New stuff now please

Anyone here old enough to remember the original Miama Vice TV show? I saw it on reruns, I think, when I was in my teens. The final scene of the proper big end-of-everything finale stuck with me and I’ve never known why. But every now and then I think of it and it makes me wonder.

It was the scene where Tubbs asks Crockett where he’s going to go next. And Crockett says: “Somewhere further south. Somewhere the water’s warm, the drinks are cold and I don’t know the names of the players.”

We never did find out if he made it, or what happened to Tubbs back in the big bad Bronx. But that feeling of needing to have a fresh situation, to be in a fresh environment where you need to learn or assimilate all over again… I think that’s always stuck with me.

When I was in my early twenties I took a holiday to Hong Kong, mainly to see the sights but also to see the international film festival. It was awesome, and alien, and everything that I needed at that point in my life. I felt like I wasn’t done discovering, that there was more to see, to try, to experience there. Within a year I had passed a CELTA teaching certificate and got 6 months teaching experience under my belt, so I headed back to HK with a suitcase and a one week bed-only booking at a YHA hostel. I got jobs, I got visas, I learnt about the way of life, I went to uni to learn Cantonese… it was a dream.

But all dreams must end. After eleven years out there I was beginning to get bored. I was feeling the drag of the constant changes in visas, the sniping by bosses and the general crowdedness of the city. I made the monumental mistake of leaving HK to return to England. At the time it seemed like a good idea - doesn’t it always? But if I had sat down and weighed everything up, I would have taken a 2 or 3 month break, back-packed around southeast Asia, had a change. And when I had wanted to return to something familiar and routine, it would have been HK. That’s what should have happened. But didn’t.

Instead I returned to the UK and spent time assimilating to the foreign place it had become. People were smaller, more parochial, tiny-minded. Everything was too far apart and public transport was shocking. Food was expensive, rent-related bills a joke. And all my friends and found-family were still in HK. In one fell swoop I had cut myself off from normality, comfortable familiarity, and my favourite people. I lost it all. And it was my fault.

After a stint in the south of England, it came to pass that my job was up for redundancy. There was nothing like-for-like so I was free to take the redundancy payoff and run. I had a choice - go back to HK where I felt I belonged, or try somewhere else. Money not being my friend, I opted for Manchester, the place I had been born but never lived in. And so I hauled my arse 300 miles up the country and started again. I was in a city again, with bright lights, places open till late, neons and crowds and excitement. It didn’t have my friends, it didn’t have my circle: I had done it to myself again. I had cut myself off from everything familiar and everyone I liked.

I’ve been here coming up to 2 years now, and every day I regret leaving HK when I did. That was 7 years ago, and I’m still thinking about that. I still miss the lifestyle, the people, the place itself. But I can never go back (due to a little bit of back-stabbing that I’ve already been over) and even if I could, it wouldn’t be the same place. It’s moved on without me, and I should follow its example.

Sometimes I think about other places I could go to. But it’s a circular argument - if I go to a fresh country to start learning all over again, my friends will still be in HK and England. But if I don’t go somewhere else, what am I doing here? Treading water because I have bills to pay because I’m treading water because I have bills to pay?

You know how people say you need a third place - you have home, you have work, and you need another place that’s not either of those things, so you can recharge from the other two? I’ve tried a few different third places over the course of my life - martial arts, writing fiction, archery, going to the pictures. And while I still have an interest in all of these, it’s writing fiction that’s always been the main one. I cannot seem to get my own original fiction published for love nor money, so I continue with where I got started - fan fiction. I still watch movies and TV, I still end up with muses and I still write the further adventures of these characters. I get reviews and emails, I get thank yous and requests, and this fills a void that getting countless agent rejections have made (and continue to feed).

