Another health note -- this one involving Compulsory Testing Orders for Covid!

 

Signs of the times at a Mobile Specimen Collection Unit 

here in Hong Kong! 

 

A sign that Hong Kong is still far from being "back to normal" (unlike what the authorities seek to claim): Earlier this week, my building was one of over 40 that day issued with a Compulsory Testing Notice (CTN) -- meaning that everyone of its residents was required to go get a Covid nucleic acid (AKA polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test. In the case of my building, it's because three -- yes, just 3 -- people (out of a few thousand) living in it had come down with the Wuhan coronavirus (or Covid) in recent weeks. 

 

Thus it was that I -- along with the thousands of others of the people living in my building (and workers and visitors who had spent more than two hours in it over the course of a week), and tens of thousands of other people living in other buildings issued with a CTN -- had to go to a designated Mobile Specimen Collection Station or Community Testing Centre to be tested for Covid.  More than incidentally: the sense I have is that there must be scores of them since there is not just one but two of them within walking distance of where I live! 

 

For those living outside of Hong Kong who wonder what would happen if we don't comply, and go and get tested: we'd be slapped with fines of up to HK$10,000 per person!  Just last month, 54 residents of the J Residence in Wan Chai were found to not have "complied with the compulsory testing notices" and collectively been issued HK$460,000 worth of fines!

I'm not sure whether that building's management and security guards were negligent in alerting the residents to the Compulsory Testing Order having been issued for it.  I will say though that the equivalent in my building could never be accused of that as copies of the CTO were put up in the lobby and by the escalator entrances on the ground floor, and put into every single mail box in the building!  Also, on the day that the CTO was issued, the security guard at the desk made a point to alert every person who passed by his station about it!

 

For the record: this is the second time that I've had to have a PCR test -- and both times have been the result of a Compulsory Testing Order being issued for my residence.  The first time, the test had involved a guy sticking the testing stick up my nose and it had been pretty painful.  But with the government having decided last week that throat swabs are adequate, I was spared that this time around!

And while I officially was supposed to have had a throat swab, I ended up just getting a mouth swab!  As University of Hong Kong microbiologist Dr Siddharth Sridhar's pointed out: "Actually, collecting a proper throat swab is very difficult. You've gotta use a tongue depressor, a torch and get right to the back of throat and tonsils with your swab."  But rather than do that, my tester this time around actually just swabbed my tongue and sides of my mouth!

 

I wonder if this had a part in my test turning out to be negative.  What I do know is that this mouth swab was a lot less painful than the nose swab I had some months back!  In any case, cue relief on my part once more upon getting a negative test result.  For even if I managed to not get sent to Penny's Bay and, instead, could stay in my own flat, it's still not exactly ideal to be unable to get out of the space for a week!   And okay, yeah, I was expecting a negative result as I don't have any Covid symptoms. But you never know -- since, remember, some people who have Covid are asymptomatic!

A more personal blog post than usual

 

Among the latest works of All Things Bright and Beautiful's 

Ah Li and Joanne

 

The label for the above work at the exhibition

of theirs that I went to recently

 

A lot of things have happened in Hong Kong recently.  But rather than write about them, here's pointing out that they've been covered pretty well by the likes of the fellow behind the Big Lychee blog  (See in particular yesterday's and today's entries).  And if you're wondering: I'm not planning to end this blog any time soon but I'm going to take a breather because the last few days have seen me getting news about a number of friends that have made me focus more on personal matters than normal.

A quick recap: The first post I saw when I got onto Facebook on Saturday morning was that of a friend announcing the death of her mother.  The news was not unexpected as I've known for a while that her mother was dying of cancer.  But I knew my friend was hurting all the same from the news; this since the last time we met up, she couldn't help crying when telling me about her hospital visits to see her mother.

Over the weekend, I also learnt from another friend that she recently had to have breast surgery after the cancer she has spread there.  In addition, I learnt from a third friend that her husband is not doing so well and could feel her worry even though we live thousands of miles apart.  And then late on Sunday night came shock news that a dear friend -- who I've not seen for over three years thanks to his never ever having set foot in Hong Kong, and Covid and Covid regulations making me loath to leave Hong Kong (even only temporarily) all this time -- had died of a heart attack.

