Green Mist Descends

Sent out of de World Cup by a handball – and to tink Oi'd never don anyting loike dat in me whole loif.

Defying Mao

Just as Sebastian Heffner once wrote a book called Defying Hitler, Nien Cheng's memoir could be called Defying Mao. Dipping into my yellowing edition last night, I re-read the two bits I'd marked up when I first read the book.

"The guard would unlock the door of the cell and lead me into a room in a remote corner of the prison compound where we could continue to shout at each other without being heard by the other prisoners. I would give in and stop talking when I became utterly exhausted. Sometimes my endurance outlasted the guards' patience. When that happened, they resorted to physical violence to silence me, either hitting my body or kicking my legs. They called me a 'hysterical old woman' and often deplored my 'mad fits', but they never knew my real purpose in provoking them. During my six and a half years of solitary confinement, I deliberately caused scenes such as this many times. Whenever deep depresion overwhlemed me to the extent that I could no longer sleep or swallow food, I would intentionally seek an encounter with the guards ... fighting was a positive action much more encouraging to the human spirit than merely enduring hardship with patience, known as a virtue of the Chinese race."

At another "interrogation":

"As I gazed at Mao's face wearing what was intended as a benign expression but which was in fact a smirk of self-satisfaction, I wondered how one single person could have caused the extent of misery that was prevailing in China. There must be something lacking in our character, I thought, that had made it possible for his evil genius to dominate."

Life and Death in Shanghai

In the Authorised Version of the Bible, the letter to the Hebrews has the simple yet evocative phrase "of whom the world was not worthy" to describe those men and women who had shown outstanding courage in defence of the faith they upheld.

When I first read Nien Cheng's account of her experiences in Shanghai during the Cultural Revolution (has any act of lunacy ever been so badly misnamed?), these words came to mind. Twenty years on and no other book on the twentieth century turmoil in China comes close to Life and Death in Shanghai, whose author died in Washington DC earlier this month at the age of 94.

Entirely free of the boastfulness and self-promotion that characterise so many other books by "survivor/sufferers", the author's intelligence and courage bring a power to the narrative that is fully commensurate with the monumental subject matter. The understated style makes the sadness of the senseless loss of her only child almost unbearable.

In an age when serious matters are dumbed down, it is refreshing as well as instructive to read a book in which the dumb acts of human beings are treated with seriousness.

SCMP Slumps to All-time Low as Director Misspells Own Name

I open my Inbox this morning and what do I find? A missive from Hong Kong's world newspaper inviting me to attend a PostGrad Expo next month. I don't want to appear too mean, but it would appear that the person who really needs to go back to school is the South China Morning Post's Marketing & Communications Director, Michael McComb, who signs off as follows:

Your sincerely,

Micheal McComb

Bunyan had his Slough of Despond. The SCMP prefers to wallow in its Vale of Diction.

Swallowing Eulogy More Than Satire

I mentioned that Byron was a bit harsh on the Stormin' Norman of his day, the Duke of Wellington, in his Don Juan, which came out in instalments like Private Eye, and was eagerly awaited by his readers. Here's a taster on the Iron Duke, whose name he corrupted to "Villainton", which must have gone down well in the Wellesley household:

"I am no flatterer – you've supp'd full of flattery:

They say you like it too – 't is no great wonder.

He whose whole life has been assault and battery,

At last may get a little tired of thunder;

And swallowing eulogy much more than satire, he

May like being praised for every lucky blunder,

Call'd 'Saviour of the Nations' – not yet saved,

And 'Europe's Liberator' – still enslaved."

(Canto IX, Stanza 5)

I reckon this bloke would have made a half decent blogger.

Opera That Made Pavarotti Coming to Hong Kong

Although more famous now for his operas Lucia di Lammermoor and L'Elisir d'Amore, Gaetano Donizetti's La Fille du Régiment has been a smash hit in France since its first performance in 1840. A comic opera in two acts, it used to be performed every Bastille Day at the Opéra-Comique in Paris, and is still regularly performed on Armistice Day across Europe.

