Enter the Dragons

We [Joe, Pam, Laura, Patrice, Jessica, and myself], along with pretty much everyone else in the city, had this past Tuesday off because it was the day of the Dragon Boat races, which is a tradition that has become an annual event for the people of Hong Kong and any tourists who happen to be in town for this time of year.

The races themselves consist of teams of 8 people on each boat, which are kind of like crew boats in the United States and United Kingdom, with one person pounding on a drum to set the rhythm for the rowers and another person steering. Each team has a unique name, theme, look, and usually a uniform or costume. Investment banks, corporations, and even the local U.S. consulate had teams participating in the race. We saw one team that were all dressed up in Superman costumes (see photo below).

The teams load up into their boats on the beach, then row out to the starting point which is probably about 1/3 to 1/2 a mile out in the water. After the starting gun goes off, it's a straight up race to see who can reach the finish line near the shore the fastest. There are between 8 and 10 boats in each race, and the top two or three in each get invited to compete in the next round. Some photos of the races I took from land and the pier:













The beach itself was packed, with teams resting before and after their races as well as tourists checking out the scene. Lucky for us, the USC alumni association had invited us on to the boat they had chartered for the day to cheer on the USC alumni team and watch the races. We had to go to a pier and wait in line for 30-45 minutes while ferries came by to pick up passengers who needed to be taken to the different ships that were anchored out in the water to watch the races.

The boats were anchored in the waters far away from the shore, lined up in a formation that surrounded the starting point of the races in a way that was somewhat reminiscent of the drag race in the movie "Rebel Without a Cause." The boats are usually chartered for the day by corporations or private groups (as in our case, by the local USC alumni association), who are typically participants in the races in some capacity or other. A few boats looked and sounded like they were party central in Cabo San Lucas or Cancun. The main event that I saw was a pirate galley-style boat anchored about 100 or so yards away from our boat, who were having an insane party on the deck.

We spent the rest of the day watching the races and eating lunch and drinking on the boat. Most of the people there were local USC alumni, although we were also introduced to a group of undergraduate business students who were working in Hong Kong for the summer like us, along with another undergraduate who was on vacation traveling throughout China with his dad.













Towards the end of the day, I wound up hitching a ride back to Causeway Bay on the boat, which took about 2 hours to get there, but it was smooth sailing the entire trip. We saw a junk boat along the way and got some amazing views of Central Hong Kong as we were getting into the city.











It was an amazing day and I highly recommend going out to see the races if you should find yourselves in Hong Kong during this time of year.

Party time. Excellent.

Wayne Campbell: [after Ben orders Chinese food speaking Cantonese] This guy is good.

Benjamin: I picked up a little Cantonese while I was in the Orient. You know, you sound a lot like you're from Kowloon Bay as opposed to Hong Kong.

Cassandra: I waw born in Kowloon Bay!

Benjamin: There you have it!

Wayne Campbell: This guy is really good.

Adventures in Shenzhen Commercialism

This past Saturday, we decided to pack up our passports and head across the border into mainland China to explore the bastion of consumerism that is Shenzhen, a rather sketchy town just across the border. It took us roughly an hour and a half to get there from our dorm at HKU by bus, subway, and train. Although Hong Kong is under Chinese control, they still have separate passports and their own immigration laws. We had to fill out paperwork and get our passports stamped to leave Hong Kong and cross over into Shenzhen.

The main event here: a massive five-story shopping center selling all kinds of stuff, much of it counterfeit - custom suits, fake designer shirts, purses, pirated DVDs, Chinese art, and pretty much anything else you can imagine.

We began our adventure by going to one of the many tailors on the fifth floor where the people who wanted a custom-made suit had to get measured and place the order. Their suits would be delivered to our dorm at HKU within a week.

After we were finished with the suits, we began venturing around checking out the various shops. Every time we turned around, we were ambushed by someone who would run up to us and mumble, shout or ask "YouwannabuyDVD?" or "Missymissyyouwannabuyhandbag?" in a very aggressive way. A few of them even grabbed us by the arm and tried to drag us into their store.

Eventually we made our way to a restaurant inside the mall, which was very good and gave us a boost to walk around for another few hours.

After that, we all went into a massive massage parlor and signed up for a one hour session of Chinese massage. The options were Chinese or Thai, the difference being that the Chinese style focuses on circulation and the muscles, while the Thai style is the one that is known for stretching limbs in every conceivable direction and cracking every bone and joint in your body. We were taken into separate rooms divided by gender and would eventually meet up in the main waiting area when we finished. The session was amazing, although at times it felt like I was getting tap-danced on for what seemed like forever.