My third place then - writing - could be done anywhere. I did some of my best work on a repurposed Mahjong table in my spare room in HK. I’ve done some new stuff, for new fandoms, in my old shared house in Manchester and a completely new fandom, muse and story at this flat I moved into just now. I’m doing more writing than ever before, for the things I like and want to expand upon. I could take it anywhere with me, as I have Billy II my MacBook Air within reach at all times, and connected to SugarSync to back me up on a constant save basis.

All I need is somewhere to go, but it feels like the world is shrinking and my best bet is Mars. I’ve missed the Mars One programme and I’m too old, so that’s out. Maybe there truly is nowhere left. Maybe I’m oversimplifying and there are tonnes of places I could yet still find on Earth.

Maybe I just need to go further south, where the water is warm, the drinks are cold, and I don’t know the names of the players.

Now that would be a good place to start.

CHEER UP AND DANCE

I know I’m shouting but I don’t care - Aaron Kwok has just done a charity concert from the end of Harbour City in Hong Kong and I got to see it live.

One hour long and all proceeds going direct to the Aaron Kwok Charity Fund, the goal was to raise more than Sam Hui’s concert held a few weeks ago. At time of writing, 90 mins after the concert ended, the number are still rolling in.

Anyway - link to the concert is here. You don’t have to donate to watch it, but if you do (through PayPal's Xoom service for overseas bank account deposits) then well done and thank you.

Hopefully this will not be the last time I see a live Aaron concert.

ENJOY

The 39th Hong Kong Film Awards (2020) - the winners

Well the Hong Kong Film Awards has come and gone this morning (8am in the UK, 3pm in HK) - a staggering 12 minutes of screentime, compared to the grand affairs of 2 hours plus, in previous years.

Even with the current pandemic keeping everything online (and streaming their awards ceremonies on Facebook), I still expected something longer and grander than a seemingly quick reading of the envelopes one by one by chairman Mr Derek Yee Tung-Sing. Still, we got the results and some of us were very happy. Me? A little disappointed, but hey, I’m not on the voting committee.

So who won what then? Here we go - a full run-down. Winners are in yellow.

最佳電影 
Best Film

1. 少年的你 Better Days

2. 叔‧叔 Suk Suk

3. 花椒之味 Fagara

4. 麥路人 i’m livin’ it

5. 新喜劇之王 The New King of Comedy




最佳導演
 Best Director

1. 曾國祥（少年的你）Derek Tsang Kwok-Cheung (Better Days)

2. 周冠威（幻愛）Kiwi Chow (Beyond the Dream)

3. 楊曜愷（叔‧叔）Ray Yeung (Suk Suk)

4. 麥曦茵（花椒之味）Heiward Mak (Fagara)

5. 葉偉信（葉問4完結篇）Yip Wai Shun (Ip Man 4 The Finale)

最佳編劇
 Best Screenplay

1. 林詠琛、李媛、許伊萌（少年的你）Lam Wing Sum, Li Yuan, Xu Yimeng (Better Days)

2. 曾俊榮、周冠威（幻愛）Felix Tsang, Kiwi Chow (Beyond the Dream)

3. 楊曜愷（叔‧叔）
Ray Yeung (Suk Suk)

4. 麥曦茵（花椒之味）Heiward Mak (Fagara)

5. 黃綺琳（金都）Norris Wong Yee Lam (My Prince Edward)


最佳男主角 
Best Actor

1. 易烊千璽（少年的你）Jackson Yee (Better Days)

2. 古天樂（犯罪現場）Louis Koo (A Witness Out of the Blue)

3. 太保（叔‧叔）Tai Bo (Suk Suk)

4. 朱栢康（金都）Chu Pak Hong (My Prince Edward)

5. 郭富城（麥路人）Aaron Kwok (i’m livin’ it)

最佳女主角
Best Actress

1. 周冬雨（少年的你）Zhou Dongyu (Better Days)

2. 蔡思韵（幻愛）Cecilia Choi (Beyond the Dream)

3. 鄭秀文（花椒之味）Sammi Cheng (Fagara)

4. 鄧麗欣（金都）Stephy Tang (My Prince Edward)

