I’ve said it before (and I’ll probably say it again), Martin Scorsese is one of the directors I admire most.  But it’s his “early work” – Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, The Last Waltz, King of Comedy, New York New York (yes, I even love this one), Raging Bull, Goodfellas, Casino, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Any More, Last Temptation of Christ. I have, to one extent or another, felt let down by every fiction film he’s made in the past 15 years.  I’m glad he’s survived, I’m glad he’s now loved and respected, but recently I’ve been more interested in his documentaries and film preservation work.  With every new film, I cross my fingers, make a wish, and go … hoping ….

But I never would have expected that he would make a film that would rank among his best and that such a film would be … a family film … starring kids …. in 3D.

And then I saw Hugo.

“I’d imagine the whole world was one big machine. Machines never come with any extra parts, you know. They always come with the exact amount they need. So I figured, if the entire world was one big machine, I couldn’t be an extra part. I had to be here for some reason.”

Hugo is several films rolled up in one.  In its first hour, it’s the tale of an orphan in Paris circa 1931.  Hugo Cabret’s father, a watchmaker, dies in a fire.  His uncle drags him off to Montparnasse station and teaches him to take care of all the clocks there and then abandons him.  Hugo lives inside the walls of the station, observing what goes on every day, stealing bits of food, his only companion a broken robot that his father found on a trash heap and was trying to repair.  Hugo is convinced that if he can repair this robot it will give him a message from his father.  (Sounds almost like Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, eh?)  Django Reinhardt plays guitar in a quintet in a cafe in which Salvador Dali sits sketching.  (Sounds almost like Midnight in Paris, eh?)

The people in the station that he watches include the Station Inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen), a book seller (Christopher Lee), a newsstand dealer (Richard Griffiths), a cafe owner (Frances de la Tour), and a toy shop owner (Ben Kingsley).  (Jude Law plays his father and Ray Winstone his drunken uncle. Michael Stuhlbarg plays a film professor.)  Hugo is portrayed by Asa Butterfield and Chloe Grace Moretz is the girl who becomes his friend.

And it’s the toy shop owner who provides the film with its purpose because he is none other than Georges Melies. His films have been destroyed, he is forgotten by the public that once adored him and thought dead, he spends his days sitting in a shop in an obscure corner of the station, existing only for his wife and god-daughter, a broken and bitter man.

So the second half of the film builds his legend, presents re-enacted scenes from his films and is basically a plea for film preservation, all done in a family-friendly, heart-warming way.

Trust me, I haven’t come close to trying to explain just how magical all of this is.  And magic it is, indeed.  Scorsese brings all of his prodigious technique to this film, together with the great cinematographer Robert Richardson, Scorsese’s long-time brilliant editor Thelma Schoonmaker, a score by Howard Shore, seamless digital effects.  It’s completely real life (aside from one dream sequence) and yet it plays out like a fairy tale.  Who knew that Scorsese could tug on one’s heartstrings so artistically?

I’ve now watched the film twice – first in 2D and honestly, you won’t miss out if you only see it this way.  My second viewing was 3D and the 3D definitely enhances the experience but probably most important is to see it the one way I haven’t – on a really big screen.  The film finally opens in HK this week Thursday and I’m seriously considering going to see it again.

Hugo has received the most Academy Award nominations this year – 11.  Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume Design, Editing, Original Score, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing, Visual Effects.

I’m sure there are going to be some people who won’t “get” this film, who will be bored in the second half when we see clips from Melies’ surviving work, when the film professor teaches the kids about the early history of cinema and explains to the audience what went into rescuing these films.  And that’s a shame.  I basically loved every second of this film from start to finish and I can’t think of the last time I said that about a Scorsese film.

Look, go see it, I guarantee you the first ten minutes, the bravura opening sequence, it will blow you away.