We went through a few more shops, and then the girls went to get a manicure and pedicure at one of the many salons in the building, while the guys took a seat and waited. We called it a night and a few hours later made it back to Hong Kong, after having cleared customs to leave China and re-enter Hong Kong.

Our next big adventure: dragon boat races on Tuesday... Stay tuned.

Stars and Fortunes

I ended up working the night of the candlelight vigil instead of going as a spectator. Although I was frustrated at not being able to have dinner with the girls and really experience it as an observer, I was grateful for perhaps the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see it as a member of the press.



I saw it from the front lines, so to speak, in the area right in front of the stage. There were people leading the masses in song - both Mandarin and Cantonese - with supporters waving their candles. From an AP perspective, we wanted to interview those who were younger. A mother bringing her daughter who couldn't have been more than 10...a teenager there with his friends. These children, myself included in a way, were not old enough to really "get it" when it happened. Maybe they weren't even born. So why were they there? Well...the interviews were done in Cantonese, so I can't tell you what they said. But it was moving nonetheless.

This is the video I slapped together out of the crappy images I took from my digital camera: http://usc.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=508552289973

On June 6, our class met at the wonderful hour of 7:30 a.m. at Dot Cod (a seafood restaurant but in this case serving normal breakfast) in Prince's Building to meet none other than Alan Leong, the only man to ever run against a Chief Executive in Hong Kong. For those who aren't familiar, Hong Kong does not have universal suffrage. There's a Chief Executive who's the top boss in town, and a legislative council with members from various parties who believe different things - but neither the CE or the Leg Co is elected by the people. The CE is elected by the Leg Co.

So for the first time there was a race, and debates were televised. From what I hear, it evoked murmurings like the Nixon/Kennedy debates, in the sense that it was a new way to play the game. Sorry I'm really bad at describing the scope of the matter. But the bottom line is that Leong was impressive as a person. He says he tells it straight to whomever he's talking to. In other words, he doesn't change his tactic, manner or content based on the person sitting in front of him.

On the night of June 7, I went to my first movie premiere as a member of the press. First of all, let me explain that Hong Kong cinema is huge. BUT Hong Kong movie premieres are generally teeny compared to Hollywood broohaha. I went with Tony (entertainment staff reporter) and Phoebe (fellow intern) to the premiere of "Kidnap," starring Rene Liu and Karena Lam. It's ok, I didn't know who they were either.




But that actually made my job easier. As you can see, I had to interview the two main actresses of the film for AP Clients in mainland China. Thus, in Mandarin. Because I hadn't heard of them at all, I wasn't hyperventilating or asking for autographs like some fans were nearby. It was a test of my language abilities. If they didn't look at me funny or misunderstand my question, then I was home free. I verified certain vocab with my colleagues (what kind of American-born Chinese kid would use the words "genre" or "tempo" in Chinese at home?) and did my best. As far as I could tell, I wasn't singled out as an American, so I passed.

Over the weekend, I did some very "Hong Kong" things. Dim Sum at Maxim's at City Hall (thanks to Shira's suggestion) and Temple Street Night Market. I had been to dim sum with a teacher, co-workers and family friends, but they had all been at relatively fancier places where you ordered by marking things on a sheet. My friends and I were wondering, where were these elusive carts rolling by so pervasive in U.S. dim sum restaurants???

Lo and behold, they are at Maxim's. And Maxim's is your good ole' Cantonese dim sum place - huge and crowded, noisy, pushy...David, Laura and I waited for half an hour to be seated. And it was worth it. Scrumptious shrimp dumplings, great pork buns, good tea, mango pudding. The best part was seeing a slice of everyday Hong Kong life; families were seated at tables nearby with both parents reading the paper. Larger groups chatted boisterously for hours. That's the way to dim sum.

Temple Street Night Market was like Ladies' Street in Mong Kok, a haggling bazaar, only it operates at night. Call me silly, but haggling has become - like gambling at horse races - a source of excitement and a test of my "Chineseness." The sellers seem to be more keen to drop the price if you speak Mandarin or Cantonese - they probably just take advantage of anyone who looks like a foreigner. I got some pretty great little deals. But the most fascinating bit was my encounter with a fortune teller.

