I’m sitting looking
out over the harbor. A harbor
filled with working boats, ferries, excavation vessels, small tankers, or to
put it slightly differently; there are no pleasure craft, which is the only
craft you see these days in the Hudson from Riverside Drive or in the SF Bay
from Telegraph Hill. Hong Kong
Harbor is shrinking, certainly.
Perhaps the distance has been halved in the days since Jardine first
started unloading his chests. But
with no bridge to span Central and Kowloon the water itself can’t be ignored,
the way, perhaps the East River between Brooklyn and Manhattan can be.
There’s a fact to confirm: From memory I’d say this distance
the Star Ferry now has to traverse from Central to Tsimshattsui, is still wider
than the East River, which say, the Williamsburg Bridge must span. It is definitely narrower though, than
the Hudson is over on the west side. I will consult maps when next on line.
Hong Kong has arguably advanced the mall to its furthest
point. And this point, jutting
ever further out into the harbor is the IFC, which, for now is the SAR’s final
word on mall. It is predetermined
that every time I visit Hong Kong, I will buy things here. I bought things here today.
I have in front of me, an unobstructed view sitting at this
lunch counter out over to Kowloon.
There is, of course, the man with the water bottle and cigarette sitting
across from me on the ebony bench.
The abandoned can standing there, with a yellow wrapper, off to the
man’s right. Regardless, I can see
for miles. Below me, before I sat
down, I spied an ominous site.
What had been park space has been turned into a construction site. That’s now between this view and the
harbor. For a brief moment I felt
sorry for all the establishments here and what might befall their tailor-made view. But in this town, I don’t think even Li
Kashing could defend a view. New
things go up. Period. To 登高望远 [1] is temporal and indefensible.
It’s hot here though.
The aircon is blasting but the doors are open to the balcony so there is
humidity regardless. Putting big
fat speaker cushions on your ears or hot brick cell phones up to you fleshy
cheeks is not a good way to cool off either. Syd Barrett has come on. There’s a friend. “Octopus.” 1969. Well. I can remember figuring this song out when I was twenty or
so. It’s like a circus act that
spins and spins ever more dangerously at a tilt but still, never falls over. Till he does. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syd_Barrett
Perhaps you can discern. It isn’t half the fun without his delivery:
Trip to heave and ho, up down, to
and fro', you have no word
Trip, trip to a dream dragon,
hide your wings in a ghost tower
Sails cackling at every plate we
break
Cracked by scattered needles the
little minute gong coughs and clears his throat
Madam you see before you stand,
hey ho, never be still
The old original favorite grand,
grasshoppers green Herbarian band
And the tune they play is
"In Us Confide"
So trip to heave and ho, up down,
to and fro', you have no word
Please leave us here, close our
eyes to the octopus ride!
Isn't it good to be lost in the wood
Isn't it bad so quiet there, in
the wood
Meant even less to me than I
thought
With a honey plough of yellow
prickly seeds
Clover honey pots and mystic
shining feed
Well, the madcap laughed at the
man on the border, hey ho, huff the Talbot
"Cheat" he cried
shouting kangaroo, it's true in their tree they cried
Please leave us here, close our
eyes to the octopus ride!
Please leave us here, close our
eyes to the octopus ride!
The madcap laughed at the man on
the border, hey ho, huff the Talbot
The winds they blew and the
leaves did wag
They'll never put me in their
bag, the seas will reach and always seep
So high you go, so low you creep,
the wind it blows in tropical heat
The drones they throng on mossy
seats, the squeaking door will always squeak
Two up, two down we'll never
meet, so merrily trip forgo my side
Please leave us here, close our
eyes to the octopus ride!
