tim's experiment

Sorry if this comes as a disappointment, but 69K is not an interesting new sexual technique. It is the number of our local minibus. The prosaic label does not do justice to the variety and interest of the route. Let us start in the Shatin KCR (if you’ll pardon the expression) station. Emerge at the bus station end. Note that you are still on the first floor. Unfortunately this level of the bus station is reserved for real buses. To get a minibus you have to turn left and go down a long ramp. This brings you to ground level, where you will find a row of minibus stops, and a taxi rank on the far end of it. Why the taxi rank is so far away from the station I do not know, but as a result this station cannot be recommended for people with mobility problems.

The 69K stop is the first one you come to. This is handy. I presume it is not because we have any particular priority – it just happened to be the first route to be set up. Happily the minibus stops are under the fly-over ramp which leads to the aristocratic bus station upstairs, so the queue is usually dry or shady, as you wish. But usually I find a minibus waiting with free seats. This is a prosperous route and runs are frequent, so one does not wait long.  As the driver pulls out observant passengers will note Pai Tau Village on the left. This is one of the primeval parts of Shatin though you would not think so to look at the houses now, because most of them have been turned into shops. On the right we pass the headquarters of the Leisure and Cultural Services Department, which looks rather pompous for this purpose. This is because it used to be the headquarters of the Regional Council (note to younger readers: before 1997 Hong Kong had two councils, Urban and Regional, which were entirely elected. After the hand-over they were abolished. I wonder why.) Meanwhile the shopping mall and office block on your left is mainly notable as the local lair of Ikea. Behind it are the local Government Offices, carefully sited half a mile from the nearest public transport.

We now zoom up a hill towards a bridge which threatens to take us into the centre of Shatin proper, but before we get to the bridge over the railway line we take the ramp off to the left. This leads to a highway named with Hong Kong’s usual flair in these matters “New Territories Ring Road”. Despite its apparently exalted status and purpose this highway only offers two lanes in each direction. It frequently clogs up. Minibuses making the return journey can avoid it by taking to the back streets but the northbound side is usually usable. We roar along here at whatever speed our minibus can manage, but not for long. We take the first slip road and this leads us into Fotan.

Fotan used to be an entirely industrial enclave. The name has something to do with charcoal burning. All the hills round the industrial core (which like the rest of Hong Kong has little real industry left) are now covered in housing estates of one kind or another. Readers who know their MTR will perhaps be wondering at this point why the minibus goes to Shatin when there is a perfectly good train station in Fotan. This would be to ignore a basic fact of Hong Kong transport planning, which is that nothing must be allowed to impede the Jockey Club in its vital work of separating the gullible from their money. So whenever there is racing at the Shatin racecourse (which is not in Shatin) the trains no longer stop at Fotan – they stop at a special station next to the horse casino instead. No doubt when this move was being planned the railway people did not realise that Fotan would not for ever be a purely industrial spot, deserted at weekends. But as a result of their efforts a great deal of diesel fuel is wasted taking people to Shatin to get a train they could easily board in Fotan. So it goes.

As you come into Fotan a huge six-lane highway stretches ahead of you. This goes nowhere and the minibus ignores it, turning left at the first opportunity into a little backwater called Shan Mei Street. Here we are in what passes for downtown Fotan. There is a shopping mall (MacDonalds, KFC and Starbucks are represented) a Post Office, a bus station and two recreation grounds.  The ground floors of the industrial buildings on the left are gradually being converted into shops. The interesting thing about Shan Mei Street is that it illustrates the latest European ideas about road safety, which go thus: you make a road safer not by separating the traffic from the pedestrians, but by providing copious visual clues which tell drivers to slow down. In Shan Mei Street this all happened by accident. The planners clearly wished to do their usual trick and line the road with fences. But they couldn’t. There are too many entrances, exits, bus stops, garages, and pedestrian crossing requirements. So the driver turning into the street (fortunately this requires a sharp turn at each end) is immediately presented with a spectacle of traffic islands, parked cars, buses picking people up and taxis dropping them, and usually the odd hand cart or dreamy pedestrian with mobile phone glued to ear as well. So drivers, unless terminally stupid, slow down and the street is safe. It is, however, extremely busy. Local drivers spurn the six-lane alternative because it has three sets of traffic lights in it.

