Postcards from Hong Kong, Shanghai and Luzon

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

Like many other people, I am very fond of Hong Kong and indeed of Hong Kong people generally. I lived there for some years and I wrote a long series of posts about the history of the place, here in the Bilge, which, after a little cleaning up, have found a permanent home here:

http://gwulo.com/ACBs-history-of-hong-kong

The practical downside to visiting Hong Kong is that it is fearsomely expensive. This of course is a side effect of the Chinese economic miracle - Hong Kong acts as a sort of Monaco-on-a-grand-scale-without-the-gambling and as a sort of Fairy Godmother to Chinese industrial development - its taxes are roughly a bit less than half what they are in China, its legal system is familiar and is very highly developed, as are all its business services, and it is famously free from corruption - indeed its citizens are highly alert to, and intolerant of, any sort of misconduct in public office.

One thing that has certainly changed since the 1997 handover is the number of Mainland visitors to HK - 32 million last year, compared to under one million in 1998. Most of them come to shop for genuine (as opposed to fake) luxury goods, to do business, to visit Disneyworld, etc but enough of them come to have babies for this to have become a significant issue in local politics.

About half the 80,000 babies born in HK last year were born to Mainland mothers; under the terms of the Basic Law this gives the child right of abode in Hong Kong, a very valuable privilege.

Hong Kong people are not happy about this.

This was a one page advert in "Apple Daily" earlier this year:



the text reads:

Do you want Hong Kong to spend $1,000,000 HKD every 18 minutes raising “double negative” children?*

Hong Kong... people have had enough!
■Because we understand that you are victimized by poisonous milk powder, we’ve tolerated you coming to panic buy milk powder;
■Because we understand that you have no freedom, we’ve welcome you to “travel freely” to Hong Kong;
■Because we understand that your education is backwards, we’ve shared our educational resources with you;
■Because we understand that you don’t read complete [traditional] Chinese characters, we’ve used crippled [simplified] Chinese characters below:
“When coming to Hong Kong, please respect local culture, [because] if it weren’t for Hong Kong, you would all be doomed.”

Strongly demand that the government revise the Article 24 of Basic Law!
Stop mainland “double negative” pregnant women from limitless invasion of Hong Kong!

*"Double negative children" = children of ethnic Chinese parents, neither of whom is from Hong Kong - Article 24 of the Basic Law was intended to ensure that Hong Kongers who fled abroad before 1997 could return and provides that such children, if born in Hong Kong, have right of abode there.

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

More on the subject, here... (caution - this is a Taiwan-aligned site - not that that necessarily makes it wrong, of course):

http://www.chinasmack.com/2012/featu...ists-cars.html

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

People often say that Hong Kongers are rude. This is partly true - they do tend to call a spade a bloody shovel - and partly down to the way in which they speak English - usually in a domineering and commanding tone. Of course, this may well be connected to the fact that from 1842 to roughly 1970 most of the English they heard
was in a domineering and commanding tone!

I have got into the habit of staying at the Mariner's Club, 11 Middle Road Kowloon.

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

This is of course the professional seaman's hostel, run by the usual syndicate of churches (Anglican, Catholic, Lutheran, who have I forgotten?) to provide Jolly Jack Ashore with a safe place to sleep and to keep him out of the hands of ladies of negotiable affection. In Hong Kong the building is particularly splendid, a gift from the Princely Hong, Jardine Matheson, back in the 1960's, and it is indeed one of the finest specimens of Late British Colonial ( var: Hard Wearing).



Some years ago I heaved my kitbag through the doors and found the place absolutely swarming with nubile young Asian ladies. When I ran into the CofE Padre, Peter Ellis, whom I knew quite well, I asked him "Peter, I thought the idea of this place was to keep people like me safe from attractive young ladies, but the place is positively heaving with totty!" He roared with laughter and said "But they are mariners! They are all croupiers off the gambling ships! They've all got seamen's books - and they come here for some peace and quiet and to phone their families and use the Internet!"

The staff are splendidly rude, in the true Hong Kong manner, even to regulars like me.

There are some nice ship models..

Thermopylae:



and a great rarity, a model of a turret deck steamer:



I like it because I prefer somewhere where the staff know who you are, without the faux bonhomie of hotel staff applying the Hospitality Manual rules... oh, and it's cheap, and SWIMPAL can rest assured that I am not sharing my bed with a lady of the night..

