Much to celebrate

And so it came to pass that a local girl fell ill with the H1N1 virus AKA swine flu, passed it to her brother who took it to school where eleven of his primary school class mates fell ill resulting in the swift declaration by the Education Bureau on Thursday that all primary schools would be shut with immediate effect from tomorrow (Friday) for two weeks until 25th June.

We leave Hong Kong on 24th June so for my kids that was it. Instead of worrying about closure, end of term parties of saying goodbye to their mates they came home, high fived each other and danced around the living room to “London Calling” by the Clash, rather appropriately I thought.

This is the news I’ve been hoping for. Now we don’t even have to go through the motions of going to school there’ll be Worlds Apart style home education: Ocean Park to see the red pandas, museums, hiking and the beach with a bit of music practice and swimming thrown in. Apparently the children are supposed to be doing learning@home via email but I suspect we may find our computer has mysteriously gone on the blink. It’s not as if they can do much about it after all, we’re out of here.

The only fly in the ointment is that the Hong Kong skyline project, for which we have built THIS: was due in on Monday. Which means we have cut out 680 round windows for nothing. Darn.

I am so tired. All friends appear to be determined to have just one last dinner/lunch/night out. My husband and I (how regal that sounds) are being more sociable than ever before. We can’t keep it up for long but at least now the prison camp has closed we’ll be able to have a bit of a lie-in.

This week also saw the extraordinary U-turn of Clarabel’s new Ma’am who rang me on Monday to say six weeks after offering her the job she was having serious doubts about taking her on. I sighed, wondered why she was telling me and not Clarabel and realised we only had two weeks in which to find Clarabel a new employer. Fearing Clarabel would be devastated I sat her down and explained that we might need to start searching again. Clarabel said simply it was probably for the best as their existing helper had told her she would be their seventh second helper in 18 months. Within three days we had three interviews lined up for her whereupon the new Ma’am turned around and said she was very disappointed that Clarabel had let her down. She would have been a wonderful addition to their family and what a shame she couldn’t have told her herself. I’m still reeling at that one.

I’ve saved the best til last. Our tenants went back to look at the all-singing-all-dancing house my husband saw last week and decided they would take it after all. Which means, dare I say it, that in August we move back to our very own house on Putney Common. Yippee! The fact that our new open plan large scale Hong Kong furniture won’t actually fit into our narrow, small-roomed London town house is beside the point. We’re going home.

Rollercoaster Ride

The Pioneering Accountant returned from London on Saturday afternoon. Just a few hours later an email arrived with the news we’d been hoping for: our London tenants had seen another house they liked and their offer had been accepted. The way was clear for us to move back into our own house in August. We could hardly contain our delight.

We started to plan: what to get out of storage, how to reconfigure the children’s bedrooms. My husband suggested we put in new floor boards throughout the ground floor. I was keen to paint over the purple wall our tenants have installed in one of the bedrooms. In my head I had already re-hung all my pictures, bought a dog to walk on the Common à la Jilly Cooper and was enjoying catching up on local news with friends and neighbours.

Our minds were racing with the excitement. This morning at 3.30am we were wide awake and talking through our plans, our hopes.

As we got up my husband checked his Blackberry, as is his wont. An “urgent” email had been sent at 11.30pm last night, long after our Hong Kong bedtime. Our tenants had changed their minds and had withdrawn their offer on the new house.

The disappointment hit us like cold water. The prize of returning to our own house had been within our grasp. To have it snatched away is bitter indeed. We have spent the day sighing and grrrrrring through gritted teeth. The frustration is tangible and the roller coaster of hope raised, then dashed, almost unbearable.

We are now back to square one. We have no house to move into and no further opportunity to view prior to our return. Whilst our tenants are, in principle, prepared to move out, I am starting to fear they will find fault with every other rental property in SW15. I’m also beginning to suspect the rent must have been too low if nothing else in their budget is as nice. My husband, on the other hand, foresees a scenario in which we rent another house for a year and a month later our tenants find something they like and move out of ours. Let’s hope that for once he’s wrong.

