We are just about to set off for the airport for our flight to New Zealand, Cathay-Pacific threatened rolling-strikes and Cyclone Evan permitting.
And let's not forget the threat posed by ...
... so we'll be in the air and in the direct line of fireballs. Still, there are worse ways to go.
We'll be gone a week and I'm hoping we'll have lots of new stories to tell in here.
Yes, I know I've been very remiss about blogging this year, but I only ever intended to do 1000 posts and have now exceeded that number, and so I've got all these stories about our travels and adventures this year that I've yet to tell ... but I will get around to it. That I promise.
And if I don't drop by from New Zealand, here's wishing you all a very merry christmas and a fabulous New Year.
We all know that Fiji - along with Samoa and The Wallis & Futuna Islands
- took a nasty battering by Cyclone Evan this week. It's all very sad looking through the
photos of the damage, but nothing tore the heart out of me more than
this:
Nooooooo!
That's Tata's Restaurant, the place that serves absolutely the BEST curry-roti in Nadi. It's always first up on our list of where-to-eat whenever we arrive in town. In fact, let me show you a shot from our visit to Nadi in July this year:
That's us at Tata's Restaurant, with Molly checking out the photos Baby Jane took with her new Nikon - which were all vastly superior to mine.
We'd just hit town and Molly, who'd just picked us up, said "What do you want to do first?" and we're all immediately "Tata's!" simultaneously ... apart from Talei who'd never been to Nadi before and didn't know the low-down.
So, yes, undoubtedly Tata's is a Nadi LEGEND ... and now this has happened. So very very heart-wrenching indeed.
So good luck with the rebuild Tata. I have no doubt that you'll be up-and-running and serving up the BEST curry-roti in Nadi again in no time.
Well, Our Lili didn't get into the Grand Finals of "New Zealand's Got Talent", but the results are now in and these are the Top Five:
At Number Five was Fletcher Oxford, the little boy who writes and sings about his lost cat Sushi. I couldn't find his Grand Final performance which it appears no one has posted, but here he is from the Semi Final, singing, yes, the song he wrote for his lost cat Sushi:
Honestly, from the mileage he gets out of that cat, I hope he never finds it.
At Number Four was J Geeks and ... well, from earlier performances I thought they were simply a nightmare of naughty schoolboyishness and didn't like them, but their performance at the Grand Finals was - although really quite silly and schoolboyish - also showed they had real talent and true substance:
At Number Three was Sinclair Evans or some name like that and much as I hate that he sings with an American accent, I must say that his cover of this song is amazing:
At Number Two was the amazing and incredible Jessie Hillel:
Remember how my money was on her for a WIN, but I was wrong.
And at Number One was someone who I dismissed as negligible. 14 year old Clara van Well:
Probably the most exciting thing in ages. Check this out:
It's a Match!!!
If you don't understand the picture, rumour had it that Cambridge University had the actual breastplate worn in the iconic and famous historical drawing of "A Native of Feejee Islands" so Our Venerable Leader, Bainimarama, himself flew to England to check it out.
As you can see here, it was a righteous call because it is indeed the very same breastplate. Exciting, right?
And isn't it just creepy that this Rawdon sketch is called "Native of Feejee Islands" when it is actually Tanoa Visawaqa, Vunivalu of Bau, the father of Fiji's very own King George (Seru) Cakabau, who ceded Fiji to Queen Victoria in order to stop the Americans from acquiring it in order to turn our beloved islands into a single giant cotton plantation. Hardly your typical "native", right?
That type of thing - European ethnography's habit of misrepresenting foreign Kings and such as "Natives" - happens a lot because just about all of 17th and 18th century explorers' "Native" portraits are actually representations of very important people. It's because the common people and the poor people the world over tend to dress pretty much the same way - just covering up the dangly bits however they can - whereas it's the important people in most cultures who are the ones with the very best examples of those classic "native costumes".
When Queen Elizabeth made her historic first visit to Fiji back in 1953, her gifts won everyone's hearts and minds because what she'd done was gather together all the Fijian "ethnography" from around England and Europe, identify who was who in each of these "Native" photos, paintings, drawings and sketches, and then gift copies of each image to those "Native's" descendants.
Nice, right? It was like saying "I recognise that you are NOT "natives"; that you are people in your own right, with names and lives and all the rest of it, just like WE do."
Keith was saying she did the same thing on her first visit to New Zealand as well. No wonder she has been such a beloved Monarch for so many decades.
However, what is really happening here - why someone in Fiji can now say things like "Tui Tanoa's breastplate in this picture is to be found at Cambridge University." - is that Fiji Museum has spent this entire year visiting England and European ethnographic collections to see who has what that came from Fiji, recording and photographing and giving Fiji back an idea of its own heritage:
Cambridge University shows Bainimarama
its Fiji Collection.
