Beware the Breath of the Dragon.

For the first time ever all the English newspapers shut down for CNY long weekend, which means I've been hanging out until they started up again today so I could tell you what happened with the Wong Tai Sin Fortune Stick this year.

The past two years this ceremony has been very fraught, political and anger-inducing, but I've already told you about those.

This year however we got Number 29: "It is hard to tell gods from demons but heaven and earth will eventually know."  Odd, huh? Everyone is saying it has something to do with the election of our new chief executive later this year, and, naturally since this is HK, everyone's been debating which candidate is the god and which is the demon.

It's a hard one to call because one of the candidates is Henry Tang, who is kinda "the devil we know", around forever but who we love to hate, mainly because ... well, he was on Talkback radio several years ago, chatting with a caller and said "So what do you do with your spare millions?" and when the fellow said he was a working man with no spare millions, Henry replied, in total shock, like it simply wasn't possible "What? Not even one or two?" ... which gives you some idea of why we all think he's too stupidly rich to be a good leader.

However, the other candidate we don't know and could well be "the new leader from the north" promised last year when the Chinese Communist Party hi-jacked the Wong Tai Sin ceremony, and, truly, no one wants that.

"Hard to tell gods from demons"?  Hey, has this year's stick nailed it or wot!

And what happened at the ceremony this year? Well, the good news is that a bona fide Hong Konger chose the stick; Lau, an old man who made the pick back in 2004. It's odd, yes, considering that Beijing has twice now hi-jacked the ceremony, the first time, in 2010, when a Mainland CCP cadre stepping in front of the Chosen-to-choose, pulling out a stick and reading "HK will obey Beijing" then immediately put the stick back so no one could check.  Naturally, HK was very angry and remained as feisty as ever. Then last year, 2011, a fellow chosen by Beijing chose the stick but did everything by the book so it seemed to be kosher, although the prediction read "You will have a new leader from the North." which didn't happen either, but which made everyone very cross, so I guess this year Beijing decided not risk the important place the ceremony holds in our collective psyche and thus left us alone.

Or did they?  There's a certain frisson running through that self-same collective psyche wondering if Lau has been got to or not.  And everyone is definitely saying in tones of greatest scorn "Who is this Lau fellow anyway?"  Go figure!