The undoubted highlight of the show is the aria "Ah Mes Amis - Pour Mon Âme" (not technically an aria at all, but an arietta, followed by a solo with chorus, followed by another chorus leading into the magnificent cavatina, "Pour Mon Âme").

It was with this song that Lucio Pavarotti burst onto the scene at Covent Garden in 1966 in a role he would reprise at the Met and which would earn him the title of "King of the High Cs".

The good news is that the opera is coming to Hong Kong in the new year. More details when I have them.

New Rules, Same Old Crap

Under Hong Kong's famed and feared anti-cartel laws, it's now illegal to sell a skyscraper in the Mid-Levels by using photographs of a chateau in the Dordogne. However, you can still sell the Mid-Levels skyscraper with photos of the chateau if you print a disclaimer to the effect that "the photographs in the advertisement represent the artist's imaginative impression of the development concerned". People who insist that the camera never lies should visit Hong Kong.

While here, they might like to stay at the latest of these high-rise boxes, a 63-floor contribution to the wall effect called Seymour. Located at 9 Seymour Road with panoramic views of the ParknShop, this edifice does have one thing going for it: a sensible name rather than a stupid Italian one.

Originally owned by Emperor International, the conglomerate controlled by the entertainment mogul with an eye for young female talent, Albert Yeung Sau Sing, the property was sold on to WingTaiAsia, the local arm of Singapore property developer Wing Tai Holdings.

If you thought Singaporean English was an improvement on the Hong Kong variety, think again. A quick look at the sales blurb in yesterday's South China Morning Post is enough to make you turn your nose up at the linguistic pretensions of those annoying people who will insist on switching from Hokkien to English as soon as a white face sits down at the next table.

Imagine the forgotten luxury of slowing down, where one leisurely takes in exquisite art collections amidst a ceiling of hand-crafted chandeliers.

I particularly enjoyed the schoolboy error of assuming "leisurely" to be an adverb since it ends in "-ly".

"Amidst a ceiling" is pretty good, too.

Parsons Knows

After witnessing one of the great Open Championships on the Ayrshire Coast in July, I thought I'd take in the Saturday and Sunday of the Hong Kong Open Golf tournament, which tees off tomorrow at Fanling.

Getting there is proving to be quite an adventure in itself. Monday lunchtime, I walked down to the local branch of Parsons Music, which according to the Open's website was selling tickets for the event along with Cityline. When I requested two 4-day passes for the event – the cheapest option – the woman behind the counter asked a string of questions about venue, dates and times, and then, almost as an afterthought, told me the computer was down and wouldn't be fixed till the evening.

So, yesterday, before setting out, I got my secretary to call and check that everything was in order. The thumbs up having been given, I sallied forth and asked Elvis, the man behind the counter, for two 4-day passes for the Hong Kong Open Golf on 12-15 November. At first, Elvis offered me tickets for Thursday, then for Friday. He was about to offer me tickets for Saturday when I popped round the counter to join him and point to the "4-day pass" option which was staring at him from the drop-down menu.

Having sorted that out, Elvis picked up the phone and after a brief conversation in Cantonese handed the phone over to me. The woman on the other end said something but I couldn't hear what it was because a couple of brats chose this moment to thump the nearest Yamaha upright.

After dispatching Elvis to urge upon them the wisdom of desisting, I had a conversation which was memorable in the rather surreal manner that service encounters in Hong Kong have a way of being.

"You want two 4-day passes for the golf, sir?"

"That's right."

"For the pass, there are no guaranteed seats," she said apologetically.

"That's okay," I said. "I'll take them anyway."

I passed the phone back to Elvis, who confirmed with his superior that I would indeed be willing to watch the golf without being allocated a seat number.

Next it was time to pay and I had an inkling that things might not be straightforward. The chances of the credit card going through I rated about as high as my daughter's favourite player, Nick Dougherty, winning the tournament.

I hate to say I was right, but after Elvis had swished the card through for the fourth time I told him not to bother, I would pay cash. Rather than the HK$400 per head that the website talked about (never trust a bank – the event is sponsored by UBS), the computer flashed up $360.

