Picture of the Day: Pepe the Frog

A legit Pepe the Frog moonlighting as a reporter...

Here's Pepe the Frog, an amphibian created by Matt Furie for a comic strip called Boy's Club, and became popular in 2008.

But then in the 2010s the frog somehow got coopted by the alt-right movement in the United States, and Furie was disappointed that Pepe became a hate symbol.

Fast forward to 2019 in Hong Kong and Pepe became adopted as a symbol of freedom and resistance during the more than seven-month long protests. How this frog became beloved by protesters I have no idea, but it caught on very quickly, and soon there was graffiti of the frog and even stuffed animal versions.

Last month a local artist even created giant Pepe the Frog heads for people to wear at protest marches!

This is a Pepe the Frog one of my colleagues got. He explained to me that it was a "real" one. How can you tell it's real? It has a bulge in its pants and he even showed me the frog's genitals! And just in case you needed to know, they are fuzzy green!

The Protest Spirit Marches On

Some 22,000 people stand in solidarity with teachers at Chater Garden

Finally 10 weeks into the protests the rest of the world is waking up the reality that Hongkongers are fighting to defend their city.

Today things were relatively tame. The weather wasn't cooperative this morning and there was a march organized by the Hong Kong Professional Teachers' Union with the theme, "Safeguard the next generation, let our conscience speak".

The union says some 22,000 people showed up at Chater Garden in the pouring rain. That's a lot considering there are just under 30,000 teachers in the city.

Then they marched up to Government House, where Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor lives. Or symbolically lives.

Today's slogan was "Safeguard the next generation"

Later in the afternoon the march in Hung Hom from Hoi Sham Park to Whampoa MTR station goes smoothly and peacefully and officially ends at 5.30pm. Some of the protesters splinter off to Tokwawan, others to Mongkok, throwing eggs at pro-Beijing lawmakers' offices, or leaving graffiti.

They dared to deface the office of the pro-Beijing Hong Kong Federation of Unions, spray painting graffiti, throwing engine oil, eggs and leaving pineapples, that symbolize hand grenades.

Meanwhile at 6pm I try to get on the 101 bus to get to my relatives' place in Tokwawan for dinner, and the bus driver says he is only going as far as Hung Hom cross harbour tunnel. Strange since the situation in Tokwawan is relatively calm and the crowds are dispersing.

So I take the MTR to Tsim Sha Tsui, walk to Chatham Road to catch either the number 5 or 28 bus. When I get on the no. 5 bus, the driver says he is not passing through Tokwawan, but will take us to Choi Hung. How bizarre.

Gorgeous sunset view of Lion Rock in Choi Hung

But perhaps even more interesting is that no one is fazed -- no one complains about the protesters disrupting the roads.

The bus goes on the high way and this is a route I'm completely unfamiliar with -- consider it kind of city sightseeing. We end up at a bus stop near a bus terminus and I can see Plaza Hollywood, a shopping mall that includes Diamond Hill MTR station.

I walk towards it but not without snapping this picture of Lion Rock in the pink sunset. At least one good thing came out of this roundabout drive.

Thank goodness there's a massive taxi line and within 15 minutes I arrive at my destination.

Other than a tense standoff on Nathan Road near Tsim Sha Tsui, with police trying to chase down protesters, but they are weighed down by their heavy gear. Amazingly no tear gas was fired today. Perhaps, as some people joked, it was raining, which wasn't good conditions to use it.

A laser light show in front of Mongkok police station

Protesters called it a day around 8.30pm, saving their energy for tomorrow's big rally in Victoria Park.

It's expected to be the biggest rally yet, with organizers explaining in an ad hoc press conference that they hope people will stream into the park and then have to "walk" back out towards Central. Through this constant stream they hope to have a lot of people participating.

There are a lot of calls on social media and many seem to be heeding it. We will see what tomorrow brings.

Kaws' Hong Kong Holiday

A new guy is in town and he's floating in Victoria Harbour now

We have a new visitor in town. He's a giant 37-metre long inflatable sculpture called Kaws that's literally floating in Victoria Harbour from now until March 31.