5. 鄭秀文（聖荷西謀殺案）Sammi Cheng (Fatal Visit) 


最佳男配角 
Best Supporting Actor

1. 姜皓文（犯罪現場）Philip Keung (A Witness Out of the Blue)

2. 盧鎮業（叔‧叔）Lo Chun Yip (Suk Suk)

3. 張達明（麥路人）Cheung Tat Ming (i’m livin’ it)

4. 萬梓良（麥路人）Alex Man (i’m livin’ it)

5. 張琪（新喜劇之王）Zhang Qi (The New King of Comedy)
 


最佳女配角 
Best Supporting Actress

1. 區嘉雯（叔‧叔）Patra Au Ga Man (Suk Suk)

2. 賴雅妍（花椒之味）Megan Lai (Fagara)

3. 鮑起靜（金都）Paw Hee Ching (My Prince Edward)

4. 劉雅瑟（麥路人）Cya Liu (i’m livin’ it)

5. 蔡卓妍（聖荷西謀殺案）Charlene Choi (Fatal Visit)

最佳新演員 
Best New Performer

1. 易烊千璽（少年的你）Jackson Yee (Better Days)

2. 劉俊謙（幻愛）Lau Chun Him (Beyond the Dream)

3. 區嘉雯（叔‧叔）Patra Au Ga Man (Suk Suk)

4. 鄂靖文（新喜劇之王）E Jingwen (The New King of Comedy)

5. 李宛妲（葉問4完結篇）Vanda Margraf (Ip Man 4 The Finale)

最佳攝影
 Best Cinematography

1. 余靜萍（少年的你）Yu Jing Pin (Better Days)

2. 司徒一雷（幻愛）Szeto Yat Lui (Beyond the Dream)

3. 謝忠道（犯罪現場）Kenny Tse Chung-To (A Witness Out of the Blue)

4. 葉紹麒（花椒之味）S.K. Yip (Fagara)

5. 鄭兆強（葉問4完結篇）Cheng Siu Keung (Ip Man 4 The Finale)

最佳剪接
 Best Film Editing

1. 張一博（少年的你）Zhang Yibo (Better Days)

2. 羅永昌、鄒耀衡（犯罪現場）
Law Wing Cheong, Kelvin Chau (A Witness Out of the Blue)

3. 張叔平、陳序慶（叔‧叔）
William Chang Suk Ping, Nose Chan Chui Hing (Suk Suk)

4. 張叔平、鍾家駿（金都）
William Chang Suk Ping, Peter Chung (My Prince Edward)

5. 張嘉輝（葉問4完結篇）Cheung Ka Fai (Ip Man 4 The Finale) 


最佳美術指導
 Best Art Direction

1. 梁鴻鵠（少年的你）Liang Honghu (Better Days)

2. 陳七（犯罪現場）Chet Chan (A Witness Out of the Blue)

3. 張兆康（花椒之味）Cheung Siu Hong (Fagara)

4. 文念中、利國林（麥路人）Man Lim Chung, Billy Li Kwok Lam (i’m livin’ it)

5. 麥國強（葉問4完結篇）Mak Kwok Keung (Ip Man 4 The Finale)

最佳服裝造型設計
 Best Costume & 
Makeup Design

1. 吳里璐（少年的你）Dora Ng (Better Days)

2. 潘燚森（叔‧叔）Albert Poon Yick Sum (Suk Suk)

3. 張兆康（花椒之味）Cheung Siu Hong (Fagara)

4. 文念中、陳寶欣（麥路人）Man Lim Chung, Polly Chan Po Yan (i’m livin’ it)

5. 利碧君（葉問4完結篇）Lee Pik Kwan (Ip Man 4 The Finale) 


最佳動作設計 
Best Action 
Choreography

1. 黃偉亮（犯罪現場）Jack Wong (A Witness Out of the Blue)