Connaught Road here, leaving the IFC. That’s a tough name for a road in a
British colony wouldn’t you say? Why
name it after one of the four regions of Ireland? Why are there Connaught Roads all over the former
Empire? Isn’t there a Connaught
Circle in New Delhi? But you never
run into roads or circles called Leinster or Munster much, do you? Of the four
sections of Erie why is this one prefaced so? Oliver Cromwell of course damned the Irish to piss off to
“Hell or Connaught” and this is what comes to mind when I drive down Connaught
Road in Hong Kong. What did it
mean in 1870 or so when it was probably first Christened as such? Just another part of Her Majesty’s
dominions? I suspect its referencing
more than just the territory itself and perhaps I’m wrong.
This was a rapid in and out of town. Now I’m to close the loop on this newfound
means of traveling from the Shenzhen airport to Hong Kong. In an hour or so I need to head to the
Shun Tak building and go find “bus to Shenzhen Airport”. (I’ll let you know now, later, that one
shouldn’t trust the estimated time of 90 minutes for the ride back to catch a
plane. Immigration was a mess, and
I’ll definitely need to change to a later flight . . . Later still, the flight
was delayed! )
Hong Kong cabs, Cantonese default. Hong Kong forces a different sort of timid politeness from
me. I always need to ask if
someone’s Mandarin or their English are better. I ask it in Mandarin.
One of two responses:
“What?” or “Guo yu keyi.” Then,
if the latter and I continue in Mandarin and I muse about whether they see me
somehow as mainlander-associated, a representative of all the changes that have
come over the Hong Kong people and their perception of the nation over the last
twenty years. However if they
speak English, my thoughts usually go to just what a Cantonese mother tongue
does to the way you shape English words.
It is a stereotypical archetype that kind of always sounds funny.
I was marveling this morning at my engagement with a front
page article in the New York Times on the destruction of a state sanctioned
church in the prosperous, trading powerhouse of Wenzhou, in southern, coastal,
Zhejiang. That’s one place I’ve
never been that I’d like to experience. At first read, I thought, this is an area where the
CCP may have really overstepped themselves. This because while their aversion to Christianity may be understandable,
they have not reclaimed the ground necessary to explain to 1/6 of the world the
question of eternity. The Party is
about this life. Tread lightly
trying to reckon with the rest.
The Party can only rather imperfectly claim a fullness of moral
certitude. The CCP is a
“party” that can only really claim one of the two “C”s,. Something has to
replace the second C. And Confucio-Daoist,Budhist, I-Ching=Chinese Faith’s a
tricky business to properly claim.
And international faith, which isn’t in any way “Chinese”, is even
trickier.
Now, why am I thinking this way? Well, the NY Times has older Zhejiang ladies in earnest
prayer on the cover. It obviously
feels like they are defenseless and it is unfair. Perhaps they are, perhaps it is. And they make the point that the reporters uncovered that
despite what has been said officially, a classified document obtained,
suggested the authorities intention was to cut back on the public expression of
Christianity in particular. This was the only faith being persecuted this way. Guidance was to remove all visible
sights of religious expression from the highways, which would be
understandable, if you wanted to hedge back on all faiths equally, as say Mao
did, but the only symbols they wanted removed from site were crosses.
And with a step back you wonder, to what extent have I been
manipulated into thinking this is a fundamental schism between religious freedom
and state authority, or is this a local matter, wherein an official took a
bribe and let local residents build something rather large and then, when told
to reign it in, it becomes an internationals incident? Simple fact is, the Party does see
Christianity, in almost any form, as a unique challenge to its authority in a
way no other religion registers.
China worked at accommodating Buddhism for roughly two millennium and reckoned
with Islam for nearly three quarters that time. Is the particular quality of the Christian faith, the
teachings themselves, somehow more subversive than say Islam? Is it just a legacy matter of
imperialism that gives Christianity a unique volatility? Or is it just good copy for half the
U.S. population? One wonders where
the first significant pushback to Xi’s muscular agenda will come from.
[1] dēnggāowàngyuǎn: to stand tall and see far (idiom);
taking the long and broad view / acute foresight
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