So I’ve now seen 7 of the 9 films nominated for the Oscar this year.  The Artist, The Descendants, The Help, Hugo, Midnight in Paris, Moneyball, The Tree of Life.  I haven’t seen Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close,  War Horse.  I still think that Tree of Life should be rewarded for being so wildly ambitious but I don’t think it stands a snowball’s chance in hell of winning.  People seem to think The Artist is a shoo-in and I loved it but it’s simply not as ambitious or as emotional as Hugo – it does have a cute dog, it makes you smile, I won’t mind if it wins.  I just have this sinking feeling that The Help might win.  Feh.

Addendum: meant to add this last night – I think there’s a very conscious irony to this film that adds to its appeal.  The irony is that it’s a $170 million budget film with state of the art computer effects and 3D all in tribute to someone who made hundreds of black and white silent films probably on a budget of a few dollars per film.  I don’t detect any specific “winks” to this effect in the film but probably they’re there and I just haven’t spotted them yet.

Two small things, maybe someone will get a chuckle, maybe not, but what the hell.

#1 – I hate my work laptop and I never bring it home with me.  I just dump files back and forth using Dropbox.  At home, for some reason, I never bothered to get MS Office for my desktop PC but I did buy it for my MacBook Air.  I spent a good part of Sunday working on a report for work.  I saved the file into the Dropbox folder, made certain it was there, and then closed the cover on the MBA.  Yeah, you can probably guess what happened.  I got into work on Monday morning, went to open the file and found that it was the version from Saturday, when I’d hardly done any work on it at all.  I hadn’t waited for Dropbox to sync before shutting down the MBA.  Oh no!  Would I have to travel all the way home and back to get the proper file?  Would I have to redo from memory all the work I’d done on Sunday?  Nope.  I called my helper.  Told her to lift the lid on the MBA and make sure the screen came on.  One minute later, Dropbox synced and I had the file.  Just a cautionary tale for anyone who might need it.

#2 – After work today I was going to meet a friend at his office.  I hopped into a taxi and in my miserably toneless Cantonese told the driver Wanzai Bok.  Of course, me being white, he thought I said “Wanchai Bar.”  When I looked up from my Crackberry, instead of seeing Harbour Road I saw he was headed down Queensway past Pacific Place and asking if he should make a left turn down Arsenal Street.  ”No, Wanzai Bok!”  ”Yes, Wanchai Bar!  Lo Hart Do!  Happy Hour!  Girls!”  ”Not Bar.  Bok. Wanchai North.  Bok.”  ”Oh.  So sorry.  So sorry.  Sorry monkey.”  Yes, I could swear he said “sorry monkey.”  However I’m not sure if by “monkey” he was referring to himself or to me.  I suspect it was me.

Year after year, the Hong Kong Arts Festival brings a parade of great artists to Hong Kong, most of whom probably wouldn’t appear here if not for whatever voodoo it is that the festival does to get them here.  Among this year’s shows, 2 nights with Dr. John and the Lower 911.  Of course, the good Doctor did not disappoint.

I had to look it up – Mac Rebbenack aka Dr. John is now 71 years old.  He’s been recording since he was a teenager doing studio work down in New Orleans.  (The last time I saw him live was in Boston around 1973 or 74.) His most recent albums have focused on the post-Katrina New Orleans and he’s also showed up in the TV series Treme, so it’s probably fair to say that 50+ years into his career, he’s the closest thing to being famous as he was back in the early late 60s and early 70s when his records got played on the radio and he had a couple of hits.  But you don’t go to see Dr. John because he’s “famous,” you go because the man is a truly unique performer, not just a legend but a walking encyclopedia of multiple genres that get too little attention these days.

His set certainly reflected where he’s been.  He kicked off with It Don’t Mean A Thing If It Ain’t Got That Swing, followed by I’ll Be Glad When You’re Dead You Rascal You.  We got New Orleans classics like Tipitina and St. James Infirmary.  We got his two biggest hits, Right Place Wrong Time and Such a Night (loved when he ended that one with a bit of Rhapsody in Blue tossed in).  There was blues, there was rock, there was jazz, there was soul – it was, in short, The Real Deal.

