Recently in Hong Kong Category
I am back in Hong Kong, after a week in Taiwan. Yesterday night, at my grandparents' rented flat, I saw over the window, a bunch of foreigners playing poker on the rooftop of another lower building adjacent to ours, but on Morrisson Hill Rd. I listened more closely, and, while not able to make out what they were saying, am pretty sure that they were speaking French!
It was a Thursday night of a not-long weekend, so we assume that they are tourists, or business travelers on a day off. They were blasting noisy party music too, and if you look closely at the pic, the guy with a white shirt on the right has a full house (not really, though).
Chinese indie really has me... This is apparently a whole sampler put together by Hong Kong-based Harbour Records for last Christmas.
(Tracklist from their site: http://harbourrecords.com/content/main.htm)
Because it's the Holidays, one has the tendency to do stuff that he might not be doing during the rest of the year. In previous years, I've done such things as play video games 24/7, or install Linux for the first time while skipping a family dinner. This year is no different, and I've been passing my old 2002 pictures of my first trip to Asia, specifically Hong Kong, Tokyo, the Shanghai region and Beijing (pics not up yet). I've been playing with levels in photo editor software, which is Gimp, in my case, and it has been doing marvels to make my pictures more colourful.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/smurfmatic/sets/72157603534104889/
- My Little Airport - We Can't Stop Smoking In The Vicious And Blue Summer (Better than the second album "I was too nervous")
- PixelToy - O...Oh (The only one I listened to in full so far, and very energetic, as expected from them, with even more guitars and beat than the first album)
- Start ! (Sampler released in 2005, by Silent Agreement, a Taiwan-based indie label)
- Grassland Music (2007 sampler, also from Silent Agreement - it is a low-low $6US on Yesasia!)
Hong Kong indie label People Mountain People Sea (人山人海) now has a Youtube channel. Here are their most recent music videos.
At17 - 同聲同氣 (same sound same air)
Song title sounds like a Chinese expression/saying, but I am limited. At17 (Eman Lam & Ellen Joyce Loo) is a pop duo, signed as the first band on Anthony Wong's (not that Anthony Wong) Hong Kong-based label. Their sound is definitely refreshing, and I can definitely see them as a not-so-mainstream counterpart to the Twins (they even did collabs with them, for the crossover universe factor). Google made Smurfmatic their #1 fan (or at least top 10) in the English-speaking world. So. Yes. They are cool, they are hip, and they are not afraid to cover Creep at Hong Kong 演唱會s (concerts extraordinaires).
PixelToy - 寫一首詩 （write a poem)
PixelToy (Shan Ho & Candy Wu) is the second band signed by People Mountain People Sea. I am listening to their first album right now (their second is in the mail), as we speak. As their name suggest, they are electropop, bordering on the cute. Sometimes they are experimental (Good Morning - basically the female vocalist, Candy, singing as she wakes up, gets ready in the morning), some other times they sound like britpop bands (Winnie - reminds me of Saint Etienne) or video games (什麼節快樂). Just like at17, they were part of the soundtrack directed by Anthony Wong for the 2007 movie 明明 (ming ming), otherwise a stylish music video.
See other post. Please excuse the mad screaming.
Okay, rendons à César ce qui appartient à César: this was the first time that I attended a singing contest, and it was a very remarkable event. So, yes, a singing contest for Chinese folks in Montreal. It's very interesting that the language of choice is still Cantonese (both hosts spoke Cantonese all the time, except when the contestants were Mandarin-speakers), but that half or more than half of the songs sung were in Mandarin. Shows how meaningful the "old" Cantonese establishment (and how the new force of "pan-China" is changing things). Overall very pleased to having Hong Kong in Montreal.
at17 were very cool on stage. They corrected the crowd on the pace of the clapping for instance, poking fun simultaneously. They started with 始終一天, and there was 三分鐘後, and The Best is Yet to Come, and some song from Sing Sing Sing (我們的序幕), their September 2006 show at the AsiaExpo.
I believe that it is a rare thing to have Hong Kong artists perform in such intimate venues, as the Cantopop stars that we do hear about always do at the HK Auditorium and the like. It is an observation that needs exploring. We know after seeing Beijing Bubbles that a Chinese city could have a music scene. Hong Kong does have one, but if I read about it in a English-language newspaper, is it only geared towards expats, or a "certain slice" of the population? Question en l'air.
Green Life had a kiosk during the singing contest.
The South China Morning Post is published in Hong Kong, and is a newspaper that I am very fond of. So fond of that I took photos of the copy that my parents bought at the HK International Airport on the day that they came back from their four-week trip to China. September 27th also happens to be my birthday, being one extra reason to spend time on a petty newspaper copy (albeit one that comes from the city I love the most outside of Montreal, written in the one language spoken in Hong Kong that I am most familiar with)...
