The holes in the wall

Sai Kung has been my home for ten years, the longest I have lived in one place. I don't have to extol its charms here, but the laid back nature of the place and the people, and the sea and green hills all around, are obviously what keeps me here, considering that I drive nearly 50 kms. round trip to get to work.

In Sri Lanka, my family owned a small pharmacy, and to keep that small business going was a constant struggle. When my parents bought the business, I was already teaching full-time and had my own family, and, in order to help them out, I worked at the pharmacy for free. My evenings and weekends were spent there, time that may have been better spent with my own little family. But, without my support, the pharmacy would have gone bust. The point here is that I know the daily struggles and heartbreaks of small business people.

I see many such businesses around Sai Kung town, and each business represents someone's dream. It could be a small bakery (quite a number of my students, English majors, wish to own bakeries!), a handicrafts shop, a dry cleaning store, a small noodle shop, a small spa, a vegetable stall, a bookstore. The list goes on.

I remember some of the small businesses in Sai Kung that are no more. Three in particular, all on Chan Man Street, come to mind. Around the corner, opposite McDonald's, was a store that sold beautiful handicrafts and souvenirs from New Zealand. Next to the entrance to the car park was a dry cleaning store run by a husband and wife team. They didn't speak English but provided excellent service with a smile. Then, next to the Japan Home Centre, was a dispensary where the staff spoke English and provided good advice on treatment for minor ailments. All three stores are gone now, and even the stores that replaced them are only a memory. What we have are the holes in the wall seen in the photo below.



What drove these businesses away is not the lack of custom but rapacious landlords, who gouge their tenants for rents that are unrealistic and inhumane. They would rather keep the stores vacant for months or years rather than lower the rent, even during an economic crisis. This particular building on Chan Man Street is supposedly owned by the heirs (whoever they are) of Nina Wang, who, according to the SCMP, was Asia's richest woman with a fortune estimated at HK$100 billion. (Despite all that money, she reportedly ate McDonald's hamburgers, and her estate is now being contested before the courts.) All that wealth did not help the small traders who rented these shop spaces. Rents may have gone up steeply when Starbucks moved in to the neighborhood.



This noodle shop at the corner of Fuk Man Road and Chan Man Street reportedly pays $60,000 per month in rent. They can't last long at that rate by selling $25 bowls of noodles. There might be another hole-in-the-wall here soon.

I am fond of a small restaurant that barely occupies 700 sq. ft. The business is just surviving, already paying nearly $22,000 per month. The last time I saw her, the owner/manager was nervous because her lease was coming up for renewal. Even in these troubled times, she feared that the landlord would ask for a higher rent.

PS. May 10. The landlord did ask for a massive increase in rent, from $22,000 to $34,000 per month. The restaurant will close at the end of this month. The owners will move to Tai Po to start another restaurant on premises fort which they can afford the rent. Sai Kung is the loser.

A weekend in Penang

On checking-in to the Bayview Hotel in Georgetown, Penang, we were handed a slip of paper titled "The Innkeeper Ordinance"., which had this little gem of colonial English.

"No innkeeper shall be liable to make good to any guest of such innkeeper any loss of or injury to goods brought to his inn, not being a horse or other live animal, or any gear appertaining thereto or any car or carriage, to a greater amount than the sum of Ringgit Malaysia Five Hundred Only (RM500)".

I have no idea what that legalese means, but, despite never seeing a horse at the hotel during our stay, we had an enjoyable time in Penang.



At a nearby hawker's compound, we came across a stall selling attractive lampshades. Similar to Christmas decorations in Europe, these lampshades had attractive Malaysian designs. We bought 10 to be given as gifts.

Penang is not typically Malaysian because the Chinese appear to outnumber the Malays. To our delight, we also saw South Indians (mostly Tamils) everywhere, and walked to Little India to have our meals.



A view of Penang from my hotel window. The rows of shop houses can be clearly seen.

The next morning, after the obligatory conference presentation (which is the usual excuse for my expense paid travel!), we walked back in the direction of Little India, passing hundreds of shop houses on the way. I have seen more stylish versions of these shop houses in Singapore, where many more appear to have been torn down, but, in Penang, their survival is guaranteed, because UNESCO got there first and declared Penang a World Heritage Site. So, the developers and the wrecking ball have been thwarted, and the Penang's unique flavor, giving an idea of what Singapore may have been 40 years ago, will live on. Thank goodness for that!



These shop houses are not merely tourist attractions. They are homes, and also workshops for all sorts of craftsmen such as mechanics, artists, rattan furniture makers, and printers. There were second hand bookstores, travel agencies, money changers, barber shops, and restaurants. Not in the best shape, these shop houses were evidence of a community that continues to uphold old values while surviving in a fast changing world.