 

Oh, and today is the death anniversary of Alex Chow Tsz-lok, whose passing on November 8th, 2019, sent much of Hong Kong into deep mourning.  As German journalist Jeanne Plaumann Tweeted today: "Something changed when Alex Chow Tsz-Lok died on Nov 8, 2019. Riot police, teargas laced with chemicals & pepperballs flying our way. The siege of PolyTech. The last big attempt to secure a free, democratic life. I will always remember the brave people of #HongKong. #FreeHK".  

 

I know that, as per the title of the All Things Bright and Beautiful exhibition I went to recently: We're All Going To Die Some Day.  But there are some people you hope could live longer than in fact turned out to be the case, you know?  (This generally with regards to those who died young -- like Alex Chow Tsz-lok, who was only 22 years of age when he died -- but also some older folks, particularly if they were still sound in mind and seemingly so in body.)

 

With regards to my friend who passed away this past weekend: he was an incredibly lovely man.  The person I think of when one talks about "gentlemen".  And two days on after hearing the news of his death, I still can't help shedding tears when talking about him -- as was the case this afternoon -- with my mother.

After hearing about his death, yet another friend contacted me.  Like the friend who passed away, he's several years older than me -- and he shared that he's got 10 friends on Facebook who are now dead.  I replied that I now have three and that's already pretty painful.  "Brace yourself for what's to come," he told me.  I will try, even while knowing it will not be easy

 

Maybe the thing to do is to focus on the positive memories one has of one's friends.  I know that has helped with regards to dealing with the death of my friend who passed away this past Sunday.  A certain wise Pear Fairy has said that "To live is to make memories".  I vow to keep making memories but also treasure the good ones already made with good friends and other loved ones.

Hong Kong is neither back nor back to normal :(

  

The sun's struggling to cut through the gloom

that Hong Kong has been under for much of this week

 

For some months now, Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee has been trying to "tell the world the good stories of Hong Kong".  And this was the week which was supposed to show the world that "Hong Kong is back".  But from what I can see, things haven't been quite going to plan, for multiple reasons -- some of which the authorities couldn't have controlled, others of which they could have but opted not to.

 

Earlier this week, we had an international banking summit take place.  As an Al Jazeera report noted: "Hong Kong’s government invited Wall Street’s biggest names to a summit to show the financial hub is open for business after nearly three years of isolation due to pandemic curbs.  Instead, top bank executives’ attendance at the gathering [became] a lightning rod for criticism of China’s human rights record as participants face pressure to speak out about Hong Kong’s disappearing freedoms or stay home."

 

It didn't help matters that Hong Kong's government bent or just dispensed outright with a number of Covid (including "social distancing") regulations for the attendees -- something which got many people thinking of the famous quote in George Orwell's Animal Farm that "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others".  As a New York Times piece noted: "Bankers in town for the Global Financial Leaders’ Investment Summit were told they could skip mandatory quarantine and leave on a private jet if they tested positive for Covid."  And the attendees were pictured maskless at the conference and weren't required to use the Leave Home Safe trac(k)ing app that Hong Kongers have had to use for months now.     

 

But, again quoting the New York Times piece: "[d]espite the special dispensation given to V.I.P.s, many [of the people invited] declined to visit Hong Kong". "At least four top finance executives initially slated to attend the conference this week...  dropped out. They include Blackstone Inc. President Jonathan Gray and Citigroup Inc.’s CEO Jane Fraser, who will no longer attend the conference after contracting COVID-19. The CEO of Barclays, C.S. Venkatakrishnan, also scrapped plans to go." And "[on Tuesday, Capital Group Cos.’ CEO Timothy Armour became the latest chief executive to withdraw from the conference, for health reasons."

