tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-139890072012-02-16T01:28:02.879-08:00Stephen Austinnoreply@blogger.comBlogger391100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13989007.post-68657665749974453122011-10-23T00:09:00.000-07:002012-01-02T21:13:13.606-08:00

Liu Xiaobo’s receiving of the Nobel Peace Prize ruffled feathers in Beijing. Liu’s biggest crimes in the eyes of the Beijing government is that he champions the superiority of western culture, particularly political systems. If Liu didn’t bang on so much about that, it is probable that China would not imprison him. As it is, Liu’s comment of many decades ago about China needing to be colonised

Stephen Austinnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13989007.post-87687270470703079982011-07-10T02:27:00.000-07:002011-11-02T20:44:33.252-07:00

Someone showed me a photograph she’d had taken with a well-known local singer. She was clearly disappointed as she was unable to post this picture on her Facebook page. I wondered what was exactly preventing her from doing what most people would immediately do without a moment’s thought.    Many celebrities in Hong Kong have to multitask in a number of entertainment-related disciplines. Agents

Stephen Austinnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13989007.post-44492977708883819962011-07-10T02:15:00.000-07:002011-10-05T23:04:51.741-07:00

I couldn’t bear to watch the hostage drama that came live into Hong Kong living rooms as it happened. It was like watching a rehearsal for a badly filmed and scripted swat operation with a director forced to use extras in place of professional security forces. At one point the police attempted to open a door outwards using a hammer as a kind of grapnel. The door was marked ‘push.’ What was on

Stephen Austinnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13989007.post-90577718056901953072011-03-01T17:03:00.000-08:002011-10-22T23:24:39.289-07:00

World Cup month is the time where non-soccer fans are made to feel outcasts in many countries, but no such bigotry exists in Hong Kong with its take-it-or-leave-it attitude. Here, police busted a betting syndicate and seized HK$65 million in betting slips. It was hoped that the legalisation of soccer betting here would squeeze out the illegal bookmakers.   In many countries not being a sports fan

Stephen Austinnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13989007.post-9538299379164660482011-02-28T19:17:00.000-08:002011-03-08T18:32:40.726-08:00

In January 2010, five pan-democratic Legislative Councillors resigned in an act designed to force a territory-wide by-election. The aim of the democrats was to try to force the territory further to the goal of universal suffrage, which Beijing had been effectively obstructing for years. Some might thing the term ‘obstruct’ is too harsh, given that China had been claiming to follow to the letter

Stephen Austinnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13989007.post-72958983492526822652010-11-21T17:14:00.000-08:002011-10-23T22:40:36.294-07:00

One of the distinctly original sights of Hong Kong are the faces of attractive, smartly dressed young men and women plastered on buses and various billboards. These people are not pop singers or teen idols. They are tutors at hugely popular ‘tutorial centres.’ People generally refer to the tutors as ‘celebrity tutors.’ Here the meanings of ‘tutor’ and ‘tutorial centre’ have been recast.

Stephen Austinnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13989007.post-7712532599684456322010-10-20T20:52:00.000-07:002011-10-05T00:25:40.309-07:00

It is the nature of ideas not to exist in their elemental form but for a series of thinkers to add to them and construct extensions and developments of them. These developments are frequently uncharitable, as architects of a certain agenda cherry-pick items they want to further their doctrine. The Koran for example reveals a remarkably enlightened attitude towards women considering the times,

Stephen Austinnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13989007.post-3318696135321775642010-09-13T18:57:00.001-07:002011-08-16T18:59:57.885-07:00

The anniversary of the Berlin Wall’s fall did not prompt any comment from China. It was hard not to draw parallels with the quiet time just before the toppling of Marxism in Eastern Europe, with the apparent permanence of communism in China, with that country grappling with its insistence on adhering to traditional Marxism in the face of an increasingly disgruntled and outspoken population. The

Stephen Austinnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13989007.post-6955308368674824062010-06-27T03:14:00.000-07:002011-06-30T05:11:07.761-07:00

Adam Smith noted in The Theory of Moral Sentiments: ‘Society cannot subsist among those who are at all times ready to hurt and injure one another…’   In other words, when people form a society, a bottom-up spontaneous order naturally arises, rather than anarchistic lawlessness. It is to no one’s advantage to wreak havoc on each other and trash available resources if there is ample for everyone