And what is particularly exciting is that the UK itself has become so excited by the scope and extent of Fijian cultural material objects they have in England that they are putting together an Exhibition called "Fiji" that will open for the Summer of 2013, so we can see all of it put together in one place.
AND Keith informed me yesterday that, during the Summer of 2013, WE will be walking the length of Hadrian's Wall - sooo not doing this - which means we'll be in UK then so I'll definitely be agitating to see it for ourselves.
My i-photo program keeps crashing under the weight of my several hundred thousand photographs and so I'm currently deleting thousands ... and keep coming across shots I took for this blog for stories I never got around to writing.
Here's one:
When we were on holiday in Melbourne all those months ago, we visited a great many churches and were bemused to find that the Protestant churches have been removing statues of saints and replacing them with these sorts of things:
Yup, instead of, say, a perfectly viable St Whoeveritis, you get a very annoying dripping-water chunk of badly carved granite or a piece of drift wood, petrified rock and part of an old tree trunk that is so very strange it's .... it's ... gosh, you'd
have to make this a Rorschach's Test to decide what it is.
After the expected reaction of "WTF?" the only thing that springs to mind is "WHY???" Yes, I get that this is all kinds of Zen but WHY???? Seriously, why would you do this?
I mean, these things invite questions, right?, and you don't go into a church or a temple or a wat or an ashram or ... or ... or a synagog or even a pagan-style tree-fringed sacred grove or whatever you choose as your personal sacred space to be asked questions. You go in expecting to be given good solid answers.
Being me, I naturally hunted down some random priest in one of these "sacred spaces" and asked WTF?, wherein I was told in the most avuncular, gentle and kindly manner that it's offensive to people of other
religions to have images of saints because they are automatically
EXCLUDING.
I kid you not. This is what I was told. I could only shake my head and turn away to stop the very nice priest from seeing my look of combined sadness and derision.
I'd show you a photo of him only, you know, I don't want to single him out for what I want to say to the Protestant churches of Melbourne:
For heaven's sake, it's a sodding CHURCH! Even going into
one is automatically EXCLUDING! You even choose which one to enter by being EXCLUDING! And surely "those excluders" go
into their church of choice with certain expectations, and that these are NOT being met by very annoying dripping-water chunk of badly carved granite thingies or pieces of drift wood, petrified rock and parts of an old tree trunks.
Look,
seriously folks, the function of churches is to be a place where John
and Jane Public can go to ask their deity of choice to not let them be
squashed like a bug. And does this annoying dripping-water thingy does not invite that? No, not in the least.
What all this made me think of was how, when
we were at Auckland Museum in the 80s, we were shocked to discover that they'd taken away the most
magnificent and awe-inspiring white marble ancient Greek statues and replaced them with second-rate and half-rotten wooden
Buddhas. When I tracked down some random Museum person to ask why, I was told, with the great hair-tossing and snooting of aloof contempt, it was because Greek mythology had nothing to do with
NZ. And wasn't I greeted with a snort of derision when I asked "And
Buddhism has a huge connection, how?"
So that's what I want to say to the Protestant churches of Melbourne: that they desperately need to stop being such sad and stupid tossers and get over this sodding need to be such dire religious apologists and realise that in situations like this it's entirely NOT inappropriate to just be
themselves!
I know I mentioned this over a month ago, but it's finally struck me with the full horror of what is happening:
LOLOMA BEACH WILL NO LONGER BE OURS!
The incredibly beautiful
Loloma Beach in Deuba, Fiji!
I've already told you how it's been bought by American developers and they're building a wall to turn it into a gated community, off-limits to we locals:
Our beach house just off Loloma Beach.
You can't get any more local than this!
I've ranted long and hard about the illegality and unconstitutionality of Fiji cutting off the beaches and banuves (the Fijian word for land beside the beaches) from locals because all Fiji is meant to have free and unhindered access to the sea at all times ... but I won't do that here and now. I just want to farewell our beautiful beautiful beach and thank it for all those decades of beautiful memories:
My mum died looking at this exact
scene so it's very special to me,
It's
wonderful, isn't it. I've already told you how, when I was in Fiji a few months ago, and saw the wall and realised it was all to be lost to us, I decided it was my last chance to relive my mother's last moments, to see what she saw and to understand why she died smiling.
Little Brother (who doesn't wish to be named in my blog) was with her when she died. They were walking the dogs on the beach together at sunset so, back after it happened, he was able to walk us through the scene and tell us the exact spot where mum suddenly sat down on the
beach, and how she was looking out in this direction and was smiling as the light
went out in her eyes.