As in Hong Kong and Singapore (but, alas, not in Sri Lanka), the colonial street names had been saved. There's even a Downing Street! Not only the shop houses, but grand, colonial style buildings, such as the Town Hall below, could also be seen all over town. Many of the streets were lined with large shady trees, which we call "mara" in Sri Lanka. Colombo's streets were lined with these trees but have been all but cut down now.

We found this interesting stationary store, which was really an Aladdin's Cave of items that we had not seen in ages. I last used Venus pencils ("Made in Britain") 4 years ago in school, and was thrilled to see them on sale here. (I thought the company may have disappeared now.) When we were admiring the rare fountain pens and bottles of Quink, the kindly shop lady gifted one of each item to us.

The shop house verandahs provided welcome relief from the sun.

Perhaps the biggest treat, for me, was the profusion of stores that sold used books. Undoubtedly, the king among them is Sam's bookstore on Chulia Road. Sam, a genial South Indian, not only sold books but was also knowledgeable about them because he read the, too. The last time I actually discussed books with a dealer of used books was in New Orleans, many, many years ago. (In Sai Kung, I donate my books to the Leisure Book Store, but am unable to buy anything from them because they mostly carry thrashy Brit books. And not a hope of discussing books with the people who work there. I like the cat, though.)

Sam the bookseller



On Saturday, a local English teacher, Bien Kee, escorted us on a conducted tour. We first went to two Buddhist temples, Thai and Burmese. This large reclining Buddha was at the Thai temple. This statue is made of plaster, and I marvelled at the even larger reclining Buddha in Polonnaruruwa, Sri Lanka, which is carved out of solid rock. Plaster vs, rock, there's no comparison.


With Bien Kee

We had three meals at this South Indian vegetarian restaurant. The vadai, dosa, and other items were a treat, but the big surprise was the cost, about a quarter of the prices we pay for Indian food in Hong Kong.

A mosque in Little India

A Chinese temple

Fawzia at the Chinese temple

More shop houses serving as stores

A tiny grocery store of the type we often see in Sri Lanka

A store selling colorful Indian clothes

Kien Bee took us to the Pinang Pernakan Museum, which used to be the home of a rich "baba", a Chinese Headman who must have been a Triad leader. Displaying the wealth of a bygone era, the house has Chinese wood-carved panels, English floor tiles, and Scottish ironworks. Lavishly furnished with period furniture and artifacts, the house had been recently renovated by a rich Chinese family. The Malay man who showed us around was also an artifact from the past, domineering and "do as you are told" type. While we observed him with amusement, the young Americans who were with us seemed to find him irritating.

Below are some photos from the Museum.

The center courtyard seen from one of the the dining rooms

The lovely ironworks around the inner balcony

The various outer buildings

View from a bedroom

Fawzia admiring artifacts

With a rickshaw

The hotel had a spa and I indulged in Thai oil massages on subsequent days. I have taken massages all over Asia but these were the best. The so called Thai-style massages are a torture, simply wracking ones body, but the oil helps to smoothen things out.

The traffic, the new middle-class Malaysians driving locally made "Proton" cars, are a real danger, and the place isn't all that hygienic, with smelly drains and hawkers who didn't look too clean. (What else can you expect in a place that's called Little India?) Some shop houses were rundown, and the owners are probably unable to afford renovations. The Malaysian government, despite all the trumpeting of "Malaysia, truly Asia" , doesn't care much for minorities, so may not help out with repairs. But, our visit was too short, and I want to return to Penang, the sooner the better.

Brother greets brother

A friend sent me this lovely photo. The beaming face of the London cop at 10 Downing Street says it all. Who could have dreamed ...?

I watched on TV as Air Force One arrived at Heathrow. The plane glides to a halt, the door opens, and the Obamas step out, waving to the crowd. Yes, who could have dreamed that this day would come.

The M.Phil. class of 2002

More photos with my favorite students:

With Stacey

With Mong

Stacey and Paulina outside my office door. I was in the USA on an extended visit when this photo was taken.

On my birthday. The students sang for me in four languages (Cantonese, mandarin, Bahasa Indonesia, & English)

On a visit to my home in Clover Lodge

Meedy & Stacey in my office

With Derek Chan on graduation day

With Meedy in Nov. 2004. She was visiting from Indonesia.

With Meedy & Stacey during the same visit

With Paulina at the University of Hong Kong. We were presenting at a conference and went for lunch at the Senior Common Room.



Meedy, you'll enjoy these photos.

Birthdays at Jaspas in Sai Kung

In a previous entry on Joanna, I mentioned that we would drive from CUHK to Jaspas in Sai Kung to celebrate birthdays. I have found some old photos and they are uploaded here. The above photo was taken in August 2000 and shows Joanna, Lisa Wong, Louise Ho, Benzi Zhang and me. I think it was Lisa's birthday. A recent issue of TIME said that Louise is "widely considered the doyenne of Hong Kong English-language literature".

