Hong Kong Quotes

A to the G to the U to STD I’m D boy because I’m from D I’m the crazy guy, the lunatic on beat Sending listeners to Hong Kong with my rap my tongue technology

each man must realize that it can all disappear very quickly: the cat, the woman, the job, the front tire, the bed, the walls, the room; all our necessities including love, rest on foundations of sand — and any given cause, no matter how unrelated: the death of a boy in Hong Kong or a blizzard in Omaha . . . can serve as your undoing. all your chinaware crashing to the kitchen floor, your girl will enter and you'll be standing, drunk, in the center of it and she'll ask: my god, what's the matter? and you'll answer: I don't know, I don't know . . . — PULL A STRING, A PUPPET MOVES . . .

Some marriages are made in heaven, Mine was made in Hong Kong, by the same people who make those little rubber pork chops they sell in the pet department at Kmart.

Breakfast is the only meal of the day that I tend to view with the same kind of traditionalized reverence that most people associate with Lunch and Dinner. I like to eat breakfast alone, and almost never before noon; anybody with a terminally jangled lifestyle needs at least one psychic anchor every twenty-four hours, and mine is breakfast. In Hong Kong, Dallas or at home — and regardless of whether or not I have been to bed — breakfast is a personal ritual that can only be properly observed alone, and in a spirit of genuine excess. The food factor should always be massive: four Bloody Marys, two grapefruits, a pot of coffee, Rangoon crepes, a half-pound of either sausage, bacon, or corned beef hash with diced chiles, a Spanish omelette or eggs Benedict, a quart of milk, a chopped lemon for random seasoning, and something like a slice of Key lime pie, two margaritas, and six lines of the best cocaine for dessert… Right, and there should also be two or three newspapers, all mail and messages, a telephone, a notebook for planning the next twenty-four hours and at least one source of good music… All of which should be dealt with outside, in the warmth of a hot sun, and preferably stone naked.

Former police chief of Houston once said of me: “Frank Abagnale could write a check on toilet paper, drawn on the Confederate States Treasury, sign it ‘U.R. Hooked’ and cash it at any bank in town, using a Hong Kong driver’s license for identification.

I’d been sad in Dublin, decided it was Dublin’s fault, and thought Hong Kong would help.

i am someone who wants very much to be popular. I don’t just want you to like me, I want to be one of the most joy-inducing human beings that you’ve ever encountered. I want to explode on your night sky like fireworks at midnight on New Year’s Eve in Hong Kong.

You can leave Hong Kong, but it will never leave you.

Everyone claims to be a billionaire these days. But you’re not really a billionaire until you spend your billions. —OVERHEARD AT THE HONG KONG JOCKEY CLUB

I have often noticed that nationalism is at its strongest at the periphery. Hitler was Austrian, Bonaparte Corsican. In postwar Greece and Turkey the two most prominent ultra-right nationalists had both been born in Cyprus. The most extreme Irish Republicans are in Belfast and Derry (and Boston and New York). Sun Yat Sen, father of Chinese nationalism, was from Hong Kong. The Serbian extremists Milošević and Karadžić were from Montenegro and their most incendiary Croat counterparts in the Ustashe tended to hail from the frontier lands of Western Herzegovina.

Now, I don’t think I’m a stupid guy. I’m just an average guy who does stupid things.

Japan and Hong Kong are steadily whittling away at the last of the elephants, turning their tusks (so much more elegant left on the elephant) into artistic carvings. In much the same way, the beautiful furs from leopard, jaguar, Snow leopard, Clouded leopard and so on, are used to clad the inelegant bodies of thoughtless and, for the most part, ugly women. I wonder how many would buy these furs if they knew that on their bodies they wore the skin of an animal that, when captured, was killed by the medieval and agonizing method of having a red-hot rod inserted up its rectum so as not to mark the skin.

When it gets down to it — talking trade balances here — once we've brain-drained all our technology into other countries, once things have evened out, they're making cars in Bolivia and microwave ovens in Tadzhikistan and selling them here — once our edge in natural resources has been made irrelevant by giant Hong Kong ships and dirigibles that can ship North Dakota all the way to New Zealand for a nickel — once the Invisible Hand has taken away all those historical inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani brickmaker would consider to be prosperity — y'know what? There's only four things we do better than anyone else: music movies microcode (software) high-speed pizza delivery

My mind is like the streets of Hong Kong.

Altogether, if I had to pick one place to hang out anywhere, from New York to Cape Town and Australia to Hong Kong, a bookstore would be it.

This is how I does see the world: by reading books. I does go to London, Hong Kong, Siberia, even, when I read a book. I does meet all kind of people. Learn all kinds of words. Live all kinds of lives.

I know you come from big spenders, but I could put you on a private jet tonight, fly us to Paris for a shopping trip down Champs Elysées, then have the jet fly us to Hong Kong to finish off our day on Causeway Bay. We could return to the States and stop at the Porsche dealership and pick you out a new 911 and that day wouldn’t put a dent in my finances.

The clown was an evil one. They’re either good or bad, and this one was definitely the latter.

It's not rocket science. Hong Kong has 95% tax compliance, because it's code is only 4 pages long with a 15% flat tax.

How about this? Hong Kong had been appropriated by British drug pushers in the 1840s. We wanted Chinese silk, porcelain, and spices. The Chinese didn't want our clothes, tools, or salted herring, and who can blame them? They had no demand. Our solution was to make a demand, by getting large sections of the populace addicted to opium, a drug which the Chinese government had outlawed. When the Chinese understandably objected to this arrangement, we kicked the fuck out of them, set up a puppet government in Peking that hung signs on parks saying NO DOGS OR CHINESE, and occupied this corner of their country as an import base. Fucking godawful behavior, when you think about it. And we accuse them of xenophobia. It would be like the Colombians invading Washington in the early twenty-first century and forcing the White House to legalize heroin. And saying, "Don't worry, we'll show ourselves out, and take Florida while we're at it, okay? Thanks very much.

