So the wife and I were out for a stroll in Kowloon Tong the other day when, in the street across from ours, this scene greets us:
So we've got half a dozen cherry pickers set up in the street to overlook someone's yard and a bunch of guys standing on the fence, all for no apparent reason. Now, one of the disadvantages I am at, as a new and not very well informed Hongkonger, is that when I walk past something like this I can never be sure whether it is:
(a) a newsworthy event;
(b) an annual festival;
(a) a newsworthy event;
(b) an annual festival;
(c) a flash mob; or
(d) something that just happens everyday and which Hongkongers cannot understand why I find odd.
In this case, it turned out the answer was (a). It turns out that we live just down the road from Mr Henry Tang.
Mr Tang is (or maybe now was) Beijing's chosen candidate for the next Chief Executive of Hong Kong. That's right, Hong Kong has a Chief Executive, which I always thought is quite an appropriate name for the world's biggest experiment in laissez faire capitalism. Also Chief Executive keeps Beijing happy, because it doesn't denote autonomy like President might.
Being Beijing's chosen candidate for Chief Executive of Hong Kong usually means that you've automatically got the job. There is an election of sorts, but the voters are an electoral college of 1,200 electors, and the majority of these electors are loyal to Beijing.
Unfortunately for him, Mr Tang's campaign seems to be going from bad to worse, to the point where one of his opponents has also been deemed acceptable by Beijing. So now it appears Beijing has left the Beijing-loyal electors with a choice, so no-one knows what the hell to do.
Anyway, the latest scandal involves Mr Tang's wife's house, which apparently has an illegally constructed basement. Now in Hong Kong, you do not eat on the trains, you do not cough on a stranger and you especially do not renovate without a permit. More importantly, nothing makes a politician look out of touch more than revealing that your 6,000 square foot mansion was not quite big enough and so you had to add a wine cellar. I guess the Australian equivalent would be discovering that Tony Abbott was running a private water slide in his backyard filled with Moet & Chandon and the tears of orphaned babies, all during water restrictions.
So the scene above was the local journalists showing they are eminently qualified to work for Rupert Murdoch by taking photos over Mr Tang's fence. There were at least six cherry pickers in the street all loaded with cameramen. Sadly, they didn't get any footage of the basement, given that it is by its nature covered by the house. That certainly didn't deter them, however - the cameramen and cherry pickers were there all weekend, just in case the basement felt like making an appearance or giving an interview at any point.
EDIT: It turns out that Mr Tang's pool has a glass bottom, so the journalists could see the illegal basement through the pool. Are you kidding me? No wonder Beijing endorsed this guy, nothing says socialist like a glass-bottomed swimming pool.
So the upshot is, we live near the guy who is either going to be the next Chief Executive or going to be famous for fumbling what should have been a formality. Either way, it should be good for property prices, and those are far more important to Hongkongers than politics.
In this case, it turned out the answer was (a). It turns out that we live just down the road from Mr Henry Tang.
Mr Tang is (or maybe now was) Beijing's chosen candidate for the next Chief Executive of Hong Kong. That's right, Hong Kong has a Chief Executive, which I always thought is quite an appropriate name for the world's biggest experiment in laissez faire capitalism. Also Chief Executive keeps Beijing happy, because it doesn't denote autonomy like President might.
Being Beijing's chosen candidate for Chief Executive of Hong Kong usually means that you've automatically got the job. There is an election of sorts, but the voters are an electoral college of 1,200 electors, and the majority of these electors are loyal to Beijing.
Unfortunately for him, Mr Tang's campaign seems to be going from bad to worse, to the point where one of his opponents has also been deemed acceptable by Beijing. So now it appears Beijing has left the Beijing-loyal electors with a choice, so no-one knows what the hell to do.
Anyway, the latest scandal involves Mr Tang's wife's house, which apparently has an illegally constructed basement. Now in Hong Kong, you do not eat on the trains, you do not cough on a stranger and you especially do not renovate without a permit. More importantly, nothing makes a politician look out of touch more than revealing that your 6,000 square foot mansion was not quite big enough and so you had to add a wine cellar. I guess the Australian equivalent would be discovering that Tony Abbott was running a private water slide in his backyard filled with Moet & Chandon and the tears of orphaned babies, all during water restrictions.
So the scene above was the local journalists showing they are eminently qualified to work for Rupert Murdoch by taking photos over Mr Tang's fence. There were at least six cherry pickers in the street all loaded with cameramen. Sadly, they didn't get any footage of the basement, given that it is by its nature covered by the house. That certainly didn't deter them, however - the cameramen and cherry pickers were there all weekend, just in case the basement felt like making an appearance or giving an interview at any point.
EDIT: It turns out that Mr Tang's pool has a glass bottom, so the journalists could see the illegal basement through the pool. Are you kidding me? No wonder Beijing endorsed this guy, nothing says socialist like a glass-bottomed swimming pool.
So the upshot is, we live near the guy who is either going to be the next Chief Executive or going to be famous for fumbling what should have been a formality. Either way, it should be good for property prices, and those are far more important to Hongkongers than politics.
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