In Shan Mei Street we come to our first minibus stop. Usually nobody gets off at this point. If you just want to get to the middle of Fotan from Shatin there are easier and cheaper ways, especially if you are already on a train. At the end of the street the minibus turns left into Sui Wo Road, on which it will stay for the rest of the trip. Just up this road is Sui Wo Estate, and here we have the first serious stop, at which quite a lot of people get off. Sui Wo Estate was the first Home Ownership estate in the New Territories. It is spread up the hillside with a lift and footbridge connecting the two halves, so the minibus actually stops twice. A further stop, just round the corner, caters for two private estates, Shatin 33 and Scenery Gardens.

And now the 69K magically transforms itself. Up to now it has been the standard Hong Kong public transport scene: people get on, sit down, and stare at their mobile phones. People will sometimes call out if they want the next stop, but at the early busy stops the driver will usually stop anyway. As we go up the hill, though, the minibus becomes more like the rural branch line depicted in the Ealing comedy the Titfield Thunderbolt (thoroughly recommended – find it here- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8ReXJTD60c).

Suddenly the ride is a social occasion. People getting on greet the driver. People getting off thank him for stopping. Children are encouraged to address him as “uncle”. Passengers talk to each other. The population is now thin but regular and a lot of people know each other at least by sight. The exuberant lady who sweeps our road rides up and down her patch. Many of the riders are now domestic helpers, for the estates up here are generally rather upmarket and employers have cars.   A break from isolation in a house full of foreigners goes down well.

Sui Wo Road at this stage is rather pleasant. Trees and bushes abound and there are occasional glimpses of the Shing Mun River Valley. We pass a special school run by Caritas, which has its own bus fleet and consequently rarely calls for a stop. We pass Shatin College and its associated Primary School on one side, and the Baptist University Staff Quarters on the other. I recall that when this was first built the staff insisted that they wanted a simple number and road designation on the grounds that it was embarrassing enough for non-Baptists (by then in a large majority) to have the religion in the name of the university and they did not want to live with it as well. The university agreed to this but it seems the Post Office did not because the name has stuck. Past the staff quarters  is the most up-market part of the road, a little street called Mei Wo Circuit, which has not only exclusive estates but many houses individually built to architect designs. The place is obviously a big attraction to burglars because it is home to a lot of large and noisy dogs.

A long uphill straight brings us to a small barricaded turn-off. Walkers who pass the barrier can reach the MacLehose trail, Tsuen Wan and other distant attractions. Exhausted hikers can get the minibus down the hill from here, although there is no official stop. The road levels out, passes Greenwood Terrace on the right and Ville de Jardin on the left. Then it does a smart left turn and abruptly stops. This is the end of the line.

At this point, it must be said, the Transport Department’s arrangements have little connection with reality. In theory the minibus stop for the last estate – Ville de Jardin – is further up, on the edge of the large piece of dead end which for decades served as the car park for the nearby Lions’ Look-out. In practice nobody takes any notice of that: the minibus drops its last passengers right outside the estate entrance, and residents going downhill stand opposite. The minibuses did park by the old stop, because it was handy for the clump of bushes which they use as a toilet. No official toilet is available within a short walk of the route.