La difficulté pour aller de Vilvorde à Hong Kong, ce n’est pas d’aller à Hong Kong, c’est de quitter Vilvorde.

HOO JAMES SHIN HOO. Born: James Hoo in Chicago. Age: 50. Added Shin to his name when he went into the restaurant business because it sounded more Chinese. First wife died of cancer five years ago. Married again last year. Has one son: Douglas. SUN LIN HOO. Age: 28. Born in China. Immigrated from Hong Kong two years ago. Gossip: James Hoo married her for her 100-year-old sauce. DOUGLAS HOO (called Doug). Age: 18. High-school track star. Is competing in Saturday’s track meet against college milers. Westing connection: Hoo sued Sara Westing over the invention of the disposable paper diaper. Case never came to court (Westing disappeared). Settled with the company last year for $25,000. Thinks he was cheated. Latest invention: paper innersoles.

Anti-sabbatical: A job taken with the sole intention of staying only for a limited period of time (often one year). The intention is usually to raise enough funds to partake in another, more personally meaningful activity such as watercolor sketching in Crete or designing computer knit sweaters in Hong Kong. Employers are rarely informed of intentions

Once, I asked Poh Poh if she wanted to return to Hong Kong, and she said that once you left a place, you could never go back and expect it to feel like home. Places change, she said, and so do people. Memories sometimes lie.

Yes, Leo Ming, charter member of Hong Kong’s Lucky Sperm Club,

Born in Hong Kong, raised in London, and educated at Oxford and Cambridge, Kai’s mannerisms were a clear reflection of his upbringing.

... a fine way to capture a piece of the magic of a unique city. The drama, the charm and the beauty of Hong Kong is all here-just as is its breathless energy.

when I am in a foreign city and feel even the slightest bit disoriented, I can feel the panic of that day on the Hong Kong street begin to rise in my chest. My story of being lost ended quickly and happily, but it still haunts me.

He puffed out his pigeon chest and waddled across the room towards me. With his feet pointing outwards, he looked like a fat duck with a grievance.

I’m in love, aren’t I? She thought she knew the answer by how much she wanted to be there. Wouldn’t have traded being there for any other location in the world. Wouldn’t have traded it for all the exotic destinations flaunted in Pan Am travel brochures. Not Tahiti, not Monte Carlo, not Hong Kong. No, she wanted to be here, in this ramshackle market not a ten-minute drive from her humdrum house and life. Except it wasn’t a humdrum life anymore, was it? No, I’m at the most exciting place on Earth. The center of the world. The Roman Forum during the reign of Augustus Caesar.

Give Hong Kong to an Artist. He can use it. It can be poetised.

When the Dragons belch, all Hong Kong defecates.

I don’t just want you to like me, I want to be one of the most joy-inducing human beings that you’ve ever encountered. I want to explode on your night sky like fireworks at midnight on New Year’s Eve in Hong Kong.

He took a deep breath of air. Once again he caught a strangeness on the wind, neither pleasant nor unpleasant, neither odor nor perfume—just strange, and curiously exciting. “Superintendent, what’s that smell? Casey noticed it too, the moment Sven opened the door.” Armstrong hesitated. Then he smiled. “That’s Hong Kong’s very own, Mr. Bartlett. It’s money.

The day before a cinema trip, I spent 400 Hong Kong dollars on a Jo Malone candle because I could imagine lighting it with her in the flat. For her, I'd burn a candle worth four hours' pay to me, i.e. one-sixth of a day, thinking: the other five-sixths are there, too, if you want them. It would glow purple against her face and her cheekbones would ridge like sand ripples.

The original sin of the English language in Hong Kong is colonialism, and so, deliberately or not, people who write it must find an ongoing justification to exist; this is the tariff we pay for a seat at the table, to enter relevance,

The imaginary child implied by the toys on exhibit in Hong Kong was impossible to reconcile with my actual child. I didn't think I'd like to meet the imaginary child they implied. That child was mad with contradictions. He was a machine-gun-toting, Chopin-playing psychopath with a sugar high and a short attention span.

Pearl Harbor Address to the Nation Delivered on December 8, 1941 Mr. Vice President, Mr. Speaker, Members of the Senate, and of the House of Representatives: Yesterday, December 7th, 1941 -- a date which will live in infamy -- the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan. The United States was at peace with that nation and, at the solicitation of Japan, was still in conversation with its government and its emperor looking toward the maintenance of peace in the Pacific. Indeed, one hour after Japanese air squadrons had commenced bombing in the American island of Oahu, the Japanese ambassador to the United States and his colleague delivered to our Secretary of State a formal reply to a recent American message. And while this reply stated that it seemed useless to continue the existing diplomatic negotiations, it contained no threat or hint of war or of armed attack. It will be recorded that the distance of Hawaii from Japan makes it obvious that the attack was deliberately planned many days or even weeks ago. During the intervening time, the Japanese government has deliberately sought to deceive the United States by false statements and expressions of hope for continued peace. The attack yesterday on the Hawaiian islands has caused severe damage to American naval and military forces. I regret to tell you that very many American lives have been lost. In addition, American ships have been reported torpedoed on the high seas between San Francisco and Honolulu. Yesterday, the Japanese government also launched an attack against Malaya. Last night, Japanese forces attacked Hong Kong. Last night, Japanese forces attacked Guam. Last night, Japanese forces attacked the Philippine Islands. Last night, the Japanese attacked Wake Island. And this morning, the Japanese attacked Midway Island. Japan has, therefore, undertaken a surprise offensive extending throughout the Pacific area. The facts of yesterday and today speak for themselves. The people of the United States have already formed their opinions and well understand the implications to the very life and safety of our nation. As commander in chief of the Army and Navy, I have directed that all measures be taken for our defense. But always will our whole nation remember the character of the onslaught against us. No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory. I believe that I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost, but will make it very certain that this form of treachery shall never again endanger us. Hostilities exist. There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory, and our interests are in grave danger. With confidence in our armed forces, with the unbounding determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph -- so help us God. I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7th, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese empire.