Although she was such a wonderful lady and her passing so young was such a sad loss for so many people, we all have to admit it was definitely a lovely death, and how special is it to be so at peace with yourself that the passing is easy and beautiful.
Anyway,
since we were back in Fiji and knew we were about to lose all, I thought it was
my last chance to sit on that exact spot at the exact time of day she died and get a record of exactly
what she saw in her final moments. I thought beforehand that it would be morbid and twisted, reliving our mum's final moments, but it wasn't. Just look at that photo. It
was a simply beautiful experience, yes, and I love having this as a record.
So do you too
understand why she smiled. I
certainly know.
However that is just one memory among very many more memories that go back for nearly five decades, back well beyond my birth, back to when mum and dad were first married - and they got married several beaches along from this one too - and used to camp right on this beach ...
Loloma Beach, 1953.
Check out their bivouac!
... promising themselves they'd one day build a beach house right there so they'd one day raise their future children to be wild and free, enjoying it all.
And they did, and we did, and it was such a beautiful gift from our parents to us and it's only just now, when we're on the verge of losing it all, that I realise that we can't take these things for granted because they are life's true blessings.
Such fun we had here, most weekends and during holidays at our little cottage ... but it's also where mum and dad moved after they retired, after we'd left home and gone out into the world, although they had to build a couple of extensions because originally being just a hut it wasn't designed 'for real life' everyday living and quickly became impractical.
But the memories! Such lovely memories of growing up here.
Like that reef you can see in that photo there. All those late afternoon walks at low tide, examining all the interesting
things trapped in the rock pools? Mainly little fish and lots of crabs and vivid blue starfish, sea urchins and, hey, once there
was even an octopus in there and when I poked it it squirted all this
black ink, but then it couldn't escape as it usually does because it was trapped, so we recalled mum's injunction never to stress wild animals because it could kill them, so we left
it alone.
Or
when the tide was coming in, we'd go body-surfing over that reef with
snorkle and goggles ... being dragged in and out by the waves, and learning the hard way to always wear a
T-shirt - or even better a wetsuit - because that red coral could really burn and sting.
And there was the time, as a teenager, I took my new boyfriend Rod snorkling along the outer edge of the reef at high tide. It was all great until Rod freaked out when we saw a shark right beside us. It was the usual one that always hunted there so I was used to it, so I told Rod that it was only a grey nurse and was simply looking for food, so we should just ignore it and it would ignore us, and then, minutes later, while I was exploring a little cave, something grabbed my flipper and shook ...
... and I came to on the beach where Rod had dragged me. And what was so particularly astonishing was seeing those brutal gouges all over Rod's body, and the savage bruising that quickly followed, and realising that I'd given that 'shark' a most vicious battle, even though I'd been ostensibly unconscious at the time. Odd, right! But at least it taught Rod to not play stupid practical jokes on me!
Other memories: oh, here's a good one: whenever the wind blew from the north, sand would bank up and cut off the creek so the fresh water flooded the banuve-side of the beach, and that water was always so warm and pleasant and the trees provided such good shade that
we'd spend hours in it pretending to be crocodiles.
And then there was blue-bottle jellyfish season where, if the wind blew from the west, they'd be acres of them covering the sand, all looking like beautiful azure bubbles, so we'd have race down the length of the beach to see who'd reach the farthest end first ... but since this was a Murphy Game there was a catch. We called this Girl's Club and you couldn't be our friend unless you could play without crying because The Rules
stated you could only move if you jumped directly atop a jellyfish - they'd make the most delicious squelching sound when they popped - and this game took all afternoon and naturally the tide would come in, and the waves would wash the jelly-fish tentacles around our ankles and we'd end up stung
like anything. But no matter how much it hurt, you had to take it with stoical fervour. Gosh, it was such great fun.
(Actually, once you'd played it a couple of times, you knew to always carry a stick so you could hold the tentacles away from you when you saw a wave coming. But the new kids never knew this so ... yeah, yeah, a worthy initiation.)
Oh, and
let's not forget that stand of ancient giant buttress trees at the other end of the beach, down beyond the Governor's Cottage, that always felt so sacred we
called it "The Cathedral" because it always felt so appropriate. That part of the banuve always had the most extraordinarily rich and majestic silence and almost preternatural stillness that you could only speak in whispers, and since you're coupling that with the most sublime, unearthy light coming through the trees' canopy, being there always felt like a religious experience.
Many many years ago, when I was still a child, British writer Jessica Mitford was holidaying in Fiji just down from us. Mostly she and dad talked for hours on end, but one afternoon she said to me "You look like a girl who'd know all the secret and special places around here. Will you share them with me?" I had grown up knowing all about the fabulous and famous Mitford Sisters and thought that I couldn't show her anything she'd find "Wow!" but I took her up Red Hill (which came down in the violent storm surge that also knocked our house off its foundation) to pick wood roses, and then, when I saw that the tide had gone out, I took her onto our reef to look into the rock pools, and then, late afternoon until just before sunset, I took her to The Cathedral, and then we sat on the beach to watch the sun go down and she looked at me with tears in her eyes and said "You have the best secret and special places I've ever seen."
