Walk on by

It's a dead loss trying to get attention in Lamma Island's Main Street, especially if you're a body lying in what looks like police tape to mark an incident of some kind.

This was the scene that greeted me as I was on my way home last night from a South China Morning Post photo job and, as I had my camera gear on me, I decided to snap away and see how many people stopped to see what was going on. Well, nobody did. But, then again, perhaps they already knew that the tape on the ground was no more than a street artist's prank and the body lying there was another prankster who decided to play dead just for the hell of it.

The body, who gave his name as Roger Federer (hmmmmm), said that although he hadn't placed the tape on the street, he wished he had. "That's just fantastic," was his comment.

Year of the . . . beast

Back to the blog . . . after a big gap. It's been a busy time, both on The South China Morning Post and with my band Red Star Rising. But, here we are again, doing blog catch-up, and here's a post I meant to put up a month ago during Chinese New Year festivities. It may be Year of the Rat, but the beast photographed above was more dragon than rodent, and was going from shop to shop in Yung Shue Wan on Lamma Island collecting Lai See, the traditional Chinese New Year gift (usually even cash in a small red packet). In this case there were also gifts of fruit and vegetables. The beast - nian in Chinese - is said to be a protector in folklore. This is how its origins are described at a site about a dragon year:

Chinese New Year, pronounced in Chinese as xin nian, always falls on the date of marking the beginning of the spring and thus it is also called the Spring Festival. Xin means "new" and nian means "year". There are many stories told about the origin of nian . . .

The old story says that the beast nian with a very big mouth was so fierce and could swallow many people in one single bite. People were very scared. An old man offered to subdue nian and said to nian: "I hear that you are very capable, but can you swallow the other beasts instead of people who are by no means of your worthy opponents?" So nian swallowed many of the other beasts that hurt people and their domestic animals. The old man turned out to be an immortal god and riding the beast nian flew to heaven. Now that nian was gone and other beasts were also scared into forests, people began to enjoy their peaceful life. Before the old man left, he told people to put up red paper decorations on their windows and doors at each year's end to scare away nian in case it sneaked back again, because red was the colour the beast feared the most.

From then on, the term guo nian had the meaning of "pass over" or "survive" the nian. By tradition, Chinese businesses had to pay off all their debts by the end of the year.

So there you have it, and if you want to know more about Year of the Rat, I found this offering on the Web:

According to the Chinese Zodiac, the Year of 2008 is a Year of the Rat (Earth), which begins on February 7, 2008 and ends on January 25, 2009. First in the cycle of 12 Animal signs, Rat Year begins the sequence and recurs every twelfth year. It is a time of renewal in so many ways. From New Year to Valentine's Day, to the arrival of spring, may all the blessings and delights of the New Year be yours.

A Rat Year is a time of hard work, activity, and renewal. This is a good year to begin a new job, get married, launch a product or make a fresh start. Ventures begun now may not yield fast returns, but opportunities will come for people who are well prepared and resourceful. The best way for you to succeed is to be patient, let things develop slowly, and make the most of every opening you can find. People born in an Earth Rat are said to be logical realists, shrewd, charming, ambitious, and inventive. Of course, the entire horoscope must be considered when making any personality assessment.

In Chinese, the Rat is respected and considered a courageous, enterprising person. People born in the Year of Rat are clever and bright, sociable and family-minded. They have broad interests and strong ability in adapting to the environment and able to react adequately to any changes.

They are gifted in many ways and have an easy going manner. They are active and pleasant, tactful and fantastic, and are able to grasp opportunities. They seem to have interests in everything and hope to participate in doing it and usually do it very well.

Pictures taken with the Ricoh Caplio GX100

Get the picture?

Now, I don't want everyone who reads this blog to think that fun on Lamma Island is limited to Chinese festivals and other traditional stuff, ghost months and the like. Not so, there are many splendid restaurants and bars, occasional deranged weekends and the famous beach parties. Actually, it had been my intention to photograph the ghost burning on Saturday night after all, but after a good external soaking on the outskirts of Typhoon Sepat (on the ferry back from Hong Kong), I managed to get an internal one . . . way too many vodka lime sodas at the Deli Lamma. The upshot was that by the time I got to the festival it was all over (although it was a rather lacklustre event this year those who were there told me. It was interrupted by the downpour).

Never mind, I thought (or at least I think I did), I'll photograph the beach party instead. Well I tried. The montage above is what I found on my camera the next morning . . . accidental artistry. What is truly amazing is that I, camera, mobile and wallet got home in one piece.

Now, Lamma beach parties tend to last the whole weekend, so with this in mind I set off again yesterday morning to have another shot at photographing it (see photos below). What I found on Power Station Beach was an example of what makes Lamma so special. The party was still up and pumping, with DJ Le Libertine riding the decks, a couple of lone dancers, a handful of party animals "relaxing" on the beach or in the water and our very own sound guru Parksy keeping an ever-professional eye on the equipment. But, and here's the point, just a few yards away there was a woman fishing, a young couple celebrating Seven Sisters Day, villagers out for a Sunday morning stroll and power cyclists doing their thing in front of the stranded hulk of the SS Everbest (a victim of Typhoon Pabuk).