2. 錢嘉樂、錢家班、黃偉輝、鄧瑞華、吳海堂（使徒行者2諜影行動）
Chin Ka Lok, Ka Lok Stunt Team, Wong Wai Fai, Tang Sui Wa, Thomson Ng (Line Walker 2)

3. 董瑋（征途）Stephen Tung (Double World)

4. 韓平、吳海堂（掃毒2天地對決）
Hon Ping, Gobi Ng (The White Storm 2 Drug Lords)

5. 袁和平（葉問4完結篇）Yuen Wo Ping (Ip Man 4 The Finale)

最佳原創電影音樂
 Best Original Film Score

1. 貝爾（少年的你）Varqa Buehrer (Better Days)

2. 波多野裕介（花椒之味）Yusuke Hatano (Fagara)

3. 林二汶（金都）Eman Lam (My Prince Edward)

4. 金培達（麥路人）Peter Kam (i’m livin’ it)

5. 川井憲次（葉問4完結篇）Kenji Kawai (Ip Man 4 The Finale)

最佳原創電影歌曲
 Best Original Film Song

1. Fly（少年的你）(Better Days)


作曲：盧凱彤 Composer：Ellen Joyce Loo

填詞：盧凱彤、吳青峰 Lyricist：Ellen Joyce Loo, Wu Qing Feng

主唱：岑寧兒 Vocal Artist：Yoyo Sham 



2. 好好說（花椒之味）Say It Properly (Fagara)


作曲、填詞：伍棟賢 Composer, Lyricist：Tonyi Ng


主唱：鄭秀文 Vocal Artist：Sammi Cheng 



3. 金都（金都）My Prince Edward (My Prince Edward)


作曲：林二汶 Composer：Eman Lam


填詞：黃綺琳 Lyricist：Norris Wong Yee Lam


主唱：鄧麗欣 Vocal Artist：Stephy Tang



4. 兄弟不懷疑（掃毒2天地對決） Brotherhood (The White Storm 2 Drug Lords)


作曲：蔡曉恩 Composer：Jacky Cai


填詞：劉德華 Lyricist：Andy Lau


主唱：劉德華、古天樂 Vocal Artist：Andy Lau, Louis Koo 



5. 灰色星塵（麥路人）(i’m livin’ it)


作曲：金培達 Composer：Peter Kam


填詞：小美 Lyricist：Siu May


主唱：郭富城 Vocal Artist：Aaron Kwok 


最佳音響效果 
Best Sound Design

1. Victor Ray Ennis（中國機長）(The Captain)

2. 杜篤之、吳書瑤（幻愛）Tu Dou-Chih, Wu Shu-Yao (Beyond the Dream)

3. 杜篤之、江宜真（花椒之味）Tu Dou-Chih, Chiang Yi Chen (Fagara)

4. 聶基榮、葉兆基（掃毒2天地對決）Nip Kei Wing, Ip Siu Kei (The White Storm 2 Drug Lords)

5. 李耀強、姚俊軒（葉問4完結篇）Lee Yiu Keung George, Yiu Chun Hin (Ip Man 4 The Finale)

最佳視覺效果
 Best Visual Effects

1. 潘國瑜（中國機長）Ellen Poon (The Captain)

2. 譚啟昆、吳家龍、鍾家豪、楊起超（使徒行者2諜影行動）Tam Kai Kwan, Ng Ka Lung, Chung Kar Hau, Yeung Hey Chiu (Line Walker 2)

3. 徐建、魏明、李帥（征途）Eric Xu, Allen Wei, Li Shuai (Double World)

4. 黃宏達（烈火英雄）Victor Wong (The Bravest)

5. 余國亮、馬肇富、梁偉民、何文洛（掃毒2天地對決） Yee Kwok Leung, Ma Siu Fu, Leung Wai Man, Ho Man Lok (The White Storm 2 Drug Lords)

新晉導演
 Best New Director

1. 文偉鴻（使徒行者2諜影行動）Jazz Boon (Line Walker 2)

