Plans to Resurrect Queen's Pier?

Remember this? Queen's Pier in Central before it was dismantled in 2008

I still miss Queen's Pier in Central. It used to be so convenient to take the Star Ferry from there to Tsim Sha Tsui and back.

But when I happened to visit Hong Kong in 2008, there were signs all over the pier area, and people protesting its demolition. It was surprising the government would move such an important landmark.

When I moved back two years later, the pier was long gone and you now have to schlep across a long blue walkway all the way to where all the outlying island ferries are just to catch a short Star Ferry ride to Tsim Sha Tsui.

People passionately protested the demolition but to no avail

You really do weigh if it's worth going all the way and take the MTR instead, and so it's not surprising why the Star Ferry keeps losing money. The government seems to want to make it more difficult for people to take cheap transportation that is a part of the local culture.

But wait -- the government hasn't completely killed it -- there are plans to resurrect Queen's Pier and place it somewhere around where piers 9 and 10 are now, which currently aren't being used for anything, except by photographers and anglers.

Yes -- it will not be an actual functioning pier, but a shrine to its former existence.

Why dredge up the past? It wasn't even a nice-looking structure. And more importantly why waste up to HK$305 million taxpayer dollars doing this when the money could be used elsewhere like helping the poor?

Several activists opposed the proposed plan and are calling for the pier to be restored in its original spot, though that could be costly too.

A drawing to show where Queen's Pier would be relocated

"If you put it closer to the original location, it has a much higher heritage value because Edinburgh Place will be complete. And, you have it closer to the old waterfront for tourists, students and children to come back here and realize the waterfront used to be here," says Southern District Councillor and co-founder of Designing Hong Kong's Paul Zimmerman.

Queen's Pier was opened in 1953 as a public pier, and the ceremonial location where Hong Kong governors would arrive and depart before 1997.

And now the structure is being stored in a warehouse...

First of all, why didn't the government listen to the people? And then second, why does it think that everything will be rectified by reassembling the structure for no good reason?

The Star Ferry Terminal has moved a much further distance

The government seems so completely out of touch with what is going on in the city, and thinks that it can spend taxpayer money on frivolous projects, when one in five people in Hong Kong are living below the poverty line and so many people are in need?

Even worse is that we residents have no recourse to vote them out.

After having watched Ten Years, I now see why the movie resonates with people so much. It really does capture the pessimistic mood, the sense of helplessness and frustration people have. Just like in the film, people feel the government is in cahoots with Beijing, and no one is looking out for them, so they have to defend themselves.

That's just a movie, but that's the sentiment people have in reality.

Reassembling Queen's Pier is the most absurd proposal I've heard since Financial Secretary John Tsang Chun-wah's suggestion to bring in food trucks to Hong Kong.

Do they not care about the future of this city and what its residents want it to be?

Yuen Long Eats

Noodle-fest at Ho To Tai, which was mentioned in this year's Michelin Guide

On the weekend my relatives took me to Yuen Long, where we went around and had our own foodie tour of local eateries.

Don't underestimate the flavours from this simple noodle dish

We took a bus from Jordan which went through West Kowloon and then north west to Yuen Long in a relatively short period of time.

Our first, and most important stop was Ho To Tai Noodle Shop. Opened in 1948, it was the place my great aunt and grandmother would go to get noodles for the family. They would get as many noodle cakes as they could carry and then store them in giant tin containers. After school my dad and his siblings would get steaming bowls of noodles to eat.

My mom remembers the place fondly. My mother's side of the family lived on a farm in Kam Tin and probably not every weekend, but it was a treat to come here to the noodle shop and have a bowl of wonton noodles.

The ground floor dining area of Ho To Tai in Yuen Long

This was my first time going to the shop and by today's standards it has its old school charm. The two-storey shop packs in the diners much like Mak's Noodles with small booths, while cases of glass bottled soft drinks are stacked haphazardly around the dining area.