The talk had turned to business, and in the few short hours she had learned more about Hong Kong techniques than through all the reading she had done. More and more it was clear that unless you were on the inside, real power and real riches would escape you.

A Harley Davidson fanatic,he owned two of them he told me proudly

Formula for success: rise early, work hard, strike oil. J.Paul Getty

There is great disadvantage in seeing the past as clearly as one sees the present, carrying in the mind visions of the past as vivid as on the day they happened.

Hong Kong pulses with a sort of frenzied energy, and speaks the language of alienation and impatience.

Pushing forward his own project, the peripatetic Goertzel divides his time between Hong Kong and Rockville, Maryland. On

Affluence isn't affluence at all. Hong Kong is the benchmark; everybody else's affluence is mere tat. Until you've experienced that perfume-washed air as polarized glass doors embrace you into a luxury hotel's plush interior, you've only had a dud replica of the real thing.

If we want to write shit poems about Hong Kong, then let us write shit poems about Hong Kong. If I want to exploit my pain, then let me exploit it until my heart can no longer take it.

In my constant travels, from the highland meadows of Tibet to the tropical rain forest of Brazil to the busy streets of Hong Kong, I’ve learned that you have to be content wherever you are. Otherwise, traveling is exhausting, because you’re always thinking that the next place will be better.

Documenting disappearances is a defeatist line of work: I can never write fast enough to keep up with the changes of my hometown. Nothing survives in this city. But in a place that had never allowed you to write your own history, even remembrance can be a radical act.

[F]or all its reputation for conservatism, cricket in its history has demonstrated a remarkable capacity for innovation. What game has survived subjection to such extraordinary manipulations, having been prolonged to 10 days (in Durban 70 years ago), truncated to as few as 60 balls (in Hong Kong every year), and remained recognisable in each instance?

People in Hong Kong depended not on the government but on themselves and their families. They worked hard and tried their luck in business, hawking or making widgets, or buying and selling. The drive to succeed was intense; family and extended family ties were strong. Long before Milton Friedman held up Hong Kong as a model of a free enterprise economy, I had seen the advantage of having little or no social safety net. It spurred Hong Kong's people to strive to succeed.

If overpopulation or lack of resources created poverty, then Hong Kong should be poor. Hong Kong has 20 times as many people per square mile as India, and no valuable natural resources. Yet Hong Kong is rich; the average income there is higher than in Great Britain or Canada. This is a recent development. In the 1920s, Hong Kong was as poor as India. But in a relatively short time it became rich because of one key ingredient: economic freedom.

Moonlight I know when the sun is in China because the night shining other-light crawls into my bed. She is moon. Her eyes slit and yellow she is the last one out of a dingy bar in Albuquerque— Fourth Street, or from similar avenues in Hong Kong. Where someone else has also awakened, the night thrown back and asked, 'where is the moon, my lover'? And from here I always answer in my dreaming, 'the last time I saw her was in the arms of another sky'.

No surprises" is the motto of the franchise ghetto, its Good Housekeeping seal, subliminally blazoned on every sign and logo that make up the curves and grids of light that outline the Basin. The people of America, who live in the world's most surprising and terrible country, take comfort in that motto. Follow the loglo outward, to where the growth is enfolded into the valleys and the canyons, and you find the land of the refugees. They have fled from the true America, the America of atomic bombs, scalpings, hip-hop, chaos theory, cement overshoes, snake handlers, spree killers, space walks, buffalo jumps, drive-bys, cruise missiles, Sherman's March, gridlock, motorcycle gangs, and bun-gee jumping. They have parallel-parked their bimbo boxes in identical computer-designed Burbclave street patterns and secreted themselves in symmetrical sheetrock shitholes with vinyl floors and ill-fitting woodwork and no sidewalks, vast house farms out in the loglo wilderness, a culture medium for a medium culture. The only ones left in the city are street people, feeding off debris; immigrants, thrown out like shrapnel from the destruction of the Asian powers; young bohos; and the technomedia priesthood of Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong. Young smart people like Da5id and Hiro, who take the risk of living in the city because they like stimulation and they know they can handle it.

I guess you probably won't be drinking the Johnnie Walker Black Label I brought for you," Corinna remarked. "I honor your gesture, but I only drink reverse-osmosis water these days, " Bernard said. "I honor your gesture?" My God, look what happens to Hong Kong men when they move to California, Corinna thought in horror.

Come on, guys,” I said, laughing. “What? Did you think he was going to ask me to the prom?” I teased. “Or, hey, Mom’s burning macaroni and cheese for supper Sunday night; maybe he can come over and she can tell him about the time she jumped off a ninety-story balcony in Hong Kong with a parachute she made out of pillowcases.

The military put up barricades around the areas of the cities where the infections broke out. That was the way the first Coldtowns were founded. Vampirism is an American problem, the BBC declared. But the next outbreak was in Hong Kong, then Yokohama, then Marseille, then Brecht, then Liverpool. After that, it spread across Europe like wildfire.

Eventually, however, the fact that many once-poor places like Hong Kong, South Korea, and Singapore achieved prosperity through freer international trade and investment became so blatant and so widely known that, by the end of the twentieth century, the governments of many other countries began abandoning their zero-sum view of economic transactions.