This was in 2001, again on Lisa's birthday (I think). Lixian Jin is also with us.

On my b'day in 2001.

On Joanna's b'day, probably in 2000 or earlier. Mimi Ching is also with us.



This was in 2002. Jason Gleckman, Carmel McNaught, and her husband David are also here.

The height of pompous stupidity

The photo shows the President Rajapakse of Sri Lanka receiving a Guard of Honor from the army. At first glance, this doesn't seem unusual. Every Head of State receives such honors from the armed forces of his/her country once in a while.

But this photo does not tell the whole story. It was taken two days ago in Kilinochchi, till recently the de facto capital of the LTTE, the Tamil Tigers, who have been fighting a brutal civil war in Sri Lanka for more than 25 years. Rajapakse was accompanied by the commanders of the Army, Navy, Air Force, the Defence Secretary (his brother) and the Chief of Police. And therein lies the height of stupidity.

The LTTE are now cornered to a tiny area, less than 10 sq.km. by all accounts. Nevertheless, they are known as the world's deadliest suicide bombers (they invented suicide bombing), still possess long range weapons, and till recently flew rickety planes that bombed the capital Colombo, which is hundreds of miles away. Had they got word of Rajapakse's majestic arrival, they may have launched an attack, by air or by land, that could have wiped out the President and the military command in one blow. Time and again, former Sri Lankan Presidents and military commanders have been attacked and/or killed by the LTTE. For the President and the top brass to be at one location is taking a huge risk that could jeopardize the country and certainly the war, which the government is on the verge of winning.

At least one helicopter is seen in the background, obviously used by the President for his travel. More would have been used by the military commanders. When soldiers are getting seriously injured at the front and need immediate transportation to hospitals, only trucks and tractors are used. The helicopter(s) could have been better used for such purposes. The red carpet and the spick and span soldiers are also noteworthy. A red carpet when visiting a war front in the jungle? I've never seen Presidents Bush or Obama walking on red carpets when visiting Iraq or Afghanistan. Red carpets are for state visits or ceremonial occasions, away from war fronts. And how many hours of manpower were wasted to lay out the carpet and for the soldiers to be spruced up? Maybe they, too, were flown-in from Colombo.

A major election is round the corner, so the President was making full use of a photo opportunity, as the conquering hero who is triumphing over the LTTE. But compare that with the photo below, of Tamil refugee children lining up for food? No helicopters or red carpets for them.


Children lining-up for food in camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Sri Lanka

Joanna

Joanna Radwanska-Williams, to spell out her full name, paid us a visit in Sai Kung over the Easter weekend.


Joanna, April 2009

Joanna was my colleague in the English Department at CUHK from the late 90s. She was one of the most knowledgeable linguistics scholars we've had. She was popular among students and spent much time helping them out with dramas, debates, and other activities on and off campus. Generous to a fault, she was helpful to friends in need and to domestic helpers. (Her home served as a "safe house" for helpers between jobs.) A devoted Catholic, she sang in the choir at a church in Shatin, the only Gwailo among a bevy of Filipinas.

Joanna is fun to be around. A group of colleagues (Louise Ho, Lisa Wong, Benzi Zhang, Mimi Ching, Joanna, and I) would meet regularly for lunch at Shaw Colleges noodle cafe, calling ourselves the "Noodle Club". At these lunches, Louise and Joanna would compose short poems. On birthdays, we would drive to Sai Kung for a leisurely lunch at Jaspas. Joanna always brought me sugar-free delicacies.

Born in Poland and brought up in Britain, Joanna has close ties to the US as well. She now teaches at the Macau Polytechnic, and owns flats in both Macau and Discovery Bay.

Here are two of Joanna's poems composed on previous visits to my home:

"Birdwatching"

In January on the rooftop I admire

Nature's engineering.

The Norfolk pine is a tower

Of green fronds.

Bauhinia in full bloom -

Pink marvel.

Behold the bee's precision

At altitude

Zooming in on sweet targets.

And there's a nameless bird

Like a flying flower,

Its chest of gaudy pink

Crest like the greenest leaf,

And curved beak

Like a bee's proboscis.

Espied, it eyes me

One glorious dreamy moment,

Then darted to the sky

Like an angel.

(January 15, 2005)

"A view of Clover Lodge from the abandoned pier"

The shadows on the water

Are like monk's hoods.

This evening, there are no

Mudskippers.

The whelks lie concealed.

Mysteriously overhead

Like a stealth bomber

Glides an Atlas moth

On wing's like Cyclop's eye.

My vision

Unimpaired

Deciphers the monochrome

Of dusk.

Ripples on the water

Pattern in the moonlight.

In the distance, the collage

Of Clover Lodge

Pine's arrow

Mountaintop

And velvet gray

Sky.

(January 17, 2005)