I paid up and left 20 minutes after arriving with a deeper insight into why Parsons Music is doomed to forever be the poor man's Tom Lee.

Warring with All Who War with Thought

My recent reading has included two interesting books, each something of a classic in its own field and each a strong defence of freedom: Don Juan by Byron and After Virtue by Alasdair MacIntyre.

Don Juan was a revelation to me – not least, because I had never before read anything much by Byron apart from what turned out to be snippets from this hefty work (unfinished, as all great English epics must be). Think "The Isles of Greece, the Isles of Greece ... Eternal summer gilds them yet, But all, except their Sun, is set".

The great thing about the 6th Baron Byron of Rochdale is that you can never be certain when he's being serious. Famously described by his one time lover, Lady Caroline Lamb, as "mad, bad and dangerous to know", Byron loved nothing better than taking pot shots at the great and the good of his day. Writing just a few years after Waterloo, he's merciless towards the Duke of Wellington, but his greatest scorn is reserved for his fellow poets – not Shelley and Keats, with whom he will forever be associated, but Wordsworth ("incomprehensible"), Coleridge ("drunk") and especially Robert Southey, the Poet Laureate ("mediocre").

It's not often you read a poem and laugh aloud, but this self-described "satirical epic" has just that effect. Don Juan might fizzle out a bit towards the end, but then Byron himself was fizzling out, so I suppose he can be forgiven. The following three extracts give a taste of the depth of the man, and his importance as both philosopher and poet.

Deep, wordless ire of the human heart (Canto 3)

"The cubless tigress in her jungle raging
Is dreadful to the shepherd and the flock;
The ocean when its yeasty war is waging
Is awful to the vessel near the rock;
But violent things will sooner bear assuaging,
Their fury being spent by its own shock,
Than the stern, single, deep, and wordless ire
Of a strong human heart, and in a sire."

Sanctifying excess of love by power to bless (Canto 4)

"Juan and Haidee gazed upon each other
With swimming looks of speechless tenderness,
Which mix'd all feelings, friend, child, lover, brother,
All that the best can mingle and express
When two pure hearts are pour'd in one another,
And love too much, and yet can not love less;
But almost sanctify the sweet excess
By the immortal wish and power to bless."

On tyranny (Canto 9)

"And I will war, at least in words (and – should
My chance so happen – deeds), with all who war
With Thought; – and of Thought's foes by far most rude,
Tyrants and sycophants have been and are.
I know not who may conquer: if I could
Have such a prescience, it should be no bar
To this my plain, sworn, downright detestation
Of every depotism in every nation.

It is not that I adulate the people:
Without me, there are demagogues enough,
And infidels, to pull down every steeple,
And set up in their stead some proper stuff.
Whether they may sow scepticism to reap hell,
As is the Christian dogma rather rough,
I do not know;—I wish men to be free
As much from mobs as kings—from you as me.

The consequence is, being of no party,
I shall offend all parties: never mind!
My words, at least, are more sincere and hearty
Than if I sought to sail before the wind.
He who has nought to gain can have small art: he
Who neither wishes to be bound nor bind,
May still expatiate freely, as will I,
Nor give my voice to slavery's jackal cry."

More on After Virtue when I've finished it.

Mozart Minus Magic

It is a sad reflection of the version of The Magic Flute currently being staged at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre that the best part of the evening was reading Savio Lau's recommended CD and DVD recordings in the programme notes.

In his article, Lau pays tribute to Ingmar Bergman's 1975 filmed version, writing that "after many recorded and live performances of the great work, the Bergman version still comes top for its wit and enchantment". What a full house in the Grand Theatre on Friday evening got was The Magic Flute without wit, without enchantment, and without magic. They responded in turn with a very short ovation and a swift exit.