Ed Lim’s daughter, Monique, was a junior now, but as she’d grown up, he and his wife had noted with dismay that there were no dolls that looked like her. At ten, Monique had begun poring over a mail-order doll catalog as if it were a book–expensive dolls, with n ames and stories and historical outfits, absurdly detailed and even more absurdly expensive. ‘Jenny Cohen has this one,’ she’d told them, her finger tracing the outline of a blond doll that did indeed resemble Jenny Cohen: sweet faced with heavy bangs, slightly stocky. 'And they just made a new one with red hair. Her mom’s getting it for her sister Sarah for Hannukkah.’ Sarah Cohen had flaming red hair, the color of a penny in the summer sun. But there was no doll with black hair, let alone a face that looked anything like Monique’s. Ed Lim had gone to four different toy stores searching for a Chinese doll; he would have bought it for his daughter, whatever the price, but no such thing existed. He’d gone so far as to write to Mattel, asking them if there was a Chinese Barbie doll, and they’d replied that yes, they offered 'Oriental Barbie’ and sent him a pamphlet. He had looked at that pamphlet for a long time, at the Barbie’s strange mishmash of a costume, all red and gold satin and like nothing he’d ever seen on a Chinese or Japanese or Korean woman, at her waist-length black hair and slanted eyes. I am from Hong Kong, the pamphlet ran. It is in the Orient, or Far East. Throughout the Orient, people shop at outdoor marketplaces where goods such as fish, vegetables, silk, and spices are openly displayed. The year before, he and his wife and Monique had gone on a trip to Hong Kong, which struck him, mostly, as a pincushion of gleaming skyscrapers. In a giant, glassed-in shopping mall, he’d bought a dove-gray cashmere sweater that he wore under his suit jacket on chilly days. Come visit the Orient. I know you will find it exotic and interesting. In the end he’d thrown the pamphlet away. He’d heard, from friends with younger children, that the expensive doll line now had one Asian doll for sale – and a few black ones, too – but he’d never seen it. Monique was seventeen now, and had long outgrown dolls.

Maybe your college professor taught that the legacy of colonialism explains Third World poverty. That’s nonsense as well. Canada was a colony. So were Australia, New Zealand and Hong Kong. In fact, the richest country in the world, the United States, was once a colony. By contrast, Ethiopia, Liberia, Tibet, Sikkim, Nepal and Bhutan were never colonies, but they are home to the world’s poorest people.

Eventually, however, the fact that many once-poor places like Hong Kong, South Korea, and Singapore achieved prosperity through freer international trade and investment became so blatant and so widely known that, by the end of the twentieth century, the governments of many other countries began abandoning their zero-sum view of economic transactions. China and India have been striking examples of poor countries whose abandonment of severe international trade and investment restrictions led to dramatic increases in their economic growth rates, which in turn led to tens of millions of their citizens rising out of poverty.

Yep, as my old pappy used to say, every man living has at least one flaw in his character and some have many for the perfect human is yet to be born. But a guy’s courage is a different matter aint it, a guy without courage is fucking useless in the same way as one who can’t keep his word is fucking useless. I guess what I am talking about here is honor, and a guy without honor just aint worth a goddamn to anyone.” A sage-like moment, courtesy of Corporal "Bayou" Lejeune. VC Lake, D 10 Special Zone, South Vietnam, in the fall of 67.

Not being able to see this, culture-based explanations for economic development have usually been little more than ex post facto justifications based on a 20/20 hindsight vision. So, in the early days of capitalism, when most economically successful countries happened to be Protestant Christian, many people argued that Protestantism was uniquely suited to economic development. When Catholic France, Italy, Austria and southern Germany developed rapidly, particularly after the Second World War, Christianity, rather than Protestantism, became the magic culture. Until Japan became rich, many people thought East Asia had not developed because of Confucianism. But when Japan succeeded, this thesis was revised to say that Japan was developing so fast because its unique form of Confucianism emphasized co-operation over individual edification, which the Chinese and Korean versions allegedly valued more highly. And then Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and Korea also started doing well, so this judgement about the different varieties of Confucianism was forgotten. Indeed, Confucianism as a whole suddenly became the best culture for development because it emphasized hard work, saving, education and submission to authority. Today, when we see Muslim Malaysia and Indonesia, Buddhist Thailand and even Hindu India doing well economically, we can soon expect to encounter new theories that will trumpet how uniquely all these cultures are suited for economic development (and how their authors have known about it all along).

Chad could put a solar panel on every roof in the country and yet become a barren desert due to the irresponsible environmental policies of distant foreigners. Even powerful nations such as China and Japan are not ecologically sovereign. To protect Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Tokyo from destructive floods and typhoons, the Chinese and Japanese will have to persuade the Russian and American governments to abandon their “business as usual” approach.

That’s what terrorism is, basically—pure theater. Nothing in particular is ever accomplished by it, other than to focus attention on a small group of people who seize absolute power by threatening everything that holds civilization together.

Japan 139 deaths/1,000,000 Pakistan 128 deaths/1,000,000 Kenya 97 deaths/1,000,000 South Korea 47 deaths/1,000,000 Congo (Brazzaville) 35 deaths/1,000,000 Hong Kong 28 deaths/1,000,00021 China 3 deaths/1,000,000 Tanzania 0.86 deaths/1,000,000

And I remembered, in a sudden jolt of recall, that my mother had traveled to Hong Kong alone, one winter, when I was a teenager. The city was renowned among the Chinese-American communities for expert, cheap cosmetic procedures, and she was there to get the moles and beauty marks removed from her face. Her sisters used to call her a spotted leopard. When she returned, however, there were white spots on her face where the moles had been. She was still marked in the places she desired to be unmarked.

Hong Kong flu The 1968 Hong Kong flu killed about the same proportion of the US population as the virus which appeared in 2020. The mortality rate was almost identical at 0.1%. There were no restrictions on movement. Hospital departments were not shut. The economy was not devastated.

