Jackie Chan Wants CCP Membership

Jackie Chan is a member of the CPPCC but not the CCP

 

This may be shocking to discover, but action superstar Jackie Chan is not a card-carrying Communist Party member.

He revealed his interest in joining the Party during a symposium organized by the China Film Association last Thursday in Beijing. Chan, 67, told the attendees that when he's abroad, he often says that he's "proud of being Chinese".

Chan sang in the Bird's Nest on July 1

"I also envy that you are Communist Party members, I think the Communist Party is just great, what the Communist Party says, what they promised, will always be delivered within a few decades," he said.

"I want to be a Communist Party member, thank you," he added, to thunderous applause.

However, many people online mocked Chan's wish, saying he was unworthy of party membership.

They referred to his extramarital affair with Hong Kong actress Elaine Ng in 1999, with whom he had a daughter, Etta Ng Chok-lam. Ng raised the daughter on her own in China, but then disowned her when Etta came out as lesbian when she was 17 years old. She married her partner in 2018 in Canada.

Jaycee Chan was jailed in 2014 for marijuana

And then Chan's son, Jaycee was arrested and jailed in 2014 for possession and distribution of marijuana during a drug bust in his apartment in Beijing.

He was sentenced to six months in jail and served the full sentence.

Jackie Chan has definitely demonstrated his patriotism over the years, and for it he has been a member of the Chinese People's Consultative Conference, largely made up of Communist Party members.

On July 1, he took part in the Communist Party's centennial celebrations at the National Stadium nicknamed "the Bird's Nest", singing a rendition of the patriotic classic, Defending the Yellow River, composed during the Second Sino-Japanese War.

Chan can no longer count on Hongkongers to be his fans anymore either after he gave an interview with state media in 2019. He spoke out about the anti-government protests, calling them "sad and depressing", and said he hoped Hong Kong "can return to peace soon".

Etta Ng (left) married her partner in 2018

He was also criticized in 2009 for his comments about the pro-democracy movement. "I'm not sure if it's good to have freedom or not," he said at the time. "I'm really confused now. If you're too free, you're like the way Hong Kong is now. It's very chaotic. Taiwan is also very chaotic."

Poor Jackie. No one wants to have anything to do with him...

Aussie Lobsters Sneak into China

Australian rock lobsters are being smuggled to China via HK

Australia and China have had long simmering disputes as of late, and this has led to the latter banning numerous food products from Down Under.

First it was wines, along with barley, log timber, copper, coal, and sugar, and recently it's rock lobsters.

But the red crustaceans are making their way to China via Hong Kong thanks to some daring smugglers.

Australian wines are banned from entering China

Back in 2015 when China-Australia Free Trade Agreement was signed, smuggling was brought to a halt and four years later, more than 90 percent of Australia's rock lobsters were exported to China, worth a staggering US$553.7 million a year, according to the Australian agriculture department.

However, the trade ban has resurrected smuggling operations. It's not just lobsters the smugglers are bringing over to China, but also frozen meats, cigarettes and other goods, possibly jewellery, bird's nest, or shark's fin.

In April, Hong Kong imported a whopping 157,978kg of Australian rock lobsters -- about 50 times the amount imported in October, just before the ban took effect.

Lobsters are packed in boxes and kept chilled

But none of the lobsters show up as cargo being re-exported to mainland China, said Hong Kong's Census and Statistics Department. Only 5 percent of the lobsters are re-exported to Macau.

"How could people in Hong Kong consume so many lobsters?" asks a local seafood trader. "Of course they must have ended up on the mainland."

Mainland e-commerce sites like Xianyu and Taobao have suppliers in Beijing, Guangzhou and Hangzhou selling rock lobsters for 300 yuan to 1,000 yuan (US$45-US$155) per kilogram.

How they get to China is, the lobsters are chilled -- not frozen -- to keep them alive and the cold temperatures put them to sleep. After an eight-hour flight from Perth to Hong Kong, and cleared customs, the crustaceans are put in water tanks for two or three days to freshen them up and then repacked again in boxes to make the illicit journey.

The lobsters end up on dining tables in China

Some are hidden in fishermens' boats together with their usual haul to get to the other side a few kilometres away, while others are taken by speedboat by smugglers. It's crucial to get the lobsters transported as quickly as possible because no one wants a dead lobster on arrival...