Among the principals, the only performances of any note came from the two basses, Mika Kares as Sarastro and Freddie Tong as his sidekick, the Speaker of the Temple. Even so, what could otherwise have been considered a tour de force by Kares was seriously compromised by the dialogue he was made to speak. Suddenly, from being a believable and weighty character fighting the good fight against ignorance and wickedness, Sarastro becomes a young Finn waging war on the English language

The question of how much dialogue to use in The Magic Flute, technically not an opera but a Singspiel, a popular 18th century form that includes speaking as well as singing, is something that anyone who stages the work needs to consider, but the twin facts that most of the dialogue is silly and redundant and that no one in this cast had the necessary acting skills to make it work should have prompted the producers and director to keep it to a bare minimum. Another reason for judicious pruning is that the second act isn't as strong as the first, as the main characters Tamino and Pamina prepare themselves for Masonic purification – not the sort I'd recommend, incidentally – with several false endings giving the audience a sense of the arduous nature of the tests the protagonists are undergoing.

While Eric Margiore as Tamino, Inna Dukach as Pamina and Mimma Briganti as the Queen of the Night were all adequate, major disappointments included Brian Montgomery as Papageno, Margaret Yim as Papagena and Alex Tam as Monostatos. In the plum role of Papageno, Montgomery was wooden and annoying, while the best that can be said for Yim is that she seemed made for this Papageno. Playing the villainous Monostatos straight out of the Wu Fung School of Acting, Tam, who is possessed of a decent tenor voice, descended to obscenity – dry humping and masturbation – when the most powerful evil is internal and understated.

Montgomery, Yim and Tam are all connected with the Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts, so it was no real surprise that the Three Spirits – played so beautifully by three boys in Bergman's film – should struggle so much, all being graduates of that academy. Not that the women received any favours from the costume designer, appearing understandably ill at ease in their Thanksgiving turkey outfits.

Basra Babe Named Miss England

In a story so vacuous and inconsequential it could form the plot for a whole series of Footballers' Wives, Lance Corporal Katrina Hodge will be swapping beret for coronet as she seeks to become Miss World in South Africa next month.

I don't think you'd need to test this bird for gender, but if it's mandatory I'm up for it.

Clown who Sacrificed Caster Semenya Finally Stripped of his Shiny Red Nose

The clown in charge of Athletics South Africa, Leonard Chuene, has finally been stripped off his red nose, big shoes and giant round buttons in a damage limitation exercise by the South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (SASCOC) ahead of an announcement later this month by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF).

The IAAF is likely to confirm that 18-year-old Caster Semenya, one of the two South African athletes who won gold at 800 metres in Berlin in August, is an "intersexual" - or hermaphrodite, if you prefer Greek to Latin - with both male and female organs.

This will come as no surprise to Chuene, who not only knew about the earlier gender verifcation tests carried out on the teenager before he packed her off to Berlin, but also ignored the advice of team doctor, Harold Adams, who urged him to withdraw Semenya from the World Championships. To round off a remarkable performance, Chuene then lied about the gender tests, denying they had ever happened, until he was forced to change his tune when a South African newspaper published emails between him and Dr. Adams discussing the tests.

Which all goes to prove the old adage: you can always tell a buffoon, but you can't tell him much.

Meanwhile, SASCOC have moved quickly to claim squatting rights in the moral low ground recently vacated by Chuene, issuing a bull in which they thunder about "taking appropriate action against the IAAF for its disregard of Semenya's rights to privacy", as they attempt to prove that you can indeed have it both ways.

This too, I fear, will end in tears: the tears of more clowns.

Quams and Quims

Browsing through the judges' report on Hong Kong's best 2008 annual reports, in which we managed another top three finish, my eye was taken by the name of one of the also-rans, a certain "Quam Limited".

The website of what wikipedia calls this "small securities firm in Hong Kong", quamir.com – pronounced to rhyme with quagmire? – has this to say about its business under the heading "Quam IR Unveils Your Niche":

"Quam IR is a proactive strategic solution provider assisting listed companies in enhancing their corporate identity and market positioning among retail and institutional investors. We help you to unveil your niche."

Reading that, I can fully appreciate why the panel didn't reward them for their efforts. Okay, so they've worked in enhance, proactive, solution and niche; but where, oh, where, are the paradigms, portals and synergies?

Be honest: would you let Quam near your niche?

Queen Breaks Silence on Adlington Row

"I hear your agent's a bit of a prick."

"Oh, ma'am, you're worse than that Frankie Boyle."

