Finally!

Donald Tsang and wife Selina enter Eastern Court to hear charges against him

Apologies to regular readers of The Fragrant Harbour blog! I'm currently on a cruise in North America and the internet charges on the ship are so high that I didn't get a chance to blog yesterday and may be intermittent in the next week or so.

We are pleased to finally see that former Hong Kong chief executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen has finally been formally charged with two counts of misconduct while in public office.

They cover his alleged failure to disclose his interests in his Shenzhen penthouse between 2010 and 2012 to various bodies, including the Executive Council while he was in office.

He is also accused of approving a licensing bid by Digital Broadcasting Corporation, a radio station of which penthouse owner Bill Wong Chor-bau is a major shareholder, and of proposing the flat's interior designer, Barrie Ho Chow-lai for nomination of the city's top honours.

Tsang made a court appearance today with his wife and after the charges were read out, he said, "I understand".

He was granted HK$100,000 bail and was told to notify if he changed residence 24 hours beforehand.

Looking at the pictures, Tsang is trying to look stoic -- claiming in a statement that he had "a clear conscience" and "had every confidence the court will exonerate him".

His wife of 56 years, Selina Tsang Pou Siu-mei, said she was "disheartened" and had words of support for him having been a public servant for 45 years.

"[Donald] is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, a man of honesty and integrity," she said. "We longed for peace and tranquility in retirement, away from politics. Instead we now find ourselves dragged into a whirlpool."

His next court appearance will be on November 13.

We will be counting down the days.

New Hip Retailer in Town

Lots of people came in for their first visit to Nordstrom to take a look

Vancouver's retail scene was not doing well in the past decade, Sears, a large department store brand in the downtown area died, and left an empty shell that was previously inhabited by Eaton's.

So it was a mixture of relief and excitement to find US department store Nordstrom was taking over the space. Not only was the store going to gentrify the area, but also occupy one of the hottest locations in the area.

Cute gourmet candies by Sugarfina, but would you buy them?

It finally opened to much fanfare two weeks ago and I got a chance to take a quick look yesterday.

Once you walk in the atmosphere is bright, white, and the feeling of lots of space despite lots of merchandise displayed everywhere. Happy pop music is playing in the background and lots of staff in stylish clothes are standing around and smiling, greeting customers.

On the ground floor there's a small shop called Sugarfina that sells gourmet gummy bears, white chocolates that are painted to look like green olives, and even a candy that tastes like champagne. Prices here start from CAD$8.50 ($6.50) for a small box. But as my girlfriend and I said later, who is going to buy candy when many of us are trying to cut sugar from our diets?

Near the candy shop is a coffee shop called eBar to cater to java aficionados. Prices there looked somewhat reasonable, though it's almost CAD$20 for a glass bottle to hold water.

People on the right line up for a table for lunch

Upstairs was the women's designer fashion and I eyed a black lace top that was a whopping CAD$995, and that's not including 14 percent tax. The sales girl pronounced the top as one of her favourites and I asked her if Nordstrom was competing head to head with luxury retailer Holt Renfrew nearby.

She said that while Holt Renfrew focused  solely on luxury -- and Nordstrom's high end section was competing with the Canadian retailer, there wasn't much else in common, saying Nordstrom offered a wide price range for all kinds of consumers.

I asked her if she had worked in retail before since she sounded so chipper, but it turned out she had just graduated with a degree in philosophy before getting what she called, "A big girl's job".

The third floor featured menswear and there was also space for a restaurant called Bistro Verde. When I was there it was almost noon and there was a lineup to get a table. Looks like it's already the place for dining.

The artistic signage for the washrooms on the third floor

We checked out the washrooms and they were clean and spacious. We liked the sign for men and women, which was actually a piece of art! Called "Dick and Jane" by Tim Yankosky, the two well-known symbols are actually made of vintage rulers.

Nordstrom is not only hip and stylish, but also artistically cool.

Inspired by Iris

Iris dazzles thanks to her fun in experimenting with fashion and accessories

On the plane to Vancouver I managed to sleep quite a bit and in the last part of the flight I tried to stay awake. I was probably one of the last people on the planet to watch Frozen and also caught the documentary Iris.

While I now understand the hype about the theme song "Let It Go", it was Iris that resonated with me.

Iris is Iris Apfel, the 94-year-old American interior designer and now fashion icon.

The opening scene shows her dressed up with a number of colourful amber necklaces around her neck and she starts describing her outfit and sense of style. From then onwards you are mesmerized watching the nonagenarian who's an absolute riot, not just visually but verbally too.

She even shops in craft stores to find interesting pieces

She was born in 1921 and married Carl Apfel in 1948. They started doing interior decoration and clients wanted reproductions of fabrics from a century before. As she recalls in the documentary, she bumped into a school friend whose father she remembered was a weaver.

He completed the job well, and they started getting more business, that the weaver asked the couple to go into business with them and that's how they started Old World Weavers.

Apfel says that their clients didn't want to have what others had and so the couple traveled around the world to go on buying trips to find one-of-a-kind items and and fabrics to produce from other weavers. It was then that she started buying one of a kind pieces of clothing or fabrics that she fashioned into wearable items.

Their business did so well that they decorated the White House for nine presidents: Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan and Clinton until the Apfels retired in 1992.

Apfel with husband Carl were in the interior design business

In the documentary they are asked what it was like decorating the White House. Carl starts to talk, hinting Jackie Kennedy was a problem, but then Iris stops him, saying these are things they are not supposed to talk about.