And while I’m at it, I should raise a glass to The Lower 911, Dr. John’s backing band.  David Barard on bass, John Fohl on guitar, Raymond Weber on drums – these guys were able to follow their leader wherever he went.  The Doctor of course gave a master’s course in piano, occasionally switching to the Hammond B-3 and even cutting loose on guitar on a Champion Jack Dupree song.  The program said that the running time would be about 90 minutes but it was closer to 105 – and it started almost exactly at 8, meaning that there were quite a few late arrivals in the audience.  He almost never spoke to the audience – a couple of times intro’d a song by mentioning the songwriter and introducing his band towards the end.

I only wish I had some better photos to share with you.  The HK Cultural Centre seems to be one of the few venues where the ushers are actively going after people with cameras.  I had no way to adjust settings, just set to “P”, cover the back LCD screen, point the camera, click, drop it down out of sight again.

And speaking of the HK Arts Festival bringing in the kinds of stuff we don’t otherwise get in HK, tonight’s little program booklet mentions some of the stuff that I guess has been confirmed for the 2013 festival.  One of the items on this list makes me very happy indeed – Einstein on the Beach!  The only Philip Glass opera I’ve ever seen is Satyagraha, which was transcendent; I’ve always wanted to see this one on stage.

I know, you thought this was going to be about Chris Brown, who took home two Grammy Awards over the weekend and used the occasion to tweet to the world that those who haven’t forgiven him for beating the crap out of Rihanna should just fuck off because now he’s won 2 Grammys.  But it’s not.

And it’s not about Mitt Romney, whose candidacy for the Republican nomination for President of the United States may have hit an insurmountable snag when he proudly told the world that on a family trip 20 years ago, he put the family dog in a crate strapped to the top of the car while they drove for 12 hours.  Not sure if this part is true but I did read somewhere that every now and then he’d have to stop and hose off the car because the terrified animal’s “business” was running down the sides of the car.  Because you see in America you’re free to abuse poor people all you want but don’t get on the wrong side of PETA.  But it’s not about Romney either.

Nope, this is about the continuing saga of Henry Tang, the man who felt that Beijing should just hand him the post of Chief Executive of Hong Kong on a silver platter and be done with it. Apparently the fact that he’d not only been cheating on his wife – a lot! – and may have had kids outside of his marriage was quite okay.  The fact that he was treating the fake election as a fake election and not even bothering to have a platform or policies was quite okay.  Nope, his “candidacy” is getting derailed because it was discovered that his house in Kowloon Tong has an illegal 2400 square foot basement.

So let’s see his leadership qualities in this.  Let’s see how macho he is.  What does he do?  How will he, ahem, dig himself out from under this?

“It was my wife’s idea …”

The SCMP reports that “the disclosure may leave [Mrs. Tang], who admitted masterminding what many are calling an “underground palace”, facing criminal charges over the illegal works.”

“There were inner struggles in my heart. On the one hand I wanted to give the full picture, but on the other hand I did not want to implicate my wife,” said Mr. Pussy Tang.

Dude should have just copped to being Superman and saying, “Hey, I own the place, I need a Fortress of Solitude so I have a place where I can contemplate how I can best use my super powers for good rather than evil.”  Nope.  Instead he just kind of looked at the ground, shuffled his feet a little bit and muttered, “I didn’t do it, it was HER!”

The good news is that this nimrod might actually have to pull out of the race to win an election that isn’t an election.

The bad news is that Regina Ip has announced she might throw her wig hat into the ring.

I suppose it doesn’t really matter who gets “elected” Hong Kong’s next Chief Executive.  Regardless of who becomes our next C.E., Hong Kong’s future is clear – it is destined to become a shopping mall and public toilet for billionaires from Shenzhen driving through to get to the Hong Kong-Macau-Zhuhai bridge.

UPDATE:  Not that I really had any doubts but it looks like I’m not alone in my assessment of Henry Tang’s character.  Just grabbed this from Facebook:

This story is horrible on so many different levels.