2. 黃綺琳（金都）Norris Wong Yee Lam (My Prince Edward)

3. 黃慶勳（麥路人）Wong Hing Fan (i’m livin’ it)

4. 梁國斌（獅子山上）Leung Kwok Pun Nick (Lion Rock)

5. 卓翔（戲棚）Cheuk Cheung (Bamboo Theatre)

最佳亞洲華語電影
 Best Asian Chinese
Language Film

1. 大象席地而坐 An Elephant Sitting Still

2. 返校 Detention

3. 影 Shadow

So there we have it. I didn’t see a win for Aaron Kwok and not nearly enough for Ip Man 4, but I’m shallow like that.

A fantastic 8 wins for Better Days（少年的你）from 11 nominations. I was trying to find a copy of it before the awards - now I think I should try harder.

That’s it from me. Have fun in lockdown, and I’ll be back soon.

Peach and lube, everyone, peach and lube.

The 39th Hong Kong Film Awards (2020)

If like me you love a good HK movie, then you may be aware that the film award season is upon us. America’s Golden Globes and their Oscars have been and gone, marked only by the facts that Ricky Gervais wins all the awards just for his mass celebrity roast, and Parasite took home the best film, despite being FOREIGN (how that happened in Trump’s America is anyone’s guess, but then, as it’s about class wars and the haves and have-nots, maybe it’s not that much of a mystery right now).

Now it’s Asia’s turn.

Taiwan’s Golden Horse Awards happen ever November, which for me kicks off the award season. It gives a good indication of the HK front runners - and if there are any. There are the Golden Rooster Awards every year in China, but honestly it’s treated like it’s an inside secret known only to the mainland - and to be honest it’s a bit like the Oscars except without the best foreign anythings.Then there’s the Asian Film Awards, which is a much smaller affair whose main purpose is to kick off the Hong Kong International Film Festival every year. South Korea has the Blue Dragon Awards (at last, something not made of gold!). India has literally at least 20 different film awards every year, which is not surprising when you consider that they are still the world’s biggest film producer in terms of numbers. In 2016 they made 1,903 films - the US managed 798 while the UK made 200, just to put this in perspective. Also, just to set the records straight - the US is the third most popular film industry in terms of numbers of cinema tickets sold, after China, and then India. However, interestingly enough, Hollywood is the most profitable film industry in terms of revenue. Hmm. Not saying their tickets are too expensive, but their tickets are too expensive.

Anyway, bearing in mind that I’m biased toward Hong Kong movies, I wait for the HK film awards every year. It’s a chance to get a definitive list of new films that I can peruse, and if they win an award, maybe I’ll watch them before others on the list - or not. If I don’t like the sound of the blurb I’ll probably give it a miss. Tragic love stories almost always get binned from the outset.

Where are we this year? Well, let’s go with the films that garnered the most nominations first, shall we?

The 39th Hong Kong Film Awards (2020)

Nominations

Better Days (少年的你) - 12 nominations

Best Film, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best New Performer, Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Art Direction, Best Costume & Makeup Design, Best Original Film Score, Best Original Film Song

Fagara (花椒之味) - 11 nominations

Best Film, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, Best Costume & Makeup Design, Best Original Film Score, Best Original Film Song, Best Sound Design

i’m livin’ it (麥路人) - 10 nominations

Best Film, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor x2, Best Supporting Actress, Best Art Direction, Best Costume & Makeup Design, Best Original Film Score, Best Original Film Song, Best New Director

Suk Suk (叔‧叔) - 9 nominations

Best Film, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best New Performer, Best Film Editing, Best Costume & Makeup Design

Ip Man 4 The Finale (葉問4完結篇) - 9 nominations

Best Director, Best New Performer, Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Art Direction, Best Costume & Makeup Design, Best Action Choreography, Best Original Film Score, Best Sound Design

