tim's experiment

Interesting story in Sunday’s Post about the Real Estate Developers’ Association, which has apparently commissioned a very expensive PR firm (nothing but the best for our plutocrats) to find out what the public thinks of them and why. The first interesting thing about this piece of news is that it was not new. It was published the previous Tuesday here: http://biglychee.com/ We blogistas have to stick together.

The second funny thing about it is that the real estate moguls are going to pay a lot of money for something which many people would be happy to tell them for free. Many of us would be happy to have the chance to tell a selection of real estate developers what we think of them, which would go roughly like this:

The real estate business is populated entirely by lying scum whose attitude to ordinary people is much like that of shearers to ordinary sheep. They deploy shoals of legal landsharks to find loopholes in the laws designed to ensure that new buildings are reasonable in size, inoffensive in appearance and consistent with the government’s view of what would be in the public interest in the area concerned. Aided by subtle corruptionof the relevant parts of the civil service this enables them to inflict on our urban landscape buildings which are gross, ugly and frequently deployed in a way which not only spoils the view for everyone else but effectively prevents them from even seeing it. The industry’s ethics are non-existent, its aesthetics abysmal, and faced with a real estate developer as a potential son-in-law most of us would feel a strong preference for an ordinary decent murderer.  Added to these offences is their malign influence on public policy, which includes preventing the government from running a decent public housing programme, and slagging off the Chief Executive in Beijing if he does not share REDA’s bloated opinion of its importance to the local economy. We blame real estate developers largely for the fact that accomodation in Hong Kong is hideously expensive, and considerably for the shortcomings of our political system. Also we don’t like them. Too many come across in public as arrogant fatcats with antediluvian politics and obnoxious personalities.

As to what the expensive PR people will think up to remedy this situation, the mind — as they say — boggles. I am not going to try to help this bunch of bandits but some of the more objectionable individuals might improve the overall average perception if they contrived to drop dead in the street.

The news that an 81-year-old minibus driver died while sitting in his cab without air conditioning, pursuant to the new rules on idling engines, raised a number of issues. I am not sure that I really subscribe to the inference drawn by professional drivers, that the new law will endanger their health. No doubt the inside of a roasting minibus is not pleasant. But when you are 81 the call from Saint Peter can come any time.

What this story does show is the total inadequacy of Hong Kong’s provision for the aged. Why was this poor man still working at an age when most of us expect to be enjoying ourselves – if we are still here? Because there is no old age pension, even for the very old. If I had been in Legco last week I would have thrown a banana myself, when Donald Tsang, asked if the conditions attached to “fruit money” could be relaxed a bit, wondered whether the government could afford it. Come on, the government has reserves oozing from every pore, it blows gazillions without a qualm on useless railways lines and new layers of political sinecures. It can afford whatever it really wants. Of course it is a tenet of every influential plutocrat in Hong Kong that if you take money from rich people and give it to poor people it just makes them lazy. But surely at some point in our lives we are allowed to be lazy?

Then there is the question of the environment. The official approach to this, as to other matters, is not to start with the important bits, but to start with the easy bits. Hong Kong’s air is filthy. Shall we get the power companies to give up using the dirtiest fuel known to man? Too difficult. Shall we persuade our brothers over the boundary that having a coal-fired generator in each factory is bad for your health? Sensitive. Will we persuade the transport industry to base its trucks in Hong Kong instead of filling our streets with mainland 12-wheelers which have carefully filled themselves with communism’s filthy diesel before crossing the border? Tricky. Will we persuade the bus companies to junk their older jallopies and get some electric, or at least hybrid, buses on the road? The expense, the expense! Will we grab a few elderly minibus drivers and fine them for keeping their engines running? At last a practical suggestion! 