When the kids see how amazing one seed turning in to beautiful flower and transformation to a juicy red strawberries then We are saving our future, it is not a product anymore that they used to grab in the supermarket but it is magic of life and with urban farming we doing this. @ K11

Meanwhile she's coldly interrogating me with her eyes. She's definitely in charge of this house and this moment. This must be Chloe. She escorts me to a table full of people and presents me. She introduces them briefly. This one's from Morocco, that one from Italy, he's Persian--I'm not exactly sure what that means--this one's from "the UK." They're all in their twenties, poised and dismissive. They don't know or care who I'm supposed to be at home or where I went to school. They're measuring something else I can't see and don't understand. They nod and turn back to each other. They seem to be waiting for a cue from Chloe to release them from having to feign interest. She introduces herself at substantially more length. Her father is Chinese and her mother is Swiss; she grew up in Hong Kong and "in Europe." I grew up in Michigan and in Michigan. But she didn't ask.

On the joy of exercise. — I really dig exercise. When I’m jogging early in the morning, boy! It’s sure refreshing. Although Hong Kong is one of the most crowded places in the world, I’m surprised how peaceful it can be in the morning. Sure, there are people, but I become oblivious to them while I am running.

This is the Hong Kong curse that expat housewives talk about in hushed voices: the man who takes to Hong Kong the wrong way. He moves from an egalitarian American society, where he’s supposed to take out the trash every day and help with the dinner dishes, to a place where women cater to his every desire—a secretary who anticipates his needs before he does, a servant in the house who brings him his espresso just the way he likes it and irons his boxers and his socks—and the local population is not as sassy with the comebacks as where he came from, so, of course, he then looks for that in every corner of his life.

Hong Kong, please watch over him, he saw that young man Lazaro in a dream and is convinced he’s a terrorist, always has been, and I should never have let him into the house that day with the tray of seafood I’d ordered; this anxiety gives him abominable, uncontrollable thoughts, but the analyst told me to look at it differently, he said I know the road he’s on, and even if it leads down into the abyss, yawning glaciers, he sees things we don’t, fresh tracks under a starlit night, for him brightly lit, so much so that even in the farthest depths he knows he can’t get lost, and you’ll see he’ll find his way back to us

The vast majority of those who served alongside a Special Forces unit in the Southland of Vietnam during the war returned to the world forever hyper-suspicious of everyone and closed-mouthed as to what they had been doing out there in the shit. It would take many years, decades even, before they opened even a splintered crack of insight as to what they had endured, had suffered. Many never would, just carried their secrets from the war along with them to the grave.

I wanted to board the plane with you, to show our boarding passes to the flight attendant together, sit side by side and talk until I put my head on your shoulder as you read and slept, and then wake up to together and listen to music, watch a movie, go to the bathroom… Maybe we’d fall asleep again then wake up to another meal only slightly more appetising than the first and watch the shifting cloud formations outside the window together, and hear the captain announcing that we were about to land in Hong Kong, about to land in Malaysia, about to land in Paris… Do I think too much? All I really want is to fly with you.

I breathed in the green heat and the dirt and the cooked-bun smell that is Hong Kong to me. ‘Yes,’ I said, and I could feel myself smiling. ‘It smells like home.’ ‘Not my home!’ said Daisy, sniffing bravely and trying not to use her handkerchief. ‘But – well, I suppose this is an adventure. I must just get used to it!

I’d received countless gifts in my life. A customized Audi for my sixteenth birthday; a limited-edition Vacheron Constantin watch when I was accepted into Oxford; a penthouse atop the Peak in Hong Kong when I graduated from Cambridge with my master’s. None of them touched me as much as a flimsy paperback of velociraptor erotica.

I'm a little uncomfortable with all of this.' 'With what?' 'Well... doesn't it feel weird that we're only beating up... ...Asian people?' 'We're in Hong Kong. The bad guys are Asian. The good guys are Asian. Everyone here's Asian.' 'I'm just used to beating up people of all races and creeds. That's how I do it in New York. ...

Look closer at this street corner: The sun is setting. The vendor at the newspaper stand packs up the dailies and puts away the cartons of eggs. Students with laptops in their arms shuffle out of the cha chaan teng. Elderly couples and their poodles take a stroll by the pier. You can still hear the uproar of the crowds that once gathered on the steep slopes for film screenings, festivals, protests. The florists at the wet market put away the last lilies. The last tram slots itself into the station. And then the scene dissolves again. Maybe you can’t save this place; maybe it isn’t even worth saving. But for a moment, there was a sliver of what this city could have become. And that is why we’re still here.

When the rain comes, it does not matter whether you welcome it or hate it—the rain falls upon your head regardless.

with the Communists in power, nothing in China is worth real money. That’s the lesson the Americans and British and Japanese are going to learn the hard way.

The British treated the Palestinians with the same contemptuous condescension they lavished on other subject peoples from Hong Kong to Jamaica. Their officials monopolized the top offices in the Mandate government and excluded qualified Arabs;46 they censored the newspapers, banned political activity when it discomfited them, and generally ran as parsimonious an administration as was possible in light of their commitments.

I remember arriving by train in a small Swiss town. I had walked up a steep, cobblestoned street that offered a sweeping view of the village below and a lake, which, in the late afternoon light, was like a great cloudy opal. And I remember thinking, with a sense of mounting joy, that not a single soul knew where I was at that moment. No one could find me. No one could phone me. No one could see me who knew me by name. For someone whose childhood experiences had pounded home the Sartrian concept that hell, truly, is other people, that was an awesome moment. I knew, at least for an instant, that I was free. That feeling is one I've sought to find again and again. Often I've succeeded, other times, for no reason I can figure out, the feeling of elation and freedom degenerates into a profound loneliness and sense of bitter isolation. But there is still something about arriving in a strange or unexplored city, in Hong Kong or Paris or Sydney, wandering streets one has never walked before, in a place where, only against the most astronomical odds, would one encounter a familiar face. It's that desire for peace coupled with anonymity, for that strange serenity that sometimes comes with immersing oneself in the utterly foreign and exotic, that I suppose was at the heart of my idea for Cities.