My Prince Edward (金都) - 8 nominations

Best Screenplay, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, Best Film Editing, Best Original Film Score, Best Original Film Song, Best New Director

Beyond the Dream (幻愛) - 6 nominations

Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Actress, Best New Performer, Best Cinematography, Best Sound Design

A Witness Out of the Blue (犯罪現場) - 6 nominations

Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Art Direction, Best Action Choreography

The White Storm 2 Drug Lords (掃毒2天地對決) - 4 nominations

Best Action Choreography, Best Original Film Song, Best Sound Design, Best Visual Effects

The New King of Comedy (新喜劇之王) - 3 nominations

Best Film, Best Supporting Actor, Best New Performer

Line Walker 2 (使徒行者2諜影行動) - 3 nominations

Best Action Choreography, Best Visual Effects, Best New Director

For the full story, head over to the official page. The ceremony is due to play out on 19th April, but here's the thing; due to political unrest and now this pernicious coronavirus, the actual date is in doubt.

It may be held live as usual, but Vegas money says it will either be delayed until May or be held behind the hygienic safety of a pre-recorded presentation ceremony without a live audience.

Here’s hoping this whole coronavirus thing is over soon - I believe HK needs a little frivalous distraction right now, and this would go down well.

For now though, I’m happy that Ip Man 4: The Finale has two fist fulls of nominations, and Aaron Kwok is once again in with a shout.

Fingers crossed all round, then.

Dual Permanence

Object permanence is knowing that objects continue to exist whether you can see them or not (or notice them with any of the senses). Young kids don’t have this yet, which is why they think Peek-A-Boo is the greatest thing ever. As you get older, you develop new ways of displaying object (or abstract) permanence - you know your job is still there even though this is not your rota’d or contracted day to work; you know everyone else is having to work their retail job on a Bank Holiday even though you’re going to spend the day in the garden hoping it doesn’t rain on your barbecue; you know where to find a petrol station because it’s always in the same place; you’re developing existential dread because you’re painfully aware that the climate crisis is killing everything while everyone pretends not to notice but you know it’s there waiting - the list goes on.

What about other things? What about places you’ve lived, the way of life or the feeling of being there?

If you’ve ever seen another post on this blog then you’ll know I used to live in Hong Kong. I was there for eleven years. I came back close to six years ago, and yet I can’t seem to shake the idea that this new life is permanent and it’s HK that’s ended for me.

I left for various reasons - I needed to get out, I needed a change, I needed something new. I thought I needed to get back to Blighty and relax in open spaces and enjoy the idea of working after simply flashing the HR department my passport, not sitting through interviews over and over and finally getting a work visa after weeks of struggle (other people’s experiences may vary).

However now I look at it, perhaps I just needed an extended break. I’m one of those people who work and work and don’t look up from my desk, so for three years in a row my boss had to remind me that I had holiday left and I had to take it before the end of the year, as I couldn’t carry them over. I think that may have contributed to me feeling stifled and trapped, irritated at everyone around me when it wasn’t their fault. When I rocked up back in England, it was all empty spaces, deep breaths, crystal blue, freezing skies and a month of unemployment until I could find something.

Something unwound in me. Something was gone - the frustration, the irritation, the wanting to punch the next person who jabbed me in the eye with an umbrella or trod on my foot trying to cut me off at a pedestrian intersection. I was slowly but surely letting it all go. Compounding that was the feeling that, due to being unemployed, I could just sleep an hour more, go for a walk when I wanted, enjoy the fact that I could eat late or early or whenever I wanted to go to the kitchen, and not rush around work times or frantic schedules. Yes, I was relaxing and getting used to be able to spread out again.

But over the next few years I was also immersed in the cold weather, the grey skies and freezing rain, the tepid environment and insipid, boring outlooks of people who thought driving twenty miles was a long way. Conversations I shrank from willingly; most people around me had been born and grown up in the same village or town, and had been to a city maybe once even though they owned a car. They were Small Town People, and there’s nothing wrong with that - if you’re also a Small Town Person. I don’t think I am - I realised I was bored of the tiny fishbowl I’d landed myself in and now I needed the open sea.

