Hongkongers Should Live Better with Pride

 

Douglas Young (left) talks about his lifestyle brand, G.O.D.

Yesterday Douglas Young, the founder of G.O.D. or Goods of Desire, came to our office for an informal chat with some of us.

He is the creative brainchild behind this Hong Kong lifestyle brand to show his love for the city, how it has unique features, and how they can be turned into fun products. By the way G.O.D. is a homophonic translation of the Cantonese, "住好啲" or ju ho di which means "to live better".

Chinese culture inspires Young's design creativity

And the brand has many of these homophonic references that make it more fun for locals than for non-Chinese who don't have a deep understanding of the language.

Anyway, Young explains when he was young he went to school in the UK and ended up studying architecture but didn't practice it. He says architecture is all about maximizing space which seemed kind of boring to him.

By the time he came back to Hong Kong, Young says he had spent the same amount of time in Hong Kong as he did in the UK and felt he was straddling two worlds. When his UK friends visited Hong Kong they would point out things they found interesting that he thought was mundane; he later realized the city could be the inspiration for products that are unique about the place.

One of his more attention-grabbing slogans is "Delay No More", which sort of sounds like the Cantonese swear word 屌你老母 or diu lei loh mo, basically "f*** you". But in English without any context it can mean don't waste time, which is what Hong Kong is about too.

A G.O.D. store in Central with "Delay No More" on it

Not all of his products are related to dirty words -- instead there are fun T-shirts, and Chinese-style jackets and qipaos, environmental shopping bags with porcelain designs, panda-shaped pillows for sleeping on planes, notebooks and file folders with old school mail boxes or tenement buildings,

He feels it's important to promote Hong Kong, and locals should have pride in the city too. Young says maybe because of its colonial history that Hongkongers look down on local things and prefer Western things, but he thinks the city has so much potential if we give it a chance.

Someone in the audience asked him what he thought of local design schools in Hong Kong and Young replied they are fine, but the students are not given an opportunity to work on projects. For example he says at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, there are projects to develop a space in the school or design chairs and so on, and the design students there are not given an opportunity to take on this real world challenge, and instead outside professionals are hired.

Some fun creative items that can be bought at the G.O.D. store

Young continued, saying there wasn't enough patronage of the arts in Hong Kong, not like in Europe and the United States, and that the government should take the lead on this to nurture local talent, to give them opportunities and to show them they can make a living from doing design.

Then he hinted -- well not hinted, he said straight out that he was looking for someone, a creative mind to take over his business. Young said he didn't mind selling G.O.D., but that would mean he would have to continue generating the ideas for the business, so no one would buy it, he said with a laugh.

But he seems to come up with a lot of ideas all the time, and his passion for Hong Kong, and things Chinese are great -- some aren't executed well, but he has the idea, and that's important. The city is lucky to have Young trying to do some creative stuff and make locals proud of their hometown.

Mao Porcelain for Grabs

Looks quite ordinary but worth quite a lot: Mao porcelain bowl up for auction

A hot ticket item is up for auction by a Hong Kong collector in May in the UK.

It's a rare porcelain bowl that was commissioned by then Chinese leader Mao Zedong for his own use.

The bowl is part of a collection that includes cups and other tableware, and were made towards the end of the Cultural Revolution when Mao's power was considered at its height in China.

He ordered 4,000 pieces of porcelain, including bowls, cups and other tableware be made under demanding conditions in Jingdezhen, the well-known porcelain-producing town on the mainland.

Mao commissioned his own porcelain made in Jingdezhen

"In order to make sure they were safe for Mao to use, all porcelain made in Jingdezhen had to be lead-free," said the collector, who would only give his name as Alex.

"Two hundred artisans spent a full two years making the porcelain, and in the end 900 pieces were chosen to be sent to Beijing for the use of Mao and other official dignitaries," he said.

"The rest were ordered to be destroyed. However, the director of the Institute of Arts which made the porcelain did not want them to be destroyed, so he made up an excuse to put them into storage -- so that the institute could send replacements to Beijing if the cups and dishes were broken."

The institute later fell into financial difficulties and gave some of these porcelain pieces to staff in lieu of salaries -- meaning that some items made for state leaders were now in the hands of ordinary people.

With this bowl being up for auction, there's going to be a big buzz around it, as "Mao porcelains" are considered special because of their historical significance and fetch high prices at auction.

In 2013, a set of about five rice bowls commissioned by Mao was sold for HK$8 million by Poly Auction Hong Kong, but they were made in his home province of Hunan.

The Hong Kong collector's family bought a few dozen of these rare items when they did business on the mainland.

The items were put in family trust, but they decided to put the bowl up for auction "to test the market".

In 1996, a 68-piece set of Mao porcelain fetched 7.9 million yuan (HK$10 million) when it was sold in Beijing.