So, yes, I can tell you that all this specialness was once endorsed by Jessica Mitford, my favourite ever Mitford Sister - even before I met her - because the Mitfords' novels always felt exactly like us growing up - what with the larger-than-life father, the sweet and gentle mother, and far far too many kids who were all so quirky and badly behaved - and Jessica was the sister I always most identified with! And when she said to me "You're the ME in your family." I felt so entirely validated.
By the way, these developers cut down all that stand, the vicious swine. In most of the rest of the world, old stands of buttress trees are World Heritage, with good reason, so this is definitely a rat act of the first order.
I could go on and on and on because I've barely scratched the surface of these memories, but the day has got away from me, so I'll end with just one more.
Let's make it a good one: OK, got one: the time that travel writer Paul Theroux left our beach in a
kayak to row to out to Beqa, the island you can see out there in that photo, and Little Brother, who was only about three at the time, saw him go and, since there was an old
bilibili (bamboo raft) left abandoned on the beach, decided to follow him ... and got so far out
to sea before we even noticed he was gone - and without Theroux even
noticing a very little boy was rowing behind him - that when mum finally spotted him she had to race home to phone
Robert Miller, who was back then running the local marina down at Pacific Harbour, to send out a boat to rescue him.
And now
I think about it, Robert often had to send out a boat to rescue lots of
people. A huge number over the years. Loloma Beach could do a spectacular rip and a great many swimmers would be pulled out to sea, including us, although we knew how to get out of them so never needed rescuing.
And let's not also forget that Loloma Beach also does a very savage and destructive
storm surge.
I do hope someone informs those nasty developers.
But this is meant to be saying a fond farewell to our beautiful beach. And also, I guess, to our wonderful childhood.
So Goodbye Loloma Beach. For over 50 years we Murphys loved you so much and you will be deeply and sorely missed.
Is it just me or does CY Leung look a lot like Bela Lugosi? Let me check this out:
Both images
are undoubtedly copyrighted!
I found them on Google.
Yes, I can definitely see it ... so indeed they do; two men who look like they were born to play characters we'll one day dress up to look like during Halloween.
I'm currently hating CY Leung so much; like a deep quiet hatred right at my core. I haven't felt this way about any leader since ...
... since ever. I grew up having a truly GREAT leader: Fiji's Ratu Mara:
6 feet 9 inches of regal elegance, noblesse oblige and downright SMARTS with his finger right on the pulse of our very best selves ... and I think it was no accident that the wonderful film "The King's Speech" was written by David Seidler, Ratu Mara's former speech writer, because anyone who ever knew Ratu Mara definitely KNEW what elements go into making a truly GREAT leader.
And I too, like David, and thanks to Ratu Mara, know what makes a great leader and I know that CY Leung definitely isn't one! The Beijing Wolf is probably the worst leader I have ever known, what with having a conniving and sly entry into the leadership position, no understanding of what makes HK people tick, a secret agenda and ...
... no ... wait a sec! ... I lived in Australia when Paul Keating was leader and, yes, that guy too was truly a dick and I hated him too in the same deep quiet way - all that calling himself "the world's greatest treasurer" and meanwhile he's making stupid economic decisions that were genuinely screwing over the people and creating poverty everywhere which he has since apologised for and admitted he was very wrong - and also don't forget that it turned out he was lining his own pockets with his secret pig farms and such - and I also decided back then that he too looked a lot like Bela Lugosi. Let's check that out too:
Ooooh, yeah!
Definitely got a Bela there!
And like CY, Paul had that conniving and sly entry into the leadership position, no understanding of what made his constituents tick, and since he always made what were ostensibly such clear-cut impossibly bad choices it's quite possible that he too had a secret agenda.
So yes, I have known bad leaders before, and so I know that CY Leung is definitely one.
The latest that's made me so cross with CY? He's stirring up such anger in HK people that we're protesting him like crazy and in recent protests HKers have taken up waving the British flag. I do have a great many photos of this, but I'll have to find them, and they're not very good anyway. Nothing iconic and worth showing in any of those many downloads.
Anyway, waving the British flag is actually meant as a signal to Beijing that we here in HK have still got the Freedoms that the British put in place before The Handover and which THEY, the Chinese Communist Party, signed: the Joint Sino-British Agreement that for 50 years we'd still have Rule of Law and Freedom of Expression, Religion, Thought, and the Rights to Oppose, Direct, Demonstrate and Demand Change.
