WTO Riots - December 2005 - Part 2

Another letter from that week:

Update on our lovely Sychronised Swimming Korean Farmers. As you know, I ran off when I heard that spectacular drumming through my window, and now you want to know what it was about.

From a different battle!
But gives you the idea.

Well, turns out spectacular drumming was the prelude to their assault on the police. Naturally, I raced down to watch from the skybridge. Got to the Exhibition Centre before the 2000 Farmers arrived, and it was six lines of khaki-clad riot police, all locked shields. So Roman!

And - so cute, la - there were lots of Japanese tourists racing out to stand in front of them to get photos. The riot squad didn't mind, pulling these scary faces and looking mad-butch for them. Lots of fun.

The nice Koreans didn't make it to the Exhibition Centre, sure, which was their stated aim, so technically we won that round, but they tried and managed to collect a whole lot of riot police shields in the process ... but they returned them afterwards in a great spirit of goodwill ... so the whole afternoon must surely count as a great success.

Big news: I saw Longhair getting a face full of pepper spray. He was only off on the side, shouting encouragement in Korean through his legendary megaphone, so it was absolutely just malice on the part of the police. But I'm sure however, once the pain is over, that Longhair will appreciate it; nothing like a faceful of pepper-spray to add to your street-cred.

Oh, and I found out something great here: if you ever get a faceful of pepper-spray, what you do is get someone to blow cigarette smoke into your eyes - it takes away the sting - and then you wash it off with milk. That's always useful to know these things because you never know when they'll come in handy.

What else? Oh, yes! Kong, who runs the newspaper stand on the corner says Korean Farmers bought his entire below-the-counter stash of pornography and he's having to race in loads more because they keep demanding more. Obviously they need something to do during their long vigil inside those rows of shipping containers. I've also heard, although can't confirm, that bunches of them are sneaking away from the vigil to visit Disneyland.

I've never told you about Longhair, have I? OK, in brief: in our Legislative Council, of the sixty seats, Beijing selects 30 candidates, HKs 900 richest tycoons select 29, and we get to select one. Yup, ONLY ONE!!! It's probably the reason Beijing always tells us we're all too immature to vote, but we always select Longhair.

 Photo from the newspaper!

His real name is Leung Kwok-Hung and he's basically "just a very naughty boy". He has long hair, always wears a Che Guevara T-shirt and he has a megaphone through which he shouts slogans about "the will of the people", even in Legislative Council. Beijing constantly tries to discredit him in our eyes, but it's always stuff like "He smokes, drinks whisky and has sex with a great many women of a great many different nationalities". It just goes to show how out of touch Beijing is, but HKs only response to that is "Yeeha! You go, Longhair!" or the equivalent in Cantonese.

Oh, and, recently, Beijing ordered that he sort out his image, so they put an important Chinese image consultancy firm onto his case. After doing thousands of interviews with people-on-the-street, they came back saying "Hong Kong loves him the way he is but they do want him to be cleaner." So that's the most Beijing could do: order him to shower, wash his hair more often and
to wear clean Che-Ts.

When I saw him at the democracy rally two weeks back, he looked wonderfully clean, so clearly he'd followed Beijing's order, but yesterday he looked positively back to his old stinky self. I guess WTO protesting is keeping him too busy to shower. But isn't it awful that the CCP thinks it has the right to order someone to visit the bathroom more often! I can't imagine a more intrusive "invasion of privacy" than this.

Also, Time Magazine in July voted him "The Most Influential Figure in Asian Politics", even ousting Aung Sang Suu Kyi - which takes some doing! - so he's BIG and just going to get bigger! I just hope he never changes and sells out! But, you know, already having sex with a great many women of a great many nationalities, why would he need to!

What else? Oh, all the Korean Synchronised Swimmers are out of hospital except for a 26 yr old farmer called Mr Yu. Apparently, they're keeping him in for observation because he swallowed a lot more of our Harbour than the others. Someone really should have told the Swim Team just how desperately polluted our water is therefore just how dangerous this stunt would be! Nothing like local knowledge, as that ad says.

Oh, people around here are pulling down their shutters. Something is afoot. Gotta go check it out. I'll write again later when I find out the latest interesting thing the Korean Farmers are up to!