Here at Smurfmatic, we ruled out the possibility of Cantopop stars ever coming to Montreal (although, when one mentions Montreal, it is always always associated with Brossard-native Christy Chung), even if my childhood memories recall some of them showing up in Place des Arts for occasional concerts.
So, perhaps to renew my confidence in Montreal as a world city, it was announced last week that the special guest to a Montreal Chinese singing contest would be at17, a Cantopop girl duo, whose music deviate (just a little) from the mainstream mold of other popular singers, and are in my mind, bordering on the indie (they write their own stuff), very popular with a certain teenager crowd.
The concert will be on Sunday, October 28th, 2007, at the Club Soda. The tickets are 40$ apiece - for a singing contest (b/c the Montreal Chinese beauty pageant - whatever they call it - fetches way above 100$), it is a lot of money, but if it's to breathe the same air as Hong Kong music personalities (they are big on promoting environmental awareness in the Greater China), then it changes everything!
At17, on Sunday, October 28th, 2007, at the Club Soda. (And also, I know where to get tickets, so just e-mail me! cedricsam@gmail.com)
The memories that I had about the Handover, now ten years ago tomorrow, was that I was all very excited about the whole thing, and as certain as ever that it would mean the end of civil liberties for the people of Hong Kong.
Our family (both sides) is not strictly-speaking from Hong Kong, but rather from the nearby province of Guangdong. My paternal grandparents emigrated to Madagascar in the 40s, and had my father there; it was the same for my maternal grandparents, but to Vietnam. The latter grandparents transited by Hong Kong and stayed there for around a decade before coming to Canada in the early 80s. My mother's younger brothers and sisters all grew up in Hong Kong, and some of them went back there to live. My father's family is also connected with Hong Kong, as all of his first cousins (sons and daughters of his father's brother), except one, emigrated and made their life there. We call Hong Kong home, because we speak Cantonese at home, and culturally-speaking, Hong Kong still shines the brightest.
The pre-香港回歸 year was perhaps one of the first periods where I did more to know about the culture "back home", without the help of my parents. I was in my last year of high school, and the Internet was starting to make its way into our classrooms. Very naturally, it seems, I surfed the web, and browsed English-language newspapers like the SCMP, became very interested in the politics, in understanding the simply put slogan/concept of "One Country, Two Systems", and knowing the political characters of the time, such as Deng Xiaoping, Martin Lee (who I walked next to during a 7/1 march in 2005 in HK) and Tung Chee Hwa. It was a very important period for me, and a starting point for the interest that I have for what I tend to consider as my homeland.
In practice, things have not changed much for ten years in Hong Kong, while China kept leaping forward economically. There was 2003, with the SARS outbreak and Article 23, and 2005, with the emergence of Donald Tsang as CE of the HKSAR, and this year's CE election. Perhaps as a teenager, I was hoping for some sweeping action, but in Realpolitik, I feel that the most important notion is stability for economic prosperity, and Hong Kong in China has been fairly stable.
If people were not aware of this already, I am throwing a Hong Kong Handover party on Saturday evening at home, complete with mah jong tables, a HK flag (the bauhinia one), a menu which includes siu yok / bok choy, music from the Fragrant Port, cha chaan teng drinks, and more!
Links
BBC News: Hong Kong Brits few but faithful | Audio Slideshow: Hong Kong memories.
The Economist: Special Report on Hong Kong.
Radio-Canada International: Reports by Bethany Or, in English as part of The Link, and a in French, as part of Le Courrier Mondial. Yvonne Lo, former volunteer coordinator and current board member at CFS, was interviewed in the reports.
"Kétaine au boutte", would be how you would describe the music of Jenny Tseng Yan Lei. If the retro-kitsch movement reached HK, then they'd certainly be playing that stuff among certain circles. My father says it dates from the 1980s, but it is reminiscent of 1960s music in the West.
After trying to (unsuccessfully) repair the old sound system controller, I guess that my father fell on some old music tapes, including that of Yan Lei, and is currently playing it in their room next door. What wasn't my surprise when I overheard it! Because, to tell the truth, I have been passively wanting to find such oldie-sounding music originating from a certain lost era between WKW's sixties and today. There was some of it all throughout Fantasia, the 2004 Cecilia Cheung movie set in the sixties, and one of those Asian uber-goofy mainstream flicks.The first reference that comes in mind is, what, Quebec's Robert Charlebois, or Beau Dommage? (It's the same era, for sure) The only explanation as to why I am fond of this kind of music is that I like to live in the past and feel nostalgic aout everything. As good as it might be, it's definitely not to be listened all day long.
Finally caught up with the news that they went ahead with closing the Star Ferry terminal, and reclaiming even more land:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6141400.stm
(rant later)
SCMP Chart on National Pride in HK, via Mask of China.