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

There is, of course, a chapel, in Late British Colonial Hard Wearing:

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

I checked in, asked for breakfast ("OK, You pay extra!) had a shower and decided to head to my first appointment by Shanks' Pony and the Star Ferry.



The good news was that in honour of some anniversary the Star Ferry was free; the bad news was that I had forgotten that so much land has been reclaimed on the island side that you have to walk an extra half mile, so I was nearly late - unforgiveable in Hong Kong.

I do actually know someone who really did meet his wife on the Star Ferry - however she was not a nightclub hostess ("The World of Suzie Wong") but a Cathay Pacific hostess! The ships themselves mostly date back to the 1950' apart from two built in the 1990's to the same design. You can't improve on perfection.

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

I find that many of my friends in Hong Kong have developed a sudden enthusiasm for dining in the open air, despite the heat and the noise of traffic. They are, of course, smokers...

The best way to get around Hong Kong is on the MTR, the Mass Transit Railway. This is so much better than the tired, frowsty, crowded London Underground that the Englishman's reaction to it is usually "Did we really build this?" - and the answer is of course that we started it and Hong Kong has carried it on, adding new routes and new innovations... If visiting HK get a HK$300 tourist ticket at the airport and you will get a trip into Central and back to the airport one two or three days later plus unlimited bus, ferry and MTR travel.

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

After lunch I paid a visit to Stephen and Stitt:

This is Stephen:



this is Stitt:



Apparently their appearances reflect the personalities of the two Edwardian managers of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation after whom they are named. They are of course Western interpretation of the traditional Chinese gateway lions; the original pair are in Shanghai, these are in Hong Kong and there are a new pair in London. They have very good joss and it is a good plan to rub their paws, but the Bank seem to have taken against this and fenced them off - I rubbed paws anyway.

Behind Stephen and Stitt you may find the Battery Path road sign, which I rather like:



though it is not as good as "To Permanent Cemetery". I kid you not. Lot of zombies in these parts*. Sadly I can't find my picture of that one.

* Because until the 1900's any Chinese resident of Hong Kong wanted to be buried with his or her ancestors back in their home town or village, so all cemeteries were "temporary" - you were buried for seven years, until the worms and ants had done their stuff, then your bones were dug up, put in a pot and taken home, where proper arrangements were in place to take care of your remains. Needless to say the Permanent Cemeteries enjoy excellent feng shui, with fine views over water...

[johnw]

Glad to see this back.

[BrianW]

So Andrew, are there requirements to stay at the Mariners Club?

[George Jung]

Yes. I particularly like the link in the OP. Sending a 'link' to my kids, for their entertainment and edification!

Thanks! Got popcorn, got beer.... feel free to free-associate...

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

So Andrew, are there requirements to stay at the Mariners Club?

Some vague maritime connection (you would certainly qualify!) and - if you bring a woman in, she had better be your wife, or else!

http://www.marinersclub.org.hk/

[johnw]

Like many other people, I am very fond of Hong Kong and indeed of Hong Kong people generally. I lived there for some years and I wrote a long series of posts about the history of the place, here in the Bilge, which, after a little cleaning up, have found a permanent home here:

http://gwulo.com/ACBs-history-of-hong-kong

The practical downside to visiting Hong Kong is that it is fearsomely expensive. This of course is a side effect of the Chinese economic miracle - Hong Kong acts as a sort of Monaco-on-a-grand-scale-without-the-gambling and as a sort of Fairy Godmother to Chinese industrial development - its taxes are roughly a bit less than half what they are in China, its legal system is familiar and is very highly developed, as are all its business services, and it is famously free from corruption - indeed its citizens are highly alert to, and intolerant of, any sort of misconduct in public office.

One thing that has certainly changed since the 1997 handover is the number of Mainland visitors to HK - 32 million last year, compared to under one million in 1998. Most of them come to shop for genuine (as opposed to fake) luxury goods, to do business, to visit Disneyworld, etc but enough of them come to have babies for this to have become a significant issue in local politics.

About half the 80,000 babies born in HK last year were born to Mainland mothers; under the terms of the Basic Law this gives the child right of abode in Hong Kong, a very valuable privilege.

Hong Kong people are not happy about this.

This was a one page advert in "Apple Daily" earlier this year:



the text reads:

Do you want Hong Kong to spend $1,000,000 HKD every 18 minutes raising “double negative” children?*

Hong Kong... people have had enough!
■Because we understand that you are victimized by poisonous milk powder, we’ve tolerated you coming to panic buy milk powder;
■Because we understand that you have no freedom, we’ve welcome you to “travel freely” to Hong Kong;
■Because we understand that your education is backwards, we’ve shared our educational resources with you;
■Because we understand that you don’t read complete [traditional] Chinese characters, we’ve used crippled [simplified] Chinese characters below:
“When coming to Hong Kong, please respect local culture, [because] if it weren’t for Hong Kong, you would all be doomed.”