A year or two ago the Transport people got complaints from some nearby resident that the car park, when empty in the small hours of the morning, was attracting players of noisy car driving games. Why the resident concerned could not just call the police when the noise was bothering him I do not know. Instead we had a public consultation  over the question whether we approved of five mature trees being removed to make room for a roundabout. The answer to the question was “no” and the trees are still there. But we got the roundabout anyway. This is a silly place for a roundabout because it is not a road junction of any kind. The roundabout is just a glorified speed bump. But glorified it is. There are large road markings and signs. Also, the minibus stop, which was not used as a stop, was now in the wrong place. So the Transport genius in charge of this enterprise moved it to the car park, which now in theory no longer exists. The result of all this stupidity is that the new signs and markings are ignored. People park where they used to park and the minibuses stop where they used to stop. Actually we did not need a new roundabout and bus stop. What the place really needs is a public toilet. But that, I suppose, would have to come from another department.

I infer from this that our government’s efforts to collect local opinion are still not terribly successful. I am a frog at the bottom of our local well, but presumably other frogs in other wells can also point to arrangements which testify to the good intentions and ignorance of the officials concerned. We should not pick on the Transport people either. The Ag and Fish’s efforts to curtail the activities of the local monkey population have been hilariously and totally ineffective. If you are visiting the Lions lookout you will see their giant monkey trap, which is now in its second year as an ineffective obstruction in a perfectly good footpath. By the car park which is no longer supposed to be a car park is a large sign saying in both languages that “feeding monkeys causes problems; nature can meet their needs”. But nobody is feeding them at the car park anyway.

In other jurisdictions one might take up matters like these with one’s local councillor but in Hong Kong this presents problems. Your district boarder is also a participant in the CE election. This may explain why DB seats attract a large supply of mysteriously well-funded DAB candidates. This means that in many cases, including mine, the relevant member is someone I would not vote for if the only other candidate was Adolf Hitler. I hear he is good on the local stuff. But is it fair for me to ask him to sort out the monkeys, the roundabout, the toilet, and any other little local problems, when no matter how sincere and successful his efforts I shall be voting for someone else?

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I hear that the print version of the SCMPost is now regarded as something rather like me — a technically outdated relic of a past era. Nowadays it’s all about hits, and they only get hits on the on-line version. My source also passed on the interesting snippet that the King of the hit-magnets was Mr Alex Lo, whose daily efforts in print occupy a prime position on Page 2. This is nice for Mr Lo, who as a result is presumably unlikely, at least in the near future, to join the large crowd of Post ex-columnists (declaration of interest: of whom I am one) watching the Decline and Fall with the traditional mixture of terror and pity.  This is not so much good news for readers, however, because as a result they are exposed to a certain amount of — shall we say inaccuracy?

The Post’s budget does not stretch to a fact-checker, apparently. This morning’s offering on the upcoming, or possible not upcoming, Occupy Central manifestation provided a good example. “Wherever such mass protests occurr … they always end in tear gas, pepper spray and batons,” quoth Mr Lo. This is not a matter of opinion; it is a matter of fact. And columnists venturing into matters of fact should avoid using words like “always”. I participated long ago in numerous mass protests — how long ago can be gathered from the fact that they were mostly either against the Viet Nam war or the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia — which did not in fact end in tear gas etc. Modern writers can be forgiven for having missed the 60s, but a brief search of the memory banks should have turned up the protests in Hong Kong against national security legislation in 2003, which were massive by any standard, extremely protestant and entirely peaceful.

Opinion is free; facts are sacred; bullshit is bullshit.

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OK, I promise – last one on this topic. The Post’s coverage of anti-locust protests continues to explore new areas of journalism. On Sunday there was a mini-protest in Mong Kok. Numbers on these occasions are notoriously unreliable but apparently the protesters were heavily outnumbered by the press. Meanwhile a few blocks away the Voice of Loving Hong Kong, led by chairman Patrick Ko, was collecting signatures for a “we love locusts” petition which they will send to the relevant policy secretary.
So far, pretty normal coverage, with a few quotes from both sides. Only in the last paragraph do we enter the Twilight Zone:
“Halfway through the (anti) protest Ko somehow found himself at the scene. His presence caused a commotion, with protesters hurling insults at him…”