A Quick Visit to Tai Kwun

One of the two courtyards in Tai Kwun that gives a wonderful spacious area

The other day I had a bit of time and was near the newest landmark in Hong Kong -- Tai Kwun (大馆), or the former Central Police Station and had a quick look around.

The beautiful staircase that everyone has photographed

Many people have posted pictures on social media already, particularly the spiral staircase and the stairs where it says "Mind the Step" at each step... a bit tedious one might say.

Tai Kwun has been a long time coming. It was closed in 2006 and then the public got a chance to look at it before it was renovated in 2008 in a partnership between the Hong Kong Jockey Club and the Hong Kong government, but nothing happened for a long time; perhaps behind the scenes there was a lot of assessment that had to be done in terms of the buildings' stability and condition.

And then in May 2016 one of the retaining walls suddenly collapsed that set back the project another year or so. Meanwhile as a passerby, the construction site was wrapped up in white and for a long time we couldn't see any progress.

The second courtyard with a Herzog & de Meuron building

But finally a few months ago Tai Kwun opened its doors. Much of the original buildings have been retained, and there are two modern additions to the compound, futuristic buildings designed by Herzog & de Meuron, who you may remember designed the Bird's Nest in Beijing.

The Central Police Station was first built in 1841, and it's a huge complex that has two giant courtyards with trees, making it quite a nice setting. However the jail cells -- you can see some of them -- seem quite tiny, and prisoners were physically tortured. They couldn't even use the toilet -- only a bucket, and another bucket of fresh water.

You can access Tai Kwun from the Mid-Levels escalator

Some of the spaces in the buildings have been converted into cafes and restaurants, while the larger spaces are for art exhibitions by local artists. However we prefer admiring the architecture. There's a lot of concrete but also wood, and the compound is pretty much in tact, leaving the massive courtyards free for people to wander and feel enveloped by the space.

I have yet to try the restaurants and bars here, but it would be quite neat to dine here and see what the atmosphere is like in the evening.

Meanwhile I have heard from people who live and work in the area are so glad Tai Kwun is open because the scaffolding around it made the area congested and now there are more options for pedestrians to get around Wyndham Street.

One of the tiny jail cells in Tai Kwun

I will have to come back another time to look at Tai Kwun again more closely, but it's a nice way to spend even 20 minutes wandering around and admiring our latest landmark in the city.

Ai Weiwei's Modern Take of Hansel & Gretel

Visitors being tracked by cameras up on the ceiling of the armory

We managed to catch Ai Weiwei's intriguing interactive installation on surveillance called Hansel & Gretel, in collaboration with Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, who you may remember designed the Bird's Nest in Beijing.

At the time Ai also worked with them on that Olympic stadium, but later pulled out, stating that he didn't want to be a puppet of the Chinese government in its coming out party in 2008.

Called the "thinking person's 'Rain Room'"

So it's interesting to see this prominent collaboration again -- maybe Herzog and de Meuron want to repent for what they did? Or they now understand why Ai didn't want any part of the Bird's Nest project? Or perhaps they sympathize with what he went through when he was held for 81 days without any official charges, though later it was for "economic crimes".

In any event, we went to the site of the show, the Park Avenue Armory, and were promptly instructed by one of the staff to go to the back of the building to purchase tickets and enter from there.

We were led to a door into a very dark space and told the exit was where the blue light was. At this point we didn't know what to expect.

Why were we in such a dark room where the floor seemed curved? And what was happening on the floor?

Soon we realized there were images of us taken from above and projected on the floor, and we looked up and saw a bunch of lights lined up systematically across the ceiling of the 55,000-square foot armory, but we couldn't exactly see what they were. They were drones that were recording our movements, literally following us around with photographic evidence of their surveillance.

Being tracked is simultaneously cool and disconcerting

At first it seemed like a novelty, having machines tracking and taking picture of us. How did they do that? Infra-red cameras attached to 56 computers. But why were they doing this to us? What had we done to deserve that?

It also dawned on us that this is how Ai probably felt when he was under surveillance in Beijing, when he returned home from his unofficial incarceration to find cameras all over his home to track his movements, which is unsettling and scary how easily one can be followed at all times.