This old man looked at my hands and sweat-stained face. And speaking Mandarin, the first thing he said to me was, "Stay away from younger men." Apparently my ideal guy, the "right one" is 3-4 years older than me. Gentlemen reading my blog, take note. Just kidding. I don't really believe anything this man said, but it was one of the most amusing moments here in Hong Kong.

I was told I would be very successful in my profession, that I would have a long and healthy life, that I would be married between 27-29, that my husband will be very good to me, that I'll have two children, at least one of them a boy, that people born in the year of the horse are my enemies, that I have problems saving money (I like to spend it)....what else. He said my parents must have spent lots of time and effort raising me as a child, that I was obviously college educated, that 2008 would be a dangerous year for me (be wary of my friends, my money, etc.), but that 2010 would be fabulous. That I would meet the right person then, that everything will fall in line. Wow.

As funny as this all is, hearing an old Chinese man tell me these things with such certainty was a relief as well as entertainment. After all, who wouldn't want to be told that life will turn out ok if you just sit tight?

We Are Accidents Waiting To Happen

From today's South China Morning Post (subscription required):

Cable car closed after cabin plunges

Empty Skyrail gondola's 50-metre fall stuns experts and critics of the troubled ride

Ngong Ping 360 was closed indefinitely last night after an empty cable car plunged 50 metres onto a slope near the waterfront in Tung Chung in the worst accident since operations began less than a year ago. The crash happened just before 8pm, an hour after Hong Kong's latest tourist attraction was closed to the public. Skyrail-ITM, the operator of the cable car, said the cabin was "dislodged and found on the ground" during a series of tests conducted after operating hours. The cabin fell about 50 metres from a directional changing station on the 5.7km cable journey, landing upside down on the shrub-covered waterfront near Chek Lap Kok South Road. Stephen Ip Shu-kwan, secretary for Economic Development and Labour, said the government was concerned about the incident. It had ordered a halt to services and asked the MTR Corp to find out the cause of the accident and take all measures to ensure safety. The area is close to a roundabout, although it sees little traffic, and is accessible to pedestrians. The cabin, which was seriously damaged, was still lying in the shrubbery hours after the plunge. Its doors had fallen off and windows were broken. Skyrail staff examined the wreckage and looked for broken parts, which lay scattered across the site. Police and firemen went to the scene to search for anyone who may be trapped but no one was injured. The accident sparked an uproar among lawmakers who, along with the Tourism Board condemned the company for its poor performance since the cable car began operations on September 18. Engineers familiar with the design of cable cars described the accident as a "disaster" and "inconceivable", noting that emergency locks should automatically hold the cabin in place if the main lock failed.

This is the same cable car ride we took a few weeks ago on our way to see the Buddha and Po Lin Monastery on Lantau Island that I wrote about here.

For the curious - the title of this post is taken from a lyric in the Radiohead song "There There."

June 4 in Victoria Park

Our spring class was fully aware that we’d be in Hong Kong on June 4 – the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. We had plenty of discussion about what the annual candle-lit vigil in Victoria Park would be like. But nothing could prepare me for actually being there in the humid air surrounded by a sea of humanity with flashbulbs going off all around me. It proved to be a great learning experience.

My editor sent me to the vigil with a digital recorder to capture crowd sounds and comments from participants. I also offered my photography skills and brought my Nikon D40 to make pictures for the VOA Web site.

I took the MTR to Causeway Bay and walked the short distance to the park. I arrived early – around 6:45p.m. The vigil was due to start at 8p.m., but the park was already loud and filled with people.

I knew Hong Kong’s Catholic bishop – Cardinal Zen – was scheduled to speak at 7p.m. in the Band Pavilion so I made my way over there and joined the other media in a roped off section to the right of the stage. A crowd of several hundred with their candles burning sang hymns as they waited for the bishop. He spoke at 7:30p.m. but it was in Cantonese so I couldn’t understand his speech. When he was done, a huge throng of media crowded him as he left the stage. I’d never seen anything like it. He must be a very prominent figure. After this I walked over to the main vigil area – six soccer pitches – where thousands of people were sitting on the ground listening to speeches and singing along to Chinese protest songs. I entered the press area and joined all the media gathered in front of the main stage. I made some photos of organizers on the stage and participants in the first few rows holding candles. I captured some crowd sound and left the press area to find a subject willing to be interviewed.