Then there is a rather delicate question. Should a person at this age be allowed to work as a minibus driver at all. Let me declare an interest: I have reached an age at which this is a topic of some person interest. I do not suggest that there is some age at which nobody should be allowed to drive at all. People who live in places where the roads are quiet and the alternatives non-existent will need to make a different decision from those in places where the driving is demanding and the public transport adequate. Some people age better than others. Some were better drivers than others in the first place. But driving a minibus in Hong Kong seems like no country for old men. Whenever this topic comes up I remember my time as a court reporter, which occasionally included coverage of inquests. These are much more common in the UK than they are in Hong Kong. There is an inquest, for example, into every fatal road accident.  Where the road crash involved an elderly driver the unvoiced question always hung in the air, that perhaps if said driver had been more young and alert the accident would not have happened. This is a depressing thought, so I think I will hang up my driving licence at the age when the government starts requiring a medical check. After all if you hit someone — even the archetypal death-wish pedestrian crossing the road while deep in mobile conversation — you will always wonder, even if nobody ever asks…

I was going to skip the constitutional reform shindig, partly because I am busy — my son gets married tomorrow — and partly because so many people have had a go already. But they have all missed something, which we will come to in a minute.

There seems to have been a certain amount of bias in the coverage of the whole thing. Much has been made of the split in the pro-democracy camp. But at least it has left the politicians in that camp with some dignity and respectability. After all in the long run people will recognise that it is possible to be devoted to democracy and draw two very different conclusions: that one should vote for anything which gets us nearer to democracy or that one should not vote for anything less than the real thing. The difference is really not one of principle, but of tactics. Judging by Phillip Bowring’s comments in the Post this morning he would not have voted for the reform package. I rather think I would have. The fact that we disagree on this point is not a problem. Of course the politician who told his voters that he would only vote for the real thing has no choice. Those who agreed to negotiate with mainland officials also have no choice. Having asked for the apparently impossible and been given it, to reject it would have cast doubt on the honesty of the whole process. Perhaps they should ask for more next time.

Leader and letter writers have been very excited about the “Long Hair” comment that Szeto Wah’s cancer seemed to have reached his brain. But this is an example of that fine old journalistic tradition, the quote taken out of context. Mr Szeto put brain health on the agenda by suggesting that anyone who voted against the government’s package had a problem with his brain. Having put brains into the arena Mr Szeto had no legitimate complaint about his own being examined, and indeed although other people have complained it seems that he has not.  I must say also that although I have the greatest regard and admiration for much of Mr Szeto’s distinguished record (and I think in the education functional constituency I voted for him several times) there is a certain poetic justice at work here. When he went out of his way to end the political career of Mrs Elsie Tu some pretty nasty things were said on his behalf.

But as I said before, at least the democrats emerge as real people, with real opinions. By contrast the pro-government politicoes look like poodles and the pro-Beijing ones like puppets, What do the Liberal Party and the DAB stand for, one wonders? Whatever they are told to stand for, seems to be the answer.

Now to the missing link. The government is now committed to having five “functional constituency” seats whose electorate comprises the entire population minus that smidgeon who already have functional constituency lay-abouts operating on their behalf. The only condition announced as part of the deal is that candidates will have to be nominated by district board members. This leaves a great deal to be decided. Least surprising headline last week was the one which said that officials were considering “some form” of proportional representation for these seats.

Now I must say that even for me (I was a constitutional historian in my youth) election systems are one of those topics like double-entry book-keeping and pension arrangements which are worthy but dull. The eyelids droop at the mention of their name. So let us keep this simple.

Officials are now pondering how they can fix the system to keep as many democrats as possible out of the new seats.  Given that in the absence of some mammoth mistake some 60 percent of the population will vote for a democrat this is a bit of a tall order. One solution would be to put stringent restrictions on the nomination procedure. If for example we say that any candidate requires the nomination of 15 district councillors from the same district, then we can hope that many “undesirable” possibilities will be unable to reach the starting gate. But this would be a bit blatant. Some less obvious variation will no doubt be attempted. We cannot do the simple thing: divide the territory into five constituencies. each returning one member. That would produce five democrats. So we are probably doomed in the end to some variation on party lists in one monstrous super-constituency covering the whole territory, and the electors having one vote each. This will produce five members who are answerable to nobody but with reasonable luck at least two of them will be from the DAB or its fellow travellers. Remember you read it here first.

