfather and mother are flying through the air to see me in China. He calls it "Cathay" in my dream because that's what Shenzhen's province, Guangdong, was called by foreign barbarians when he was alive. Cathay.
"C'mon now, Mila. We're flying to Cathay to see Justin" he tells my mother. He's wearing a tweed suit, white shirt, thin tartan tie and perhaps set off with a tweed newsboy cap, attire I either imagine or think I've seen in old photos of him. He hasn't lost his Irish accent in my dream. He came to the US as a young man who'd taught at a deaf school in Belfast and had dabbled in boxing only to visit a brother who had immigrated. But Knox never returned to Ireland until many years later. While in America he'd caught polio shortly after coming and the Illinois woman he eventually married was one of his nurses. She was my grandmother but she's not visiting tonight. It was complicated between her and my mother and probably still is in the hereafter.
"Hullo mum," my grandfather had greeted his mother upon returning for a visit to his ancestral home in County Down. According to family lore, he was limping due to the polio. His mother stood silently on the porch of their their white-washed home called The Spa.
"Ah, Knox. You've got the Yankee twang," she finally said of his greeting. Until this exchange, they not spoken to or seen each other in the 20plus years since he'd left for a short tour of America.
There is no Yankee twang in my dream. He's soaring through the air to Cathay -- a place he's only perhaps read and maybe dreamed of -- arms outstretched like Peter Pan, one hand clasping my mother's who looks as she did in her high school and college photos. In those black and white pictures she isn't tethered to an oxygen tank or embittered and numbed by the booze and pain pills that momentarily pacified her arthritis pain but inflamed her demons.
She's not even Mila. Tonight she's "Johnnie," a high school/college nickname due to her maiden name, Johnston. She sometimes smokes a pipe and is already a talented artist. She wears bobby socks and is a babe. And though it was also very complicated between her and her father, tonight they're feckless and happy together. She's thrilled to be on her father's arm flying and free falling to Cathay to see her son, and her father is quietly proud to take her. And though it's a country of 1.3 billion, with a gazillion more dead Chinese ancestors crowding the airspace tonight, they'll have no problems.
You see, C has left the light on so they'll know where to find me.

2006-01-28T19:34:00.000-08:00

The Crossing continued
Bus service is 24 hours and I've taken enough at most slices of 24 hours to find that the 11pm-2am bus passengers lend a zestier flair to the usual load of tourists, low-level business types, and otherwise regular types.
It's the "Party Bus" from 11pm or so on. Many drunks and almost always a gaggle of hookers and part-time party girls who stand out from the usual crowd by tottering on their cheap, spiked heels, wiggling in their short skirts and tight slacks. It's entertaining fare providing the person next to you is passed out and not retching violently into a plastic bag.
Nonetheless, all are alert and join the mad crush to flee the bus when it hits the Hong Kong border -- the first of two borders we have to process through -- only to rush to join another usually long line. If you're a Hong Kong resident or permanent citizen it's a painless, efficient affair unlike what's waiting at the Shenzhen border 4 minutes away.
Once through the Hong Kong station with its posters warning people not to bring live or dead chickens in their suitcases and trumpeting the glories of Hong Kong ("A level playing field for all") and past the occasional sniffer dawgs, it's another line to pick up the bus you've just left.
Back on and people are barely seated until they're up and jamming again like a football front line or rugby scrum at the Shenzhen/Huanggang station.
The best and worst part of this leg is the pointless paperwork, entitled the "Health and Quarantine Declaration Form On Entry." It's a one page slip that was generated in the wake of the SARS outbreak and reactivated as all await the coming avian flu pandemic. It won't stop anything, however as like so much else in the Chinese bureauracy it's entirely symbolic and carries no purpose except to generate more meaningless employment for the people who supposedly process the forms and for the printing company or companies that produce them.
Two -- always two, sometimes three -- people in white lab coats (so you know they are medical professionals) wearing Latex gloves sit in a cramped booth to collect the forms which are simply tossed in their direction by the travelers who know better.
And what's on the form? Your ID particulars -- I often fill in my name randomly with identities such as "Mickey Mouse," "Hunter Thompson," "Daffy Duck," "Ulma Thurman," "Missing Bride," "Jeffrey Dahmer" etc or Chinese verboten names and terms such as "Lin Piao" (betrayed Mao) or the outlawed whacko religious group, "Fan Lung Gong." I'm waved through everytime.
One is also supposed to check from the "following illnesses or symptoms" you currently have. The choices range from "fever," "cough," to "psychosis," "venereal disease," "AIDS/HIV," and "active pulmonary tuberculosis."
I don't get cute with that one. I can only imagine that one would have to be terminally psychotic to admit to a "cough" much less VD, AIDS or TB and expect you'd ever see anything but a quick eviction at best or a slow languishing cold lonely death in some maximum security isolation cell in a Chinese "hospital" at best.
I also swear that I am not carrying any "animal carcasses and specimans," "microbes," "human tissues," "blood and blood products," or "soil" into China.
Once inside it's another form that gets actual scrutiny. It's one that records your passport and visa details and gets inspected by usually stern-looking clerks who often feel the need to correct your printing. More than once I've had some anal twit carefully trace over every letter and number I've clearly written down. This can take another five minutes after perhaps 20 spent in the "Foreigners" line and I'm never sure if the guy is just jacking around with me or really believes that his English penmanship is superior -- which it arguably could be, though the results always look like what they are: someone not initimate with writing English has traced over perfectly legible letters turning them into a child-like smear.
Once cleared to go it's straight past and ignore the wheezing luggage X-ray machine where the inspectors are either playing cards, sleeping, absent or gossiping as more cowed travelers occasionally put their luggage through.
The last line awaits, for taxis. Here there also be beggars. And before I catch a cab, I give only to one regular, a young woman with a severely burned boy about 2 or 3 years old. His eyes are always bright and expressive but below the bridge of what was his nose his face appears to have melted grotesquely. He has two small slits for nostrils and a mouth that is only a small, distorted oval more or less fused to where his neck begins.
His mother knows me by now and makes a point of thanking me. Sometimes I pat his soft burry head and ask, "How's it going little dude?" to which he perks up some but never utters a sound. I wonder if he can speak at all and fantasize about being able to foot a plastic surgery and primarly school education for him. I also curse whatever and whoever turned him into nothing but begging bait.