Today, Arabic numerals are in use pretty much around the world, while the words with which we name numbers naturally differ from language to language. And, as Dehaene and others have noted, these differences are far from trivial. English is cumbersome. There are special words for the numbers from 11 to 19 and for the decades from 20 to 90. This makes counting a challenge for English-speaking children, who are prone to such errors as “twenty-eight, twenty-nine, twenty-ten, twenty-eleven.” French is just as bad, with vestigial base-twenty monstrosities, like quatre-vingt-dix-neuf (four twenty ten nine) for 99. Chinese, by contrast, is simplicity itself; its number syntax perfectly mirrors the base-ten form of Arabic numerals, with a minimum of terms. Consequently, the average Chinese four-year-old can count up to forty, whereas American children of the same age struggle to get to fifteen. And the advantages extend to adults. Because Chinese number words are so brief—they take less than a quarter of a second to say, on average, compared with a third of a second for English—the average Chinese speaker has a memory span of nine digits, versus seven digits for English speakers. (Speakers of the marvelously efficient Cantonese dialect, common in Hong Kong, can juggle ten digits in active memory.)

Modern love is complicated, 複雜, a term that is even more complicated in Chinese, used as it is for anything too difficult to explain, tackle or resolve, much like the state of our city in these times. Umbrellas foster revolutions and filibustering passes for a political process. To be 複雜 is almost to deny resolution. Perhaps we are afraid of the possible outcome, and to deny ... what is it we deny? Accountability? Fault? Responsibility?

Early naturalists talked often about “deep time”—the perception they had, contemplating the grandeur of this valley or that rock basin, of the profound slowness of nature. But the perspective changes when history accelerates. What lies in store for us is more like what aboriginal Australians, talking with Victorian anthropologists, called “dreamtime,” or “everywhen”: the semi-mythical experience of encountering, in the present moment, an out-of-time past, when ancestors, heroes, and demigods crowded an epic stage. You can find it already by watching footage of an iceberg collapsing into the sea—a feeling of history happening all at once. It is. The summer of 2017, in the Northern Hemisphere, brought unprecedented extreme weather: three major hurricanes arising in quick succession in the Atlantic; the epic “500,000-year” rainfall of Hurricane Harvey, dropping on Houston a million gallons of water for nearly every single person in the entire state of Texas; the wildfires of California, nine thousand of them burning through more than a million acres, and those in icy Greenland, ten times bigger than those in 2014; the floods of South Asia, clearing 45 million from their homes. Then the record-breaking summer of 2018 made 2017 seem positively idyllic. It brought an unheard-of global heat wave, with temperatures hitting 108 in Los Angeles, 122 in Pakistan, and 124 in Algeria. In the world’s oceans, six hurricanes and tropical storms appeared on the radars at once, including one, Typhoon Mangkhut, that hit the Philippines and then Hong Kong, killing nearly a hundred and wreaking a billion dollars in damages, and another, Hurricane Florence, which more than doubled the average annual rainfall in North Carolina, killing more than fifty and inflicting $17 billion worth of damage. There were wildfires in Sweden, all the way in the Arctic Circle, and across so much of the American West that half the continent was fighting through smoke, those fires ultimately burning close to 1.5 million acres. Parts of Yosemite National Park were closed, as were parts of Glacier National Park in Montana, where temperatures also topped 100. In 1850, the area had 150 glaciers; today, all but 26 are melted.

Hence there are many things that governments, corporations and individuals can do to avoid climate change. But to be effective, they must be done on a global level. When it comes to climate, countries are just not sovereign. They are at the mercy of actions taken by people on the other side of the planet. The Republic of Kiribati – an islands nation in the Pacific Ocean – could reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to zero and nevertheless be submerged under the rising waves if other countries don’t follow suit. Chad could put a solar panel on every roof in the country and yet become a barren desert due to the irresponsible environmental policies of distant foreigners. Even powerful nations such as China and Japan are not ecologically sovereign. To protect Shanghai, Hong Kong and Tokyo from destructive floods and typhoons, the Chinese and Japanese will have to convince the Russian and American governments to abandon their ‘business as usual’ approach.

Every inch of space was used. As the road narrowed, signs receded upwards and changed to the vertical. Businesses simply soared from ground level and hung out vaster, more fascinatingly illuminated shingles than competitors. We were still in a traffic tangle, but now the road curved. Shops crowded the pavements and became homelier. Vegetables, spices, grocery produce in boxes or hanging from shop lintels, meats adangle - as always, my ultimate ghastliness - and here and there among the crowds the alarming spectacle of an armed Sikh, shotgun aslant, casually sitting at a bank entrance. And markets everywhere. To the right, cramped streets sloped down to the harbor. To the left, as we meandered along the tramlines through sudden dense markets of hawkers' barrows, the streets turned abruptly into flights of steps careering upwards into a bluish mist of domestic smoke, clouds of washing on poles, and climbing. Hong Kong had the knack of building where others wouldn't dare.

When my friends and I text we have our own language, a mixture of Cantonese and English and internet lingo and typos and everything else. I am homed, a friend tells me after a night out, to let me know they’ve gotten back safe. Homed. As if home is standing at the door begging you to come back indoors as rain runs down the bridge of your nose. And just like that you’re back again, letting the four walls cage you in, like you’ve returned against your will but you couldn’t quite help yourself.