So THAT is what the British flag means here! However this isn't how it's seen in Beijing. We now hear that the very highest ranking members of the Chinese Communist Party saw these protests and demanded CY have those flag wavers arrested for TREASON and CY had to explain to them what they had so obviously forgotten: that HK still has the Rights to Oppose, Direct, Demonstrate and Demand Change as enshrined in our Basic Law that THEY agreed to and we have their signatures to prove it.
So that's the latest: Beijing has now demanded that CY change things so Beijing CAN have HKers arrested for High Treason, which means that Article 23 is back on the table.
We can and MUST keep fighting this. The CCP's hideous Article 23 HAS to be resisted with all our might because it will definitely undercut all those Freedoms that the Joint Sino-British Declaration has in place for us FOR ANOTHER 35 YEARS!!!
Mainland China simply doesn't get it. Everything they're currently doing just says "We are sly, conniving and deeply dishonest and our word means NOTHING so don't trust us in the slightest"! Oh yeah, good one, CCP!!!! THAT'S the message you want to send when you're trying to win hearts and minds! NOT!!!!
So that's the Threatdown for this week, and it's a simple one:
Lili has just completed Round Two of "New Zealand's Got Talent" and we are waiting for the results to come in. Most fraught!
Anyway, you want to see her second performance, right?, so let me see if I can find it on youtube:
Stunning, right! All those gyrating girlies behind her and you don't even notice them. Lili has such presence and charisma, they fade into the background.
We've been talking in here about Lili for years, so it's kinda like we've taken this entire journey with her.
In fact, let me dig out that photo I showed you many years ago, that's wayyyy back in this blog somewhere:
That was when she was 17 and had gone along to her first audition and didn't know you were supposed to bring headshots ... so she raced into the bathroom and took this one of herself. Stunning, yes?
Anyway, here it is, five years later, and from the youtube clip up there you can see that she's progressed on her wonderful journey, and we've all been along for the ride.
And if you are in NZ, there is still time to vote and vote and vote and vote.
Finally the weather has cooled and I can remain in this room so perhaps I should start blogging again.
Lots of stuff has happened, and since getting back from Fiji I've done a lovely trip up to Shamian Dao in Guangzhou, and I feel most remiss for not writing more often so please forgive.
Anyway, I'll throw it open to the universe to see what I should, or shouldn't, talk about today, thus I'll open my photo program, choose a photo with my eyes shut, and either talk or not talk about it as my interest level dictates:
LOL! That looks like it should be an interesting photo but it isn't. Those are a few of the Tongan supporters at HK7s in 2010. As you know, Alisi's husband is a Tongan rugby official and so we brought along lots of red stuff and joined the Tongans in the stands to show our support for them, only ... well, you know, their team was so abjectly awful and they were playing so badly we thought it was kinder to simply slink away and leave them to their pain. As you do!
So little to say on this, perhaps another photo is in order?
OK, that's a seriously weird photo, although I really don't have a lot to say about it. This skull belongs to a person who was found buried in among Emperor Qin-Shi's Terracotta Army. They say that live humans weren't buried with him and it was only his terracotta replicas who were meant to accompany him into the afterlife, but that isn't so. They found all these weirdly deformed dead people in there too, and this is one of them. As you can see, the skull belongs to a man with a very severe harelip and no upper teeth so it's quite astonishing that such a person, over two thousand years ago, managed to grow to adulthood. There is also an arrowhead still buried behind his right ear so it's clear they killed him and thus he wasn't buried alive.
One more photo?
Ah, another photo that doesn't give us a lot to talk about: it was taken in one of the villages during our visit to the islands in the Mamanuca Group in Fiji earlier this year. This nice lady is selling goods to tourists to try to raise enough money for pay for her kiddies school fees. We bought those bracelets.
So the universe isn't giving us lots to write about today, so I guess I'm meant to be doing something else instead.
It may be autumn here in HK but you wouldn't know that by the weather. Sure, it's not as bad as it has been this summer but it's still not yet in my comfort zone. Let me check my computer dashboard and tell you what it is exactly:
29c and 75% humidity.
So that excuses me from having to think, right? That means that I'll throw it open to the universe, select a photo from my files with my eyes shut and I'll only talk about it if it's interesting:
Oh dear, that is both interesting and sad. This photo was taken in HK's wonderful and much lamented Shanghai Tang, at their flagship store on Peddar Street, back in the days before it was gazumped by The Gap and forced to hand over its entirely beautiful building to those awful awful Americans.