Well reading that must have given a great deal of innocent pleasure to the demonstrators for various causes who have found themselves similarly treated by Mr Ko’s Loving supporters. The bit that bothers me is the “somehow Mr Ko found himself”. After all there is no mystery here. Having got his petition set up Mr Ko, as any normal person would, wanted to know how the opposition’s knees-up was going. Perfectly legal – nothing wrong – easily covered by some such phrase as “Mr Ko arrived”. It seems our reporter was concerned that this might imply to a suspicious mind that Mr Ko had actually deliberately gone where he went. A careful writer, our reporter might suppose, should choose a phrase which could cover other possibilities, like:

Mr Ko was heading into the Mong Kok tube station when he ran into an officious Good Fairy. “You like demonstrations,” she said, “let me send you to another one.” and Poof, Mr Ko found himself …

Mr Ko was abducted by aliens and subjected to experiments unfit for readers of a family newspaper. He was then beamed back to Earth but the careless Spock in charge of the machinery dropped him right in the middle of the protesters…

Mr Ko was struck by a falling object and wandered in a state of amnesia through the streets of Mong Kok. When he awoke, he found himself …

Mr Ko suffers from a rare brain ailment which occasionally leads to him walking helplessly and quite unconsciously towards the nearest public demonstration. When he woke up…

A simpler solution to the writing problem would have been to ask Mr Ko how he came to somehow find himself. As so often these days seekers of this information were better catered for by the Standard. Mr Ko, apparently, told their reporter he was “just passing by”. Sure he was.

Meanwhile my moles tell me that the Post management has banned the use of the words “locust” and “anti-locust” altogether unless unavoidable (which usually means in direct quotes). This is supposed to be part of the Post’s policy against “hate speech”. This is a subtle way of taking the government’s side in the matter. The use of locust is not a piece of hate speech. Locusts do not have any embarrassing habits or satanic connotations. Nor in the Hong Kong contest are they a notorious pest. All most of us know about locusts is that they arrive in huge numbers and consume voraciously. This is a pretty good metaphor for the government’s “let ’em all come” tourism policy and its consequences. Officials do not like being criticised, especially when the criticism is justified. If you haven’t a good answer for the critics it is easier to complain about their language. Support from media lackeys in this matter is very welcome and no doubt will be rewarded in the usual way.

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God, it’s worse than I thought. The Post is now prepared to lie to its readers. Today’s front page story on the “Locust protest” was mainly devoted to official condemnations of the view that there may be some number of mainland tourists which is enough, or even too many.
This didn’t leave much room for a brief summary of Sunday’s events, but we got this: “Police intervened after scuffles broke out between the demonstrators and passers-by opposed to the march.” The ordinary and natural meaning of those words is that the march was opposed spontaneously by people who just happened to be in Canton Road at the time, which is manifest nonsense. It was opposed by people who had deliberately set out to provide a counter-demonstration. Anyone who was dubious about this could simply have consulted Monday’s Standard, which featured a very nice picture of the opponents of the march, brandishing large copies of the SAR and PRC flags.

I am prepared to believe that there may still be local people who shop in Canton Road, though they don’t include me. I am not prepared to believe that such people take with them a flag on a pole in case they are suddenly confronted by a demonstration they disapprove of. We have seen enough of the loving Hong Kong people in action to know how they work and what they are trying to do, which is basically to turn any demonstration they disapprove of into a street brawl.  Whether you approve of this or not it should be reported. These are hard times for people who used to work at the Post. What used to be a source of pride is becoming something we would rather keep quiet about. An American newspaper editor once said that when you have a monopoly the difficult thing is not to stay in business but to stay in journalism. Too hard for some, apparently.

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It is, or should be, a commonplace of journalists’ education that there is always more than one way of doing a story. There may be a better or worse, but as long as the facts are accurate there is no one right way or wrong way.

Having said which, sometimes the differences look a bit suspicious. On Sunday there was a protest in Tsimshatsui by people who want the number of mainland visitors curtailed or at least limited. This is an understandable sentiment: tourism as an industry makes a lot of money for a few people and inconveniences a great many others. On the other hand the issue has become something of a political litmus test: people taking this view tend to wave the old colonial flag and their opponents to wave the mainland five-star one.

