Took the day off from work and went up to Shenzhen. Ordered a complete set of curtains, all lined with black-out material, for the house. All lined with black-out material, curtain hooks inserted for me, delivered to the house on the day I move in – all for an fraction of what it would cost here.
Dim sum lunch – alone – at the branch of Laurel Restaurant on the top floor of the Luo Hu shopping mall. I get there around 1. When I leave at 2 PM, there’s still a 30 minute wait for tables. Unlike so many dim sum places in Hong Kong, this place has an English menu and a staff that’s both hard working and unfailingly polite. People at nearby tables see a lao wai sitting by himself and say hello. The char siu bau and har gau are as good as I’ve had anywhere. Another steamed dumpling combines prawns with dau miu, not a bad combination. The mango pudding has chunks of real mango. Together with a pot of tea and a can of Coke, 95 RMB.
Then the curtain shop. Some browsing, the usual knock-off selection. The electronics shops on the 5th floor are packed with fake iPods, fake iPhones, USB and SD memory cards, MP4 players, portable DVD players with screens, Chinese made stereo systems. Down to the first floor, I score a heavy duty tripod in one shop for 400, complete with carrying case. (The guy didn’t want to come down below 480, then for some reason the boss walked over, took a look and said let him have it.) Another shop, a telescope so that I can enjoy the view from my new balcony. The girl gave me her name card, told me if I had trouble working it I could come back to the shop and she would teach me how to turn the two knobs. (Yeah, I realize that’s a horrendous double entendre there but I don’t think that’s what she had in mind.)
Loaded down, I decided to forgo massage and head back home early.
On the train, surrounded by people reading comic books and screaming into mobile phones, competing with the commercials being blared by the train’s own a/v system. Slimming centers. Cough and cold remedies (being advertised with cute animated characters to attract kids).
As it happens, I’m sitting there reading Eric Clapton’s autobiography. I’d bought it months ago, read the chapter on Derek & the Dominoes, then put it on the shelf. But after listening to respectably decent audience recordings of the three shows Eric just did with Steve Winwood in New York, my interest was renewed. Managed to finish off the chapters on his early youth, the Yardbirds, John Mayall.
I was struck by the creative energy that existed in London at that time. The synergy as people who’d grown up listening to an unbelievably wide variety of music (and Clapton also mentions watching French new wave cinema films and Kurosawa films in the early 60s), how they all knew each other to some extent, played off and against each other. And that kind of energy and creativity still exists in MOST urban centers around the world.
Then came home, flipped on the TV and Anthony Bourdain was on, this episode in Berlin. He mentions the German expressionist cinema of the 20s. Goes to see some avant garde-ish cabaret performances. Visits a series of modern art galleries run by young, up and coming talents.
And I couldn’t help but think that I’m living in a city that is mourning the loss of one of its “great” creative talents – Lydia Shum. In her more-than-40-year show business career, as near as I can figure it, she achieved fame by being fat and jolly and having a wacky hair style. The arts here serve two purposes – Cantopop, movies and comic books that cater to the lowest common denominator. Art galleries selling anything painted with crayons in China for investment value. Oh, and let’s not forget Australian touring companies performing Broadway and West End musicals five years after their sell-by date. I’m not just talking western-style art either. Where are the books by Hong Kong authors that are being translated into dozens of languages around the world? Where are the Hong Kong movies being shown at Cannes or other film festivals? (Okay, thanks to Johnny To and Wong Kar-Wai there actually are one or two every year.) There are some people here trying something creative and new but they are tiny in number and mostly ignored by the public and the mass media.
Like I said in the title, maybe I’m just being grumpy. I’m moving into a fabulous house with an amazing view. I’ve got a beautiful, sexy and sophisticated girlfriend of a caliber I probably couldn’t even begin to aspire to back in the town where I was born. It’s a series of trade-offs, like anything else.
I’m sure I’ll cheer up by tomorrow ….