 

For a time, it also looked like Hong Kong finance secretary Paul Chan would not be in attendance at the finance summit, thanks to his having contracted Covid on a visit to Saudi Arabia last week.  But instead of being restricted to appearing via Zoom (like was the case for the Fintech financial technology conference which also took place earlier this week -- which attracted just around a little more than half the 20,000 attendees that its organizers had expected), he somehow got adjudged to be okay to attend the finance summit and be maskless for at least part of the time at it!  

 

Something else quite miraculous/against the norm: the finance summit going ahead despite the T8 signal being hoisted as Severe Tropical Storm Nagae came near the city on Wednesday.  (In contrast: M+, which I was planning to visit again, closed -- along with all of the city's other museums and art galleries along with schools, many businesses and such like!)  

 

I'm not sure what good will actually come out of the bankers' summit.  Thus far, the most eye-catching news has involved a senior Chinese securites regulator -- speaking in a pre-recorded interview that was broadcast to the summit (rather than, you know, actually in attendance) -- telling the conference attendees, many of them non-Chinese and from the West, to avoid reading international press coverage of China's economy.  And UBS chairman Colm Kelleher publicly stating -- in the presence of international journalists as well as his peers from such as Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Blackrock, JP Morgan Chase, HSBC and Standard Chartered -- that "We're not reading the American press".

 

And now, today, we have attention turning to another one of those marque events that the Hong Kong government hopes will show that "Hong Kong is back": the Hong Kong Rugby Sevens.  Only, well... take a look at the pictures showing sparse crowds and large warning signs (with regards to such as masks being required when you're not eating or drinking), and the reports of people who couldn't get into the stadium because they don't have a "green" vaccine code and you tell me if Hong Kong is really back to normal.  Oh, and umbrellas are banned from Hong Kong Stadium, the venue of the Hong Kong Rugby Sevens, too!  

 

Also, don't forget the police presence.  In the words of HK Twitterverse member Panda Bernstein: "It’s the National Anthem Enforcers, a perfectly normal thing that every country has"!  As journalist Ryan Ho Kilpatrick -- a Hong Konger now based out of Taiwan -- explains for those who didn't realize: The "[p]olice are there to enforce the [national] anthem law passed in 2020 after the opposition was expelled [as part of the pro-democracy protest crackdown]. It punishes anyone who disrespects the [People's Republic of China] anthem with up to 3 years in jail. [Hong Kong Police Force] deployment to enforce patriotism at sporting events is the new normal" now. :(

Ekin Cheng and Co deliver entertainment, and the message that Life Must Go On (Film review)

 
One of the cheeriest looking movie posters 

you'll ever see?! :D

 

Life Must Go On (Hong Kong, 2022)

- Ying Chi-wen, director and co-scriptwriter (with Wong Chi-yeung)

- Starring; Ekin Cheng, Catherine Chau, Chin Kar Lok 

 

Thanks to his starring role in the Young and Dangerous series (which included a prequel and five official sequels, and was so successful it spawned spin-offs like Portland Street Blues and similarly themed movies like Sexy and Dangerous), Ekin Cheng was one of the biggest stars of mid to late 1990s Hong Kong cinema.  But unlike the (older) likes of Tony Leung Chiu-wai and Andy Lau, who continue to be big office draws, Ekin Cheng no longer headlines blockbuster movies.  

 

Not only that but having him as its star does not guarantee a movie a theatrical release.  A case in point re the latter: the previous film that I saw him in, The Dishwasher Squad, has yet to have a commercial run despite it having been favorably received by by the audience at the Hong Kong Asian Film Festival screening of it that I attended last year.  But even though it's like that 2021 offering in having a debutant director at the helm and coming across as a rather modestly ambitious effort, Ying Chi-wen's Life Must Go On was released in cinemas -- and continues to play in them more than one month on from its opening date.

 

Life Must Go On's story begins with a social worker, named Yanki (played by Catherine Chau) whose pet project is a "midnight gym" for wayward teens.  When her boss (essayed by 29+1's Kearen Pang) threatens to defund the program, Yanki puts together a dodgeball team from the not especially sporty young females who treat the "midnight gym" more as a late-night hangout/refuge and enters them into a tournament whose other teams are seriously competitive.  