But that's all now history and we should be talking about this photo: those charming ladies in purple were from Shanghai Tang's bespoke tailoring section and their main job was to fit you for cheongsams, while the lady in white ... well, she was entirely a legend. She was the lovely dragon-lady in charge of the Husband-Seating Area. If ever you wanted to shop unhindered, you parked your husband with her and she'd feed him tea and oranges, just like Suzanne in the Leonard Cohen song, and keep him supplied with newspapers and magazines until you were ready to collect him again. Nice, right? And I recall she had the most exquisite little white songbird she kept in a little cage at her table.
Gosh yes, Shanghai Tang on Peddar Street was the most exquisite shop with everything done just right, and I'm so cross that David Tang went to all that trouble to save their wonderful old building just to lose it to some American multi-national.
I think The Gap has opened in there although I've never been and refuse to go anyway ... although perhaps I should if only to find out how much damage they've done to Shanghai Tang's perfectly wonderful interior.
Maybe that should be my project for today. Anything to get out of this terribly hot room.
Since it's still too hot to even be in this room, I'll just do the usual random photo thingy and only talk about it if it's interesting:
Gosh, yes, that is so very interesting. If it wasn't all so very humid in this room, I'd have told you all about it. And yes, I will do a story on it, only not right now ...
... but the short version is that the moment in HK they've got a fabulous exhibition of stuff that was found in the grave of Emperor Qin-Shi and for those folks who haven't already made the connection, we're talking about The Terracotta Warriors!
Yup, given the timing, it may be a very subtle attempt at Patriot Education but I don't care. This exhibition is entirely fabulous and amazing and very beautiful.
And see that photo there? If you stand in a certain spot in the lobby, on the nearby big screen you can see a winsy small terracotta warrior ride in on his chariot and race over to attack your leg with his sword. It's interactive too, so whatever you do to it, the winsy little man responds. It was so amazing and so much fun watching all these little kiddies kung-fu kicking the little fellow ... and that was only on one of the three screens. I got attacked by a heron myself on one of the other screens.
You know, the Pompeii Exhibit that was in HK only a few years ago won international awards for being the best exhibition EVER ... and I have to tell you that, having now been to both, this Emperor Qin-Shi Tomb one is so very, very, very much better.
And I also have to say that 'in person' those terracotta warriors are so vastly more charismatic than you'd ever have thought, and the horses ... oh gosh, you have never seen such beautiful beautiful horses. Anyway, that's all for now and you'll have to come back if you want to see all the photos I took at this exceptional and extraordinary display.
Have I got a story for you. In fact, I have lots of stories all wrapped up in this one, and yes, they all have happy endings.
First Story: You may have seen a simply gorgeous film called "Inn of the Sixth Happiness" that won an Oscar for Ingrid Bergman back before I was born, and that would undoubtedly be a classic today barring the fact it has Hollywood actors made up to look like Chinese and lots of highly racist dialogue. In fact, it's all too-too-much by today's standards and even though it is still a beautiful film, it now seems so dated that it's sadly very laughable.
OK, so that story doesn't have a happy ending, but it's the only one.
Second Story: I saw this film as a little kid and loved it. But mostly I entirely fell in love with a certain house shown in it. Great chunks of this film can now be found on youtube so let me show you only a bit of it:
That first minute. That's the house I'm talking about. The Mandarin's mansion. Gorgeous, right?
Anyway, when we were in HK back in 1968, we were on a journey up to The Peak when mum pointed ...
What we saw back then,
only not with those people in front.
... "Look, that's the Mandarin's mansion from 'Inn of the Sixth Happiness'!" and at first sight I felt the most incredible surge of excitement that anything so beautiful actually existed and felt an irresistible urge to get in there in person to check it out.
And did I? You have to wait for the happy ending to that particular story.
Third Story: this Stubbs Road mansion, known now as 'King Yin Lei', is quite extraordinary because, well, back then, in 1937 when this house was built, the Nazi Party was on the rise and not just in Germany either because all over the world mega-racism was the order of the day and this area of Hong Kong, The Peak, was Mega-Snobsville and only the very top of the British Colonial hierarchy and the very richest of the European taipans were allowed to build (Jackie Chan grew up on The Peak, by the way, but that was only because his mum was a cook at one of these mansions.)
However, in the midst of this era of uber-racism - or maybe because of it? - a Chinese lady called Mrs Shum Li was given permission to buy land up there and build her dream house, and here it is:
Certainly my dream house as well.
If you want a better look, here's the official photo of the place:
Not taken by me obviously.
She called the place "Hei Lo" and was aiming for an East-West fusion of architecture which I think she pulled off exceptionally well, and in doing so she also created here a new sort of building style that became very fashionable in HK among the very rich and thus a lot of wonderful old pre-war HK mansions are of this genre.
However in light of when "Hei Lo" was built, in 1937, right in the midst of the pre-war rising-Nazi-power era, I have to say I found this very strange:
Note the difference between the old and new tiles.