Kaws is the nom de plume for artist Brian Donnelly, a New York-based artist and designer who started off doing graffiti in Jersey City, New Jersey. He has admitted in interviews that Kaws doesn't have a particular meaning.

This piece, called Kaws:Holiday, is sponsored by the Hong Kong Tourism Board and Asia Miles. It is reminiscent of the bright yellow rubber duck by Florentijn Hofman back in 2013, but will this grey-coloured character called Companion upstage the cute duck?

It's strange that Kaws was chosen to do this art installation, when just a few weeks earlier a giant floral statue of Companion was erected in The Landmark's atrium as part of a collaboration with artistic director Kim Jones on French fashion label Dior's summer 2019 collection.

The inflated sculpture is 37 metres long

Kaws seems too commercialized now in terms of artistic merit. Last summer the artist collaborated with Uniqlo for the Kaws x Sesame Street collection, and he has also put his design on reimagined Jordan 4s and Yeezys footwear collection.

But hey does it matter? Our taxpayer dollars are being used to pay in part for Kaws to bring this giant thing over and cheer us up.

He also has an exhibition at PMQ until April 14. It's a Kaws invasion of Hong Kong!

Prince Edward and Sham Shui Po Stroll

Look! A bear! Colourful graffiti in Prince Edward

After dim sum at Fung Shing Restaurant on Sunday, my friend took us around Prince Edward and Sham Shui Po to walk off our meal.

An old school dry goods store with lots of merchandise

We saw some old school shops selling herbal drinks, and dry goods stores that were stocked with all kinds of sauces, noodles, dried tofu skins, dried dates, plastic containers of maltose, and ginger. These kinds of stores with such comprehensive stock are hard to find these days, but good to know they're still around in the depths of Kowloon!

Another place we hit was Sam Tai Tsz Temple and Pak Tai Temple that are attached and are like a mini version of Man Mo Temple on Hollywood Road. Inside a few people were paying their respects and praying to the gods...

A traditional temple in Sham Shui Po

We also saw some graffiti -- nice ones -- that rejuvenated a few old buildings in the area. I'd seen many pictures of the one featuring a bear, but now I finally got to see it in person! It really does make the neighbourhood more interesting for residents and visitors.

It's located on a street that has many fabric and button wholesalers, but on Sundays they are closed, so the street is pretty much empty. My friend says this is where they filmed some scenes for the Transformer movie...

We also saw the School of Chinese Medicine run by Baptist University, an old shop building that has been re-purposed. Again I've seen it in pictures and not in person.

Some details of the building are still intact, like some old Chinese characters are faded on the ground floor walls, while glass windows have been installed as well as air conditioning.

A Chinese medicine clinic run by Baptist University

It was previously owned by the Liu family that owns Kowloon City Bus and there are some artifacts left behind from the 19th century. The place is usually closed on Sundays, but because there was an event going on, we were able to quickly look around the ground floor.

I asked my friend about seeing the shop where a man called Chan Cheuk-ming, better known as Ming Gor hands out rice boxes to the poor. He started doing this in 2013 out of his own pocket, and then when the media started reporting on him, he was flooded with donations, but at least it helped him keep his business afloat.

Ming Gor's relatively new shop

Last year he expanded to a nearby new space that features a slick-looking sign and space, and tries to keep prices low despite increased rents. That's because Chan has said he is in a working-class area and he can't just raise prices. He also knows if he does he'll soon have no customers.

It's tough having a business in Hong Kong, but if you have heart, people will help you out.

Number of the Day: HK$640 Million

The 10th handover anniversary is nine times cheaper than this year's bash

Can you believe it's almost 20 years ago when the British formally handed Hong Kong to China?

A decade ago we spent HK$69 million, so how come another 10 years later it has ballooned to HK$640 million?

Perhaps just as infuriating is that the money is going to events and activities that hardly have anything to do with the handover anniversary with the theme "Together, Progress, Opportunity".

We'll see more steps beautified like this with taxpayer money

The Leisure and Cultural Services Department will have a whopping HK$194 million budget and it will splash out on a "City Dress Up" project, where stairs in different districts will be painted. Shouldn't that just go under maintenance?

