the proverbial fool

Nobody likes to be thought a fool, although this may be in part because the word has developed increasingly negative connotations over the past four centuries. I suspect a religious influence. In the Middle Ages, ‘fool’ was another name for the court jester, who was the mediaeval equivalent of a professional comedian, a man whose job it was to make his employer laugh.

In fact, there were two

guess who’s coming to dinner

It’s traditional for Chinese families to get together on New Year’s Eve, which this year falls on the second of February, for a dinner, sometimes at home but more often in one of the many big restaurants around town. Needless to say, trying to book a table at this time of year is very difficult, which is why our family dinner will be tomorrow night.

Hong Kong’s restaurants are a bellwether for

east is east

Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Rudyard Kipling, The Ballad of East and West.If I could point to one thing that I’ve learned after so many years of living among Chinese people, it is that if there’s more than one way to look at a situation or to perform a simple task, the Chinese invariably opt for the alternative to what I’d previously been used to. Take the

return to koon garden

Yesterday was an interesting day. In the morning, I visited the wet market in Luen Wo Hui to buy meat and vegetables. The old lady whose vegetable stall I patronize speaks no English, but that isn’t a problem. I was in the process of asking for a catty (about 20 ounces) of pak choi when a young Chinese girl in some kind of uniform came up and offered to help.

“Gei chin [how much]?” I asked the

transliteration

Unlike the English, who had no qualms about the wholesale importation, where required, of words from a host of other languages, when the Chinese don’t have a word for something, they often combine existing characters to form a new word: for example, in Cantonese, a train is foh che (‘fire carriage’), leaving the way open, when motor cars first appeared, for these new monsters of the road to be

the emperor’s cavalry on parade

What value do you place on an object? Do you value it according to how much you paid for it? Or do you value it for the pleasure it gives you during your ownership of it? These twin questions are the reason I’ve chosen to discuss a narrow strip of batik that Paula bought for HK$1 in Stanley Market long before it became a ‘must visit’ tourist venue and no longer became worth visiting (and long

of tablecloths and maiden aunts

If, like me, you grew up in postwar Britain, you probably had at least one formidably severe, intimidating maiden aunt by whom you were occasionally invited to tea. I had several, all great aunts and all incredibly ancient (from the perspective of a five-year-old). And only too ready to administer a sharp slap across the side of the head if you were foolish enough, cocky enough, to transgress any

one picture

I recently set myself the task of selecting just one photograph from the thousands that I've taken over the years that would sum up for someone who has never been here. And here it is (the explanation follows):


The first thing you will notice is that there is nothing in this picture that tells the viewer it was taken in Hong Kong. This is deliberate. Although it has one of the finest natural

in defence of pigs

The English language contains a lot of words and phrases that include the name of an animal and are, as such, intended as metaphors for specific types of human behaviour. Most of these hinge on a key aspect of the perceived character of the animal in question. Thus, to fox is to outwit through guile or cunning and clearly derives from the long-held belief, reinforced in children’s literature,

sweet and sour

The history of kung fu is littered with stories, probably apocryphal but with some credibility, of old masters, on their deathbeds, lamenting that they hadn’t passed on all they knew to at least one of their disciples. Not all teachers were like that of course: I studied wing chun for five years in the 1980s with a teacher who said he would consider himself a failure if he didn’t have at least

chopsticks

An old Chinese story tells of a wise and virtuous man who was granted a wish before dying: that he be able to visit both heaven and hell and judge for himself the difference between the two places. When he arrived in heaven, he found it to be a massive banqueting hall with long rows of narrow tables that were laden with dishes and pots of the most mouth-watering delicacies that could possibly be

and you thought it was all over

Even though the date of Chinese New Year wanders up and down the Gregorian calendar over a range of about four weeks, it always seems to be cold in Hong Kong over the new year period, and this year has been no exception. However, instead of the usual two or three days of cold weather, this year it was cold and miserable throughout the first week, threatening to dampen any enthusiasm for the

fireworks

I often say that the best time to be in Hong Kong is Chinese New Year—if you’re a resident. If you’re a visitor, it’s the worst time—everywhere (apart from the big hotels) is closed. The Hong Kong Tourist Board did initiate a New Year’s Day parade through the main entertainment district in Kowloon a few years ago, but this is Chinese New Year for tourists, and we don’t bother to attend.

However,

a new year

Firecrackers had been going off sporadically all morning, and the local lion-dance troupe, which is always kept very busy on the first day of the new year, is running behind schedule. It is due to arrive at midday, but it is past 1pm before their truck finally pulls up outside the village.

The first order of business is for the lion to pay its respects at the village shrine, accompanied by the

kung hei fat choi

Since the time of Emperor Wu Ti of the Han Dynasty (141–87 BC), acknowledged as one of the greatest of Chinese emperors, the Chinese New Year has fallen on the second new moon following the winter solstice, which means that in 2010 it will be on 14th February. And the usual signs of its impending arrival have been gathering for the past fortnight, starting with a gradual increase in the price of

confucius he say...

Very little that happens in Hong Kong makes the news internationally. Stories that do invariably have a sensationalist angle to them, such as the case of the phantom acid thrower, which made the BBC’s World News recently probably because in the latest attack tourists were among the injured. Another example is the sordid wranglings over the will of eccentric billionaire Nina Wang, Asia’s richest

chinese whispers

If you were to look up the entry for ‘China’ in Cassell’s Book of Knowledge, an eight-volume encyclopaedia published in London in the 1920s, you would find the following opening paragraph:
A book in China begins at the top of the last column on the last page and goes backwards till it ends with the first column on the first page. A dinner begins with fruit and sweets and ends with soup and rice.