Stephen Austinnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13989007.post-60458018249404069232010-06-23T18:55:00.000-07:002010-06-27T00:03:01.153-07:00

Mao being revealed as not having said ‘The Chinese people have finally stood up’ on the establishment of the People’s Republic of China did nothing to dampen the celebrations of China’s sixtieth anniversary that spilled over into Hong Kong. The celebrations even went as far as an institution supposedly above politics, the Taoist Wong Tai Sin Temple. This temple complex is one of the most

Stephen Austinnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13989007.post-34959504143813605422010-06-20T20:42:00.000-07:002010-10-17T04:17:11.959-07:00

Recent support for compulsory drug testing in schools is symptomatic of extensive ignorance. Supporters of school drug testing are unacquainted with a number of facts. These enthusiasts know nothing of drugs, or the needs of people who become abusers. The test advocates know precisely nothing about the availability and ease of manufacture of narcotics, and the sophisticated, efficient and a

Stephen Austinnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13989007.post-21463727927564121172010-03-10T18:40:00.000-08:002010-04-14T04:43:20.467-07:00

To China, and more pertinently to the Communist party, the most dangerous and insidious thing that can exist is a lack of stability. This is why in some mainland films adhering to party lines the stereotypical ‘bad guy’ is a foreigner seeking to destabilize society. Making a foreigner into a scapegoat and depicting him or her as a ‘destabilising influence’ detracts from the fact that most of the

Stephen Austinnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13989007.post-28229925338130367382009-11-04T23:18:00.000-08:002009-12-31T18:47:38.978-08:00

Dissidents who have protested against China’s human rights record this year had a unique opportunity to be on Chinese soil to take part in the demonstrations against the Beijing crackdown in 1989. They are still free to enter Hong Kong; or would have been had this not been the anniversary year of the founding of the PRC or the twentieth anniversary of the massacre.  But as we saw this month, a

Stephen Austinnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13989007.post-87907376799186239082009-10-19T04:44:00.000-07:002009-10-19T05:20:43.164-07:00

With anniversaries being important to communist states, 2009 engendered mixed feelings for Beijing. The sixtieth anniversary of the creation of the People’s Republic of China, demanded huge synchronised displays of state deification, flag waving and panegyrics singing the praises of the China’s rise and naturally for the Communist Party. This was also the twentieth anniversary of the Tiananmen

Stephen Austinnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13989007.post-34651887378627548602009-07-30T01:33:00.000-07:002010-06-20T19:24:49.281-07:00

The media would have had us believe that in April this year the two genders in Hong Kong were embroiled in a contemptuous and hostile war of revilement. Men and women were disparaging each on a website and a TV show called He is Kong Girl She is Kong Boy was rubbing it in with local celebrities Edward Lam and Jim Chin. There was also a stage show that played as chat rooms and discussion forums

Stephen Austinnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13989007.post-42753943375616082842009-07-05T06:14:00.000-07:002009-09-12T23:57:51.619-07:00

The Hong Kong Education Bureau showed their usual decisiveness by entertaining the idea that creationism is taught as an ‘alternative’ to evolution. The dispute that followed this even appeared in the journal Nature, with local complaints that this had made the city a laughing stock. The Concern Group for Hong Kong Science Education mustered the support of hundreds of academics to lobby the

Stephen Austinnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13989007.post-80004013850417203312009-04-09T19:19:00.000-07:002009-04-09T20:18:35.465-07:00

Ian McKewan’s Atonement powerfully draws the reader into the world of the Tallis family, particularly Briony and Cecilia Tallis, and Robbie Turner, in England in the 1930s. The peaceful opening of the novel belies the approaching build up of sexual tension and the dreadful misunderstanding that changes the lives of the protagonists in ways they could never have envisaged. They are as unaware of

Stephen Austinnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13989007.post-17485488688181407322009-03-04T18:36:00.000-08:002009-03-04T19:42:50.298-08:00

By a quirk of the Chinese calendar, the advent of the Year of the Ox fell hard upon the western New Year this year, coming on the twenty sixth of January. The New Year approached with the city in recession and many people worrying whether they were going to find themselves laid off. Last year it was bitterly cold by our standards and this freeze up had badly stalled peoples’ homecoming trips in

Stephen Austinnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13989007.post-38442899878382859022009-01-26T22:27:00.000-08:002009-11-12T02:57:20.547-08:00