I was on one of my world 'walkabouts.' It had taken me once more through Hong Kong, to Japan, Australia, and then Papua New Guinea in the South Pacific [one of the places I grew up]. There I found the picture of 'the Father.' It was a real, gigantic Saltwater Crocodile (whose picture is now featured on page 1 of TEETH). From that moment, 'the Father' began to swim through the murky recesses of my mind. Imagine! I thought, men confronting the world’s largest reptile on its own turf! And what if they were stripped of their firearms, so they must face this force of nature with nothing but hand weapons and wits? We know that neither whales nor sharks hunt individual humans for weeks on end. But, Dear Reader, crocodiles do! They are intelligent predators that choose their victims and plot their attacks. So, lost on its river, how would our heroes escape a great hunter of the Father’s magnitude? And what if these modern men must also confront the headhunters and cannibals who truly roam New Guinea? What of tribal wars, the coming of Christianity and materialism (the phenomenon known as the 'Cargo Cult'), and the people’s introduction to 'civilization' in the form of world war? What of first contact between pristine tribal culture and the outside world? What about tribal clashes on a global scale—the hatred and enmity between America and Japan, from Pearl Harbor, to the only use in history of atomic weapons? And if the world could find peace at last, how about Johnny and Katsu?

In Hong Kong, I read Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “Love in the Time of Cholera”, in which the hero must wait until his seventies before being united with his beloved. In a moment of Melancholy, I inscribed my copy: Angelina, I will love you always. Adam and sent it to her, via Jacinta. It was an unhealthy book for me to have read at that time, and to have then inflicted on Angelina. Just wait long enough and somehow the right people will die. The starts will align, we’ll get over ourselves and we’ll be together. And in the meantime, what?

I became expert at making myself invisible. I could linger two hours over a coffee, four over a meal, and hardly be noticed by the waitress. Though the janitors in Commons rousted me every night at closing time, I doubt they ever realized they spoke to the same boy twice. Sunday afternoons, my cloak of invisibility around my shoulders, I would sit in the infirmary for sometimes six hours at a time, placidly reading copies of Yankee magazine ('Clamming on Cuttyhunk') or Reader's Digest (Ten Ways to Help That Aching Back!'), my presence unremarked by receptionist, physician, and fellow sufferer alike. But, like the Invisible Man in H. G. Wells, I discovered that my gift had its price, which took the form of, in my case as in his, a sort of mental darkness. It seemed that people failed to meet my eye, made as if to walk through me; my superstitions began to transform themselves into something like mania. I became convinced that it was only a matter of time before one of the rickety iron steps that led to my room gave and I would fall and break my neck or, worse, a leg; I'd freeze or starve before Leo would assist me. Because one day, when I'd climbed the stairs successfully and without fear, I'd had an old Brian Eno song running through my head ('In New Delhi, 'And Hong Kong,' They all know that it won't be long...'), I now had to sing it to myself each trip up or down the stairs. And each time I crossed the footbridge over the river, twice a day, I had to stop and scoop around in the coffee-colored snow at the road's edge until I found a decent-sized rock. I would then lean over the icy railing and drop it into the rapid current that bubbled over the speckled dinosaur eggs of granite which made up its bed - a gift to the river-god, maybe, for safe crossing, or perhaps some attempt to prove to it that I, though invisible, did exist. The water ran so shallow and clear in places that sometimes I heard the dropped stone click as it hit the bed. Both hands on the icy rail, staring down at the water as it dashed white against the boulders, boiled thinly over the polished stones, I wondered what it would be like to fall and break my head open on one of those bright rocks: a wicked crack, a sudden limpness, then veins of red marbling the glassy water. If I threw myself off, I thought, who would find me in all that white silence? Might the river beat me downstream over the rocks until it spat me out in the quiet waters, down behind the dye factory, where some lady would catch me in the beam of her headlights when she pulled out of the parking lot at five in the afternoon? Or would I, like the pieces of Leo's mandolin, lodge stubbornly in some quiet place behind a boulder and wait, my clothes washing about me, for spring?

I often end up biking home with a paper bag in my basket, a warm boluo bao inside. Whatever the time of year, they remind me of sun, tropical heat, being with family. Mooncakes, the little cakes eaten during the Mid-Autumn Festival, are meant to look like moons. Boluo bao look like shining suns.

I retweet hot takes about bubble tea, MSG, BTS, and some drama series called The Untamed. I learn it’s important to be anti-PRC (that’s the People’s Republic of China) but pro-China (I’m not terribly sure how that’s different). I learn what “little pinks” and “tankies” are and make sure I don’t inadvertently retweet support for either. I decry what’s happening in Xinjiang. I Stand with Hong Kong. I start gaining dozens more followers a day once I’ve started vocalizing on these matters, and when I notice that many of my followers are people of color or have things like #BLM and #FreePalestine in their bios, I know I’m on the right track. And

People like Mrs. Lee were used to only one kind of Chinese wedding banquet—the kind that took place in the grand ballroom of a five-star hotel. There would be the gorging on salted peanuts during the interminable wait for the fourteen-course dinner to begin, the melting ice sculptures, the outlandish floral centerpieces, the society matron invariably offended by the faraway table she had been placed at, the entrance of the bride, the malfunctioning smoke machine, the entrance of the bride again and again in five different gowns throughout the night, the crying child choking on a fish ball, the three dozen speeches by politicians, token ang mor executives and assorted high-ranking officials of no relation to the wedding couple, the cutting of the twelve-tier cake, someone’s mistress making a scene, the not so subtle counting of wedding cash envelopes by some cousin,* the ghastly Canto pop star flown in from Hong Kong to scream some pop song (a chance for the older crowd to take an extended toilet break), the distribution of tiny wedding fruitcakes with white icing in paper boxes to all the departing guests, and then Yum seng!†—the whole affair would be over and everyone would make the mad dash to the hotel lobby to wait half an hour for their car and driver to make it through the traffic jam.