When my role at work was made redundant and there was no other company vacancy like-for-like they could offer me, it meant I was free to take redundancy without penalty and I could literally do anything I wanted.

The choice became obvious: back to Hong Kong, or new adventures in Manchester, England.

My friends on all sides of every ocean were quick to point out that they thought of me as an explorer, and therefore going back to somewhere I’d already been was a waste of time. I should head to Manchester, the place I was born but never really spent any time in. Live there, have fun there, see the bright lights and all-night places, go to the international events and have the chance to enjoy the multi-cultural diversity of a major city.

I did. I went through all the sorting and packing all over again - the same as I had done every time I moved to a new flat in HK. I packed my entire life into about nine cardboard boxes and hired a removals company to get them and all my furniture to Manchester. And here I am, living on the outskirts but close enough to the city so that my rent is a little lower but I can still get on a bus (a bus! The public transport works! And half of it all is electric!) to go into the proper city. There’s a Chinatown and proper shops, an eclectic mix of Boho, yuppy, down to earth, just getting by and loving life. The shops stay open when the streetlamps come on, there’s buses until midnight and trams all day and free buses to major points around the city. There’s weird and wonderful eateries and bars, allowances for all kinds of dietary requirements and faiths, there’s a welcoming vibe of just wanting everyone to sit in the same sun and drink, or eat, or listen to music or read their textbooks or holiday novels or after-work comics. When it rains people put on their coats and carry on.

It’s refreshing, it’s a sprawling yet connected place of stuff to do and things to see. There are guided walks if you want to get to know the place, there are apps for proper quiet plods around the city by yourself, there are literally so many things to do that I’ve been out about 70% of all weekends in the past ten months I’ve been here, and I’ve still barely scratched the surface.

This is what I wanted, right? This is how it should have been since the first day I got back to England, right?
Then why do I still feel like HK is just around the next corner of the street I’m on? Why does it feel like when you’re texting someone who lives 5,000 miles away but you talk so often it’s like they’re just in the next room? Why is it, when I’m watching an HK drama (I’m currently on Apple Colada) and see them walk past one of my old flats, I wonder why I didn’t see them filming when I was to-ing and fro-ing, and then I realise it’s because I don’t live there? And that’s the thing - it’s always “I don’t live there”, not “I don’t live there any more”.

Someone asked me for directions in the city a few weeks back, for a place I should know in Manchester. But before I could think I said “which one?”. Then I realised there is> only one in Manchester - the other I know is in Hong Kong. Why am I doing this when I’ve been here since November 2018 and it really should have sunk in by now that I’m here, this is where I live, this is what life is now. I’m normally pretty good at adapting to things - I got used to HK in about twelve months, I adjusted back to the UK in about the same. But perhaps I just did the superficial surviving, not an actual adjustment. I stopped calculating what items were in HK dollars as UK pounds became real to me again. I started carrying a fleece around again, knowing that the weather would only feel like eighteen degrees C when the sun was out, and as soon as it hit 4pm the temperature would start to fall off until it was barely eleven degrees by 9pm.

Perhaps I didn’t do the real adjustment; my head is still over here, I think, and to some degree so is my heart. This comes as a shock to me, as I really didn’t think I had a heart.

I know the HK I miss so bad I can taste it is gone, and it’s never coming back. It was Hong Kong between about 2006 - 2012. By the time I left in 2013, I thought I was over the place. But I think it’s like when you’re cooking and you pick up a scalding pan - it burns you and you curse about it, but years later you look at the scar and you miss the cooking part that it reminds you of. It’s like there’s an invisible, indelible mark of HK stamped on me somewhere and I’m only now realising it’s even here. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to get rid of it - and I’m not even sure a day will come when I want to.