This difference was deliberate. Back to this later.
Can you see them there? The mosaics on the floor? No? Let me show them to you again:
Swastika? Seriously?
Yes, I am aware that the swastika was originally the symbol of Buddha's Wheel of Life, however I can't see how anyone back in 1937 wasn't highly aware that it had been hi-jacked by the Nazis, inverted and made to mean something entirely different. Having them all over her outdoor patios makes me extraordinarily interested in who exactly Mrs Shum Li was and what her story is.
Anyway, fusing the second and third stories, as I said I've always longed to visit this mansion but for a lot of my time in Hong Kong it was still a privately-owned home - owned by the Yeo family I heard - and it's not like you can just go up and knock on a front door requesting a guided tour, although - yeah, yeah - I have been known to do that sort of thing in the past, but NEVER when I'm not sure if the occupants speak English, so without meeting a Yeo in person, King Yin Lei was definitely off-limits to me.
Fourth Story: King Yin Lei has been much in the news for the past five years because of the terrible saga the poor house went through. And if you want to know all the details of that horribleness, you'll find it here:
But the quick story is that, in 2007, the Yeo family put Mrs Shum Li's dream home up for sale and although Hong Kong Conservation Society was begged to buy it to preserve it, that heinous toothless tiger I'm forever complaining about refused to get involved and thus the mansion was sold off to a Mainland Chinese CCP Cadre who, as it turned out, intended to tear it down to build luxury high-rise.
When the news finally leaked, our lovely SAR got on its feisty and demanded the Government do something, so Hong Kong threatened and Nasty Cadre resisted ... and during that period, with a strong urge to do something, anything, to save that mansion, even throwing myself in front of bulldozers, I spent a lot of time having afternoon teas up at Cafe 66, the revolving restaurant atop the Hopewell Building, so I could have an eagle-eye on what this nasty fellow was up to, but I missed the bit where it all turned really vicious and only witnessed the terrible aftermath.
And what I missed was the demolition team turning up and the demolishing about to start, and HK, like a posse turning up at the final moment of a John Wayne oater, rode in - finally answering the public clamour - to slap a stop-work order on the demolition in order to give itself time to decide what to do next.
Toothless tiger indeed, right?
It was their phrase in the order that talked about King Yin Lei's "pristine historical architecture" that got the Cadre going and so the moment HK thought they had him and so cleared off the scene, he ordered his still-standing-by demolition team to smash up everything in the place,
Look again at the place!
What sort of monster wants to damage this?
So wrong, right?
Seriously, everything was smashed. All those magnificent green tiles were hurled to the ground, and jack-hammers were taken to all the walls, and those decorative bits were crushed and all the mosaics were smashed with sledge-hammers. Heart-breaking, right?
However, doing this nastiness to the place didn't do the least bit of good because it threw HK into a rage and finally, finally, finally, the Government acted. Threatening Nasty Cadre with terrible repercussion, the posse was back, demanding to see the damage for itself ... and as you can see on that video clip above, they noted that "the structural skeleton of the building had not been damaged" and thus the place was save-able and so the HK Government organised a land swap with the nasty CCP Cadre so he could build his high-rise elsewhere, then on threat of prosecution ordered him to pay for the repairs and thus King Yin Lei was handed over to the HK Conservation Society to organise the entire rebuild.
My shot of the place
during the restoration.
And this is the fellow who was put in charge of the entire operation:
I don't know his name and I'm sorry about that because he turned out to be mighty and magnificent and the finished product is stunning. Let me show you:
Here's the games room after the vicious attack:
Note that Nasty Cadre even smashed
the parquetry flooring.
And here is the same room again after the restoration:
Happy ending?
Mighty and magnificent indeed, right?
I'm in awe of the amazingly apt decisions that nice fellow took, like NOT allowing the restoration to be invisible; for people to actually be able to see what was original and what was copied.
And he also made the very wise remark that it was almost - although not quite - a good thing that this viciousness had happened because it meant a LOT of research had to be undertaken into how everything was done in the first place; all skills which had been lost and which had to be relearned and thus HK now has a LOT of re-skilled artisans who can do everything that was done here back in 1937.
So this is the happy ending to Story Four! Nice, right?
But, moving away from the main narrative thrust of Story Four, if you want to know if I have any criticism of the restoration, I
have to say that, yes, I do. If you look at that film clip from "Inn of the
Sixth Happiness" the decor is entirely Chinese but if you look at
what is there now, it's all ...
... almost the entire decor is like this ...
...
kinda French Provincial rococo and I must say that King Yin Lei
deserves better because, well, this European decor doesn't really suit
it.
In fact, this games table/opium bed in the games room ...
... is probably the only Asian piece in the place and that is just WRONG.