This year is the Bank of China’s 100th anniversary.  To commemorate this milestone, they printed up 1,100,000 special HK$100 bills.  The bills are only available at Bank of China Branches and cost HK$150 each.  They are also selling uncut sheets with varying amounts of bills.  The bills went on sale on Monday and insanity followed.  Reports were that collectors and speculators would buy these $100 bills for up to HK$1,000.  Reportedly these would fetch even higher prices across the border.  You can probably guess what happened.  Lines formed around every branch of Bank of China in Hong Kong.

Tuesday morning when I got to Sheung Wan, the line for the local branch was at least 3 or 4 blocks long.  The police were at a total loss as to how to deal with this and kept trying to re-route the lines down different streets.  Here’s what the scene looked like around lunch time.

The Standard reported that some guy went down the line in Central and paid people for their “right to buy” tickets, spending HK$70,000, only to be told that the tickets would only be honored by the people they were originally handed out to and not to him.  I have trouble believing this.

By the afternoon, they had people lined up from Des Voeux Road down Hillier Street, then all the way down Wing Lok Street, and finally snaking around in loops in Grand Millennium Plaza.

Well, let’s do the math.  $100 bill that you pay $150 for.  You can buy two.  $300, turn around and sell them for somewhere between $1200 and $2000.  So that’s somewhere between US$117 and US$221 in profit for standing online for at least 4 hours if not all day.  Obviously several thousand people found that a worthwhile thing to do with their time.  Is it greed? Poverty? Lack of anything better to do?  Probably a little bit of each.

And what about the venal bastards at Bank of China running this promotion?  Are they going to claim that they had no idea that this would be the result?  Impassible streets, residents and shops inconvenienced, rampant speculation and who knows what else?  Hello? iPhone 4s?  Snoopy?  The whole thing vaguely reminds me of the obscure film, The Magic Christian, in which Peter Sellers and his son Ringo Starr go to improbable lengths to prove what greedy bastards the British are.  I recall the climax was when they put a thousand gallon vat into the center of London, filled it to the brim with animal shit and urine, and then dumped buckets of money in, watching as the bankers, in their three-piece suits, jumped and dived in to get at the money.

(By the way, if you’ve never seen Magic Christian, it’s not a great film but well worth seeing.  Aside from Peter Sellers and Ringo Starr, the cast included:  Wilfred Hyde-White, Richard Attenborough, Laurence Harvey, Christopher Lee, Spike Milligan, Raquel Welch, Roman Polanski, John Cleese & Graham Chapman (pre-Python), Yul Brynner. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll kiss five bucks goodbye.)

Finally on Tuesday afternoon a voice of reason appeared.  The Standard reported, “The Hong Kong Monetary Authority yesterday demanded the Bank of China restore public order as the frenzy over the bank’s commemorative banknotes reached a new high on the second day.”

At the very minimum, the government should force the Bank of China to pay the bill for the police and for the subsequent clean-up.  As if.

The top mobile phone companies in Hong Kong all offer a monthly plan to mobile phone subscribers with unlimited data usage for HK$398 per month.  (That’s roughly US$52.)  But apparently the word “unlimited” has a different definition than the one most of us have come to know and accept.

So in November, HK’s Office of the Telecommunications Authority (OFTA) issued new guidelines that stated, in part:

• Find out whether the “unlimited Internet usage” service plans claimed by mobile network operators are subject to the “Policies”, i.e. whether users can really enjoy unlimited usages under reasonable restrictions.

In other words, some of the mobile companies were selling unlimited plans that really were unlimited in name only.  So when OFTA issued these new guidelines, which in effect said, “hey, people, read the terms and conditions of the contracts you’re signing!” the mobile companies initially responded by saying that they would no longer offer unlimited data plans.

Yesterday was set to be the last day that SmarTone would offer unlimited data plans and their shops had long lines with people looking to renew their contracts while they still could.  Or so they thought.

