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Pier Politiking 2: Imprisonment
Tuesday, Jul 15, 2008 5:30AM / Members only
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The Real Sin City...
Friday, Jul 4, 2008 4:28PM / Members only
The Kowloon Walled City, the city of darkness, the quintessential concrete jungle...
For many people in Hong Kong, the Walled city once represented everything that are dark, criminal, and uninhabitable. The enclave was in fact full of opium dens, brothels, triads, gambling dens, and had real bad sanitary conditions. But to many others like me, it possessed a sort of beauty that can only be describe as exceptional and ethereal...
Before I go any further, however, I must confess that I've actually never been inside the Walled city. It is no exaggeration to say that this is one of the biggest regret of my life (well of course, besides all the personal immaturity and stupidity committed in the past). By the time I came to hear about and started reading on the history of this special place in Hong Kong, it was already demolished by the government. What a shame, but we'll get back to that, because to talk about the walled city, we must first dip into the muddy water of Hong Kong history...
Most historians agree that the Kowloon Walled City can be traced back to the Song Dynasty (960 - 1297), where the North-Eastern coast of the Kowloon peninsula was the site of a major salt trading port. But it was really in the Qing Dynasty (1644-1912) that buildings and a new fort were built on the strategic position in 1810 that would later become the infamous walled city. The reasons for the imperial court to do so are simple, they wanted to put a check on the rampant pirates that were roaming in the South China Sea and the British colonial development on Hong Kong island, since only Hong Kong Island was ceded to the British in the Treaty of Nanking in 1841, and it wasn't until 1860 that the colony began to extend inland into the Kowloon peninsula with the signing of the Treaty of Nanjing after the second opium war.
However, even when the New Territories were 'leased' to the British for 99 years in 1898, the British still did not claimed control of the Kowloon City. Many Imperial officials who remained in the area refused to give up jurisdiction which resulted in the British giving the Chinese jurisdiction of the area after numerous failed attempts in forcing the inhabitants out. And eventually, with the turbulent events of the early 20th Century China that saw the fall of the Qing Dynasty, the formation of the Republic of China and the People's Republic of China in 1949, many Chinese refugees, be it anti-Manchurian Triads, the Kuomingtongs or Communists, began to populate the Chinese enclave.
With the British and the Chinese government taking a hands-off policy towards the walled city because of its touchy subject, the place quickly developed into a special zone in which law and order did not apply. Triads seized control of the place, and it grew into the a hotbed for all sorts of criminal activities and dodgy operations that became synonymous with the walled city in our collective memory of the place.
It was during this period, in post-WWII Hong Kong and all the way to the evacuation of its residents in 1991 that the Kowloon Walled City began its continual process of demolition and reconstruction where individual buildings homogenised into an intricate network of communal stairways and corridors linked one to the other, creating a labyrinth of buildings and passages that makes it impossible for an outsider to navigate without getting lost...
Without an architect supervising the construction of all the buildings and renovations in the walled city, the only regulations the residents had to follow were the limiting height of its building to fourteen stories because of its close proximity to the Kai Tak airport, and electricity safety regulation for the obvious reason to avoid fire. Thus, in an effort to build a better home for themselves, the six and a half acre of slum with its 35,000 residents at its peak became a sort of organism, always growing and mutating into its own form...
The Walled city's evaucation and demolition began in 1991 and was completed in 1993. A recreational park was built on the location where the walled city once stood and several relics from the enclave still remain now in the park. But like most project by our government to preserve cultural heritage, it is a complete failure. It is a great loss to not only the people in Hong Kong, but also for anyone who are interested in visiting extraordinary historical landmark, that such an unique structure is now torn down and lost forever. Why haven't anyone suggested on preserving the whole walled city under sustainable development? If it was preserve, clean out, and turn into a museum, I think it would be one of the coolest museum or art gallery ever existed. Walled city is part of China's, Hong Kong's and Britain's history, and like most things in our past, it was first deliberately displaced, then destroyed, and finally forgotten...
Ever since I came to learn about the Kowloon Walled City, I've always wanted to go inside and experience how it was like for the people who lived there and found their own ways to survive in this seemingly dystopian landscape. So whenever I come across a book or article about the walled city, I always try to make it part of my library collection. One of the book I've always go back to is CITY OF DARKNESS - Life in Kowloon Walled City, a photo-journal about the Walled city's history and the people who lived and survived in the enclave. Most of the photos in this blog are grabbed out of the book, and there are a lot more stunning photos inside the book with lots of interesting personal stories from the resident of the walled city.
For those of you who have traveled in and out of Hong Kong in the 80's or early 90's at the Kai Tak Airport, I'm sure most of you did not miss the concrete monolith during the plane's landing, which was always a joy for me to watch the foreigners in awe (or fear) of the close proximity of the plane and the buildings nearby. I remember pointing at the Walled city once when I was young and asked my mom what that piece of land was. She didn't give me a very good answer, she only said that it is a place in which no decent people would want to set foot in. How mistaken she is...
At last, I like to show you a clip of a film shot in the walled city when it was still standing.
Anyone remember Jean Claude Van Damme's Bloodsport??
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEo6ogAnoZ8
I wish Borges could write a piece about the walled city...