Lavabit was an e-mail service that offered more security privacy than the large corporate e-mail services most of us use. It was a small company, owned and operated by a programmer named Ladar Levison, and it was popular among the tech-savvy. It had half a million users, Edward Snowden amongst them. Soon after Snowden fled to Hong Kong in 2013, Levison received a National Security Letter demanding that the company turn over the master encryption key that protected all of Lavabit’s users—and then not tell any of its customers that they could be monitored. Levison fought this order in court, and when it became clear that he had lost, he shut down his service rather than deceive and compromise his customers. The moral is clear. If you run a business, and the FBI or the NSA wants to turn it into a mass surveillance tool, it believes that it is entitled to do so, solely on its own authority. The agency can force you to modify your system. It can do it all in secret and then force your business to keep that secret. Once it does that, you no longer control that part of your business. If you’re a large company, you can’t shut it down. You can’t realistically terminate part of your service. In a very real sense, it is not your business anymore. It has become an arm of the vast US surveillance apparatus, and if your interest conflicts with the agency’s, the agency wins. Your business has been commandeered.

Each night when I returned to the rooming house in Hong Kong, I lay on a cot with wet towels over my chest. The walls were sweating because I couldn’t open the windows for fresh air. The building was on a fishy street on the Kowloon side. This was not the part where the fish were sold. There it smelled of the morning sea, salty and sharp. I was living in Kowloon Walled City, along the low point in a wide gutter, where the scales and blood and guts gathered, swept there by the fishmongers’ buckets of water at night. When I breathed the air, it was the vapors of death, a choking sour stink that reached like fingers into my stomach and pulled my insides out. Forever in my nose, that is the fragrance of Fragrant Harbor.

The two men dined alone. They ate parsley soup, whiting, roast veal, cabinet pudding; they drank whisky and soda. Lord Copper explained Nazism, Fascism and Communism; later, in his ghastly library, he outlined the situation in the Far East. “The Beast stands for strong mutually antagonistic governments everywhere,” he said. “Self-sufficiency at home, self-assertion abroad.” Mr. Salter’s side of the conversation was limited to expressions of assent. When Lord Copper was right, he said, “Definitely, Lord Copper”; when he was wrong, “Up to a point.” “Let me see, what’s the name of the place I mean? Capital of Japan? Yokohama, isn’t it?” “Up to a point, Lord Copper.” “And Hong Kong belongs to us, doesn’t it?” “Definitely, Lord Copper.

This is Unique !! Shopping malls working with one side of our needs, material satisfaction but here @ K11 there is a huge effort and initiative to bring emotional needs of human, our spiritual satisfaction. K11 doing this with bringing Art and Nature in to the material shopping experience. It is not only satisfying physical needs and material but also our soul. Art itself is biggest teacher and Nature is biggest artist.

@K11, Urban farming; It’s something nice and warm for families and kids, but also references elements of the city. Urban Farming is very important for Shanghainese people because the city has lost its connection with nature. When you buy fruit or vegetables it’s just that - a product - for kids and us, we wanted to reconnect this with the amazing process of growing plants. People need this, urban farming connects people with their roots. In this way it’s also educational

How I Got That Name Marilyn Chin an essay on assimilation I am Marilyn Mei Ling Chin Oh, how I love the resoluteness of that first person singular followed by that stalwart indicative of “be," without the uncertain i-n-g of “becoming.” Of course, the name had been changed somewhere between Angel Island and the sea, when my father the paperson in the late 1950s obsessed with a bombshell blond transliterated “Mei Ling” to “Marilyn.” And nobody dared question his initial impulse—for we all know lust drove men to greatness, not goodness, not decency. And there I was, a wayward pink baby, named after some tragic white woman swollen with gin and Nembutal. My mother couldn’t pronounce the “r.” She dubbed me “Numba one female offshoot” for brevity: henceforth, she will live and die in sublime ignorance, flanked by loving children and the “kitchen deity.” While my father dithers, a tomcat in Hong Kong trash— a gambler, a petty thug, who bought a chain of chopsuey joints in Piss River, Oregon, with bootlegged Gucci cash. Nobody dared question his integrity given his nice, devout daughters and his bright, industrious sons as if filial piety were the standard by which all earthly men are measured. * Oh, how trustworthy our daughters, how thrifty our sons! How we’ve managed to fool the experts in education, statistic and demography— We’re not very creative but not adverse to rote-learning. Indeed, they can use us. But the “Model Minority” is a tease. We know you are watching now, so we refuse to give you any! Oh, bamboo shoots, bamboo shoots! The further west we go, we’ll hit east; the deeper down we dig, we’ll find China. History has turned its stomach on a black polluted beach— where life doesn’t hinge on that red, red wheelbarrow, but whether or not our new lover in the final episode of “Santa Barbara” will lean over a scented candle and call us a “bitch.” Oh God, where have we gone wrong? We have no inner resources! * Then, one redolent spring morning the Great Patriarch Chin peered down from his kiosk in heaven and saw that his descendants were ugly. One had a squarish head and a nose without a bridge Another’s profile—long and knobbed as a gourd. A third, the sad, brutish one may never, never marry. And I, his least favorite— “not quite boiled, not quite cooked," a plump pomfret simmering in my juices— too listless to fight for my people’s destiny. “To kill without resistance is not slaughter” says the proverb. So, I wait for imminent death. The fact that this death is also metaphorical is testament to my lethargy. * So here lies Marilyn Mei Ling Chin, married once, twice to so-and-so, a Lee and a Wong, granddaughter of Jack “the patriarch” and the brooding Suilin Fong, daughter of the virtuous Yuet Kuen Wong and G.G. Chin the infamous, sister of a dozen, cousin of a million, survived by everbody and forgotten by all. She was neither black nor white, neither cherished nor vanquished, just another squatter in her own bamboo grove minding her poetry— when one day heaven was unmerciful, and a chasm opened where she stood. Like the jowls of a mighty white whale, or the jaws of a metaphysical Godzilla, it swallowed her whole. She did not flinch nor writhe, nor fret about the afterlife, but stayed! Solid as wood, happily a little gnawed, tattered, mesmerized by all that was lavished upon her and all that was taken away!