How you can change your mind about the totalitarian regime that took over your territory... For the general public, the totalitarian aspect of China seems pretty mild for regular working citizens from an external point of view. And as for these statistics, HK is still a island of relative free speech and free everything in a sea of relative restraint/censorship (I was reading how it is rather expected that you self-censor yourself in China, more than having a thought police run around hunting for dissidents).
In any case, I don't know. I am very interested in HK/China politics, and wish that the Bibliotheque Nationale du Quebec wasn't two months late in receiving the SCMP (about the only reliable publication that I can *read*). I would go to 6/4 and 7/1 walks, but I am not the kind of person to press for democracy right now for real (but understand the idea that you ask for 200% of something, if you want to insure to have 100% of it). And, I generally think that things must be gradual, and that immediate opening of the political system will only lead to an USSR-like collapse. See South Korea, Taiwan (all former brutal dictatorships), and Singapore (practically a single-party-thus-dictatorship city-state).
In general, I am proud of the HKness of my Chineseness. Was not born there, and my mother didn't even live there for more than a few weeks/months, I think (she passed by Taiwan for a few months, to get her papers for Canada). But uncles/aunts from both sides of the family live there, and I do consume more than the incidental HK culture, and speak of going to HK as "going _back_ to HK" (faan heung kong). Proud of its modernity, cleanliness, although I think I really need to go back to Beijing (five years after, and a year before the Olympics) and wander around in SH, not as a mere Western-born/grown tourist. Etc. Back to work.
Man, my mother got me this morning's SCMP. It's so... fresh ._. (and is actually mostly made up of the weekly business classifieds, woaw).
Behind the news: "Political bombshells", a feature on the Lebanon war and political consequences in Israel.
Saturday Columnist: "Taking workers for a ride", by Albert Cheng. Labour-related stuff, low-wages despite HK's economic recovery.
Sports: Hum, a glossy paper calendar for the upcoming Premier League season. Looks so awesome, and so not into football anyways.
City: "Activists take aim at child-sex offenders". Woaw, I was thinking about the JonBenet Ramsey case during the last month, and just this week they apparently found who did it - just a few months after the poor mother died of sorrow / cancer.
City (also): "Summer of Love". Five steps for a happy fling: 1- Don't believe in everything they say, 2- set goals, 3- don't over-commit yourself, 4- protect yourself, and 5- have fun.
Sports (also): Hum hum, news about Evgeni Malkin. XD
Business: Air China is not doing as well as it thought it would. Developer SHKP sets new low in mortgage rates.
i should start planning, especially with things like this.
My brother failed to completely un-pack from Hong Kong (he's been merely using the luggage, left in the entrance hall, as remote drawers), but I discovered in one of the side compartments, two copies of the SCMP dating from July 18th and July 26th, for me.
There was a very interesting story in last week's issue on the Suez Canal Crisis, one of those historical events we know about, but then don't know much about in details, like the Tian'anmen square massacre. It was fifty years ago - and in it, a dramatic recounting of how the old Europe tries in vain to re-assert itself, how political characters tragically cause their own failure, and how the Americans sided against Israel for the last time (so we'll see, as the Lebanon crisis/war evolves). I guess I see the appeal of long historical and political essays which I don't have the patience to read, and thank magazines for providing at least a bit of the entertainment.
Also, in this week's issue, Hong Kong public housing crumbling into shambles (on the culture of defenestration).
In the lineage of silly HK flicks, A Chinese Tall Story is the latest to score at Fantasia. Two years ago, there was another film called "Fantasia", which featured possessed chopsticks (played by the Twins), big green monsters related to Andy Lau, etc. Now I am missing more than half the references, caught that it made fun of Independence Day, Return of the King, and Star Wars, not to mention Spiderman, along the mish-mash of Chinese legends, and a particular HK flick that we cinema snobs like so much. Whether it was good... was Scary Movie good? ... You got your answer. XD
The computer-generated stuff is worth mentionning. There's a trend for cheap CG in HK cinema, as of late, exemplified for instance in Fantasia, or more well-known in the two most recent Stephen Chow offerings Shaolin Soccer and Kung Fu Hustle. It's bad, everyone watching those movies knows that. Last year, they also made a human/CG children's hybrid with characters recycled from a lost and found devel matrix of A Bug's Story. Plenty of examples to mention - just that in Western cinema, the effects are so much more well-done, that it is to wonder whether in Asia it's how it is because of low budget, or because it's just the way things are to blur the line between cartoonesque and reality. In Japan, I assume they have budgets, and they still do it.
And why is Joe Hisaishi behind the soundtrack of that sillyness of a film?
HK Magazine has a website. I've known about it for just a few months, but still... quite my favourite read, with the SCMP Sunday Magazine.
