Li Bai Tai Chi

One of my ambitions in Hong Kong is to learn Tai Chi.

Although I frequently see people practicing Tai Chi in parks, I found it surprisingly hard to find a class.   My first evening class through the performing arts school was cancelled due to lack of interest.   So I was very happy when my physio-therapist at the Adventist hospital suggested the Li Fai center.   I would never have found it by myself since its all all chinese as you can see from the website.

Li Fai was a member of the Hong Kong Wushu Team  in the 90′s and also performed in movies (e.g. 'Iron Monkey').

Li Fai as the 'Eagle-claw Lady' in 'Iron Monkey'

She subsequently opened up a wushu school which offers tai chi, 'kung-fu' and other martial arts like swords.  It seems pretty serious, but the staff, teachers and students are very friendly.   

I also like to think of it as the 'Li Bai' center.   This is not as odd as it sounds since Li Bai was an expert swordsman and used sword imagery in his poems.   Apparently he said "when I was fifteen, I was fond of sword play, and with that art I challenged quite a few great men."   (Which also reminds me of Miamoto Musashi, the great Japanese swordsman and namesake of Baba's cat, who was also famous for painting and sculpture).   And I wonder whether its a coincidence that the great swordsman played by Chow Yun-Fat in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is called Master Li Mu Bai...

But I digress.   I joined the Saturday morning introductory tai chi class. It a 'moveable feast', held at different locations and times each week, sometimes at the school's center in Java Rd, North Point and sometimes in municipal gyms.  It has a great atmosphere with many older people and women and lots of laughing.  Instruction is entirely in chinese and I am the only gwaileo.  But I seem to be doing OK by watching carefully, and receiving occasional kind explanations from english-speaking students.  

Kung Fu Dim Sim on Java Rd, near the Li Fai Center

What special equipment do you need for Tai Chi?  'Wu-shoes', of course!

The W Hotel Pool

One of the unexpected perks of my job is the view of the 'W' hotel pool.    The 'W' is a posh hotel in the building next door with a nice roof-top pool on the 50th floor, where guests go to relax and sunbathe.   This is the view of it from my boss' desk

Naturally from time to time staff have been known to glance out the window and admire young ladies frolicking in the pool or sun-bathing in their bikinis.   But we do try to be discreet.  We don't  want to undermine the professional and inclusive working environment that we all strive to maintain out of respect for our female colleagues.

Well, we needn't have bothered.   In the first week of August a legendary troop of male models took up residence in the 'W' and spent most of the week playing, posing and preening by the pool.   These were the famous Abercoombie models who promote the brand by attending store openings and driving around in open-topped busses wearing as little of their sponsors clothing as possible.  They had been flown in to Hong Kong to open the new flagship store.

My female collegaues leered and ogled shamelessly at these boys all week.  (I took a great photo of this but they made me delete it!).    There was running commentary of the pool activity and much discussion of 6-packs, reconnaissance visits to the W hotel bars, and the best vantage points at the store-opening.   

A passerby has her picture taken with Abercrombie & Fitch (A&F) models at a store in Knightsbridge, a Singapore shopping mall. Photographer: Simin Wang/AFP/Getty Images

This photo below shows the boys lining up for a photo-shoot.

And this is the result which was published the next day.

In the top right corner is the ICC, and if you could zoom in enough you could (theoretically) see my colleagues with their tongues hanging out.

According to Bloomberg the Hong Kong flagship store generated more than $1 million in sales in its first five days.   But in America the brand's performance has become somewhat, er, flacid.

Li Go

Not many people know that inter-locking toy building bricks were invented in China.   In the Ming dynasty by the great artist and philosopher Li Go.   And not by the Danishman Ole Kirk Christiansen as cultural imperialists in the west believe.

You can still sometimes find his works in Hong Kong street markets...

Golden Pig

"This year it is even more challenging to find primary school places than normal.    There has been an inflow of expatriates moving to Hong Kong, and also a growing trend for rich mainlanders to study at Hong Kong schools.  And apparently 2007 saw a mini-baby-boom across asia because it was thought to be a particularly auspicious 'Golden Pig' year.

2007 was the 'year of the pig' in the chinese 12-year astrological cycle.  Pig years (like dragon years) are considered auspicious years to be born in.

"children born under the pig's patronage will benefit from the animal's image as fat, happy and prosperous...   The pig in general is considered by Chinese as a representative of fortune and luck, with a mild temper and an honest character, so many Chinese parents believe babies born in this year are lucky..."

In 2007 Beijing hospital officials surveying busy birthing and prenatal care wards were predicting a 20 percent increase.   (Im still trying to pin down the stats)

Many couples were acting on a belief that 2007 is not only a Year of the Pig, which comes along once every 12 years, but a Golden Year of the Pig, which comes along once every 60 years and showers extra-powerful blessings on those born during its passage.