With so many people milling around me, it was overwhelming to decide whom to approach for an interview – especially in a city where English is not the main language. But eventually I zeroed in on a man and his wife. The man agreed to be interviewed but declined to give his name. As you’ll read in the article, he said the city “has a long memory.” Usually I would be opposed to including a source that wouldn’t give his name, but I thought his decision perhaps reflected the high-degree of self-censorship critics say Hong Kong is afflicted with.

With my “man on the street” interview done, I returned to VOA to write and voice my script. I had written most of the script earlier in the day and needed only to drop in my acts. The focus this year was on comments made by Ma Lik so I was sure to include that high up in the script. I was also lucky enough to get an interview with Albert Ho before the vigil, so I was able to have a quote from him ready to go.

It’s also interesting to note that when I was writing my script before the vigil, I remembered a class discussion where Mike said that most people at Tiananmen were not killed in the square but rather in the streets around it. I made that clear in the script.

Many of VOA’s language services in East Asia were clamoring for my story so I had to rush to finish writing it and voice it. The editor chopped off some of it due to length. My piece was what VOA calls a “long CR” or correspondent report. A CR is only supposed to be between two and two and a half minutes.

I voiced the edited script and produced it in the studio. I established crowd sounds at the beginning and then did a fade under. I did the same thing at the sign off. I also had an act from my “man on the street” and a quote from Albert Ho. The script was posted on VOA’s Web site along with a photo that I took. I regret that the audio was not posted online but my editor tells me sometimes VOA’s Web department is overloaded.

Attending the vigil was a moving experience and helped me to even better understand what makes Hong Kong unique. It was a long day (11a.m. – 11 p.m.) but a fulfilling one. I’m proud of the way my piece turned out and am glad I had the opportunity to cover such an important event.

All my photos from the vigil (and from my entire stay in Hong Kong) can be viewed here.

Tiananmen Plus 18

"Everywhere I hear the sound of marching, charging feet, boy
'Cause summer's here and the time is right for fighting in the street, boy."
-The Rolling Stones; "Street Fighting Man"

Today marks the 18th anniversary of the Chinese government's crackdown on student protesters in Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Although it was the culmination of a series of events and protests that had been building for weeks, it is most remembered for the events of this day, when the People's Liberation Army took the gloves off and shut down the protests.

What everyone remembers happened the next day, June 5, as the extent of the military's crackdown was becoming clear to reporters and people on the ground. A lone, still unidentified protester ran in front of a column of tanks as they were driving down the street and forced them to stop, as the cameras of international news organizations captured the extraordinary moment and soon transmitted the now iconic images throughout the world. A video of this, with Chinese subtitles and voiceover, can be seen here.

Contrary to popular belief, this did NOT happen in Tiananmen Square, it was on the Avenue of Eternal Peace and the tanks were LEAVING the square at the time this happened.

I went to help cover the annual candlelight vigil organized at Victoria Park every year and it was a pretty amazing thing to see. The park consists of 4 or 5 soccer fields next to each other, and the whole place is full with tens of thousands of people.

The only thing that comes to mind as a remote comparison to this are the annual vigils in Central Park in New York City on the anniversary of the death of John Lennon, although I doubt they draw anywhere near the size of crowds that this event does. [UPDATE: I should add a comparison to another annual event in NYC - the 9/11 anniversary vigil at Ground Zero.]

One of the most amazing things I heard and saw was this really depressing song (with lyrics in Cantonese or Mandarin, I couldn't tell) built around a piano melody that was somewhat similar to the one in Pink Floyd's "Nobody Home." After a few verses, they would stop singing the lyrics and read what I think were the names and ages of people who were killed at Tiananmen, while showing pictures of them on a giant projection screen as the music kept playing. Some of the photos were graphic -- a few showed pictures of the corpses in the morgue or the hospital.

The stunning thing about all this to me was the fact that the crowd was totally calm and peaceful. At some points where there was complete silence, you could have heard a pin drop in the park, never mind the fact that there were tens of thousands of people gathered there. That was radically different form the protests I've seen in Washington (i.e. anti-Iraq war, anti-abortion, etc.) where there is a bigger police presence and the crowds tend to be much more confrontational, at least in rhetoric or attitude, than the one I saw tonight.