Half my family is leaving for HK tomorrow morning.
Patrick Masbourian is now hosting the 9-11:30AM show on Radio-Canada's Première Chaîne, and on Monday, he interviewed Miss Vicki Ng-Wan [asx clip - between the 27th and 40th minute], Miss Chinese Montreal 2006. The story was that after winning the contest in Montreal, she went to HK, did not agree to the terms of the contract (where she was legally bound to stay in HK for three years, she said), didn't sign, obviously got kicked out of the contest. She reports that another girl, from Malaysia, also went back home before the end of the contest.
Never followed beauty pageants, but it was nice to hear about something Chinese in the local medias (besides how the Mainland is crushing the world, etc - which was incidently a segment of today's show...). Most notably, Christy Chung was a winner of the Montreal contest in 1993, and went on to win HK's and become a big Canto-star in the mid-90s.
My brother and mother are both leaving for HK next Saturday for 3 and 6 weeks respectively. It means... A two-people household for most of the summer. It also means shopping by proxy. Probably more intense this time, since I now know all about the goodies you can get from HK and not anywhere else. Mostly, it's the clothing: a bargain is to be found all the time. Another thing is consumer electronics, especially what's called "seuil fo", goods that some HK companies import from other markets and sell back without warranty or some minimal store warranty, but at a much reduced price (if you bargain right) and no taxes, b/c HK has no sales taxes.
Combined with a super favourable exchange rate (thank you Alberta), everything is cheap cheap cheap. A combo at McDonalds is about 3.50CAD (20-25HKD), as a reference, and has been the ruin of many visiting CBCs, ABCs. Curiously, a mezzo latte at Starbucks is also 20-25HKD, which is about the same price as in Canada. Foreign magazines and English newspapers (the SCMP) are particularly expensive - the SCMP is 7HKD, but then it caters to expats, visiting CBCs/ABCs. Obviously, one of the free weeklies in English has an upper-class yuppie feel to it (ads for expensive restaurants, beauty salons for men...).
I've been also shopping at Uni-Qlo, b/c I know they make cool designed tees. My first visit to a Uni-Qlo was in nowhere Iwate town Ichinoseki, on the Tohoku Shinkansen line between Sendai and Morioka, where Uri picked me up to drive me to the village where he teaches English. The store looks and feels like a Gap, and yet, I am not very used to the type of clothes they sell. Maybe it's trendier, per Western standards? Or simply, the different styles makes me feel as if it's trendier. In any case, the HK prices are about like in Japanese stores, which is more affordable than in NA or Europe for nice nice clothes. I looked at prices, and while I think Uni-Qlo in the Chinese market (another Uni-Qlo I've been to was the one near Xintiandi in Shanghai's old French Concession) positions itself as more higher-class, even if it's about the equivalent of Old Navy in Japan, just like the usual HK shops (Giordano, Bossini, Baleno, etc) sell at about their HK prices on the Mainland despite the different standard of living.
But still, shopping at Uni-Qlo is probably still cheaper than shopping at Gap... You get the trendiness at a bargain, what an easy win-win situation...
A cool photo exhibit on Wah Fu, Hong Kong, and the high-density living, from the Urban planet exhibit on the BBC News site.
A museum you have to visit if you are in HK is certainly the Heritage Museum. Located in the tranquil suburb of Shatin (also known as the first "new towns" of HK), the Heritage Museum was completed in 2000 and houses a number of permanent and temporary exhibits. It's considered one of the main museums in the HK SAR and for some reason retain better memories of the exhibits I've seen there versus at the Museum of Arts and other ones in TST.
In 2002, there was the Baihua Qifang exhibit of selected works from the 9th Chinese National Art Exhibition (my photo), with what seemed like deliberately propaganda art (one painting with a Zhou Enlai portrait at the front of steam train).
Since then, the KCR built a new train line called the Ma On Shan Rail, which is right across the bridge from the Heritage Museum, but when I went last year, we took what was a pleasant walk proposed by the HK Tourism board.
That time, there was an exhibit called redwhiteblue, after the tricolor fibrous plastic fabric ubiquitously used in HK to cover things (from rain, etc) or used to make bags for blankets and other bulky things, but now used in an artistic context. Really a "cool" exhibit. I feel sorry to have missed Spaces and Places, despite still being around.
A lady approached me with a marketing questionnaire as I were about to leave the museum. With the CCA exhibit Les années 60 : Montréal voit grand in mind, I wrote in the comments section that some sort of exhibit on HK in the 60s or 70s would be very very interesting (at least that genre of exhibits seems to attract crowds in Montreal - why wouldn't they be just a wee interesting in HK?). Both of the upcoming ones, megARTstore and Hong Kong's Popular Entertainment are definitely must-see.