" Pig years, which occur every 12 years, are considered auspicious. But [this] one, or so many believe, [is] especially fortunate since it is not just a pig but a golden pig, the first in 60 or even 600 years, depending on which astrologer one consults."   (the economist)

Some even believed that 2007 was a golden fire pig year.  "The Year of the Golden Fire Pig comes only once every 600 years and rumor has it, 2007 is this special year.  It is Golden because the combination of elemental Fire, the sign Pig, and Yin/Yang components bring this year once every six centuries!  It is said that children born under this sign will live in comfort as wealth and luck are always near. The Fire Pig is known to have traits of wealth, prosperity, luck and fertility "  (link)

But it does seem to depend rather on which expert you consult:

Philosophy Professor Song In-chang of Dajeon University, “People born in the Year of the Pig tend to easily make a fortune, but at the same time, they also tend to have an unfortunate destiny of wandering and being unable to stay in one place throughout their lives. Since the theory of relating people’s destiny with time of birth places so much importance on incompatibility or win-win relationships among different elements and factors, there cannot be a year that guarantees nothing but luck to the people.”  (link)

 Ye Chunsheng, a culture researcher at Guangzhou's Sun Yat-Sen University and deputy secretary general of the China Folklore Society, said that belief was mistaken.    "This year is not golden," he said. "It is earthen. The last Golden Year of the Pig was 1971, and the next one should be 2031, with 60 years as the full cycle."    (washington post)

"fire pigs can have trouble controlling their passions, can be egocentric, chaotic and even quite destructive at times in their drive for freedom and beauty".  (Time Magazine)

Schools

The reason we have only found an apartment four months after arriving in Hong Kong was that we didn't know where Hannah would be going to school until quite recently.

Finding places at schools in Hong Kong is notoriously difficult, especially for primary, and especially this year.   So back in November 2011, as soon as I knew we might move here, I started submitting applications.  

We eventually applied to 10 different international schools spread right across the Hong Kong SAR.  From the Japanese Inconvenient School in the northern New Territories, to the ANZAC School in Kowloon, the Goldman Sachs International School on the Peak, the Chinese Intense School in the middle of  Hong Kong, down to the Happy Kids Inspirational School on the south coast of the island.  These 10 schools are all very different and all very good in their own way, some selective and some not.  

We couldn't really apply for state schools.   Hong Kong has a large network of state-subsidized english-medium-of-instruction schools run by the ESF foundation which are good quality, largely non-selective, and reasonably priced.   Unfortunately ESF stands for 'every school full'.  Their admissions system requires you to become resident in a catchment first, then apply to the local ESF school only and wait for a place to become available, which can be 2 or more years.   So it works better for longer-term residents than newcomers.  

Hannah had interviews with three selective schools and was unsuccessful in the first two.   Shortly after we arrived she was lucky to be granted an interview at the ultra-selective Goldman Sachs International School.  But on-the-day she was quite unsettled, and she joined the 80+% of interviewees who were rejected.   In retrospect this was probably a good thing.

She was also put on the waiting list for other, less-selective schools, and we got her a NZ passport to gain priority for the ANZAC school.   However due to the number of applicants ahead of her on the waiting-list, sibling priority etc,  none of these schools were expecting to be able to offer her a place until 2013.  

So we were very pleased and relieved in June when we received an offer of a place at the Happy Kids Inspirational School.   This is a highly regarded American school and seems to have a style which should suit Hannah.  They are also faith-based and places priority on character in a way I find appealing.  

The main down-side is the high fees - which I think are second only to the HK branch of Harrow School!   Also the location of the campus on the expensive side of Hong Kong dashed our hopes of containing our rent costs   Happy Kids IS has high expectations of parental engagement which may be a challenge for us to meet, and I expect we will have some culture-shock.   But over-all this is a very positive and exciting opportunity for Hannah.  

Once the school was fixed we could start to look for apartments in a fairly short radius from the school campus in Repulse Bay, since Hannah is too young for a long commute.   Eventually the best compromise seemed to be to stay at Parkview which is 30min by bus for Hannah each way,  reasonably convenient to my work due to the shuttle-bus into central, and (believe-it-or-not) relatively cheap compared to apartments nearer the school.

New Apartment

After 4 months in Hong Kong we finally moved into a proper apartment.   But we did not move far - about 200m to another tower at Parkview where, thanks to our agent, we were very lucky to find a nice flat.

Living room

View from living room east across the country park

Bedroom

View from bedroom across podium and sports club

Thoughts on a quiet night

I'm sitting alone with a bottle of wine and my Macbook for friends.   The 3 of us are drinking and thinking about Li Bai (aka Li Po).   Together with Du Fu, he is one of china's greatest ever poets, and also, alongside Omar Khayyám  one of the world's great poets of drinking (of which more anon).

Thoughts on a quiet night is Li Bai's most famous poem.  Many, many school-children have been required to memorize it, long before they can drink.

So bright a gleam on the foot of my bed – 

Could there have been a frost already? 
Lifting myself to look, I found that it was moonlight. 
Sinking back again, I thought suddenly of home.

Sources :  here and here.    To hear it recited in chinese click here.  

I like it but, to be honest, I don't get why this is super famous.   It reminds me somewhat of  Japans most well known poem, the haiku by Matsuo Bashō, which I also don't really 'get':

古池  蛙飛び込む  水の音
furu ike ya / kawazu tobikomu / mizu no oto
ancient pond / frog jumps in / splash of water [1686]

I wonder if we could bring them together, to promote peace in Asia:

So bright a gleam on the foot of my bed – 

Could the old pond by frosty already? 
Lifting myself to look, I found a frog
Splashing back again, I thought suddenly of wine.