The government’s advertisements — I beg your pardon announcements — urging us to “Act Now”, raise interesting questions. Not about the merits of “acting now” a topic on which we have no power and will not be consulted. Nor about the merits of the ads — I beg your pardon announcements — themselves, though they were well down to the standards to which we have become accustomed. The announcements urging you to change the water in your flower pots at least offer an argument: standing water = moquitoes = tropical diseases. Act Now’s analogy with ballroom dancing was just an appeal to a poor metaphor. 

The question which will no doubt provide some entertainment and income for sundry lawyers in the near future is whether it is proper for a TV company to broadcast such a thing, when we have been repeatedly told that the broadcast media are not allowed to run political advertisements. As it happens we have some recent examples. A political party, the DAB, sponsored a radio programme. The DAB, as is its habit, did not defend this as either not an advertisement or as legal on other grounds. They said the democrats had also broken the rules, pointing to a paid ad from Ms Emily Lau announcing a political meeting. 

It seems to me, assuming that the DAB’s characterisation of Ms Lau’s broadcast is accurate, that both these offerings should have been refused by the station concerned, because both ought to be covered by the ban on political advertising. Clearly an announcement of a meeting ought to be covered by any ban on political ads. It is not asking people to buy something, but that is not what politicians do.  Media may, as a public service, report the date and time of upcoming meetings but a paid for announcement is an advertisement, like an announcement of a birth, marriage or death. The sponsorship of a programme may be a more subtle form of advertising, but advertising it is. Makers of expensive watches to do not sponsor programmes which consist of a ten-second look at a clockface because of a philanthropic desire to ensure that television viewers know what the time is. The sponsor hopes that people will think better of him because of his sponsorship. That does not, of course, mean that the DAB may not sponsor public-spirited programmes. It means only that such sponsorship may not be announced over the airwaves. If the party no longer wishes to sponsor a programme on those terms then the claims of public-spirited motivation are hypocritical, a common ailment in political parties. 

This brings us to the “Act Now” spots. I think you would need to have a very expensive legal education to dispute the point that these were political. The future constitutional arrangements for Hong Kong are clearly a matter within any reasonable definition of political matters. They are discussed predominantly by politicians, and the matter is to be decided in the Legislative Council, which few will dispute is a political body. And indeed the official spokesman who tackled the matter did not dispute that the subject matter was political. He said that Announcements of Public Interest were for the purpose of informing the public about government policy, and the proposed reforms became government policy once they were approved by Exco. 

We will perhaps leave to the lawyers, who enjoy this sort of thing, the question whether on the face of it this is enough. If broadcasters are prevented by law from broadcasting political ads this should surely include political ads offered by the government, whether or not those ads fall within the proper definition of an API. If I complain to the Broadcasting Authority that an API is a political ad is the authority going to reply that such announcements are above the law? What would happen, one wonders, if in an unguarded moment the government perpetrated an API which was indecent or obscene? Would the station which had actually broadcast it be allowed the defence that it had no editorial control over the matter? 

But I suspect these questions are unnecessary, because the official concerned was quite wrong in suggesting that a matter became “government policy” once it was approved by Exco. This might have been good enough in the old days when Exco was “The Governer-in-Council” and he did not have to take its advice if he did not like it. The Legislative council, in those days, was entirely chosen by the Governor and if it had flatly refused to do his bidding he could replace it in toto or rule by decree. However our present constitutional arrangements are different. Government legislation and spending require the approval of Legco. Changes to the electoral arrangements are explicitly stated to require the approval of Legco. Clearly Legco is constitutionally part of the Government. It is not the Chief Executive’s creature and nor is he encouraged to rule without it. Accordingly a decision on matters within Legco’s competence or requiring Legco’s approval cannot, it seems to me, become government policy until the council has had its say. Until that point they are still policy under construction, as it were, and cannot be regarded as appropriately uncontroversial for an API. This point has been nicely illustrated by the events of the last few days, in which it has been discovered that the proposals praised in the Act Now ads are no longer government policy, which now favours an amended version. So the APIs were APIs last week but would be political ads if aired again this week. Come on folks, the law may be an ass, or in the case of some lefty lawyers a weathercock, but surely it is not as stupid as that…