Because today SmarTone announced that they would continue to offer unlimited data plans.  Which introduces the notion that this is some new form of gonzo marketing targeted to Hong Kong’s herd mentality – tell people something will no longer be available, creating artificial demand, profit from that demand, and then announce that it will still be available.  Apparently this is legal.

Anyway, the mobile operators all announced essentially the same policy – unlimited data but once you reach a certain threshold in a month, you will get “lower priority to access the network for the remainder of that billing period.”  In other words, they’re going to follow the US model and throttle heavy users.

The mobile companies say that only 15% of their users ever exceed 2 gig of data in a month.  I just took a look on my iPhone and I see that I have only consumed 270 meg in the past 3 months.  I’m not streaming video on my phone and rarely need to use Google Maps while on the go; mostly I’m getting emails and tweets and weather reports.  My iPad is WiFi only and most of the time I’m too lazy to tether the iPad to the phone.

But still, “unlimited” should mean “unlimited” and not “we’re gonna slow your download speed to molasses if you actually take us up on our offer and use our services a lot.”

The Grammys must qualify as the second most bizarre American awards show (after the Golden Globes, ‘natch).  Often the nominations make little sense, let alone the actual awards.  One reason to watch, I suppose, is the outfits that some of the stars choose to wear.

Actually this year I have no complaints about the big winner – Adele, who took home 6 trophies.  If you’re gonna give awards to a big selling album, hers is a pretty good one.  And for once, no complaints about the best new artist award, which this year went to Bon Iver, who’s not exactly new but did reach new levels of acclaim last year.  I found some of the genre awards quite reasonable, including:

Country Performance by a Duo or Group – The Civil Wars “Barton Hollow”

Large Ensemble Jazz Album – Christian McBride “The Good Feeling” (on the other hand, an award category called Improvised Jazz Solo strikes me as exceedingly strange)(winner this year is Chick Corea)

Blues Album – Tedeschi Trucks Band “Revelator”

Bluegrass Album – Alison Krauss “Paper Airplanes”

Americana Album – Levon Helm “Ramble at the Ryman”

Folk Album – Civil Wars “Barton Hollow”

Comedy Album – Louis C.K. “Hilarious”

Historical album – the deluxe reissue of Band on the Run.  Really?  I don’t think this made any critics’ lists of best reissues of the year.  Beach Boys “Smile” anyone?  (Not even nominated)

Best Box or Limited Edition Package – The Promise, Darkness on the Edge of Town Story (can never complain when something Bruce-related wins though honestly, again, Smile, or maybe Achtung Baby would have been better choices)

Oh well.  See the full list of winners here (if you care).

Yes, you all know by now, Whitney Houston is dead.  She was a great singer, great voice, beautiful, talented.  All these people moaning about “what a great loss it is”, I guarantee you none of them bought a Whitney Houston record in the past ten years, unless it was one of many compilations released to keep making some money off a once-great performer whose life spiraled out of control.  You either liked her or you didn’t or perhaps you didn’t even know who she was (or maybe think it’s a cool pose to say you didn’t).  Whatever.  The tributes will flood, more greatest hits albums and remix albums and live albums, screenings of her films, so on and so forth.  Listen and watch if you care, ignore if you don’t.

What bugged the crap out of me was the second raters on CNN on Sunday afternoon, forced to devote all the air time to her passing and clearly not good at improvisation.  Within an hour I heard at least 5 times how amazing it was that her rendition of the national anthem became a single (with two minutes of comparison to Kelly Clarkson’s version).  Then it went even further downhill.  They got Larry King on the phone.  ”Larry, what do you think about all of this?”  Who could possibly give a rat’s ass what Larry King thinks about this?  And then even further downhill when they got that massive talent, Jermaine Jackson – live on the phone from Istanbul! – for a good miserable five minutes – though it seemed like an eternity.  Then interviewing nobodies on the street.  ”Oh, I’m so sad.” “Oh, my favorite song was I Will Always Love You.”  I mean, come on, this is a global network, all the power and muscle of Time Warner behind it, struggling to maintain second place ratings behind Fox Fake News, and this was all they had?