As Christmas approached people’s thoughts naturally tended toward their annual bonuses. The economic downturn overshadowed most of the anticipation people had at the prospects of a nice fat envelope at the end of the year to reward them for all their hard work.   The fact that no bonuses came this year was a particularly stingy trick for executives in boardrooms to pull. The bonuses represent

Stephen Austinnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13989007.post-77109106271861935702008-12-28T03:38:00.000-08:002009-01-05T19:33:21.177-08:00

The Halloween ‘festival’ in Hong Kong has grown from rather grubby beginnings. In the early nineties a few regular western patrons of Lan Kwai Fong, the well known ghetto of western dissipation and debauchery, would dress up in Halloween fancy dress of varying levels of quality.   There the voluptuaries would do what they usually did, drink themselves senseless but with the added enchantment of

Stephen Austinnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13989007.post-52002828439518904532008-12-17T02:14:00.000-08:002010-06-03T16:26:46.886-07:00

The city’s populace’s deep distrust for banks has contributed to a series of bank runs over the decades. Even before Hong Kong’s emergence as a financial centre in the 1970s, a run began on the Liu Chong Bank in June 1961, and it lasted for several days before the Hong Kong Bank and the Chartered Bank bailed it out. In 1965 a run on the small Ming Tak Bank escalated to take in the Canton Trust,

Stephen Austinnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13989007.post-34916336432423515532008-11-10T05:26:00.000-08:002010-06-03T16:13:54.057-07:00

China’s Olympic medalists were dragged around Hong Kong in the kind of high-pressure tour that would have been a nightmare to even the most hardened whistle-stop ‘been there, seen that, done that’ tourist. In one single day, the hapless athletes were hauled around Ocean Park and Disneyland, attended lunches and went on shopping trips, while all the time vigorously pursued by packs of

Stephen Austinnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13989007.post-13868373750966092652008-11-06T18:34:00.000-08:002008-11-09T00:23:27.144-08:00

The Taipei Post said of the Olympic opening ceremony, ‘Well-meaning Chinese have dreamed that the Games could help show China’s true face and earn the affection of foreign visitors and athletes. Sadly, it started with grim paramilitary goons in blue tracksuits accompanying the Olympic tour on its embarrassing tour of democratic countries. And now the games start with broken promises on press

Stephen Austinnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13989007.post-4847168312950252192008-09-15T19:23:00.000-07:002009-11-05T02:42:08.567-08:00

On the first of July 2003 Hong Kong got ready to celebrate its sixth year free of colonial rule. To commemorate this happy occasion, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao clinked glasses with rich and powerful figures in the Convention and Exhibition Centre in a self-congratulatory ceremony about the success of post-handover Hong Kong.   Outside in the baking heat, 500,000 citizens had other ideas about the

Stephen Austinnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13989007.post-20446480892929658502008-06-26T19:28:00.000-07:002008-07-29T22:12:02.503-07:00

The Central Policy Unit, the Hong Kong government’s information centre said the Olympic torch relay increased support for the central government among residents. It claimed a majority of residents disapproved of protests by pro-democracy demonstrators. The Unit is known for its tendency to put a positive spin on whatever the government wants it to and never responds to requests to how data is

Stephen Austinnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13989007.post-16415349005016065992008-05-04T03:11:00.000-07:002009-11-05T02:10:01.965-08:00

Just prior to the Olympic torch relay in Hong Kong, the immigration services barred entry to three human rights activists who were intending to protest during the event. One of the three was Danish sculptor Jens Galschiot, who created the Pillar of Shame, a statue that commemorates the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown. He later said he and his sons were ‘treated like criminals.’  After six hours of

Stephen Austinnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13989007.post-12483374207524859222008-05-01T01:49:00.000-07:002011-03-27T20:02:46.208-07:00

A shopping complex in Times Square, Causeway Bay became something of a centre of attention in the relatively new development of people power that emerged from the mass demonstrations against government arrogance and insensitivity to public opinion concerning the demolition of the Star Ferry Pier. Times Square has a piazza at its front that is ostensibly ‘public space.’ Various parties have

Stephen Austinnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13989007.post-33935876175786618442008-04-03T05:41:00.000-07:002011-03-09T02:15:48.909-08:00