It is a sad story when someone who is cycling along without a care in the world is struck by a falling tree, and suffers fatal injuries. One sympathises with the relatives and friends of Choi Kit-keung, who suffered this misfortune in Shatin last week. Having said which some of the resulting complaints have many of us barking, if you’ll excuse the phrase in this context, up the wrong tree.

Trees are a part of nature and like other parts, including us, they eventually grow old and die. When this happens unexpectedly, or is hastened by rough weather, they may, also like us, fall over. This is part of nature’s rich pageant and to expect our government to change it in the name of “tree safety” is fruitless and wasteful. Actually accidents involving falling trees are extremely rare. The last one before this was two years ago. Before that I don’t remember any. If you are hit by a falling tree you may rightly rail against the harshness of fate in your case. But from an overall point of view this is not a common hazard. The likelyhood of being knocked off your twig by a falling tree is extremely low: somewhere between being struck by lightning and being kidnapped by the North Korean Secret Service. You are far more likely to win the Mark Six.

So it is a spectacular waste of money to have teams of civil servants roaming the territory taking the pulse of sickly trees. And now, according to this morning’s papers, the district crime squad is looking into the matter. What on Earth could it have to do with them? Murder by Death Watch Beetle? Where are you, Agatha Christie, when we need you?

The serious side of all this is that in the brouhaha over trees an important point has been overlooked. Mr Choi was not beaten to death by the tree. When he fell off his bike he struck his head on  the pavement, causing the injury which killed him. So the moral of the story is not that the government should be taking more care of trees. It is that cyclists should wear crash helmets. I readily admit that when I was a kid we all rode bare-headed. But in many countries now the wearing of some sort of protective headgear is virtually universal, if not compulsory. In Hong Kong it is almost unheard of except among the serious racing fraternity. This should be changed. This would be a more constructive reaction to Mr Choi’s death than griping about government tree inspectors. It is of course perfectly legal to ride a push bike without a helmet. But if someone chooses to play roulette with his life it is too late to complain when the ball drops into the zero hole.

Last week, in preparation for the football World Cup, the government launched an anti-gambling campaign. This clearly came from the same rhetorical neck of the woods as the anti-drugs campaign. Young people were urged not to gamble at all. There were no half measures, no exemptions for “harmless flutters” or games with friends for nominal stakes. Our young were firmly told to stear clear of gambling of all kinds. It seems that officials accept, at least as far as the younger generation is concerned, that gambling is a social evil and a potentially dangerous addiction.

This is a view with which on the whole I agree despite having, long ago, enjoyed a short but lucrative career as a bingo caller. Some people do not become addicted to gambling, just as some poeple do not become addicted to tobacco or, for that matter, heroin. But the harm done to those who get hooked probably ought to outweigh the rather modest pleasure provided to those who don’t. However this praiseworthy point of view sits rather oddly wth some other government activities. There was a “Don’t gamble fun fair” opened by Acting Secretary for Home Affairs Florence Hui, Director of Broadcasting Franklin Wong Wah-kay, Chairman of the Ping Wo Fund Advisory Committee (don’t ask) Dr Yau Wing-kwong, member of the Betting and Lotteries Commission Tsang Chi-hung, Director of Operations of the Hong Kong Police Paul Hung, chairman of the Hong Kong Football Association Brian Leung, and Legco member Dr Samson Tam.  Some of these people must be considered to be either confused or perhaps a touch hypocritical. The Betting and Lotteries Commission is not, as far as we know, dedicated to the abolition and suppression of betting and lotteries. Nor is the Hong Kong Police Force, whose efforts in this area are limited to protecting the lucrative momopoly in legal gambling enjoyed bythe Hong Kong Jockey Club. RTHK is far from free of information of interest to and intended for gamblers. And the government itself does very well out of the Jockey Club.

