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!

Any Old Glasses?

The Redoubtable Walkers are just back from Luang Prabang where they had a wonderful time, despite  their van being hit by a truck on a narrow mountain road, PLUS they discovered the body of a young Italian man who'd disappeared a week earlier while swimming in a river. (They reported it to authorities, then watched the local fishermen go out in a flotilla of boats to retrieve the body and, in a very touching and beautiful ceremony, reverently ferry him back to shore.) (Someone needs to put the family of this young Italian tourist in touch with the Walkers so they can hear all about it. I'm sure it would bring much comfort to them.)

All very sad and dramatic, yes,  however, that's not what I wanted to tell you. It's this:  the old eye doctor actually broke down in tears.

Yes, the elderly optomologist wept.

What happened was that when we were in Luang Prabang several years ago, we heard about an old retired optometrist working among the poor in Laos, treating eye problems gratis.  Then, back in HK, I was just about to throw out all my old glasses when I recalled this fellow, and since Lois and Paul were about to leave for a holiday in Luang Prabang, I gave all my unwanted glasses to Lois to pass on to our friend Ruth to pass on to this doctor.

Lois did so and said Ruth was grateful that someone cared about what this eye doctor was doing, and said she'd definitely see he got them.

But then I found another half dozen old pairs (gosh, I can really shop, can't I!) so - since getting donations to Laos is always so fraught - put them aside waiting for someone else to visit LP so they could be delivered personally,  and when I heard that the Walkers were about to depart for those shores, I gave her the glasses and told her about the elderly optometrist, and The Redoubtable Mrs Walker, so much more efficient than I am, passed on word among her friends and gathered many many more pairs to drop off to Ruth.

And that's what happened, and that's when Ruth told her that when she delivered my previous donation of old eye glasses (thank you Lois) the doctor actually broke down and wept in sheer gratitude.

So that's how badly this lovely now-retired optomologist needs glasses. Like how much he desperately, desperately needs them. It's because the poor of Laos have NO access to getting anything even vaguely optometrologial and the elderly among the Mhong hill tribes really do need them, and it was breaking his heart that there was really nothing much he could do to help.

So, as Ruth also told Mrs Walker, what happened to my old glasses was that the eye doctor went to the nearest poor village, drew pictures on the hands of everyone who needed a pair, and got them to try on each pair in turn and the any person who, at a distance of one foot away from their eyes, could identify what he'd drawn got to keep that pair.

And my collection of unwanted glasses hardly went any distance at all.

So please keep that in mind if you too are about to toss out your unwanted glasses. There is an old eye doctor in Luang Prabang who can be reached through Ruth who desperately needs them. However, since donations aren't generally delivered to the right people in Laos (a shamelessly "the buck stops here" kind of place.), take advantage of anyone you know who is going to LP so they can be personally delivered and that way we can know for sure that he's getting them.

Is a trip to Zhuhai in order?

Mmmm, Zhuhai? Who knew?

After dissing this little SEZ city so badly, saying there is nothing to do and absolutely nothing happens there, now it turns out it has a Furniture District, a little township full of carpenters and craftsmen who make up your furniture designs for you. 

Sounds much like Dafen, a little township in Shenzhen full of artists who paint pictures for you and sculptors who make statues for you, a place I love so much I've blogged on it many many times.

Or the leathergoods district up in Guangzhou full of folks who make handbags and shoes. Or the guitar-making district - also in Guangzhou - that Keith is crazy about.

Isn't China simply amazing the way it has all these astonishing resources all over the place?

Now I REALLY want to get back to Zhuhai to check this furniture district out. I have wanted an opium bed my whole life, and I hear they have ever so many different styles of them there.

I haven't told you, have I, about the opium bed I found in Wan Li district in Guangzhou, on the day Halley took me around to farewell her old neighbourhood that was on the verge of being torn down to make way for development?  Well, what happened was we were wandering around the back streets when we met an old man Halley once knew, who told her he was selling his opium bed for 200 yuan (A$30.00) and did her rich 'foreign devil' friend want to buy it?  I was immediately "Oh yeah! This foreign devil wants very much." so he took us inside and showed it to us and it was the very best I'd ever seen, only I didn't know how to get it back to Hong Kong so I reluctantly had to let the opportunity pass.  But ...

... when I was back in HK and told Keith, he was furious with me and said "Why didn't you just offer him HK$500.00 to be paid on delivery?" and I kicked myself because with Halley alongside as translator it would have been the work of minutes to organise the entire thing. Plus Halley knew him so he wouldn't have cheated me.  What a true idiot I am!

Anyway, despite a bargain like that probably not coming my way again, seems I can finally get myself my very own opium bed. What a pity my China Visa has lapsed or I'd go on Monday.

What Kills Us This Week!

You may have noticed that I'm not doing my "What HK is in a panic about this week" post anymore, but it's not because HK has stopped the constant Chicken-Little-ing, it's just that I've got so used to it, I'm now barely noticing anymore.

However, I just have to tell you that this week EVERYONE booked on sea cruises is cancelling thanks to the Costa Concordia accident.  It's not often that HK cares about anything that happens in the rest of the world, but this has caught their attention and everyone's using it as an excuse to Go Chicken-Little bigtime.

And since this is HK, everyone's looking for omens predicting this would happen and already stuff is making the rounds. Like this youtube clip:



You'll notice that the champagne bottle doesn't break despite several attempts, and HK is talking about how it's a dark omen that Costa Concordia was doomed to go under taking lots of passengers with it ...

... so don't you think that this should mean that rather than everyone cancelling their sea cruises they should be checking what happened to the champagne bottle at the launch of the ship that they're taking their cruise on.

Word to China.

This is un-sodding-believable.

In China Daily, the Chinese Communist Party propaganda newspaper in English, there was a story about the locals in a province of China refusing to let the Communist Party take down a Chinese stelae commemorating the Englishman who found a negotiable passage down a dangerous provincial river thus opening up the area to trade and making everyone rich. Seems this Englishman was a hero in the area and therefore they weren't going to allow the Communist Party to carry out their current historical rewriting agenda - wherein no one else foreign ever did anything to help China - on their turf.

Kudos Provincial Chinese!

It's a great story but not the one that I find so un-sodding-believable.  It's this one:

The reporter who wrote this article said he came across another amazing story about an Englishwoman,  Gladys Alyward, who worked in this area:

Seems this reporter fellow discovered that there was an English parlourmaid who so wanted to be a missionary she saved up all her wages for a decade and ended up in this self-same provincial area of China, and who ended up saving several hundred children from the invading Japanese army.

And the reporter says "This story is such a good one, it deserves to be made into a film."


Seriously? 

OK, I know China was behind the Iron Curtain for many decades, but don't they have fact-checkers up there?

A little hint to that certain Beijing journalist:  IT'S ALREADY BEEN MADE. IT WAS A SMASH HIT. OSCARS WERE WON.
It's called "The Inn of the Sixth Happiness" and it's just gorgeous. 



PLUS the entire film is now up in youtube so there's no excuse for Chinese not to know about it.

So please, Beijing fact-checkers, please take it onboard so you don't let any reporter say anything so silly again.

Oh, and aren't you waiting with bated breath for the opening of the film "Flowers of War."?