Candlelit Vigil

I did go to the Tiananmen Square vigil. It didn’t rain and Victoria Park was packed with people holding candles, their flames cupped in paper cones. The crowd was quiet and attentive. At a given signal everyone sat down like obedient children at a school assembly. At other times all the candles were held aloft. They looked like silver tulips nodding in the wind. Songs were sung and speeches heard. Applause was polite, respectful and the atmosphere attentive rather than rousing. All of it was in Puthongua. It was the only time I had ever attended a mass rally without understanding a word of what was being said. And yet it was surprisingly moving just to be a part of that collective demonstration. An exhibition at one end of the park displayed names and photographs of some of Tiananmen’s victims with an appeal by the Tiananmen Mothers’ group. Many mothers of the dead who came together in their search for truth and justice are now in their 70’s and 80’s and are still under surveillance by state security in Beijing for their perceived role in the 1989 protests.

One announcement was made in English. In 1990, at the first anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre 100,000 people gathered for the first candlelit vigil in Victoria Park. Yesterday at the 20th anniversary vigil, the announcer said, there were 150,000 people attending. I was glad to be one of them.

Updates

We leave in three weeks time. Gulp. And I have done NOTHING to prepare except sell six dehumidfiers. Actually I am quite pleased even with that. Not a single box is packed, not a cupboard sorted. I appear to have let go of my control freakery and have gone to the other extreme of not giving a damn. But that’s a Gemini quality. Or else I’m in denial. Moving? Us? Noooo! Some mistake shurely. My attitude is that if my Hong Kong days are numbered, I ought to be out there enjoying myself and not worrying about sorting out the nonsense.

The five year old is a lot better. Post tonsillectomy he doesn’t snore any more or gag on his food which is something. He is now eating more and has gone back to nursery. But his voice has changed. It’s now higher and a bit nasal and I miss the big, deep booming voice of my little boy. When I hear the new high one it makes me look up and think, who’s this stranger at my table? More worryingly he definitely hasn’t stopped coughing. OK he may just have a cough. Perhaps it’s linked to Hong Kong’s appalling air quality. Perhaps it’s not a bad thing we are leaving. So we’re back to square one and off to see the doctor tomorrow.

How I abhor school projects! The 10 year old has returned from school with the “Hong Kong Skyline Project” and is expected to produce a scale model of a Hong Kong building. He has chosen to do Jardine House (aka House of a thousand a***holes!) where his paternal grandfather used to work. Take a look at this and guess how I’ll be spending the weekend….

Earlier this year the eight year old came home with instructions for an Egyptian project that would have challenged anyone twice his age. He was expected to build an Egyptian artefact, place it like a museum piece in an appropriately decorated shoe box, write about it and draw a map showing where it had been excavated. Marks would be taken off for evidence of parental assistance. My son chose an obelisk as his artefact. It could have been a lot worse, but show me an eight year old boy that could make an obelisk without parental assistance. So I helped a bit but tried to make it look like I hadn’t. I needn't have bothered. The resulting Y03 “Museum” was nothing more than an exhibition of parents’ fabulous Egyptian creations. Only one or two children had heeded the instructions and had produced rickety cornflake packet exhibits that were quite frankly substandard. As I went around I lavished praise and attention on those who had clearly done it all on their own. And then I asked some with breath-takingly perfect exhibits how they’d made a part of their model. “I don’t know,” said one, “My Dad’s an artist and he did it when I was asleep.” Don’t you just love children for their honesty!

An interesting development arose yesterday on the house-hunting front. Apparently our tenant is racked with guilt at the thought of this poor dispossessed family of six having to return to London without being able to move back into their own much loved house. I don’t quite get the guilt: we did sign a contract after all. Anyway, our managing agent thinks they might actually consider moving out. It’ll cost us of course, it always does. At the same time, the Pioneering Accountant who is currently in SW15 looking for a place for us to live come August, has found a house which he says makes ours look like a hovel and is going to get the managing agent to take our tenants to see it. We’ll sub the difference and pay their moving costs. They’ll also be able to extend the tenancy on the bigger place whereas we will be throwing them out smartly come August 2010. And if they don’t take the sweetener, we will move into the palace ourselves. My husband has described the new place in tones of such rapturous praise that I’m starting to hope the tenants stick to the letter of the law so that we can have it instead. All of a sudden I’m not to keen on my lovely home being described as a hovel, nor in fact on living in one.