The music was great, but the atmosphere was even better. And to top it all, I found Lamma veteran Tanya sizing up the Everbest for the possibility of a boarding party – literally. What a great idea, she said, to sling a ladder up and boogie on down aboard the stricken vessel. A top idea indeed but somehow I don't think the inappropriately named Everbest is likely to be around long enough for that to happen.

Anyway, we adjourned back to the Deli to "discuss" the idea further, which is why this blog wasn't posted until today (Monday).

This entry is dedicated to Tanya and barrister Peter Chan, who was visiting Lamma and is now seriously considering moving here. Great conversation, hope to see you back again soon mate.

Be my ghost!

It's that time of the year again. Tonight (Saturday) the Yue (or Yu) Lan (or Laan) festival takes place on Lamma Island. I won't be blogging the "burning" ghost event as I covered it last year - on July 30 (scroll down to see the photos).

However, there is a mystery about the date this year. Although this whole month is dedicated to ghosts (the hungry ghost and lantern festivals), the website DiscoverHongKong has the hungry ghost festival on Day 15 of the Seventh Moon (August 26 to you and me) with no festival at all today (August 18). However, confusingly, there is one tomorrow, the Seven Sisters Festival (or Seventh Goddess Day, Tsat-je), on Day 7 of the Seventh Moon (August 19). Just to make things more confusing, although the site Hong Kong FastFacts agrees that seven sisters/goddess day is tomorrow, it puts the hungry ghost on August 29. The sisters festival has nothing to do with ghosts and is an occasion for Chinese girls and young lovers to break with the constraints of tradition and be openly "romantic". It is also known as Chinese Valentine's Day. This is how DiscoverHongKong describes it:

"The festival has its origin in Chinese folklore dating back more than 1,500 years. The legend features a weaver maid (with six older sisters), who led a lonely life working at her loom throughout the year. Her father, the Heavenly Emperor, felt sorry for her and allowed her to marry a cowherder from across the Milky Way.

After the wedding, she neglected her weaving duties and the Emperor ordered her to return home and visit her husband only once a year - on the seventh day of the seventh moon.

The celebrations centre on religious rites and feature needlework competitions. As part of the worship, young women make offerings to the night sky and the two stars that represent the cowherder and the maid. They usually present fruit and burn joss sticks and incense in the open air, chiefly on rooftops, in backyards and gardens or at Lovers' Stone on Bowen Road in Wan Chai."

So it appears that today isn't a festival at all, not that that is going to stop Lamma's Taoist priests and charmers from going ahead with their ghost burning. And in the run-up to today's event, they have been going round the island playing music designed to scare ghosts away (see photos above), all part of their month-long campaign to banish wandering spirits from the island. I was woken up by the procession yesterday morning and recorded the music, which has a link below . . . best not to listen to it if you're a ghost or spirit though, you may find yourself banished from the Web forever! I also recorded a ceremony that took place in the afternoon and there is also a link to a slideshow of that.

Listen to the music: click here (A 2-3 minute Quicktime file)

Watch the slideshow: click here (A 7-minute Flash movie)

By the way, for the photographically minded, my shots are usually taken with a Nikon D2X camera, but the ones in today's blog and in the slideshow were taken with a 10-megapixel Ricoh Caplio GX100, in my view one of the best small digital cameras ever.

Anyone for T?

A typhoon that is. It was the usual chaos in Hong Kong as Typhoon Pabuk did an about-turn and headed back for the region after the weathermen thought it had bypassed us. The "8 warning" went up at 2.30pm on Friday, an hour earlier than had been predicted, sending Hong Kong into typhoon free fall. Banks, offices and the stock market closed and millions of people headed for home. The MTR (mass transit railway/tube/underground) was swamped with people before the management could call in extra drivers to handle the crowds, resulting in entrances being closed to stop a bad situation becoming dangerous. Bus queues were ridiculous and there was the usual scramble to catch the last ferries to the outlying islands before the services were suspended. The 8 invalidates taxi drivers' insurance so they were off the road. Mobile and landline telephone networks were overwhelmed and Hong Kong came to its usual halt.

You would have thought that after all these years of typhoons, the warning system, which has been refined after authorities made a bad call on a Typhoon 3 last year (it was an 8 everybody agreed) - see http://www.hko.gov.hk/informtc/informtc.htm - would give people enough time to disperse in a less hectic manner.

As for me, well I just managed to get the last ferry of the afternoon to Lamma Island (4pm), and spent the journey at the back out on the poop deck of the Sea Supreme, despite the best efforts of the ferrymen, who had roped off the upstairs section (they were forced to relent). And what a journey it was . . . heavy, vicious waves that sent more than just spray over the sides of the deck. It was wonderful, great money's worth for HK$16. And, as you can see from the photos below, visitor to the island Terran Daily (in the green mack) had the ride of her life. Of course, not everyone was so excited as the occasional scream from inside the cabin testified as the Supreme lurched and ditched in the waves.