There was an interesting letter in the Post this morning, apparently part of C.Y. Leung’s non-campaign for the Chief Executive’s job, in which Mr Leung pointed out that the rather stingy space provided for orang otangs in our local zoo was no worse than the space provided for many human beings in our city. Mr Leung offered the statistical snippet that 43 per cent of all housing units in Hong Kong are smaller than 40 square metres. He did not, as he might have done, go on to compare this with the rolling hectares provided for the fun and games of the small minority of the population who can afford to own race horses.

There was a time when the government did not ban dangerous drugs. Instead it sold a monopoly to a person called the “Opium Farmer” and protected his monopoly by prosecuting alternative suppliers and their customers. This now seems a rather disreputable arrangement. It is, however, exactly what the government still does with gambling. What is the point of holding fun fairs urging people not to gamble when there is a government-sanctioned and approved betting shop on every housing estate, and so many top people are members of our local four-legged casino that the Court of Appeal thinks it would be hard to find a judge who was not on the roll? One thing which never works with young people is that line that goes “don’t do as I do; do as I say.”

This blog has been neglected lately because I have been away so much. One trip to Jakarta. Indonesia is a friendly and fascinating place, but Jakarta provides a chilling glimpse of where we might be heading. Basically there are two cities. One is inhabited by the rich, including the corporate expat set. This consists of large hotels, shopping malls, large houses with numerous servants and upmarket clubs, ditto. These places have elaborate security of the sort found in Hong Kong only at the more controversial consulates. Bags are examined, metal detected, car boots opened for inspection. Travel between these secure enclaves is usually by car. Visitors will take a cab, but residents tend to have something large and solid with a paid driver and smoked glass windows.

Leave your cocoon and go round the corner, and you enter another world. The wardrobe is by Les Miserables and the environment is clearly not disturbed by considerations of Food and Environmental Hygiene. Small children ask you for money and “ladies” of uncertain gender offer services which Bill Clinton dows not count as sex. Elderly folk can be seen settling down for the night in other people’s doorways. Life is precarious and basic. Intruders from the other world will feel uncomfortable – perhaps they should – if not unsafe. And this is all, I suppose, the standard arrangement where many people are very poor and a few people are very rich.

This is not where we are but it may be where we are heading. Statistical measures of Hong Kong’s wealth distribution have been moving in an ominous direction for years. Under a government of the rich, by the rich and for the rich the upper end of the income distribution is bound to prosper. The only question is what happens to the rest of us. At the moment there are no places in Hong Kong where a rich person need feel unsafe, and — apart from clubs — few places from which a poor person is barred if he can handle the dress code. Some senior civil servants and top business bods appear to live in a different world; that is by choice, not necessity. But how long will this last?

Went to the Institute of Education this week for the inauguration of a new show at the Museum of Education, a small but delightful few rooms which nestle in the middle of the IEd’s stunningly beautiful campus. The latest exhibition concerns Hong Kong’s village schools, which usually started as voluntary efforts by villages or groups of villages. There would be one class, the premises were often the clan hall, and the education provided was, I suppose, basic. One slightly chilling exhibit is a small cane. Apparently new pupils were supposed to present their teacher with a group of symbolic presents. The cane indicated a willingness to be chastised in the pursuit of learning. Eventually most of the schools were adopted by the government, provided with proper buildings, and then in due course closed as too small. Some of the exhibits brought back personal memories. There is one of those stencilling machines which we used before photocopiers came along. You prepared a stencil by typing on some special, and rather expensive, paper. This was mounted on the drum and the operator then wound a handle – once for each copy, which discouraged gratuitous copying quite effectively.