The Development Bureau gets to spend HK$14.67 million and part of it will be splurged on a Backstreet Art and Run project. Sounds like a gentrified graffiti project.

Meanwhile the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department has HK$9 million and is spending the money on tree planting, hiking and camping facilities that it would normally budget for in its costs. So why does it need this extra money?

Similarly, how are International Fire Instructors Workshop; Fire, Ambulance Services Academy Open Day: Hong Kong Cup Diplomatic Knowledge Contest and Inter-school Cross-curricular Project Competition on Climate Change have anything to do with the 20th anniversary of the handover?

Lau Kong-wah says the events "spread care and joy". Huh?

Some critics are already questioning the use of the money, adding that government officials don't seem to have any imagination for better ideas.

However, Secretary for Home Affairs Lau Kong-wah said the events were meant to engage the public and "spread care and joy".

If Lau wants the government to spread "care and joy", how about revamping the education system to get rid of the rote system, making more financial resources available for the poor, developing more social housing, setting a decent minimum wage, stop kowtowing to tycoons, giving young entrepreneurs a break and so on.

Does an exhibition about Egyptian mummies and art pieces from the Louvre have anything to do with Hong Kong?

Works for Paris' Louvre Museum have no HK connection

There is already an uproar about spending HK$190,000 on making the song, "Hong Kong Our Home" that has been mocked by anti-establishment musicians.

It's an outright mess, but it's too late to voice our concerns.

It seems the Hong Kong government is keen to spend an outrageous amount of our hard-earned taxpayer dollars to please Beijing. But does it care really? And it does seem ripe for corruption opportunities.

Oh wait -- opportunity is one of the themes of the 20th anniversary of the handover this year.

It all makes sense now...

Banksy's New York Show

One of the first graffiti pieces Banksy did in New York in October 2013

In October 2013, the British graffiti artist Banksy presented his artwork all over New York City. For the whole month, he produced a different piece in a different location, which he announced that morning on his website with a cheeky audio guide to go with it.

His fans, art collectors and those who happened to come across it, rushed to these places to photograph it -- or if they were too late -- to see it already painted over, graffiti-ed over by other artists, or even cut out of doors and walls as owners thought it was a free Banksy art piece.

His take on the US attack on innocent lives in Iraq

The hipster scavenger hunt was captured in a documentary called Banksy Does New York that was released in 2014 and I saw on the plane last night.

He is an elusive character -- no one knows what he looks like, and somehow manages to pull off very interesting pop culture social commentary pieces.

The documentary follows several main people, fans, journalists and art critics to discuss almost every piece Banksy did in New York, the meaning behind them, what happened to the pieces afterwards and what this says about people, art and celebrity.

Two fans in particular who are dog walkers, would jump into a car and everyday film themselves as they tried to find the latest Banksy piece. Sometimes they found it, or they got there after it was painted over, by Banksy himself? Or someone else? Or his graffiti, which defaced the wall or surface, was graffiti-ed by someone else defacing his piece. Quite ironic, but it also got people annoyed and angry that people just blatantly ruined what they felt was art. Or did Banksy care?

A Banksy sphinx sculpture an art dealer hopes to sell

Some art dealers were thrilled to see Banksy doing some interesting things, from witty stencil graffiti which he is well known for, as well as creative pieces, including a wall and car together with wild-looking horses in a reference to an attack on innocent Reuters reporters in Iraq, and you can hear the original recording of the US soldiers during the incident.

Another is a fun diaorama of a landscape scene complete with a waterfall and pond, another was a collaboration with a local graffiti artist and they hung their two canvases side by side from the bottom of a bridge like a gallery.

Towards the end he apparently bought an innocuous oil painting of an idyllic landscape from a thrift shop and painted a bench and a Nazi soldier sitting on it and "donated" it back to the shop, where they raised over US$600,000 to help families living with AIDS.

New Yorkers began having fun with his graffiti

But then there were greedy people who owned the building where Banksy left the graffiti and either put plexiglass over it to "protect" it, or even cut out the door or wall to keep it for themselves.