And you don't need to ask what happened when we finally arrived at Lamma do you? You do? OK, well I'll tell you. When the 8 goes up it's party time. Typhoon parties are as much a part of the culture here as noodles. In my case I popped into the Spicy Island bar on Lamma's Main Street to trade typhoon talk with the regulars and formidable host Amar Singh (pictured last).

US sailors strike lucky in Lang Kwai Fong

While in port, the carrier strike group's approximately 6,000 crewmembers will have a chance to participate in friendship building and community relation activities. That's what the rather stiff press
release from the USS John C. Stennis public affairs office said about the visit of its of sailors to Hong Kong this week.

The kind of activities they had in mind for the boys from the USS John C. Stennis carrier, USS Antietam, USS Preble and USS O'Kane, were "painting social centres, sorting and packing donations, entertaining kindergarten aged children, landscaping, and clearing shrubbery". (http://www.c7f.navy.mil/news/2007/july/53.htm). Right, but everybody knows what they really get up to in Hong Kong don't they? Let's just say that it's difficult to squeeze your way into a bar in Wanchai while they're in town.

The lads above are pictured getting into the spirit of the Lang Kwai Fong Food and Beer Festival, an annual July weekend of expensive booze and junk food designed to part tourists (and not a few locals) from their cash. OK, that's a bit cynical, but it is an expensive and overly plastic place to hang out; Wanchai (on any other weekend than a visit by the USS lads) and Tsim Sha Tsui are a much better bet. Lamma Island is a better bet still, but then I'm biased there.

Here are a few more shots from the two-day beer fest:

It's Friday the 39th every day at the Green Cottage

Time kind of stands still on Lamma Island, off the coast of Hong Kong (for those who don't already know where it is), and just to prove it, the clock at the Green Cottage cafe is stuck permanently at Friday, 39th. I was so taken with the clock, first I photographed it and then decided to write a song for my band Red Star Rising, which will be called Friday 39.

But here's the thing, when researching Friday 39 on the web for lyric ideas, I found that there are many - and sometimes bizarre - references to this date. Mistakes or dated on purpose? You decide.

For example, under an entry for the Spanswicks of Scotland (http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~dutillieul/
SpansCounty/Scotland.html), we find this extract from the Scotsman newspaper:

The Scotsman Friday, 39th August 1946
CONFECTIONER FINED £20 - An Edinburgh confectioner who, it was stated, by overstating the number of personal points in his possession in returns to the Ministry of Food, would have obtained almost half a ton of confectionery, was fined a total of £20 by Sheriff Jameson, at Edinburgh Sheriff Court yesterday. He was William Spanswick, 12 Niddrie Mains Road, and he admitted on two occasions - March 31 and April 28 - recklessly made false statements to the Ministry of Food regarding the number of confectionery points in his possession. He pleaded guilty through an agent.

And then there's this entry on the site for "Rusty Roo Artists' Retreat . . . a place to let your soul breathe" (http://www.rustyroo.com/Roo_workshop_dates07.htm):

September, Friday 28th - Sunday 39th
Ikebana from the landscape & pastels
Lily Karmatz
Lily will guide you through the landscape and help you discover the possibilities available to construct sculptural arrangements/works, using fresh, temporary and permanent materials based on the Japanese art of Ikebana. Once you have constructed these instillations (sic) you will be encouraged to use pastels/paints to express the design, colour and texture of these works. No experience necessary.

OK, well, that's Sunday the 39th, but it's still the 39th.

Then we've got dance workshops among the SWIM 2000 program(mes) here: (http://www.swimuu.org/swim2000/programs.htm)

Dance Workshops - n., plural, instruction and supervised practice in styles of dance. Wednesday/27th through Friday/39th, after the worship service, you can swing on by, waltz right into the ballroom, and have some fun learning the finest dancing moves! The perfect primer for New Year's. See Workshops for descriptions.

Waltzing into the ballroom on Friday 39th sounds a bit scary to me. But there's a nice association here . . . the dance of time . . . I quite like that one.

It won't surprise anyone to learn that The Beatles also had a happening on the 39th. This wasn't a Sergeant Pepper's event though, or a Magical Mystery Tour date sometime in 1967. This was a Waterstones bookshop event featuring the Fab Four (http://www.fabfour.addr.com/waterstones.htm). Among a list of other "fab" events, we find this one:

Sheffield, Orchard Square
From Friday 39th there will be a full window display which will include Beatles memorabilia supplied by the Centre for Popular Music and a local collector. The collection include original poster and artwork, plus toys and authentic merchandise from the Sixties. The music will be provided by HMV for the Great Beatles Election. Voting forms will be available for people to vote for their favourite Beatles track. The winner will be receiving a Beatles Collection CD and the local newspapers will be covering the event and the results.

Truly fab. Add to this a blog written on the 39th (http://autonomousreplika.blogspot.com/
2005_09_12_archive.html) and too many references to 39th Street in New York to mention, and you'll see that the date throws up a lot of interesting references.

My personal favourite? The Beatles, of course, although none of this would have come to my attention without the Green Cottage clock. The 39th? A virtual time. Lamma Island? Virtually the best place I have been to . . . and I'm lucky enough to live there.