The only thing I could do at that point was switch off cable and put on a movie.  We Need to Talk About Kevin.  It’s directed by Lynne Ramsay and it’s her first feature film in almost a decade.  It stars Tilda Swinton and John C. Reilly as the parents of the devil.  Well, not quite the devil, but from birth on Kevin hates his mother and makes her life hell until, right before his 16th birthday …. [SPOILER!] he goes on a killing spree.  (Maybe not that big a spoiler, almost every review of the film mentions this.)

It’s impressively acted, shot and edited.  The opening sequence, I lost track of how long it lasts, 15 minutes or more, cuts back and forth across time, making little sense on the surface but it’s impressionistic.  For some reason it reminded me of Gaspar Noe’s films or at least his style.  The narrative never settles into a conventional chronological tale but keeps jumping around- albeit a little bit slower and with more dialogue – till the meant-to-be-shocking climax.  The thing for me was, despite it’s being so incredibly well made, it didn’t add up to much.  All this talent, all this technique, all this art – applied to what’s really little more than a standard horror story that doesn’t get tied into any greater truth.  It’s too arty to be drive in fare but the script refuses to reach deeply enough to make any psychological or sociological point.  I admire the hell out of Ramsay and Swinton and Ezra Miller (the teenage Kevin) but can’t bring myself to admire this film.

Oh, btw, despite my promise to myself to never watch another Lars Von Trier film, I did finally watch Melancholia.  And I made it all the way through.  It’s weird, those first 5 minutes or so, such lushly gorgeous images out of the reach of most directors, followed by a film that’s mostly jerky hand-held camera, telling a relatively silly story.  I guess those first 5 minutes sucked me in and a great cast – Kiefer Sutherland, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Stellan and Alexander Skarsgard, John Hurt, Udo Kier (!) – but I suppose I can admit that mostly it was because I knew Kirsten Dunst had a couple of nude scenes.  And yes, she did look quite okay, but all the same, if I could get back that 2-1/4 hours of my life, I wouldn’t complain.

…. catching up on more Oscar nominated films …. The Descendants, loved it but not as much as Sideways …. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, only great if you already know the story, but I’m now rooting for Gary Oldman for the best actor oscar, which he won’t win …. The Artist, well worth your time and it should put a huge smile on your face unless you’re a complete philistine ….

Lunch today, at a place called Zheng Zong Yun Gui Chuan – the last three letters because this wonderful little hole in the wall at 123 Jervois Street serves Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan food.  Not much to see from the outside (or inside, for that matter) but they do display a menu translated into English with some photos.

My gf ordered what the menu said was their signature dish.  Basically it’s cold poached chicken, Hainan style, but buried under a mess o’ chili.  She could have ordered it with rice or noodles but for some reason she wanted it on its own.

I went for a bowl of soup.  Their soups start at $21 for just the (chicken) soup & the noodle.  Of course there are several types of noodles, lots of things you can add in and you can also specify several different degrees of heat for the soup.  I went for the regular noodle (they also have some kind of noodle made from sweet potato flour – guess I’ll try that next time), medium spicy, with fish slices (bits of real fish, not that processed fish cake stuff) and pork dumplings.

For me it was a comfortable degree of heat – I didn’t want the top of my head blowing off at lunch time.

As I suspected, a peek into the kitchen revealed this:

You may find it interesting to note that the one English language review on OpenRice is a total rave – and the writer does seem to know what she’s talking about.  The overall ratings for the place are poor – 1 good vs. 3 OK vs. 5 not good.  Google does a pretty miserable job in translating the Chinese reviews.  An example – “Well tasty chicken quite shoesmeals paper of the worst thing to ban all one, asked him whether the tissue, even to speak with you +3 mosquito .. ……. + a packet of fixed +3 mosquito mosquito style Gangster transferred frozen drink with the meal … +3″  And “Ganji Department are a few would like to ask a few hot, the last pick left big hot!! have left a few minutes ride something to eat first, shop kittens 23, left a bit like resistance!”