I got the sense that the public mood was a little angrier than normal this year, because Ma Lik, the chairman of the pro-Beijing Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong (DAB) party in Hong Kong, made statements recently challenging the historical record of what did and didn't happen in Tiananmen Square in 1989. According to the Associated Press writeup of the comments, he said:

Ma, leader of one of Hong Kong's biggest political parties, told Hong Kong reporters on Tuesday that "gweilos," local slang for "foreigners," shouldn't be allowed to decide what really happened at Tiananmen, the South China Morning Post newspaper reported. Many of the event's accounts have come from foreign media.
"We should not say the Communist Party massacred people on June 4. I never said that nobody was killed, but it was not a massacre," the newspaper quoted Ma as saying during the briefing about political reform.
"A massacre would mean the Communist Party intentionally killed people with machine guns indiscriminately," Ma was quoted as saying.
Journalists covering the crackdown described tanks and troops armed with machine guns fighting their way into the city and suppressing the protests. Four days after the event, an announcer at the Beijing Radio station read a report that troops had killed thousands of people.
"The most tragic event happened in the Chinese capital, Beijing. Thousands of people, most of them innocent civilians, were killed by fully armed soldiers," the announcer said.
Ma also said he doubted accounts of tanks running over bodies and grinding up corpses like meat, the Post and Ming Pao Daily News reported.
...
Ma toned down his remarks Wednesday morning during an interview with government-run RTHK radio.
"What I meant is to look at the incident rationally. It happened a long time ago. I was not insulting those who lost their lives in Tiananmen Square to fight for democracy," he said.
But he added, "The description of the June 4 incident as a massacre and a river of blood, I think all these are not complete and correct views."

One of my friends here had to try and get a spokesperson or representative from DAB for an on-camera interview for a story on the anniversary that was commissioned by a client. In light of Ma's comments, I told her it would be virtually impossible to get somebody from DAB to talk, especially today and given the fact that their leader seriously stirred up a political and PR hornet's nest with his comments.

What follows are a series of photos I took from the vigil before it started and at the very beginning. Unfortunately for me, my camera ran out of battery shortly after it got dark and was not able to take any pictures from the last hour or so I was there.

Moral of the story? Charge your camera battery more frequently than once a week and always have a spare in case of emergencies.

All bets are on

This is Natasha, doing my apparently weekly blog.

I visited the Happy Valley race track on Wednesday evening with Joe and Jessica (see video and pictures posted), and it was an amazing display of what was extremely "Hong Kong" and yet extremely Western too. It's apparently a huge pastime for Hong Kong locals (their Jockey Club is ridiculously rich, I hear), and every Wednesday night from September to June, you can see businessmen rolling up their sleeves to go to the races at night. Cheap beer, the second-cheapest McDonald's in the world, little slips of paper...all you have to do is circle the horse you're betting on and let the rest happen.



I hadn't seen so many Westerners in one place - a lot of French people, actually. I've been using my Mandarin so much it was odd hearing French. I immediately wanted to jump in their conversations, but of course that would have been wildly inappropriate. The mainlanders were also flooding the place, especially the air-conditioned indoor rooms where people stared intently at the screens. This is serious business.



As for this past weekend, the USC crew had a lot of fun going out. We work long hours during the week, so there's a dire need to blow off steam come Friday night. Lan Kwai Fong is a favorite of ours, even though you can accuse us of being completely touristy and "Western." This is an L-shaped cobblestoned block of clubs and bars, stacked on top of each other and next to each other...the music flows into the streets and people pile out there in the hot air at night. Pictures to show how crowded it gets will be posted soon.

On Saturday, Joe, Jessica, Amanda and I went to Stanley Beach and Repulse Bay. It's quite astounding how fast the city moves from tall skyscrapers to sandy beaches. You take a bus 20 minutes out and you're immediately looking down a cliff-like slope to beautiful waters and green hillsides.



This picture was taken by Joe, who has the fancy camera. Good job.

As for work, things are going pretty well. I'm busy goign out on shoots all the time, mostly for the current story I'm working on about the government's pay rise for foreign domestic workers. People from the Philippines, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Nepal and India come to Hong Kong to be domestic workers for families (like a live-in maid). They get about $3400 Hong Kong dollars per month - that's their minimum wage now - which is about $436 US dollars a month.

It's an interesting story, but it was so difficult getting any one of the maids to talk on camera yesterday. It was a Sunday afternoon with the AP photographer out in the heat, carrying equipment around...there are plenty of maids who spend their day off sitting in Central or Victoria Park, but they're all so camera shy. A large part of that was because they'd be afraid their employers would see their faces on TV.

Other projects right now include getting ready for handover anniversary features. Tonight there'll be a vigil commemorating those who died at Tiananmen. It's supposed to be in Victoria Park, and I think I'll be there to see what happens.