These days the winter solstice is no longer a holiday in China or Hong Kong, but it was once. From the time of the Yin Dynasty, through the Zhou and Qin Dynasties, the Winter Solstice was considered as the first day of the New Year. By the time of the third century BC a meteorological cycle was well established in China as a calendar system. By the time of the Han Dynasty the Winter Solstice was

Stephen Austinnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13989007.post-9227283916674672432008-04-03T05:38:00.000-07:002010-03-14T03:05:46.344-07:00

In Hong Kong on eighth of November 2007 a public debate between Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee and Anson Chan Fan On-san at the University of Hong Kong attracted a lot of interest, not least for the fact that Regina Ip was visibly flustered at the rowdy nature of the meeting, especially when a student asked whether Ip would push for universal suffrage with the same zeal with which she had pursed the

Stephen Austinnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13989007.post-36783108252939870142008-02-06T20:46:00.000-08:002010-03-13T03:09:26.764-08:00

President Hu Jintao came to visit Hong Kong for the tenth anniversary of the handover to China. Predictably, he made a long and soporific speech. After sifting through the verbiage and party platitudes there was nevertheless indication that Hong Kong had got something like a thumbs-up from Beijing. Hu referred to the ‘valuable learning experience’ of the last decade. This piece of political

Stephen Austinnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13989007.post-57179602419807981342007-08-09T20:42:00.001-07:002012-02-06T19:12:01.301-08:00

On the thirty first of May a motion to calling for the commemoration and vindication of the pro-democracy protest was defeated in the legislature. Democratic Party members took turns reading out the names of the victims. This list was prepared by the Mothers of Tiananmen, a group that actively campaigns for the lives of their children. This was the ninth time this has happened since the handover.

Stephen Austinnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13989007.post-49662315910334838842007-06-10T00:38:00.000-07:002010-05-16T19:41:37.981-07:00

The sound of drums, cymbals and marching coming from Canton Road one Sunday afternoon suggested that some kind of parade was going down the street. Indeed a closer look revealed a long line of people dressed in yellow and holding banners marching down the avenue that led to the tip of the Kowloon Peninsula. The marchers were devotees of the Falun Gong spiritual movement. On Sundays and on public

Stephen Austinnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13989007.post-29069348056275873912007-05-27T02:08:00.000-07:002008-01-23T20:14:34.454-08:00

When June approaches you can usually count on the 4 June 1989 Beijing crackdown of the pro-democracy students to appear in the local media. There are many people here who want to keep the memory alive; there is a candlelit vigil in Victoria Park. In 2006 there were, according to the organisers, 44,000 attendees. The police said 19,000 came. There is always a wide discrepancy between these two

Stephen Austinnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13989007.post-27874564981179290022007-05-23T23:54:00.000-07:002008-12-17T17:37:32.837-08:00

I went down to the starting line at Tsim Sha Tsui at about 7:15. The twenty-kilometre race had just started with its contestants running up Nathan Road. The area around the Kowloon Mosque was busy with photographers and camera people. We started getting ready for the race; there were about 6,000 of us.  The MC told everyone to put their hands up to cheer. The elite runners started first, and then

Stephen Austinnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13989007.post-61074190081243948602007-05-23T22:46:00.001-07:002007-05-24T18:23:28.547-07:00

Stephen Austinnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13989007.post-72519886635640286062007-04-26T00:19:00.001-07:002007-05-24T18:23:50.425-07:00

Stephen Austinnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13989007.post-58436138416083588222007-01-29T13:01:00.000-08:002010-02-25T03:43:25.287-08:00

On the fifteenth day of the seventh lunar month, you’ll see people burning offerings on the streets of Hong Kong. These offerings are in honour of the Hungry Ghost Festival which takes place to placate dispossessed ghosts who return to earth for a month, and could otherwise be dangerous to the world. The Hungry Ghost Festival originated in India where an early Buddhist school called ‘Tendai’

Stephen Austinnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13989007.post-81261589562876751482007-01-27T02:55:00.000-08:002009-07-31T06:18:51.934-07:00

When I first arrived in Hong Kong, along with many others I looked for work. A number of options were immediately on hand; they included handing leaflets out in the street, bar work, English teaching and being a film extra. The first one was obviously for any person unqualified for anything else. Bar work required certain experience and skills, but it seemed odd that something as highly

Stephen Austinnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13989007.post-86427899118817505162006-10-24T21:47:00.000-07:002007-05-24T18:31:31.755-07:00

Stephen Austinnoreply@blogger.com0