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Death at Intervals
Wednesday, Jun 25, 2008 6:49PM / Members only
Imagine this following scenario:
On the first day of the new year, No one dies...
From that day on, your given city no longer produces any dead person, even if he or she has been involved in the most fatal accident or diagnosed with the most lethal disease...
Death has cease to exist...no one will die...
Can you imagine what would happen to a city or a country if that's the case??
Well, that's what the Nobel Prize winning novelist Jose Saramago tried to capture in his latest novel DEATH AT INTERVALS. Like his earlier and immensely successful effort, Blindness (which is already adapted to the screen by the great Brazilian filmmaker Fernando Meirelles and in competition this year at Cannes), DEATH is another great attempt in the satirical portrayal of human nature in the face of some unknown yet serious collective calamity.
Here with DEATH, Saramago tried to capture the confusion, and simultaneously, the excitement of the public when death cease to happen to everyone in the society. How would the governement react? What would happen to funeral directors, hospitals, social services and pensions? And in such time of great social changes, some sectors in the society will fall but other will rise to the occasion, and in this dark and funny fable, we will find that the mafia can be of important help.
I actually finished this book a month or so ago, but numerous scenes and details have always find its way back to me. I don't want to give any of its plot away, but towards the last 1/3 of the book, you will find the story about Death, the almighty undertaker, saddening and touching enough for you to sympathize with her, even though being aware that when our time comes, we will only be too fearful to come face to face with her...
I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys reading satirical pieces that tell us more about our condition as human being, our selfishness and ignorance. But if you haven't read a Saramago novel before, Blindness might be a better one to start off with. Better read it before the film comes out though, the novel is always better than the film...
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1World1Dream=1Nation1System??
Tuesday, Apr 29, 2008 4:35PM / Members only
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Sex...as you like...
Friday, Apr 25, 2008 7:31PM / Members only
Wow...can't believe the last entry was so long ago...
sorry...i'm really quite lazy with blogs...
anyways, thought of something funny and worth sharing...but because the following entry deals with explicit sexual content...pls follow in your own discretion...
A couple of days ago on msn, a friend of my who's a big Hentai fans (in case some of you don't know, Hentai is Japanese Anime Porn), msg me and said:"I found my perfect dream girl..."
He refused to tell me who the girl is or where she is from, so I asked him to send me a pic of this so called dream girl. And instead he send me a link to a website. And to my bewilderment, this is what I saw:
Yes, she is a silicon doll, but she is not your average blow-up Mary or Jane. Her 'name' is NEU(Goblin Chic), a product by the Japanese company 4 Woods Co. Ltd whose business slogan is "Manufacturing Inspiring Soulful Love Dolls". Contrary to what you might think about a blow up doll, whose look and function are all pretty mundane and dull, these 'girls' from 4 woods are anything but simple. On their website, they have choices of over 12 different dolls that cater to different tastes. From ethnicity, body frame, breast size, nipple color, eye color, skin tone, hair style and color, make up style, finger nails style and color, body paint, and even REAL PUBIC HAIR transplant, these dolls can be customize to satisfy most of your seedy desires. Click on the order form in the website and have fun picking out your own dolls and you will see what I mean. Gotta give it up to the Japs, they always seems to take things to another level...
Naturally, I was quite worry about my friend; I was worried that sexual frustration have already pushed him to the fringes that he has to find a doll to compensate for his lack of it. Yet when i expressed my concern, his reply would be nothing short of food for thought:"I don't see what's wrong with satisfying myself with a nice doll like that;
instead of going out of the way with all kinds of phony lies and stupid jokes to get a gf, I rather save myself the effort and get a prostitute instead...
sex is getting more unreal each day anyways,
I just can't wait till the day when all sexual desires
can be fulfilled virtually or with bots..."
Remember Jude Law from the film A.I.?? Where he plays the role of a male prostitute robot? Well what my friend hopes for is precisely that, when sexual activities are no longer limited between real human beings and can be conducted through different means, even by oneself.
I did some searching on the web to see when and how we will reach that stage of human evolution, and to my surprise, it doesn't really seem like it will take that long. At least, i'm convinced I can see it happening before I die at old age. There are numerous researches that are going on right now that tries to map out our whole neuro-circuit. In other words, in a matter of decades, we will be able to find out exactly which part of our brain are responsible for the feelings and rushes we felt when having sex, down to the exact synapses. With the advance of Head Console development, (think of the head gear that the characters in Matrix wore on their head), we already have product in the market now that can read signals from our brain to give simple command to the computer, it won't be long until this process can be reverse, where the head console can trigger certain parts of our brain or synapses that will give us authentic emotions and reactions.
With that being achieved, i think there will be a huge revolution in the porn industry, where the old fashioned video porn will no longer be able to satisfy people. Instead, pornography will enter into a new age, Porn 2.0 kinda thing where the porn star in the video or the gaming software can 'interact' with the user and really stimulates him/her where it matters...
Who knows, maybe in the near future, no longer will anyone will be left unsatisfied sexually. And with that almighty SEX issue out of the way, maybe more people can be left with a clear mind to deal with their relationships with others. The future can be a bit intimidating, but for people like my friend, it can be a bright new day...
in the meantime, i guess i'll just try to gather up money to buy my friend that doll from 4 woods, which will cost us some $50,000 HKD...
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