The Standard had the story on its front page. The Post’s much larger front page was filled with China stories. According to Standard reporter Kelly Ip the protesters, who numbered about 100, gathered outside the Star Ferry pier and in that vicinity were confronted by several dozen members of the two pro-Beijing groups which specialise in street thuggery, the Defend Hong Kong Campaign and the Voice of Loving Hong Kong. A disorderly scene ensued, until the police separated the two groups with crowd barriers. The protest then proceeded as planned down Canton Road.

This is not the story as told by the Post’s Ng Kang-chung. Mr Ng’s version of the start of the march was “The march got off to a tense start when scuffles broke out between protesters and people opposed to the demonstration. Police had to intervene.” What, no idea who these people are at all?

Apparently not. Mr Ng, however, did find the Voice of Loving Hong Kong later; they staged a “rival ‘welcome to Hong Kong’ campaign on Canton Road. About 10 members distributed leaflets…” Interesting that he was not curious about the patriotic person in the Post’s picture, who is confronting a young man in a Brazil football shirt brandishing an anti-locust poster. The confronting person is wearing a mask. Not, I fancy, for medical reasons.

I would like to believe that this was all just coincidence. Maybe Mr Ng was a bit late on the scene and picked up the early action from other reporters. But it smells a bit off. We expect the Post to worship the Chinese government. That is its habit. Presenting the Voice of Loving Hong Kong as a bunch of pacifist leaflet distributors when they have just enjoyed provoking a good punch-up is going much further. We no longer expect balance from the Post. It would still be nice to have accuracy.

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Let us see, in the public-spirited atmosphere of the festive season, if we can sort out the problems of those people who are puzzled by the continuing unpopularity of our glorious Lufsig – I mean leader.

It seems that Mr CY Leung’s advertised appearances always attract a hostile crowd, so he is reduced to unadvertised or private ones. This did not happen to previous CEs or for that matter Governors. This is the kind of coincidence which has some people smelling a malignant conspiracy, and others calling for new public order legislation to protect the majesty which doth hedge about our Mayor. Why, wondered one of these suspicious people, did Mr Leung get no credit for his achievements?

Well there are some problems with Mr Leung’s “achievements”. One of them is that some of them do not look so much like achievements as quick fixes in which important principles were sacrificed for political expediency. Another is that Mr Leung did not come into office after a long spell in opposition. Any established policy which he now seeks to correct was preserved or initiated while he was a big wheel in the two previous administrations. It is particularly difficult to work out what Mr Leung – who as Convenor of Exco was the CE’s senior advisor at the time – thought when the administration killed the public housing construction programme which he is now painfully reviving. Did he argue vociferously against this piece of social vandalism, Exco deliberations having miraculously remained secret so nobody heard about it? Did he grit his teeth and long for the day when he could correct the error? Or is he, as a post-doctoral fellow in the Liaison Office University of Yesmanship, incapable of saying “no” to anyone further up the slippery pole to advancement in the service of Communist despotism?

Be this as it may, the problem is not in what Mr Leung does, but what he is. The fact is that he cheated shamelessly to get the job in the first place. Now on the Mainland it is axiomatic that we should let by-gones be by-gones on a truely epic scale. What are several tens of millions dead in the rosy light of the Party’s glorious history? Unfortunately this is not a habit in Hong Kong, where a certain level of integrity and honesty is still regarded as becoming in our leaders. Mr Leung is in the position of those Shakespearean bastards who seize the throne by murdering the rival claimants. Nothing he can do as a ruler will expunge the manner of his arrival. It does not matter whether he does a good job. The objection is to his having the job at all.