As there were four of us, we each ordered a different dish. First up was the sui gao lo e-mein. The sui gao are flat and triangular, filled with minced pork, shrimp and wood ear fungus with a touch of shrimp roe. We also ordered the soup version.

Next came egg noodles with thin strips of pork in a tomato sauce. The noodles were slightly al dente and went well with the pork and sauce when mixed together.

The bowl of beef tendon at Victory Beef Ball was delicious

Finally the wonton noodles with egg noodles arrived, and while wontons are not delicate like Mak's Noodles, the ones here were a bit rough around the edges and slightly salty.

We also ordered turnip with shrimp roe that was delicious, as well as another plate of wide egg noodles with oyster sauce, julienne of ginger and young spring onions sliced lengthwise. When mixed together, this dish worked very well -- simple pleasures with fresh ingredients that made the noodles taste extraordinary.

Our next stop was Victory Beef Ball. To conserve our stomachs we ordered a bowl of only beef balls in broth, and a bowl of beef tendon. The former were meaty but also had a bit of an elastic crunch to them, while we enjoyed the tendon, almost melting in the mouth, very smooth and flavourful.

Wife cakes (top shelf), ginger and preserved egg cakes (below)

Hang Heung is known for its lo po beng or wife cakes so we came here for some, along with ginger and preserved egg cakes, and red bean ones too.

Finally we headed to Tai Wing Wah, known for its roast meats, but also this branch has a menu featuring dishes all at the same price. The place is also famous for its rice baked in clay bowls that you can flavour with soy sauce and pork lard... yes lard...!

Our plate of char siu was disappointing -- the pork was too lean and didn't have enough fat to make it tender and it tasted as if it hasn't been marinated long enough. Our soy roast chicken was delicious, but as it was presented in a bowl, we could later see lots of oil half way up the bowl... nevertheless the chicken was very tender.

Char siu (top left) and roast soy chicken on the right

Fish maw stir-fried with egg whites was nothing spectacular, while the steamed pumpkin with squid topped with garlic was delicious and interesting. The slices of pumpkin soaked up the garlic and squid flavours and overall the dish had many textures, soft, crunchy, sweet and savoury.

Stuffed fish that was deep-fried is labour intensive, but the execution here was not up to par. The fish is supposed to be carefully deboned, the fish meat ground up and perked up with mandarin peel and scallions before being restuffed back into the fish and then deep-fried.

This one had the odd bone stuck in it, and the slices were so roughly chopped, it was as if the chef had no interest in making the dish at all. We preferred the one we ate at Lin Heung Kui over a week earlier.

Fantastic steamed pumpkin and squid with lots of garlic

Finally for dessert, the steamed sponge cake was a light shade of yellow -- using white sugar, though it was nice and fluffy.

We rolled out of the restaurant and I got to my bus stop to get back to Hong Kong Island. The bus stops have an electronic board that tells you when your bus is expected to arrive. In my case, the estimation was off by two or three minutes. Not bad.

It took me 40 minutes to get from Yuen Long to Shun Tak Ferry Terminal in Sheung Wan, and then another 20 by tram.

I bought a box of wide egg noodles from Ho To Tai. I'll be eating them for a while...

Ho To Tai

G/F, 67 Fau Tsoi Street

Yuen Long
2476 2495

Victory Beef Ball

Shop 1, G/F, Kit Man House

Kuk Ting Street

Yuen Long
2475 5575

Hang Heung

66 Castle Peak Road

Yuen Long
2474 5731

Wing Wah

2/F, Koon Wong Mansion

2-6 On Ning Road

Yuen Long
2476 9888

Ten Years and Kennedy Town

About 200 people showed up tonight to watch a screening of Ten Years

In the last year or so there has been a protest against the redevelopment of a temporary garden in Kennedy Town and now it's starting to simmer.

