Recently in Honkers Category

This past summer, it seem’d to me that the Hong Kong tabloids (Apple Daily in particular, but that should come as no surprise) papers would compete to publish the least flattering picture possible of Tung Chee-hwa, Hong Kong’s Chief Executive. Well, it looks like they won’t have Tung to kick around anymore.

This is a great day for Hong Kong; even though his successor (probably Donald “Go Forth and Be Very Fruitful” Tsang) will be hand-picked by the boys in Beijing and report back to them, at least the people of Hong Kong will no longer have to suffer the bumbling incompetence of their previous leader.

I was going through some old stuff on my dresser this morning and managed to find four blank post cards from Hong Kong I managed to bring back last summer. Since they’re awfully pretty and it’d be a shame to waste them, [the next four three two one folks to email me with your name and address gets a postcard from Hong Kong (via Manhattan) All done, folks. Thanks for playing!

The Shaky One demonstrates why a picture is worth a thousand words (or, in this case, $2, 354 Hong Kong dollars).

(I would imagine that most expats in Hong Kong have been to that bar, so I’m hardly claiming exclusivity here…)

This is probably only funny to people who know a little about Hong Kong: Feign for Hong Kong Chief Executive

(Larry is a HK-based cartoonist who wrote the late and lamented comic strip The World of Lily Wong)

Was digging through some pictures of Hong Kong and found this picture of a coffee shop in Macau that I had somehow missed the first time around…

BTW, would anyone be interested if I released the originals of my Hong Kong pictures under a creative commons license?

The Seven Deadly Sins, as illustrated by Hongkong Land:

Click on the small versions to see a very large version of each image.

These posters are used to advertise the on-going renovation of part of the Landmark, a large, popular shopping mall/office complex in downtown Hong Kong. Presumably the renovations will be so luxurious that it’ll inspire each of the sins. The illustrations are clever and subtle: “Gluttony” is transparently metaphorical, while the gender reversal for “Vanity” is both amusing and apt, given the number of dandies that populate Hong Kong’s social scene. I do admit that “Sloth” is a bit too subtle: in other words, I don’t get it. Perhaps our hero is left only with the shadow of a kiss on his cheek because he’s too lazy to pursue the heroine?

The last deadly sin, the one that they left out, is greed. Why’d they leave it out? Well, they probably figured that it was, for Hong Kong, redundant…

Well, I guess I survived that really nasty upper respiratory infection with minimal complications. Missing a week at work wasn’t fun, though; neither was the persistant light-headedness and general fatigue. The flip side is that I lost 10 pounds in four days, so win some, lose some.

This is leading up to saying that my departure from Honkers has snuck up on me with surprising speed, so it’s time to say so long, Hong Kong. And I’ll be saying that Thursday night at 8:00 p.m. at Delaney’s in Wanchai, so if you want to join me in raising a glass to this city, drop on by…

More than half a million protestors marched yesterday in the heat and humidity and pollution. And people say that Hong Kongers aren’t political.

From the Times: Huge Rally in Hong Kong Calls for Democratic Elections. The key graf:

But on Thursday, Mr. Tung [Hong Kong’s Chief Executive] was barely mentioned as protesters showed a new boldness in denouncing mainland China for banning general elections here and, in their view, trying to intimidate democrats.

In something of a minor miracle for press freedom, the official Chinese press didn’t completely ignore the march; however, their coverage was perhaps less than comprehensive:

Demonstrators gathered at the Victoria Park on Hong Kong Island at 2:30 p.m. to hold a protest. They marched into the streets and caused traffic jams.

Well, I suppose we can be thankful that they at least mentioned the march…

It should be noted that the PLA garrisons were opened to the public for the holiday; does this mean a change in policy? (probably not, but it’s interesting nonetheless)

More followups: frequent commentor Tom has some great pictures of the march, as does this guy; more first-hand reports from here; here & here; here; and here.

A question for all the non-Asia readers out there: how much play did this story get in your local news (other than the Times, of course)?

And in unrelated news, it’s come to my attention that I have about three weeks left in Hongkers. Perhaps it’s time for a HK blogger get-together before I head back, eh? Who’s in?

94 degrees Farenheit and 68% humidity.

Oh, and there are over 300,000 protestors marching out there in the heat today. Today’s a public holiday, and I’d join them, save for the fact that I’m at the office working right now…