Strongly demand that the government revise the Article 24 of Basic Law!
Stop mainland “double negative” pregnant women from limitless invasion of Hong Kong!

*"Double negative children" = children of ethnic Chinese parents, neither of whom is from Hong Kong - Article 24 of the Basic Law was intended to ensure that Hong Kongers who fled abroad before 1997 could return and provides that such children, if born in Hong Kong, have right of abode there.

They come to the U.S. to have babies as well, though it's much more expensive. It's also a way around the one-child policy, I suppose. For some reason, the same people who most vociferously condemn the one-child policy also condemn anchor babies.

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

If you can afford an anchor baby you can afford the fine for a second child - but only children are popular in China now.

There are plenty of Mainlanders for whom money is not much of a concern. A friend here, a lawyer, was doing some work for a lady shipowner who asked him whether her son, who was taking a college course here in England, was correct when he informed his doting Mama that he "really needed US$6K a month to live on in England!"

[George Jung]

For most of us, our misconceptions of Asia don't toggle very well with that mental picture, Andrew. 'The masses' tend more toward parochialism, I suspect.

What's the story on Stephen and Stitt? (This thread isn't gonna write itself, you know!)

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

Ah, yes, Stephen and Stitt.

in 1923, when the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation had grown out of their 1865 headquarters in Shanghai, they chose to replace it with a rather grander building, which still stands:




although it is no longer the Shanghai HQ of HSBC, because it "no longer suits the requirements of modern banking" (I suspect the real reason is "HSBC don't want to remind anyone of their presence in Shanghai before 1949"!). The building, having been the offices of Shanghai City Council was offered back to HSBC who declined it and it is now the HQ of the Pudong Development Bank. HSBC have a new tower block in Pudong.

As you will know, in Chinese traditional architecture, doors are guarded by pairs of lions - female, with cub under paw, to the left, and male, with ball, to the right.

By way of example, here are the lions outside the front door of the old Bank of China building (now Sir David Tang's China Club) in Hong Kong:

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

The General Manager of the HSBC in 1923 was AG Stephen, who had pushed for the new building, and the then Manager, Shanghai was GH Stitt. Stephen decided that the concept of the door lions should be followed but British Lions should be used (see Trafagar Square...) and a local sculptor was commissioned to produce bronze lions symbolising Protection (roaring) and Security (quiet) . They were immediately nicknamed Stephen and Stitt.

The Shanghai lions are now in the museum, having escaped being melted down twice, once by the Japanese, once by the Red Guards, but the Pudong Development Bank has had copies cast and they occupy the original places.

The mosaic ceiling in the dome escaped the Red Guards because a local architect had it whitewashed, which kept them happy - they had wanted to pull out every stone. It has been restored:




When the HSBC replaced its Hong Kong building, at 1, Queen's Road Central, soon after, it decided to have lions there as well, so two much bigger lions were sculpted and cast, again in bronze. These were also nicknamed Stephen and Stitt (the roaring lion is Stephen - he had that sort of personality!)

The HSBC HQ in Hong Kong has the best feng shui in the whole of Hong Kong, (no accident - neither is the Chinese name of HSBC - Wayfoong Inhang - the Money Coming In Bank) and the lions themselves are considered to be lucky.

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

The third HK building went up in 1935 and looked like this:



The Shanghai lions were considered lucky, and the habit started of rubbing their paws and noses to have some of the luck rub off on you. The HK lions are even luckier due to their surpassingly excellent feng shui, so you rub their paws and noses too.

When the 1935 building was replaced by this very well known one:





in 1985, the lions, which had been on holiday in Statue Square, nearby, were moved back and located in accordance with the advice of the best feng shui practitioners in Hong Kong. The entire Board of the Bank attended the ceremony of Moving the Lions.

During WW2 the HK Bank Lions were shipped to Japan to be melted down, butthey escaped, and were spotted in a shipyard by a US seaman who knew them - they moved back to Hong Kong but Stephen has some bullet wounds dating from the battle of Hong Kong in December 1941.

The London HQ has its own lions, now.

Incidentally, the flat bit at the top of the building is a helipad, but it has never been used as the HK Government forbids choppers over the city...I used to reckon the building would be a good set for a James Bond film...