Oh, and I've been given a lovely award from Brits in Bosnia (whom I'm fairly sure I've met in a previous life) for which I thankfully have to do nothing, except say thank you Brit!

VI IV – Remembering Tiananmen

Twenty years ago today troops and tanks entered Beijing’s Tiananmen Square to crush the pro-democracy demonstrations that had occupied the Square for 7 weeks. In the violence of the crackdown hundreds, possibly thousands of people were killed and many more were wounded. It is unlikely that a precise number of Tiananmen’s victims will ever be known.

Hong Kong is preparing to commemorate the anniversary with the annual candle lit vigil in Victoria Park this evening. They are hoping for as many as 100,000 activists to turn out although the bad weather forecast could lower the numbers considerably.

“Activists and former students who took part in the protests 20 years ago in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square will give speeches at the rally, interspersed with traditional remembrance songs and the laying of wreaths,” reports the South China Morning Post this morning. “The highlight will be a speech from Xiong Yan, formerly one of the 21 most wanted protest leaders who fled to the United States in 1992 and on Saturday stepped on to Chinese soil for the first time since then, when he entered Hong Kong.”

"A massive crackdown was launched on weblogs, websites and Fanfou, the Chinese generic version of the Twitter micro-bloging service. Authorities declared a 2national internet server maintenance day" covering most major online networking websites. The maintenance would take three days, they said." What a coincidence! What timing!

Hong Kong Security chief Ambrose Lee Siu-kwong has stated that exiled Tiananmen dissidents are not on the Immigration Department’s surveillance list ahead of the 20th anniversary of the June 4 crackdown in Tiananmen Square.

So how would he explain the fact that only yesterday Xiang Xiaoji, a former leader of the student protests who has spent the past 17 years in exile in the US was denied entry to the city and was put on a flight back to New York? June 4 student activist Wuerkaizi spent last night in a restricted zone at Macau airport after being denied entry to the city and Danish sculptor Jens Galschiot was also turned away recently.

The US consulate has intervened and stated that Washington “regretted the government’s decision to block Mr Xiang’s entry, particularly in the light of the city’s well-known reputation for allowing freedom of expression.” Meanwhile HK Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen has made himself unpopular with the controversial suggestion that people should make an “objective assessment” of the events 20 years ago in light of China’s economic development.

Bah! Quite hard to be objective when people you love and principles you stand for have been shot by troops or crushed by tanks. I find it worrying that Xiang Xiaoji was allowed into Hong Kong for the 10th anniversary commemoration in 1999 and yet ten years on, the authorities have turned him away. Does that indicate that Hong Kong is growing less liberal as it leans more and more to Beijing?

In a statement Xiang Xiaoji said the best way to honour the Tiananmen dead was to continue the fight for democracy on the mainland. Hong Kong’s annual commemoration of the protesters made the city a beacon for democracy in China.

I hope that will continue to be the case. And as I write I’m considering I ought to dust off my own radical student past and go and be one of the 100,000, even if I do get a little wet.

Photo credit: AP Jeff Widener

Wednesday Morning Hikes

I’m going to miss my weekly hike. Starting at 7.15 each Wednesday morning we have hiked through all weathers. I joined the group in January and it was cold enough to wear several layers plus a lightweight jacket. We’ve walked our weekly route through rain and fog, sometimes unable to see more than a few metres in front of us. I like it that way. Whilst you don’t get to enjoy the view you also don’t see the steep steps rising up and up ahead of you.

Now it’s getting hot and humid. Even the lightest clothes cling uncomfortably. And yet we persist. Always the same route, it takes us an hour and 40 minutes. There are those who walk faster, go ahead, others stop to catch breath and gulp water.

We talk, more or less out of breath, as we climb the many concrete steps. All current or one time GSIS mothers we have lived through the dramas of the school’s planned move to Ma On Shan during campus renovation, fierce parental opposition, a proposed attempt to replace the Board of Governors and the eleventh hour solution of an alternative decanting site on Hong Kong Island. It’s a social walk. Perhaps if we didn’t talk so much we’d walk faster.