Wasn't it public art though? What designates it to be theirs?

Even worse was a rough brick sculpture of a sphinx that three guys just literally stole from a lot near where they worked. They sold it for an undisclosed sum to a European New York-based art dealer who thought he could sell it for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Most ironic was Banksy paying an old man to sell his stencil graffiti on canvas for US$60 each and only sold a few, and now they were worth over US$200,000 each.

How does one assign value to art, and is it only art if a famous name is attached to them?

An old man sold Banksy's pieces for US$60 each

It was just fascinating to see what he produced and how he was able to pull off such a large-scale project every day without being discovered. One reporter was able to get an accomplice to reveal that he had to sign several confidentiality agreements and that there is no way he could have done all this himself -- he must have had a team helping him to scout locations and execute all these pieces.

Which is why the reporter thinks Banksy knows what he is doing -- he is a businessman, and knows others are profiting from him, that his name has value, even though then Mayor Michael Bloomberg stated defacing public spaces was a definite no-no.

Banksy Does New York is a fun, comprehensive look at not only the graffiti pieces he made, but also the meanings behind them and how New Yorkers responded to them.

He must have found their reactions amusing.

Tuscan Trails: Lucca

The cathedral in St Michael's Square

Lucca is a charming town that still has its three- mile circumference city walls intact, much like Xian. And like the Chinese city, people can bike around the city walls, as the ones here are like a promenade complete with pebbles and trees.

The walls are quite thick, and the Romans made it into the best army base; it never really had to defend itself nor was it heavily destroyed during World War II.

Composer Giacomo Puccini

In 5 AD Lucca was the capital of Tuscany and in 1250 it was one of the richest towns in Europe, as merchants had to pass through this town. However it quickly lost its influence when Florence became strong in textiles, thus attracting talent, technical know-how and power.

As it gained strength, Florence also began conquering other towns except Lucca, which managed to become independent. But Lucca also managed to specialize in silk, in particular weaving gold thread into it.

These days it is best known for making shoes -- particularly sewing the leather uppers, which is why there are many shoe shops here and places to buy leather goods.

One of the most famous people to come from Lucca is composer Giacomo Puccini. Apparently his music is the most played in the world, with songs from La Boheme and Turandot. His childhood home was pointed out to us, and we got to see that he probably had a good view of the church in St Michael's Square, the centre of the town.

Along the top of the city walls of Lucca

The facade of the church is embedded with many images and messages for the common people on how to go on the path to purity. On top of the church is St Michael with a spear to kill the devil.

Somehow the town of over 80,000 people has over 50 churches. Our guide explained that during Roman times, the Romans did not get along with the Christians and so the churches were in a corner of the town. But soon afterwards they proliferated and many of the churches are in buildings that don't necessarily look like a typical church.

Many pilgrims come here to see "the Holy face of Jesus"... it is said in the Bible that Nicodemus took Jesus down from the cross and prepared him for burial. He was Jewish and could not create icons of God. But he had tried to sculpt Jesus' face and left the work unfinished overnight.

Can you see the graffiti from the 13th century?

Somehow the face was completed while he slept, which suggests it was done by an angel. It was proclaimed to have a "perfect face" that looks Syrian, with dark hair and narrow eyes. Unfortunately we weren't able to see it for ourselves; and on September 13, the residents celebrate the Luminara, the day of the crucifix, where the town is lit with candles and there is a procession to the sculpture.

In any event our guide wanted to point out that even in the 13th century there was graffiti on the walls. Graffiti is an Italian word that means "scratches".

We were then led to a square that was actually oval because before it used to be an amphitheatre and over time it lost its use and people modified the space into other more practical things, like a marketplace in the 1830s. Today it's a "square" surrounded by restaurants and touristy shops.

Some enticing buccellato in the pastry shop

Our guide tried to continually tell us that even though Lucca is an ancient town, it is still alive thanks to the inhabitants. And we liked wandering the streets and could have done so for a whole day.

To snack on, the best known food here is buccellato, a bread that is slightly sweet.