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

You'll notice that the Standard Chartered building, built a couple of years later at a fraction of the price, is ever so slightly taller...

For completeness, here are Stephen:



and Stitt:



outside the Canary Wharf, London, HQ of HSBC.

and here is Stephen




and Stitt in Shanghai, note the well rubbed nose and paws:

[Gerarddm]

That is a magnificent b/w photograph of Stephen.

[GaryK]

Thanks Andrew for the story on Stephen and Stitt.
There is, or was, a bar on the 4th or 5th (or 6th?) floor of the Mariners, I knew it well.
For awhile the semi long term residents (and Taiwan visa runners) of the nearby backpacker hostels made it their local. Many a fine time had there. "The Mariners" became an institution, but I went back there in the 90's and was disappointed to find it closed down

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

Lessee, Mariner's Club bars... the Bridge Bar is on the third floor, as is the Seven Seas Lounge, which has a snooker table. I don't remember a bar on another floor... apart from the swimming pool.

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

Whilst in HK I called into my favourite clothes shop chain and bought stuff for all three boys:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giordano_(store)

Think "Bennetton + Marks and Spencer". Clever concept, good quality, low price. Neat.

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

Giordano was founded by Jimmy Lai, but when he started a "rather vigourous" popular newspaper, Apple Daily, and criticised the mainland leadership (famously, he called Li Peng a "turtle's egg" (= bastard)) he sold his majority and concentrated on the paper.

Relations between HK and the mainland don't improve, a Beijing university professor announced on a chat show that "Hong Kong people are dogs, still running after the colonialists":

http://www.chinahush.com/2012/01/25/...ople-are-dogs/

this row was sparked off by a Mainland couple letting their little emperor eat on a train.. eating on trains is forbidden in Hong Kong and rightly so - and HK people are super-vigilant in defence of their way of life.

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

Those with fond memories of Wanchai thirty, forty, fifty years ago - the World of Suzie Wong - will find Hong Kong rather respectable, these days, and one reason for that is that the adjacent mainland cities provide all the "entertainment" that a man could possibly want.

The epicentre of this is Dongguan, a town where I learned an alternative translation of the shipping phrase "FOB" ("Free on Board"), and which is in most respects rather like Victorian Manchester.

Dongguan is famous for the "Dongguan SMS" - a text message sent straight to the phones of those assessed as likely to be able to afford the range of services on offer,indicating where they may be obtained, and for the regularisation of what are known as "Dongguan Services" - following complaints about other towns in China where "johns" were frequently ripped off, the Dongguan sex businesses organised what is known as the "Dongguan ISO standard" for marketed sexual services, complete with set prices and customer satisfaction surveys.

Las Vegas has nothing on Dongguan.

More here:

http://www.danwei.org/magazines/dong...o_services.php

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

Time to leave 香港 (Hong Kong, heung gang, fragrant harbour) and get on a Dragonair Airbus to 上海 (Shanghai, shang hai, above/up/upon sea). Did you spot that we went from Traditional Chinese to Simplified Chinese there? You didn't because 上海 is the same in both styles of writing.

These two cities tend to conduct a staring match, each giving the other the evil eye. Both cities are creations of 19th century imperialism; both are the same age, foundedin 1842, though Hong Kong has always had a different government structure. Shanghai already existed as a town in 1842; Hong Kong did not, and whilst Hong kong was a Britisj colony, Shanghai was always Chinese but with Britain, France and the United States granted special privileges extracted at gunpoint from the Qing dynasty under the Unequal Treaties.

Hong Kong's hinterland is the Pearl River basin, whilst Shanghai's hinterland is the Yangtse basin, so in effect Hong Kong has about 90 million people in the back office and Shanghai has about 250 million.

Shanghai is huge. It is the biggest city in the world, most of it is new, it is very "hip" and "cool" and it is very, very impressive.

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

so, a couple of snaps from my phone..

Actually, this one's from Wikipedia:



but the plaque is from my phone:



The plaque reads "The founding meeting of the Chinese Communist Party took place in this building in 1921".

Today, the area is very, very cool, with crowds of Beautiful People drifting by from bar terrazo to exotic restaurant...

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

A corner of Pudong...



a corner of the Huangpu (this is NOT the Yangtze, the Huangpu is a tributary):



and a street scene:

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

Compare that with a street view in Hong Kong:



It goes without saying that people in Hong Kong are no more going to park on the pavement than they are going to smoke in public outside a designated smoking zone. The mindset of the two populations is entirely different.