But back from this aside to Story Three: The restoration was finished last year and I sooo wanted to see it however it simply wasn't possible ... until last Sunday when I read in South China Morning Post that there was an open-day up at King Yin Lei, so I bullied poor Keith into coming up to The Peak with me so I could fulfill that urge from 1968 and get into that wonderful mansion in person.
It wasn't easy since Keith was exhausted after an all-Saturday high school English Language tournament and simply wanted to collapse, so it took me all day working on him and it wasn't until late afternoon that he finally surrendered and agreed.
But when we finally arrived at 55 Stubbs Road, it looked like it wasn't going to happen. "Sorry, only ticket holders allowed inside." we were told at the gate.
"But ... but ... but!" I spluttered, and this wonderful fellow overheard me:
The very kindly Mr So!
"Stay here." says wonderful Mr So. "I'll see if I can get you in."
He went away and it took only five minutes and one cigarette before he was back. "You're in." he tells us.
King Yin Lei was indeed wonderful and let me show you just a few of the great many photos I took that afternoon:
Fifth Story: Now that the restoration is finished, HK Government is asking the big question "What shall we do with the place? It can't just sit there!" so part of the plan behind this open-day was to let people know and see the various suggestions folks and organisations had come up with.
Perhaps revealing what may have been his plan all along - also getting Westerners opinions of what should be done - the very kindly Mr So suggested that we too check those proposals out and let them know which one we liked best, but we can't really offer HK any real opinions because Keith and I are now in a big snit with each other because neither of us agree with each enough to answer that question.
But I will say that I'm sad that every single one of these proposals we saw involves the destruction of that rather charming swimming pool down the slope:
Does everyone want this to go?
Yeah, me too!
It's indeed lovely but those silver tiles would be
virtually impossible to keep clean.
These are a couple of samples of what folks want to do with the place:
The Ink Society put forward this plan:
The swimming pool becomes
a gallery for ink drawings.
Call me a conspiracy theorist but I see the hand of the magnificent Anson Chan behind this proposal.
The magnificent Anson Chan,
Anson Chan is currently looking for a venue to show her mother's ink drawings and since she's a THINK BIG sort of thinker I really do believe this is her idea.
Yes, I really do think her mother's drawings should be on display somewhere, and I'm not just saying that becauses I've admired Anson so much - ever since I met her at a Democracy March wearing a Juicy Couture tracksuit with pearls which was obviously her idea of how to "dress down like the people" - AND I have long loved her mother, Fang, the daughter of a Shanghai industrialist who is the very same wild Bohemian Chinese artist you're forever reading about in all those novels and autobiographies by folks who lived in Paris during the Ernest Hemingway/Gertrude Stein Epoch.
Fang was an incredible lady, and one who went on to marry, have seven kids, become a widow very young, raise all those kids single-handedly and in relative poverty, but who all grew up to be fabulous, and yet she still remained committed to Art and being an artist, so who wouldn't want to see those ink paintings she spent her life doing.
Naturally when I told Keith that any proposal put forward by Anson Chan had my automatic approval, and I too really wanted Fang's art works given a gallery they deserved, we had a big argument because he said I was being elitist and really I should be supporting the other proposal where this mansion becomes a wedding venue for regular Hong Kongers.
This is the other proposal and as you can see it's yet another assault on that swimming pool:
The wedding chapel venue!
Can you see it down there,
right where the pool is now?
That's where your wedding would take place, and after you're married
your banquet is held in King Yin Lei. Nice!
To be honest, I'm not in the least opposed to this plan as it is indeed the more democratic one, although I do have a single major objection: this proposal doesn't address what I foresee as terrible problems with parking. In a nutshell: Chinese weddings are always so very large and Stubbs Road is so narrow, winding and dangerous, and since there's no place to park within the grounds of the mansion and having guests park kerb-side would only cause accidents, the solution is going to be either the HK Government will have to buy more of this very expensive land to build a guest carpark or else it will have to organise shuttle services from a car park built down the hill maybe in the somewhat cheaper areas of Happy Valley, Causeway Bay or other non-The Peak environs, and either way both these options will end up being very very costly.
There was also another proposal but Keith and I were arguing so hard over the first two, neither of us noticed what the third one was. Nonetheless, I do have a photo:
And now that I finally look at that one closely ... are those a row of terracotta warriors down there where the swimming pool is now? That is entirely bizarre! What on earth is that about? Gosh, I'm really regretting that this proposal didn't get my attention because it's kinda mind-boggling.
So "What shall we do with the place?" remains mid-narrative and you'll have to wait to find out if Story Five has a happy ending.
And to wind up this piece by showing you the happy ending of Story Three, let's just have a shot of me finally releasing a childhood dream I had way way back in 1968:
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