The film watches her as she attends events in New York (even with scenes with New York Times' photographer Bill Cunningham), and various designers exclaim how Iris is so amazing. The praises come thick and fast and Iris can see through all of it, but she's gracious about all the attention.

She mixes and matches things, but her main theme is accessorizing. Her mother had told her that as long as a woman had a good black dress, it could be dressed up or down according to the accessories.

Iris will hunt everywhere and anywhere for anything she thinks is stylish from $4 colourful wooden bangles to even stuffed animals or African prints she's found in a small shop in Brooklyn.

Iris likes mixing and matching items to create new looks

She knows exactly how to put outfits together and layers pieces even though they may not have been purchased in the same place -- that makes it even more interesting for her. Some of her items are Chinese, like fabrics by the Miao minority, or Tibetan bracelets that she quips are so heavy she only wears them if the even she is attending is about 30 minutes long.

While she was well known in design circles, Iris became globally famous after the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2005 took a good selection of her clothes and jewellery to demonstrate the creative things people could do with their outfits. Called "Rara Avis: Selections from the Iris Apfel Collection", it was one of the more popular exhibitions promoted through word of mouth, and everyone raved about her and her sense of style.

What Iris has that most of us don't is guts. She is very comfortable about standing out and wearing what she does. She doesn't care what others think, only concerned about what she wants to wear, which is her secret to pulling off these eclectic, dramatic, bold looks.

And she will buy everything and anything. Each of their homes is stuffed with clothes, accessories, furniture as well as things from stuffed animals to crazy knick-knacks. Carl seems amused whenever Iris goes shopping -- he jokes that he'd rather his money go to Iris to spend than to the taxman.

However the film also documents Carl getting older, celebrating his 100th birthday with a big bash. And one can see Iris contemplative, worrying about what to do as the two of them get older. Carl passed away in August, just three days shy of his 101st birthday.

There are scenes of Iris going through their storage facility to get rid of some furniture, paintings and accessories. She says her accountant chastised her for not throwing out the items earlier, but she firmly says she wasn't ready at the time. That gives comfort to viewers to know, that not everyone is mentally prepared to let go, even Iris.

The documentary was made by Albert Maysles, in his 80s, and sadly he too died earlier this year.

Interestingly he's sometimes part of the film, inserted here and there, capturing Iris talking directly to him, or when photographer Bruce Weber insists on talking about Maysles, and he can't help but include himself in the documentary.

Iris says young fashion designers today have no sense of history, have no understanding of the evolution of fashion. She says art, politics, history, design, fashion, the economy are all interconnected and one needs to understand all of this to realize what is going on.

She is definitely one of a kind -- and we are sad to hear her dear Carl is gone, but we hope she will keep busy and thrill us more with her striking outfits that scream attention, mixed with witty humour. She shows that one can still be very busy late in life, as she calls herself a "geriatric starlet", who's blooming in her 90s and taking it all in.

Remembering a Selfless Fighter

Jiang Peikun and his wife Ding Zilin were cofounders of Tiananmen Mothers

We are saddened to hear that retired Chinese academic Jiang Peikun, co-founder of the group Tiananmen Mothers has died at the age of 81.

He and his wife Ding Zilin lost their only son Jiang Jieliang, 17, during the bloody crackdown at Tiananmen Square on the night of June 3, 1989.

The duo channeled their grief and anger into activism that has campaigned for truth, accountability and compensation for victims for the past 26 years.

The name "Tiananmen Mothers" was chosen over "Tiananmen Fathers" because Jiang believed it would be more emotive with people on the mainland and abroad.

Jiang was formerly a linguistics professor at Beijing's Renmin University who died Sunday at his home in Wuxi, Jiangsu province. He is survived by his wife Ding.

Ding lost her son Jiang Jieliang 26 years ago at Tiananmen

"With heavy hearts, all members of Tiananmen Mothers will always remember Jiang Peikun, who was also a pioneer of aesthetic research in China," said an obituary published by the group on the WeChat social media website on Thursday.

"We will turn grief into strength, and move forward unswervingly to achieve our three major demands that were established by him -- truth, accountability and compensation [for victims of the crackdown]."

You Weijie, spokesperson for Tiananmen Mothers, said: "Ding wants to tell all of her friends, that, for the rest of her life, she will work to complete her husband's dying wish [for the group's demands to be met]. He was the spiritual leader of Tiananmen Mothers," added You, who is the widow of a victim of the 1989 crackdown.

In the past 26 years, Ding and Jiang have collected the names and testimonies from families who lost their children in Beijing at that time. Even last October they sent four members to mainland provinces and municipalities to record more testimonies from more than 20 other families of victims.

Jiang had a stroke caused by cerebral infarction in 2008 but that did not deter him from continuing with his activism -- he insisted on working on editing and post production work on new testimonies they had collected at the time.

In an earlier interview, Ding said her husband carried on working, even though he was forced to wear an oxygen mask to complete his tasks.

He was also the one who drafted the group's main statements and objectives, and during sensitive periods Jiang and Ding were kept under house arrest. They were also harassed when they showed support for jailed human rights activist Liu Xiaobo who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010.

After news of Jiang's death was announced, the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China and overseas dissidents paid tribute to him. At 11am today -- the start of the National Day holiday -- the alliance held a memorial in front of the Beijing Liaison office in Hong Kong. Members also demanded redress from Beijing over the crackdown.

We hope for Ding and Jiang's sake that the Chinese government will face up to the truth and give them and all the other families the right to mourn and account for the children they lost that night. If anything they deserve to know what happened and why.