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

This is a good moment to look at certain Chinese Characteristics...

A very topical first word: 普通高等学校招生全国统一考试 National Higher Education Entrance Examinantion aka "the Gaokao"

In the great Chinese tradition of open competitive examinations as the basis for entry into all good things; the gaokao is open to all, without fear or favour. You can't bribe your way into a Chinese university, and great talent at sport won't help you either. Just pass your gaokao.

But not everyone is happy with the gaokao; some intellectuals argue that because it requires the regurgitation of a vast amount of memorised material and uses multiple choice answers it may in fact be limiting Chinese achievement.

A good discussion in The Atlantic, today, here:

http://www.theatlantic.com/internati...t-back/258787/

But th

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

The next one is fiendishly hard to translate, but very important.

山寨, Shanzhai,

Literally " a walled village in the mountains" (山 = shan = mountain - one of those ideograms that you can see right away)

OK, who lives in a walled village in the mountains? Bandits, of course, so shanzhai means "bandit"

Bandit means pirate, counterfeit, fake, but shanzhai also suggests "peasant quality".

Ever since Deng invited us to make stuff in China and make use of its cheap labour force in exchange for "technology transfer" Western, Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese and Hong Kong boardrooms have resounded to the cry of "what sort of suckers do they take us for!"

NOBODY makes all their product in China. The handful of idiots who did are long since out of business.Rule One of doing business in China is "You make the key widget, or undertake the key process, far away from China and then ship the bits in for assembly in China."

Chinese industry is imitative. The huge military manufacturing sector does not produce anything for civilian sale, unlike our own military-industrial complexes, and very often what it does make is carp. China is far behind even Russia in military equipment. In particular, take note of China's appallingly shoddy materials.

The civilian sector has grown from businesses that made widgets for foreigners , and thought they could cheat the foreigners by making them .

It is this civilian sector that makes and sells "shanzhai" stuff.

A shanzhai item is not a fake, it is a knock off. A watch badged "Rolex" bought cheap from a shifty chap with a suitcase is a fake. The same watch, even cheaper, badged "Great Wall Watch Company" , and sold in a shop, is shanzhai. An electric car with a lead acid battery is shanzhai. China is heaving with shanzhai mobile phones, because one Taiwanese mobile phone company was one of the innocents described above who made everything in China; Nokia and RIM don't fall for that one.

It looks good, but it does not work too well and it does not last.

The term "shanzhai" has been extended to mean large chunks of the national way of life.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanzhai#Shanzhai_culture

[George Jung]

You read Chinese... from what age?

I very much am enjoying this thread. Thank you.

[The Bigfella]

I was reminded of you whilst having a quiet ale and a chat about the British (and French and....) with these chaps last night in the old quarters of Penang



We were quite the mini United Nations. Only one Muslim at the table and at least 3 of these were his



... so he wasn't leading the discussion. There was also a Brit-born Aussie there (paranoid about getting his pic taken) and myself, of course.

The Indian chap was most thankful to have grown up and been educated under the British and then went on to discuss the differences in working for first Bovis and then a Chinese owned construction company, (which could always win a contract with under the table deals).

Much was made of how the British, as opposed to the catholic nations, separated religion from government.

There was a bit of discussion about the relative development of Penang, Melaka and Singapore... and I'd love to see you take in this region at some stage in the discussion, Andrew.

[GaryK]

We were quite the mini United Nations. Only one Muslim at the table and at least 3 of these were his.

Far out. I know in Kuala Lumpur police raid the nite clubs and if they find a muslim with a drink in his hand he is hauled off to the lockup.

(sorry for the thread drift Andrew)

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

You read Chinese... from what age?

I very much am enjoying this thread. Thank you.

Started to puzzle out characters in 1997 when I was 45; cannot say I have made much progress!

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

You probably know more than I do, Ian. But if ever you wanted to see a case of "two nations separated by a common language" you could try Singapore and Peninsular Malaysia!

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

More on "shanzhai". This is a very recent word - so new that it is still finding its way into dictionaries - but I have a feeling that it is going to be important. Some people suggest that the word is phonetic in origin - a play on the pronunciation of "Shenzhen", if spoken in Putonghwa with a Cantonese accent, in which case the word certainly comes from Hong Kong, where making up new words in Cantonese is a national sport just like making up new words in English is a sport in Noo Yoick - indeed HK and NYK have a lot in common with each other. The idea being that shanzhai stuff is made in Shenzhen - the original Special Economic Development Zone, over the border from Hong Kong, which does indeed have a reputation for making peasant quality knock offs.