 

Enter Jones (Ekin Cheng's quirky character) as their coach.  Despite his actually not knowing anything about dodgeball outside of reading about it on Wikipedia!  Something that Yanki had not realized about her former schoolmate, who she had recently reconnected with at a high school reunion at which he regalled his former schoolmates with tales of doing such as running a marathon in Japan, taking part in a cycle race in Taiwan and coaching a sports team in Cambodia.  (Other things that Yanki failed to realize about Jones is that he's far less of a success in life than he tries to make himself out to be.)

 

With Life Must Go On being an inspirational sports dramedy though, you'd think that you would know how the story will go.  But what with it being a Hong Kong (as opposed to Hollywood) movie, do realise that success is not measured in terms of trophies or even multiple wins for the team, and the focus is much more on personal growth and team bonding!       

 

Suffice to say also that Life Must Go On gives Ekin Cheng plenty of opportunities to show that he can still charm audiences.  And I must say that, without him (who really comes across as an amiable fellow on screen), the movie wouldn't feel so luminous!  For while co-star Catherine Chau performs with credit, I must admit to not connecting much with the young actresses who played the dodgeball team members -- to the point that I am not sure that I'd be able to recognise them when (or if) I next see them in a movie!    

Presumably, this movie was conceived by producers Emperor Motion Pictures as a way to introduce a bunch of its latest starlets to audiences as well as be an Ekin Cheng star vehicle.  But, truly, it was the movie's older performers who impressed; with Chin Kar Lok and Joyce Cheng, in particular, making the most of their guest starring roles -- as an old athletics team-mate of Jones turned rival dodgeball team coach and frustrated sister-in-law respectively.  

 

Put another way: the veterans showed that there's much life in them still as well as that life does indeed go on!  And, in the process, they helped Life Must Go On to entertain as well as deliver meaningful messages (about, say, how one shouldn't give up, and, also, how one sometimes needs to temporarily retreat in order to progress) that should resonate with -- and, in so doing, help provide comfort to -- its contemporary Hong Kong target audience.

 

My rating for the film: 6.5        

All Things Bright and Beautiful, and "We're All Going to Die Some Day"! (Photo-essay)

Two years ago, the folks at All Things Bright and Beautiful (i.e., Ah Li and Joanne) put on an exhibition entitled "How to Survive a Disaster" that also was a launch for their 2021 calendar.  If there was a follow-up exhibition last year, I missed it -- but I did manage to get one of their 2022 calendars, whose theme was "The Story Goes On".  And earlier this week, I went to this year's exhibition (and launch for next year's calendar).

I have to admit that I was a bit hesitant to do so, given that its title of  "We're All Going to Die Some Day" sounds rather, well, ominous!  But this being the All Things Bright and Beautiful crew, things did turn out to be beautiful -- and not super dark.  And yeah, I came away, like two years ago, with another of their calendars; it's become kind of a tradition to have one of theirs to look at... along with another featuring my hero, Funassyi (whose 2023 calendar I also got this week courtesy of a Japan-based friend)! 

 

The exhibition is a small but serene feeling one; ditto re its venue

 

Two images that appear in the 2023 calendar

 

Explanatory label for the upper image in the above photo 

(click on the image to view an enlarged version of it)

 

Explanatory label for the lower image in the above photo 

(click on the image to view an enlarged version of it)

 

I found this image calming...

 

...and was heartened by its accompanying 

explanatory note

 

You can buy copies of the 2023 calendar

and such as postcards too

 

The exhibition runs until tomorrow and is very much 

worth supporting (Joanne and Ah Li are good people

who really f**king love Hong Kong too)

What passes for "normal" these days in "dynamic zero", national security law-era Hong Kong

People will be free to gather in barbecue sites 

again soon -- Woo hoo! :D

 

For those people thinking that Hong Kong is back to normal, consider this: There are individuals celebrating the announcements made yesterday by the Hong Kong government that "Bars and restaurants will be allowed to open all hours from next week while public barbecue pits will also reopen... The changes, which take effect in one week, will also see people attending functions such as weddings allowed to remove their masks when photographs are being taken."  For this is what passes for the relaxing of social distancing measures in this part of the world!