The Cadogan Street Temporary Garden is by a bus stop and it's not a large area. It was previously an incinerator and before that an abattoir, where long-time residents remember hearing the squealing of the pigs...

And now the government is looking to rezone the area and put up residential blocks with 600 flats. The area seems small to squeeze that many people in, but hey, micro flats are all the rage these days.

They are protesting the development of the park into flats

Last year a developer tried to get a permit to build a hotel on the site, but it was soundly defeated. However, with housing a hot topic, can you deny others the opportunity to own their own home?

But before that even happens, the government needs to decontaminate the soil, and residents fear that turning up the soil will release contaminants into the air, which is another reason why they'd like the park to stay.

So far activists have collected some 2,000 signatures but it's obviously not enough of an impact to get the authorities' attention.

And so tonight they enticed people to come because they would be screening Ten Years, the film that won Best Picture in the recent Hong Kong Film Awards.

Many sat on the ground of the park while police watched

Over 200 people showed up at 7pm with blankets to sit on or on plastic bags from the protest tents that have been set up for the last few weeks. Apparently the organizers didn't get a permit to protest in the area, but the police didn't move in to shut things down, though they were monitoring the area all day and evening.

I'd read a lot about Ten Years, and finally got a chance to watch it. It's an interesting collection of five short films that are loosely related, telling their own story of what they think Hong Kong will be like in 2025.

The first story is called "Extras", where two men are caught up in a political campaign to implement a national security law in Hong Kong. They're just trying to get by working for a triad, but people higher up (Beijing) have other plans for them.

The pivotal scene in Extras about the national security law

It's sad to see their predicament, and also frightening to see how government officials don't mind having a few casualties to succeed in their political aims.

Next was "Season of the End", the weakest of the five films. It shows a man and a woman who are desperately trying to preserve anything that was left behind by bulldozers that demolished homes. The place they occupy to do their work seems bleak and bland, and towards the end they are in a desperate state of mind.

"Dialect" offers a bit of comic relief as a Hong Kong taxi driver shows how terrible his Putonghua is. Many in the audience couldn't help but laugh when he tried to tell his Mandarin-speaking app where he wanted to go but it couldn't understand what he was saying.

However, the need to speak Putonghua is a must in order to financially survive in the city. He cannot pick up passengers -- or rather passengers would rather communicate with someone who speaks Putonghua than Cantonese.

A taxi driver is frustrated not being able to speak Putonghua

He sympathizes with a local woman who has lost her job because she too cannot communicate in Putonghua, and he later gets penalized for not following the rules.

This vignette is practically what is happening now -- people must know how to speak Putonghua to increase their job prospects, and it's people in the taxi driver's age group, those in their 40s and 50s who are losing out. Even his son speaks to him in Putonghua in front of his friends to avoid ridicule.

The fourth one is "Self-Immolator", where a body was found burned in front of the British Consulate in Admiralty, and experts and commentators are all speculating as to who would have done that and why.

One young activist who fights for Hong Kong independence is the first to be convicted in the national security law and goes on a hunger strike and dies in prison. Everyone thinks it is someone related to the young man, and it's interesting to note one of the characters is a Hong Kong born Indian woman speaking Cantonese to show how ethnic minorities are treated in the city.

In the end it's an elderly woman who decides on doing the ultimate sacrifice, though we don't know what effect that will have on the future of the city.

A shopkeeper asks the difference between "local" and "HK"

There are localist groups who are pushing for Hong Kong independence now, though Beijing has completely dismissed them for even promoting this idea...

Finally "Local Egg" is a scary look at kids who are like little Red Guards, reporting on what is going on in shops to ensure they are politically correct. The word "local" should not be used in a sign saying "local eggs", but "Hong Kong eggs" is deemed kosher. The shop keeper writes "local eggs" because customers don't want to buy those from the mainland.

However, the last chicken farm closes in Hong Kong, and the shop keeper has to find other ways of giving his customers what they want. Meanwhile his son is being indoctrinated to become one of these Red Guards, though he seems to have a mind of his own.