Then I came across a little unheralded gem. I have often wondered what happens to those sheets on which guests are invited to sign their names at weddings, openings, ribbon cuttings etc. Well many years ago (late 50s or early 60s I think) they had one of these sheets at the opening of a new school campus in the New Territories, and somebody carefully preserved it. And there it is. In the midst of a forest of Chinese names, which I could not read, there were four English ones. They are not terribly well written because the only implement available was apparently a Chinese brush. But a careful observer can distinguish the names of David Akers-Jones, Denis Bray and their respective wives. Sir David, as he now is, is of course still with us. Mr Bray, alas, is not.

This is a shame because we got on well in our occcasional meetings, and also because in rowing terms Mr Bray was an important landmark. I stumbled across this by accident. All rowing men in England have heard of a frightfully exclusive rowing club, which only admits people who have won certain events. As the mere captain of an Oxford college which rowed in the second divison I did not qualify. The club is called after Leander, a mythical Ancient Greek oarsman, and it is so old that the tie has none of the usual stripes found on club ties. It is simply one solid colour, a rather alarming shade of pink. One evening I attended the  annual Christmas drinks thing which the Information Services Department threw (I don’t know if this is still going on) for the press. Mr Bray was the man in charge of the department at the time, so he was greeting new arrivals. He was wearing a conspicuously pink tie, so thinking that he had been at Cambridge and would understand the joke, I said, “Hello, I see you’re wearing your Leander tie.”  And it turned out that in fact he was wearing his Leander tie. He was immensely chuffed that someone had recognised it, and seems to have spent the rest of the evening talking about it. Because I received a succession of visitors who wanted an explanation of what was so special about The Tie and why Mr Bray was chiding colleagues who had not recognised it.

You can find the whole story behind this in the Bray book, which is now on-line and a good read. During the first half of the 20th century British rowing was divided into two hostile camps. There were the Orthodox, who sought men of a standard shape who were taught to row in a standard, geometrically efficient way. Then there were the followers of a coach called Steve Fairbairn, who propounded the view that this was all unnecessary nonsense, and the coach should concern himself only with what happened at the end of the oar which went in the water. The Orthodox people had science on their side. A good Orthodox crew also looked good. Fairbairn crews sometimes looked a mess. People could do different things as long as the eventual result was the same. On the other hand people who were too small or oddly shaped for Orthodox crews often more than made up for their physical shortcomings by trying harder. The great stronghold of the Fairbairn school was Jesus College Cambridge, and their greatest triumph was the crew from that college which won everything, up to and including the Grand Challenge Cup at Henley, in 1947.

And Denis Bray was a member of that crew. So when they’ve finished with his autograph in Taipo they might consider sending it to Cambridge.

Our nearest shops are the small mall surrounded by Sui Wo Estate. This was an early Home Ownership estate and the mall provided does not have the luxurious appointments found in later models. There is no airconditioning. but an elaborate two-storey structure on vaguely Moorish lines. It provides shade and ventilation but does little for you in heavy rain. There is a wet market, a supermarket, some eateries, a hardware shop and so on. The shops seem to do quite well because there is no competition in Sui Wo Road and not much in Fotan, the nearest town with a small shopping centre. The mall is also a bit of a social centre. Old folk sit under the trees, buses and minibuses discharge their loads, the shopkeepers know each other and many of their customers. The upstaits part, which you would really only visit if you wanted something in particular, is home to a curious combination of music shops, tutorial centres and doctors’ clinics. The whole thing is about 30 years old and, it must be said, looks it. But it works all right.

Like many other similar spots, a few years ago it fell into the clutches of the Link Reit. A certain amount of mythology has collected around this which we may quickly dispel. It is simply not true that under the management of the Housing Authority the malls lost money. On the contrary the authority’s commercial properties always made a profit, which was used to subsidise the housing account, which did not. There was a certain justice to this because the tenants had, in many cases, little choice but to use the commercial outlets which came with their estate. No doubt the authority was to some extent subject to non-commercial temptations to keep its tenants happy by running the commercial properties in a way that maximised residents’ convenience rather than proprietorial profit. And what, one wonders, is wrong with that?