Because "face" is so massively important in China - to the point where Chinese consumers buy 6% of the world's consumer goods but 20% of the world's luxury goods, according to this week's "Economist", shanzhai goods are very popular - you gain face by having something that looks good, but was cheap.

Shanzhai stuff is sometimes portrayed, particularly by the Government, as being equivalent to "domestic grade" in Japan, thirty years ago, but I don't think that's really a good comparison. The Party cannot make up its mind over whether to be proud of shanzhai stuff as reflecting local enterprise or to be ashamed of it as being knock off stuff, invariably derivative and very often reliant on imported technology.

Certainly a huge problem with China is the emphasis on things looking good, rather than working well. The high speed train crash last year was a good example - the high speed railway is "all Chinese" but the technology has been ripped off from the Germans and the Japanese by people who don't really understand it.

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

Here is a review of a generally positive book about China's aerospace and avionics industry, yet it illustratest the problem of "shanzhai"...

http://www.pekingduck.org/2012/06/ja...hina-airborne/

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

This is seriously interesting - a little documentary about what happened to 21 American servicemen who, as POWs. chose to stay in China:

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

Anyway, back to Shanghai. Here is a travel tip - the place is full of "five star" hotels, which seem very willing to adjust their room rates in a downwards direction when asked nicely. I stayed in my employers four star hotel, which has been expensively rebuilt and is now much worse than it was fifteen years ago, so far as service and facilities are concerned they used to be excellent, but, back then, the place had a manager from Hong Kong. Certainly I had no complaints about my hotel room, although the breakfast was unremarkable, and service was delivered with the usual snarl. Mainlanders have a real problem with service businesses.

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

Here is a naughty thought from a Shanghai blogger:

http://shanghaiist.com/2012/06/25/sh...mao-soleum.php

[The Bigfella]

That's a classic article Andrew.

I've got a friend (she's an ex-relative) who reckons the Mayor of Shanghai got her pregnant. Not in the traditional sense.. but she was there doing some (very) big business and was feted at a banquet with all sorts of stuff she'd not normally eat (pigeon squabs swimming in fat... that sort of thing). Anyhow, the resultant squirts saw the pill disappear and she got pregnant on her return home.... so she reckons it was the Mayor's fault. Lovely kid btw.

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

Easily done - which is why the pill is not recommended if you go sailing.

I have a whinge about Shanghai food - the food that Shanghai people eat at home is delicious, but put them in a restaurant and they go berserk and start ordering all sorts of God's creatures...

[The Bigfella]

Easily done - which is why the pill is not recommended if you go sailing.

I have a whinge about Shanghai food - the food that Shanghai people eat at home is delicious, but put them in a restaurant and they go berserk and start ordering all sorts of God's creatures...

They do indeed. I had a visiting Professor from China that we let organise the meal at a local Chinese restaurant, back in my PWC days. He spent a long time talking to the Chef... and the meal was amazing. All sors of God's creatures, as you say... a lot of it was about different textures and tastes... things like jellyfish....

[GaryK]

..and service was delivered with the usual snarl. Mainlanders have a real problem with service businesses.

Still? In my first trip to China in '86 staff would march into your room without knocking. I remember sleeping in a Chengdu hotel room when the door flung open with a bang. I jumped a foot off the bed! It was the maid coming to change the water.
I put it down to those communists being a strange lot..

Talking of restaurants, I've had plenty of Taiwanese sea monster affairs.. I think they do it to show off.

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

I am absolutely certain that they do.

I was taken to dinner here:





http://www.randomwire.com/1933-shanghai-slaughterhouse

[Hal Forsen]

I find that many of my friends in Hong Kong have developed a sudden enthusiasm for dining in the open air, despite the heat and the noise of traffic. They are, of course, smokers...

Ah HK....
I spent time in Hong Kong during my USN years back in the 70's. Interesting place to say the least...
One night I was working shore patrol and my partner and I had stopped in a noodle house to grab a quick cup o' joe and as we stood there I watched an HK local alternate mouthfuls of noodles with massive pulls off his ciggie, blowing out the smoke as he chewed.....
Another trip to HK, I ran into my boot camp CC one night, both of us on liberty and we ended up paintin' the town red and getting snot slingin' drunk together.
Still have my HK custom made Cracker Jacks with Liberty Cuffs.
Yargh.