Of course as any careful reader of Shakespeare will know, the situation is not completely hopeless. The Royal usurper can salvage his reputation and support with a successful war against the French. Unfortunately Calais is far away and Hong Kong does not have an army, so Mr Leung is reduced to picking a diplomatic bunfight with the Philippines.  I cannot recall the last time a Hong Kong Government did anything so shameful. The latest “sanctions” are not in pursuit of compensation, reparations or accountability. All these substantive issues have been successfully sorted out. Hong Kong is now starting a fight because it still wants … an apology. Polite expressions of regret from the relevant government are not grovelling enough. A fulsome apology from the current Mayor of Manila (who is as it happens the responsible official) is dismissed as “insincere”.  So we are now acting on the rather unlikely theory that you can get a more “sincere” apology out of someone if you hold a gun to their head.

And will the Hong Kong government apologise to those domestic helpers who are abused, exploited and tortured by their employers?  This is not the result of an unexpected crisis mishandled. It is a result  of policies deliberately instituted and persisted in despite, or because of, their obvious consequences in making it difficult for helpers to assert even the most fundamental human rights, of which the right not to be tortured is one. I am not holding my breath.

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Goodness you get a high class of rubbish in the SCMPost these days. Picture on Saturday’s front page showed a PLA frigate passing the Star Ferry Pier, accompanied by two helicopters. Apparently there were actually two frigates. Xinhua was reported as saying that they carried out a “co-ordinated patrol across the harbour”, resulting in more familiarity with the “air-sea situation” and improved ability to handle emergencies. I take this to mean that the two frigates sailed down the harhour, and possibly back, accompanied by the helicopter which each of them carries. This is a normal thing for the PLA navy to do and they have done it before.

This was not enough for the Post’s news desk, which deployed two reporters to turn this respectable sow’s ear into a political silk purse. Clearly what was needed for this purpose was someone — anyone — willing to read into this mundane piece of military practice a political massage related to some topical issue. Enter the ever-obliging Mr Lau Yui-siu. Mr Lau has been demoted since the last time I saw him in a Post piece. Then he was a “China affairs expert”; now he is a “China analyst”. And his analysis was that the sail down the harbour was supposed to send a “strong message” to protesters. The PLA, he said ominously “wanted to tell Hongkongers that they would be ready to carry out their duties if they are needed to handle the Occupy Central movement”.

Macau-based “military observer” Anthony Wong Dong (Mr Wong has previously appeared in the Post as the “chairman of the Macau-based International Military Association: some sort of groupie?) took a different view. He said the drill had been “restrained and humble” to avoid “making the Hong Kong public nervous”. So no story then?

Wait! Coming to the rescue we have “naval expert” Ni Lexiong. I know it’s a cruel trick to Google these guys but Prof Ni is an academic in a Shanghai university. He is the leading China authority on Alfred Thayer Mahan, an American naval theorist who died 100 years go. I dare say there isn’t much competition for the Mahan franchise. Prof Ni’s take on the matter was that the drill would be a deterrent to “disobedient forces”. It was a warning that Hong Kong people “should not challenge the Central government’s authority, with military means being Beijing’s last step to maintain  Hong Kong’s stability and prosperity.”

I hate to disagree with another naval enthusiast – there are not many of us – but this is not a happy way of putting it. If Beijing ever has to resort to military means then Hong Kong’s stability and prosperity will end abruptly.

But the whole story really does not stand up to close examination. If there is a public disorder problem it may be necessary, as a last resort, to send in troops. This is dangerous, because their training and approach are not intended for this sort of situation. A brisk military approach can lead to Bloody Sunday, Amritsar Massacre, Kent State, Tienanmen etc. Still, men in the street with guns are the last resort. In circumstances of this kind the navy and air force are useless.

A PLA frigate is a submarine hunter. It is not designed or equipped to sail down Queens Road and hose down an Occupy Central protest. The helicopters might have some utility as people-movers or observation platforms, but our government is not short of helicopters. If the PLA wishes to send a message about its willingness to shovel protesters off the street it will not doubt find a few truckfulls of soldiers to do a quick circuit of the one-way system. The sailors were just practising. News, not fiction, please.

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