Notes
Nothing New Under the Sun
I've been handed a lot of tracts in my time here, but never by a taxi driver and never one titled:
The Religious Belief of Mr. Sun Yixian, The Father of China
That's Sun Yat-sen to you.
And they left out a word; Sun was known as the Father of Modern China. Evidently the publishers felt Sun deserved an elevation in status, seeing as he was Christian.
As tracts go, this one was weak: it fabricates a tenuous connection between Sun's deliverance from imprisonment by the Qing authorities and the acceptance of Jesus Christ, the ultimate goal of all evangelistic groups. Too bad they missed the typo mentioning that his trouble transpired in 1986, which is rather embarrassing considering that they pointed out his death occurred in 1925 (although the Chinese text was correct).
I don't know why the cabbie decided I'd be receptive; perhaps it was because I was polite. I'm just glad he wasn't a Mormon, because then there would have been two of them in the front seat, and they wouldn't have let me out until I agreed to visit their church.
Better to get a tract with my receipt than having him proselytise.
Bruce Lee Museum
First, he was going to sell it to raise funds for Chinese earthquake victims.
And then he pulled it off the market after fans clamoured for it to be kept as a museum.
Now he wants permission to bend zoning laws to turn it into a 25,000 square foot complex.
What is it?
The Crane's Nest, Bruce Lee's former home at 41 Cumberland Road in Kowloon Tong. Used in recent years as a seedy "love hotel", the 5,699 square foot two-storey house is all that remains to connect Bruce Lee with Hong Kong (the statue at the Avenue of Stars notwithstanding).
Arguments in favour of creating a museum have received a lot of press lately:
"Chinese people were called the 'sick men of East Asia' ... until Bruce Lee came along. His contribution to Chinese culture was a lot more than just being a movie star. We need cultural heritage and it's unreasonable not to preserve it."
"Bruce Lee was the actor who cut through the old-style Hollywood handling of Asian characters by raising them up from the coolies or servants who just kowtowed and said 'yes sir'."
"It's humiliating. The government has been promoting Hong Kong using Bruce Lee's image but have they ever done anything for him?"
The current owner, a billionaire philanthropist, has proposed to convert the house into a museum along with the addition of "a cinema, a library and a martial arts centre".
The idea has a good head of steam and now it remains to be seen whether the government will finally get off their asses to honour Hong Kong's No.1 son. After all, it's been 35 years.
Bruce Lee died on July 20, 1973.
I Got Yer Courtesy Right Here!
According to Hong Kong's YWCA, 70% of young people "do not exhibit courteous behaviour".
Courtesy is defined as not swearing in public, giving up seats on public transport, saying "hello" or "thank you", not littering, and helping others.
Basically they're worried because Hong Kong is turning into New York.
Or Maybe I Just Hate Loud People
I'm no luddite, but the longer I live in Hong Kong, the more I detest mobile phones.
Sure, they've made communication easier, but they've exterminated manners. Those of us old enough to remember the age prior to the cellular revolution bask in the memory of how enjoyable it was to have dinner in a restaurant free of electronic trilling and babbling idiots.
Before mobile phones, making or taking a call was considered a private matter. If you were dining with a surgeon or obstetrician, you knew there was a chance the doctor could be called away, and if an emergency arose the maître d' handled the situation with discretion. In other words, he didn't tear through the restaurant, flapping his arms and screaming at the top of his lungs.
Which is more or less the equivalent of what some Hong Kongers do when the phone rings, such as the social Neanderthal I saw heard in the Sha Tin New Town Plaza: he was standing in the rotunda adjacent to the train concourse and BELLOWING into his phone, his voice pinging off the high ceiling and bouncing through the far reaches of the mall.
Now imagine that in the confines of a bus or train. And the older the person is, the louder he tends to be. My mother-in-law is bad for this; when she gets on the phone, her volume rises exponentially, and God forbid she should get excited. When that happens, birds three miles away are startled from their perches.
I am aware that people all over the world misuse their phones, but considering Hong Kong's 140% market penetration rate, the level of abuse is significantly higher. The rationale for allowing mobile phones to be so intrusive is that an incoming call could be a chance to make money, and in this town money is king.
But the reality is that intense competition has given Hong Kongers access to monthly airtime packages with thousands of minutes, most of which is spent either gossiping or asking the most-overheard question ever: where are you right now? (at one time listening in on someone's conversation was considered eavesdropping; these days it can't be avoided).
People have become slaves to their phones and thus have discarded basic civility. It's gotten so bad that I've come to loathe any ringing phone; half the time I won't even pick up the land line when at home. And if I don't recognise your number on Caller ID, I won't answer. Period.
I may hate mobile phones for wreaking havoc in polite society, but they do have an upside: they make me appreciate e-mail.
E-mail is quiet.
Wet, Wet, Wet
It's official: June was Hong Kong's wettest month ever, breaking the record set in May 1889 (records began in 1884).
The Observatory's tally was 1,346.1mm, which for my North American friends is about 53 inches of rain, or 4.4 feet.
That explains the new webbing between my toes.
Dim Sum
HK Photographic
Friend Finder
Good Feng Shui