 

With regards to the barbecue pits: Would you believe that Hong Kongers have not been allowed to make use of public barbecue pits (which are found in country parks and scenic locales such as by public beaches -- and popular among young Hong Kongers, families and domestic helpers on their days off) since July 15th, 2020?  So this makes it so that since they only finally reopen this November 3rd, they will have been closed for 841 days?! 

 

As for bars and restaurants: "Under the present regulations, restaurants must close at midnight, while bars are allowed to serve no later than 2am. The removal of the opening hour restrictions will be welcomed by the hospitality industry ahead of next month's football World Cup, where many key games will kick off at 3am."

 

But as is pointed out in the RTHK article I've been quoting: "Other rules, such as the mask mandate, vaccine pass and limits on the number of customers at restaurant tables, will stay in place." And, of course, limits on public gatherings because many of these "social distancing" regulations are, of course, designed to make protesting (for democracy, against the incarceration of political prisoners -- of which Hong Kong now has thousands, ranging in age from those in their teens to 80 something year olds -- and such) well nigh impossible rather than truly science-based anti-Covid measures.

 

Some other signs that the idea that "Hong Kong is healing" can't be taken seriously: as the US-based Hong Kong Democracy Council pointed out in a Tweet, "Today in Hong Kong, 8 protesters aged 19-61 were sentenced to 44 to 56 months in prison for "riot" during the police siege of Polytechnic University on Nov 18, 2019, nearly 3 years ago, for doing little more than being there."  And as lawyer-activist Samuel Bickett noted: "These trials are happening every couple of weeks in Hong Kong and rarely reported—mass trials of “rioters” who are convicted and sentenced to years in prison with little attention to their individual culpability. Most were merely present nearby an incident."

 

Also, as the trial of Chow Hang-tung continues, we have the following craziliy unjust situation: "The leader of Hong Kong's Tiananmen vigil group still can't see the actual materials she's being prosecuted over, as authorities cite national security".  A reminder: Chow, along with two other ex-standing committee members of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, Tang Ngok-kwan and Tsui Hon-kwong, stand accused of failing to comply with a national security police data request.

 

As a Hong Kong Free Press piece relates: "Under the national security law, the commissioner of police, upon approval from the security chief, can issue a notice requesting information such as financial records from foreign or Taiwanese political groups, and their agents.  Prior to the trial, the prosecution applied for Public Interest Immunity (PII) to conceal information of the materials concerning the case, claiming that the disclosure would “harm public interest.”

 

Chow, a trained lawyer who is defending herself in the trial, "has requested the prosecution to disclose more concealed materials during a national security trial on Friday after saying that the redaction of information prohibited her from having a fair trial."  This seems a fair request.  And, frankly, one would have thought that she wouldn't even have had to request to see those redacted and concealed information.

 

As barrister Edward Wong, who is representing Tang, argued: "The right to fair trial would require the opportunity to test or to testify against the evidence produced, or in this case, relied heavily upon by the prosecution".   In response, the presiding "magistrate ordered Chow, who has been remanded in custody since September last year, to draft and submit to the court and prosecution a list of materials that she would like the prosecution to disclose, and the reason to disclose them. The trial will continue on November 7."

A day of setbacks for those seeking better for Hong Kong (and China) but also one where resistance is shown to still exist

Photo taken in a very different Hong Kong from now

back on June 4th, 2016

 

I read a beautifully written piece in The Guardian this morning about how Xi Jinping has purged China of hope -- but can't stamp out small acts of resistance.  Among other things, Yangyang Cheng wrote that: "Sorrow tears into my organs and gnaws at my bones. But what I fear more than pain is numbness: to give in to the powers that be, and give up on imagining otherwise."

 

And amidst it all, I took comfort from her concluding lines: "I hold no illusions about the long night ahead, but each refusal of injustice preserves an opening. Every act of rebellion, however spectacular or humble, is a reclamation of the self and a love letter to a stranger. Across the darkness, another searching gaze catches the flicker, and a sacred bond is cast: I see you. I feel you. We are still here."  