There were also at least two drones that wandered around ceiling hovering over people that gave an uneasy feeling.

After a while we emerged from the giant space and back into the sunlight, where we were instructed to go back to the front entrance of the Armory.

When we entered the doors, we were told to look at a series of red lights, which we later found had taken a picture of us that was projected onto screens in the hallway. We looked like zombies, our pupils were blank, making them haunting images.

A peephole view of the installation from a distance

Here there wasn't much to see except a kind of library space where people could sit down and browse through the Hansel & Gretel website that chronicles the history of surveillance over the centuries.

You can also take a picture of yourself on the iPad and then it will try to find the earlier picture of you when you walked through the entrance. In my case it was a successful (and creepy) match.

There was also an area where you could look through a peephole back at the armory space to have a more bird's eye view of the project, though you still couldn't clearly see what was going on.

What to do about it?

In the gift shop you can buy special foil bags or plastic case to put your smartphones in to stop others from tracking you, or buy a giant magnet that says #resist, as well as giant tomes of Ai's body of work.

There's also a phone case that says "The NSA has all your selfies" -- which pretty much hits the nail on the head.

The title of the show is a reference to the Brothers Grimm fairytale of two children tempted by sweets by an old woman who holds them hostage. Some critics have surmised from the show that the more you post online, the more Big Brother knows about you and your friends.

Will that stop you from posting on social media? Probably not, but don't say you haven't been warned.

Hansel & Gretel

Until August 6, 2017

Thompson Arts Center at Park Avenue Armory

643 Park Avenue

New York

www.armoryonpark.org

Beijing's Deja Vu

Chinese Vice Premier Liu Yandong makes the successful pitch for Beijing

Here we go again -- Beijing has been awarded the rights to host the 2022 Winter Olympics.

It was a pretty lopsided race to start with, though the Chinese capital was considered a weak contender in the beginning.

Originally Oslo and Stockholm were the the frontrunners, but each fell out probably due to the fact that their respective residents didn't want to foot the massive bill.

Then it came down to Beijing and Almaty, Kazakhstan.

Pro-Tibet demonstrators present a dramatic protest

There were concerns Beijing would have no snow, and the usual human rights abuses -- which made me realize this was why dissident artist Ai Weiwei was given back his passport about a week ago. He's now in Germany visiting his son.

While Almaty has tons of natural snow, it didn't have the experience of holding the Games like Beijing did in 2008 (the 7th anniversary is coming up), and its own human rights issues.

Beijing promises it will snow -- dammit we will make it snow! -- by hosting the alpine events in Yanqing and Zhangjiakou (60km and 140km away respectively) from the Chinese capital.

The Chinese delegation also brought out its star power -- Yao Ming and Li Na -- interesting that the retired tennis superstar would be willing to show up, but maybe because she's a mother now, pitching for Beijing gets her some brownie points.

Now there's another reason to use the practically neglected Bird's Nest and other Olympic venues, though Beijing will surely build a few more -- ahead of schedule -- to show that it can.

Now the Chinese government can boast in its promotional literature that it is the first city in the world to host both the Summer and Winter games. It's an easy way for China to hint, Any host city in the United States ever attempted that feat?

Residents in Zhangjiakou hold a sign saying, "We did it!"

Beijing is doing its happy dance now and will do so for the next few days, though the euphoria won't last long. Memories will flood back of hutongs being demolished for Olympic venues and how the city was in lock down mode, where residents couldn't move around freely while the Games were on.

One thinks Beijing's promise of having snow -- some form of it -- on the mountains seems like a huge one that may not be fulfilled, though now that all eyes are on Beijing again, it will have to be on its best behaviour from today until 2022.

Over lunch over a week ago, a hotel executive and I were talking about Vancouver and how he went there to watch the Winter Games.

But he suggested that perhaps to help the ailing Greek economy that it would be best to hold the Summer Games every four years in Athens from now on, where it was originally held thousands of years ago.

He felt cities were needlessly going into debt holding these events, spending money to build Olympic venues that are collecting dust.

What about the Winter Games, I asked? Have them in Vancouver?

He agreed, or to do without them altogether -- after all the Olympics didn't have winter events!

Food for thought...