Anyway the arrival of the Link is Sui Wo did not produce a great deal of change. The car park lady who stamped your ticket and took your money was replaced by a machine which takes Octopus. Unfortunately the car park entrance requires a rather complecated regime, because the machine has to distinguish between delivery people, who pay nothing, shoppers – who pay if they stay longer than half an hour – and residents who pay by the month. This may explain why the tentacle occasionally breaks down. So the car park is still attended. At one stage a few signs appeared complaining about rent increases. But most of the shops have survived.

The notable exception was our bakery, a local enterprise. This disappeared, to be replaced by one of the two chains which have bakery shops everywhere. This is something of a recurring theme. We have a convenience story run by one of the two chains which have such stores everywhere, a chemist by one of the two chemist chains, an ETC machine from one of the two networks you find everywhere, a supermarket from … well you get the idea. It is difficult to believe that all these duopolies run on a basis of ferocious competition, especially as the more numerous oil companies have no difficulty in tacitly coordinating fuel prices. So while distant dimwits hail Hong Kong as a shining example of the merits of free markets we are left at the whim of a variety of virtual monopolies. Of which of course the Link Reit is one. You want to let out a shop within a mile in any direction of the Sui Wo mall and you can’t. Planning regulations do not permit it.  

I am not sure which parts of the Hong Kong economy really display the freedom which makes us so popular with teh Chicago school of economics. The stock market, perhaps. Which explains why it is so easy to get robbed there.

To Sham Tseng on Saturday to play in the first wedding to be held in the Dragon Garden. If you missed the story this was a reproduction traditional Chinese garden constructed long ago by a local eccentric. It was proposed that this should be replaced by another of those huge blocks of flats of which Castle Peak Road now has so many.  There was a row and eventually the government gratified local tree-huggers by securing the garden’s preservation. It has now been done up a bit and it is, I must say, a very pretty garden. It is a bit awkward to get to but if you can afford to bus your guests in from distant parts of the territory it is an intersting choice for a wedding. Among the interesting features is the absence of anywhere to go if it rains. But Saturday was fine.

Anyway having got so far we decided to sample Sham Tseng’s signature dish, which as serious foodies will know is roast goose. This has become considerably more hygienic since I first tried it many years ago. In those days all the goose restaurants were built on stilts on the edge of a watercourse. Unwanted fluids of all kinds simply went through the floor into the creek. Happily mains drainage has now arrived and the restaurants look reasonably modern and well cared-for. On Saturday nights they are very busy and you need a reservation. Parking is subject to one of those curious New Territories arrangements by which someone gives you a ticket and parks your car for you in what looks suspiciously like a free public spot. But as long as you get your card chopped by the restaurant there is no charge. The goose is still good and they do other dishes as well.
After the bird we strolled along the main road in search of a dessert specialist.

Castle Peak Road presents an interesting spectacle at this point. The road itself is quite wide – two lanes each way with a central reservation. On the north side it is still very traditional Hong Kong village with a strong entrepreneurial tinge. The houses are three-storeys, adorned with numerous dubiously legal additions and the ground floors have all been devoted to commerce – mainly to the sort of restaurant where you sit at a folding table on a plastic stool and careful diners use their first pot of tea to wash the crockery. On the other side of the road (I think this was where the San Mig brewery used to be) there is an equally typical spectacle – one of those estates which features a large podium containing carpark and clubhouse, surmounted by several towers of flats. On the south side of the street there is no sign of life at all. I suppose the residents, who must be numerous and rich, come and go in their cars. On the north side there is, for once, a nice wide pavement, and large groups stroll along chatting and comparing the merits of the various food offerings. The effect is rather like those Spanish towns where everyone sleeps through the afternoon and spends half the night strolling the streets, stopping occasionally for snacks or drinks. It is noisy, sociable and pleasant. It is the past. Across the road it is quiet, not particularly pleasant and rigorously socially segregated. People who cannot afford those flat prices are not welcome. This is, I fear, the future. And this is what we call progress?