Towards the end, the main character says we should not get used to these changes because if we do, then there will be more changes.

Will Hong Kong become like this, where quasi Red Guards will be spying on us and reporting our activities and we will all be speaking Putonghua?

Who knows? But these filmmakers have presented their visions of what 2025 could look like, and to say it's bleak is an understatement. They are definitely not drinking the Kool-aid, nor are they hinging their hopes on rule of law and politicians to save the city.

It's no wonder Ten Years has resonated with people; no one seems optimistic, and yet they can't think of another way to look at the future.

As for Cadogan Temporary Park, we'll have to see if the authorities back down. While the activists are trying to be realistic, they are trying to get as many people to sign the petition as possible to prove it's not just a small group of voices opposing development plans.

Singapore's Newest Landmark

The two buildings are joined together with a canopy

I spent about three days in Singapore this past week having been there about five years ago and the Lion City is quite impressive in its infrastructure and soft skills, though it is h not even close to the edginess of Hong Kong.

Nevertheless there were some new landmarks we checked out and old favourites.

Wu's dynamic painting of the Great Wall

First up was the National Gallery of Singapore, which opened a few months ago. Located walking distance from the Fullerton Hotel, the gallery is housed in two national monuments, the former Supreme Court and City Hall.

We went during a weekday and it was quite quiet, so staff were very helpful and friendly with any inquiries we had. We went through practically the entire thing, which is quite a lot to cover, but when it's hot outside, it's a nice respite.

One of the special exhibitions is the late artist Wu Guanzhong, who donated a number of works to the National Collection, similar to him gifting several pieces to Hong Kong. Here, the show, entitled "Wu Guanzhong: Beauty Beyond Form", shows his early works, small realism paintings in oil, then his move to ink painting that soon became more abstract in nature.

Another show is "Chua Ek Kay: After the Rain", where the Singaporean artist was born in Guangdong but settled in Singapore. He did some fantastic large ink paintings that are so evocative and contemporary. As he traveled extensively, he realized he needed to create new art forms to express what he saw in places like Australia.

Beautiful wood ceiling detail in the former Supreme Court

His work evolved from big brush ink works to intricate paintings that focused more on texture of dry versus wet to create effects that he wanted to convey.

I don't know many Singaporean artists, and so it was interesting to see a few, such as Georgette Chen who migrated there, capturing everyday life in the city. An interesting piece of trivia is that on the back of the 50 dollar bill is the work of artist Cheong Soo Pieng called Drying Salted Fish, and the original work can be seen in the gallery.

A special exhibition on until July 17 is "Reframing Modernism: Painting from Southeast Asia, Europe and Beyond". Co-organized by the National Gallery and the Centre Pompidou, it's an interesting exploration of 20th century art, seeing the similarities of what was going on with Pablo Picasso, Vassily Kandinsky as well as Vietnamese and Brazilian artists at the same time.

Our attempt to sketch works in the Modernism exhibition

One gallery staff member was very keen to get us to participate and gave us a work sheet and pencil to copy some of the works on the walls... Admittedly none of them were really inspiring, but we copied one or two (very badly) for fun.

The space in the Supreme Court was a bit odd to house works of art, and seemed more like it should be a museum dedicated to the judiciary than a gallery. That's because the chairs for judges and the dock for the accused were still in their original places, while art was added on the walls. Some of the rooms were quite small too, making it hard to put the works together in a logical fashion.

Xu Beihong's Put Down Your Whip

But one of the highlights of this landmark is the rooftop (of the City Hall), where you can get a panoramic view of the downtown area, Marina Bay Sands and the five-star hotels in the vicinity.

The gallery is smart to have a bar up there called Aura Sky Lounge, where visitors can take in the view and enjoy a drink and snack.

National Gallery of Singapore

1 St. Andrew's Road

Singapore 178957

Tel: +65 6690 9400