I have no idea what those folks were on about.  I’ll definitely return.

I am increasingly of the opinion that the animosity between “mainland locusts” and “Hong Kong dogs” is a serious issue.  I don’t think it will go away.  Oh, it may fade out of the news for awhile, but it will surely come back again.  And again.  Because the simple truth is, there is no way that Hong Kong can win this one.  No way.  China won’t intercede, or if they do, if they start running ads somewhere saying “be nice to the Hong Kong dogs,” it will be a half-hearted attempt.  And the crappy excuses we have called “the Hong Kong government” can’t go against China, they can’t and even if they could, they wouldn’t.  So the only resolution would be if Hong Kongers kept their mouths shut, kept their opinions to themselves and learned to love their mainland brethren, or at least pretend to, because there is no other possible outcome.  Hong Kong secede from China?  As if.

As I wrote to a friend earlier today, I see definite parallels with Tibet.  The Chinese government actively encouraged Han Chinese to move to Tibet.  They gave them all kinds of incentives with the notion that if Tibet looked more Chinese, if it sounded more Chinese, it would eventually become more Chinese.  50+ years later, nope, still hasn’t happened.

My friend is someone who has lived in mainland China for the past 15 years and has traveled extensively throughout the country.  I think his opinion is as valid as anyone else’ on the topic, if not more so.  Here’s some of what he wrote back to me.  (He’s asked me to not use his name in the post but otherwise given me permission to quote him.)

Re HK/mainland – it’s very significant. HK has an important role to play in the future of China. The view of many – that I have argued against – that HK is being turned by the commies, is simply not true. there is a fundamental cultural/social difference that is growing not shrinking, and Legco elections etc are not a reliable gauge of the state of play.

Prof Kong’s comments are enormously important – he’s Peking University, and these people are very sensitive to speaking within accepted parameters. i.e. his comments reflect a position beyond himself within the ruling class.

There is a connection here to what is happening in Tibet, another place where the party thought they could bring pressure to bear and things would eventually fall their way. It seems I was wrong on Tibet – I used to say the Dalai Llama would one day die and it was game over. I think it’s going to be more complicated than that.

The background to all this is two issues – the party’s incapability of doing respect, to anyone or to any entity, and the power of the Internet to provide transparency.

There is a confluence of issues raising pressure on the party at the moment. How it plays will be fascinating.  They are smart, but they are more selfish than smart, so I would expect them to make more and more mistakes. Watching developments is more fun than TV.

I’d like to write more on this topic but, frankly, I’m just too tired tonight.  So in the meantime, let me just direct your attention to new-ish blog Dictionary of Politically Incorrect Hong Kong Cantonese.  What this guy is doing is taking all the various stuff from HK newspapers, Youtube, Weibo, Facebook and other sources and translating it into English.

Read this stuff and try to convince me that this is something that will just blow over.  Oh, there may be some pauses, some times when everyone is united in their hatred for the Japanese or the Americans, but this will return, again and again.  ”Hope for the best, expect the worst,” as they sang in the Mel Brooks movie The Twelve Chairs, and I suppose to many non-Chinese, there is a kind of Mel Brooksian feeling to this entire thing.  Surely these people cannot be serious.  (Yeah, I know, stop calling you Shirley.)  And yet many of them are.

This is life in Hong Kong in 2012.  It may feel a bit like 1Q84 but last time I looked there was still only one moon in the sky – on those increasingly rare nights that one can see past the pollution.  Donald Tsang has refused to address this in any meaningful way and Henry Tang hasn’t even managed to get off his fat ugly ass long enough to have a platform or positions on anything (to the point where even China has called him up and said, “Yo, Hank, WTF?”).  And so when I look at possible projections of the future, I’m worried.