 

Which is just as well since this has been one of those days which has been full of pain and anger resulting from seeing Hong Kong effects at resistance encountering a number of setbacks.  First up: the announcement in The Big Lychee, Various Sectors' latest blog post that the USA-based Hong Kong Democracy Council's new report, “Business NOT As Usual: International Companies in the New Authoritarian Hong Kong”, which calls on global finance leaders to not attend the Hong Kong government's finance summit and documents 39 "corporate bad actors" in Hong Kong", is unavailable to many Hong Kong internet users; so they will just to make do with such as a Twitter thread by Samuel Bickett that summarizes its contents (starting here).    

 

Upon further investigation, the Hong Kong Democracy Council's Anna Kwok reported that it wasn't just the report that had been blocked but, in fact, the organization's entire website and, actually, for a while now.  This means that it has been given the same treatment as Hong Kong Watch back in February.  And who knows when many more websites will become unavailable to those in Hong Kong without a VPN (or on those internet service providers that haven't yet got the memo).       

Also today came news that the Hong Kong government is planning to drop the "political neutrality" rule for civil servants. As lawyer-political observer Antony Dapiran noted in a Tweet, "Secretary for the Civil Service Ingrid Yeung Ho Poi-yan plans to drop the requirement of political neutrality from the code of conduct for HK’s civil service [in order to make it so that] “Political neutrality cannot be used as an excuse to evade tasks decided upon by the government.”

 

And as another member of the Hong Kong Twitterati pointed out: "Ironically, if I'm not mistaken, the neutrality requirement was meant to prevent civil servants from openly supporting opposition political views. Now that's not enough. It never is with patriots. You MUST openly pick a side, and it's no secret which side yr expected to pick."

 

Adding to the irony quotient: this same day saw a national security law judge state that he wanted what went on in his court to not be political and, instead, neutral.  Though he sure had/has a strange definition of what constitutes "neutral" for sure.  

 

More specifically, while presiding over the national security law trial against the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China (i.e., the group behind the candlelight vigils in Victoria Park on June 4th), Principal Magistrate Peter Law barred lawyer-defendant Chow Hang-tung from using the phrase “Tiananmen [Square] massacre", with prosecutor Ivan Cheung suggesting that Chow use the term “June 4th incident” instead.  In response to Law's suggestion that she use “proper terminology in [a] neutral form”, Chow was moved to state the following: “I do protest to the term Tiananmen incident, what is a massacre cannot be downgraded to an incident, this is not a neutral term”.  

 

And that's not all: "The prosecution also objected to Chow’s use of “the killing” when referring to June 4, 1989, saying that the police application for a notice requesting information from the Alliance did not mention any killing.  “Then how do I describe it? That some people died on that day?” Chow asked, after the magistrate agreed with Cheung and asked the barrister not to say “the killing.”"

 

Those people who are "glass half full" types might say: "Hey, at least they're not denying that people died in Beijing on June 4th, 1989.  So Hong Kong's not (completely) part of the People's Republic of Amnesia yet!"  But seeing these court antics one day after Jimmy Lai received a fifth conviction (for an act that usually is considered a civil rather than criminal matter) makes them all the more risible.  

 

Seeing the treatment meted out to the likes of Jimmy Lai and Chow Hang-tung, one is reminded of what Tim Hamlett wrote in a Hong Kong Free Press opinion piece last month: i.e., "we see a system where the government selects a target and then throws at it anything that might stick. So crowd-funding becomes money-laundering, a breach of lease conditions becomes fraud, clapping in court becomes sedition, and so on. Laws which have been dead letters for decades are exhumed and, if that fails, there is always the national security law, which can mean whatever you like."  

It really can feel overwhelming at times, and one can easily be moved to despair.  As Yangyang Cheng put it in her piece in The Guardian: "I cannot recall when I entered a state of perpetual mourning."  And yet, it also is she who reminds us in the same article: "No control is absolute. Power at its most menacing and totalising is also insecure and unsustainable."  And yes, I do take some comfort from thinking -- no, knowing -- that this is so.