There are ten or so who hike regularly but it is rare for everyone to be there, usually there are between four and seven walkers. This morning there were four of us and we walked through grey cloud, chattering like sparrows, unable to see far in any direction. Just as we made it home the heavens opened. We had a narrow escape.

Waking early on a Wednesday I always regret having agreed to go. The others are expecting me and will be waiting. I hate the thought of those rugged steps that rip the breath from you and make me curse and gasp. But when you return to the bottom you can finally stop knowing you’ve done your body a good turn and it’s over for another week. It is shortly after 9am, the morning lies ahead and you are exercised and bursting with feel good hormones. It’s a bit like banging your head against a brick wall: fabulous when you stop.

Two weeks ago there were only two of us: me and the super fit B who had a baby only five months ago. Had I not been there to slow her down, she would have skipped up Mount Butler like a mountain goat.

When we reached the top B was not even slightly out of breath and had barely raised a sweat while I was beetroot red and puffing. Every Wednesday we see the same Chinese man practising his Tai Chi. It is possible he walks up every day but we can only vouch for Wednesdays. This time, as the views were clear he offered to take photographs for us. I had my camera with me but he looked at it disdainfully and suggested using his and emailing us the pictures. Not sure I wanted to give out my email address to this charming stranger, I declined and said my camera would do fine.

So here we are, B and I atop Mount Butler with views over Hong Kong harbour and the Southside behind us. And in case you didn’t realise, I’m the red faced, sweaty one under the hat next to the gazelle that is my fit friend.

Shenzhen

Shenzhen was one more place I was keen to see before we leave. To understand why you must try and appreciate what Shenzhen is to Hong Kong: Shenzhen is fake paradise, the land of cheap copies, cut price tailoring and Made in China all within an hour of Hong Kong Island. Whatever it costs in Hong Kong it will be a tenth of the price in Shenzhen.

Shoppers head over the border from Hong Kong in their thousands, armed with empty suitcases, wheelie shoppers and huge bags. The first time you go, it is hard to imagine what there is to get excited about. Seen from a distance Shenzhen is nothing but an ugly urban sprawl of concrete skyscrapers. And yet everyone talks about it: Have you been yet? When are you going to go? Whilst fundamentally sceptical that it would hold any appeal for me I was keen to see for myself, if only to gain the moral high ground and dismiss it all as worthless rubbish.

We headed for the border by car: two Shenzhen virgins, one relative novice and a veteran. We parked and took the MTR just one stop before buying our visas, having our swine flu health checks, passing passport control and walking across the border into….. a five storey shopping complex.

I had expected it to be filthy, dangerous and over-crowded. I expected there to be vendors pawing and clawing at me to get my attention and more importantly my business but I hadn’t expected it to be so much fun.

We headed first for a tailor and showed her a few things we’d considered having copied. I was non-committal taking the view if I left empty handed it wouldn’t really matter. If I found something fabulous then I might be swayed. The tailor took us to the fabric market, an Aladdin’s Cave of material. And bit by bit my high-minded resistance was worn down. Beautiful fabrics at RMB 25 a metre - £2.50! Add £20 for the cost of a tailor made dress and it’s a no brainer. Take your pick, why stop at one?

And of course the same thing could be said for bags, shoes, watches, jewellery. It’s hard to imagine the quantities and, dare I say it, the quality of the goods on view. Vendors call out, Missy, Missy! in anticipation of your interest in their shop. They usher you in and sit you down on a plastic stool, hand you a catalogue of designer bags to flick through. That one, you say, or Have you got Prada? And a man will disappear round the corner or rummage in a large hold-all and suddenly produce a large proportion of the latest collection of whichever designer you called for. In one shop when I explained what I was after, the man removed a panel in the ceiling and shinned up to retrieve a plastic bag full of the items I had described.

It becomes addictive. The atmosphere and the bartering go to your head and you start to justify absurd purchases on the grounds of their absurd prices. It’s a good policy to arrive with a list, to know your budget and to stick to both.

I expected to be tired, I expected to be bored. In stead I left feeling I’d had a great time, enjoyed every minute and picked up a couple of really good bargains. Of course the real test will be when I unpack the parcel that arrives next week from the tailor. It’ll be interesting to see what my copied dresses look like and if it's really true that if you pay peanuts you get monkeys….