The Informant!

The Informant! is much like The Insider, except that it stars a fat Matt Damon with glasses rather than a fat Russell Crowe with glasses. It also has an exclamation mark in the title to indicate that you shouldn't be expecting to take it too seriously.

Best line in this story of your everyday attention-seeking whistleblower. Damon has just spilled the beans (soya beans, if I remember correctly – the film's set in the agricultural limbo-land between Illinois and Missouri) about multi-million dollar price-fixing involving Japs, Frogs and Yanks. He turns to the second FBI fellow to comment on the lead investigator, Brian:

"He's a good listener – don't meet one of those every day."

Best moment. Damon is about to be sentenced to umpteen years in jail for stealing millions of dollars from his own company. The judge says he can see no mitigating circumstances and doesn't buy the cock-and-bull story about bipolar depression. "It's a pity, as you could have made CEO of the company one day."

David Brent like, Damon turns round smiling in his chair to receive the approbation of the courtroom. So sad, it's actually credible.

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, a 2007 film directed by Sidney Lumet, the veteran director whose credits include 12 Angry Men, Serpico and Dog Day Afternoon, is an unremittingly bleak and powerful film.

If it was Oliver Cromwell who is said to have asked the artist Peter Lely to paint him "warts and all", then this film is a warts-and-all depiction of human weakness and human ugliness. And in a cast that includes Philip Seymour Hoffman and octogenarian Albert Finney, that means a lot of ugliness, not least in the first action of the film, when Hoffman's flab fills the screen in a poignant, not to mention rather painful, humping scene with Marisa Tomei. It almost beggars belief that the excellent Hoffman was still in his 30s when the film was shot: he looks closer to 50.

The much maligned Tomei looks great throughout – the vacuity of her character is well captured by her choice of a little black number with plunging neckline when the family are in mourning – and delivers the knockout moment of the movie when, faced with a husband who's howling from the depths of his heart about his lousy relationship with his father, she gives a single look that says both "I don't care" and "I'm leaving you".

It's a measure of the bleakness of the film that Hoffman cannot even manage to be the biggest loser in it. That honour goes to his screen younger brother, played by Ethan Hawke. When he can't afford the US$120 to send his ten-year-old daughter on a field trip to see The Lion King (since when, incidentally, do kids need field trips to see a Disney cartoon?), his girl tells him that she's going to tell her classmates "I can't go because my Dad is such a loser".

The film is the kind of dissection of the human condition that could well do the trick for someone suffering from serious depression. It will either help the sufferer to see that he's not alone, or it will make him realise the futility of just about everything he does and everything he wants. As the Finney character says when his eldest, but certainly not dearest, son suggests refocusing his energies on his jewelry shop after he has lost his wife, "The damn place can burn down for all I care".

That is pretty much a metaphor for the whole picture.

Lost in Translation

An interesting insight into the different assumptions that people from different cultural backgrounds bring to translation and editing work. A friend who has to prepare news summaries for the transport and logistics sector in Hong Kong was preparing the following news clipping, which had already been translated from Chinese, for the monthly media summary:

"Authorities in Fuzhou are considering imposing heavy penalties for the violation of traffic regulations. Fuzhou Bus Group said it would increase the pressure on its bus drivers."

To make the meaning clearer and to ameliorate the rather severe nature of the tone, she changed the second sentence to "Fuzhou Bus Group said it would urge its bus drivers to drive professionally".

She got a message back to say that she had misunderstood the meaning. Fuzhou were not concerned about the need to stop drivers speeding, jumping red lights, etc; they were worried about the pressure that increased fines would have on the morale of their frontline staff.

Wig Makers to Take Class Action against Agassi

I hear zey are going to hit you vif a hair suit.

Second Autobiography Will Reveal Parenting Agonies, Says Agassi

"Mummy, I want to snort coke when I grow up."

"Zat's ok, dahlink, but remember to line up ze book deal first."

Agassi Admits Addiction

"Andre, are you also addicted to self-promotion?"

"Dude, I deal with that on page 237 of my autobiography, Open: My Autobiography, by Andre Agassi."