What do I do about it? The easy answer is just to return to HK. But I can’t do that, due to money, and a certain immigration case that’s been cleared but will always hang around my neck like a millstone, thanks to a certain person who is dead to me. If I won the lottery tomorrow then I would certainly try to find a way to return in time. But let’s be real here - people like me don’t win the lottery, and I will never be in a financial position to leave this country and relocate again. It’s Manchester or nothing, which is why I’m doing my best here.

I hang around Chinatown more than I should, causing me to hold onto the feeling that HK is here, just out of sight round a corner. It’s object permanence for an entire territory of Southeast Asia, and I don’t know how I’ve managed it but it’s a real place that lives in my head alongside Manchester and therefore I’m still connected to it.

I had cause to rewatch Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’s pilot episode recently. And one part that I never really understood the last dozen or so times I’ve seen it stuck out to me. Well, more like poked me in the eye in painful realisation. When confronted by aliens who do not understand linear time, Starfleet Commander Ben Sisko struggles to explain that humans do the best they can day by day, because they can’t say for sure what will happen next. But the aliens are confused; if that’s true, why does he often think about and get sad over one particular memory? He is brought back to the same awful scene in his life and over and over, but when he demands to know why they keep showing it to him, they say in all innocence that they don’t control it - he brings them back to it. “You exist here,” they say, and “this is not linear.” He accepts this is true - and that a part of him will always exist in that awful moment.

I have no awful moments in HK, even including the day I was officially detained by HK Immigration (very politely and completely by the book, I might add) for forty-eight hours pending an official criminal investigation that I later completely cleared of. I have no reason to get stuck on one memory as Sisko did. Instead I think a part of me will always exist in those happy and not so happy times in HK - a conglomeration of my life there, everything rolled into one ball so that everything is touching everything else all at the same time. I can’t tease it out, I can’t separate any part of it from another, and I think that’s where anything up to half of me exists. They are memories, but they’re alive. When I’m in Manchester Chinatown and I chat with a waiter about living in Kennedy Town, we talk like we’re both still there. When we express support for the current protesters, it’s as if we’re about to attend protests and hand out bottles of water to them from the shadows in silent solidarity. But we’re not there, we’re nowhere near there - so why does it feel like we are?

Is this object permanence or just old age?

對你愛不完 - Love You Endlessly

I miss Aaron Kwok (郭富城) concerts. I miss them so much I can taste them. The cheering, screaming or singing of the crowd; the waterworks, fireworks, stage hydraulics, safety harnesses, lighting; the costumes; the dancers; the atmosphere of total and utter love, adoration, enjoyment and pure unabashed joining in.

I miss all that. Hong Kong pop concerts are a spectacle and Aaron concerts are arguably the pinnacle; you don’t get someone sitting on a stool and playing guitar or piano, or someone singing their greatest hits plus new songs. You get interaction, excitement, fireworks, twisty-turny stages that lift, turn 360 degrees and then do it again vertically. You get audience participation (“which of the four sides of the audience shouts the loudest? Hmm, let’s find out shall we?”) and bong-bongs (inflatable tubes you can hit together), tiny lights, whistles and all kinds of noise-makers. You get wet as a certain Mr Kwok dances through water troughs so hard he douses the first five rows. You get your sign out with your country or a message of support spelt in LEDs so he can read it when you’re waving it. You get pure joy and exaltation running through your veins for the 3 plus hours he’s on stage.

He talks in between some of the numbers - he tells you he’s learnt an entire song on an instrument he doesn’t play, or had his hair shaved off again in another amusing pattern just for the concert series of 12 - 18 consecutive HK nights. He banters with the crowd, then tells you it’s just between him and the people who made it tonight, because he’s not going to let that bit go on the concert DVD / blu ray. He tells you who’s made his costumes for the event, who’s done the music, who’s trained all the dancers and helped him bring it all together.

And then he launches into another 3 - 5 songs, then does another costume quick-change before the next segment. He might appear from a secret entrance, or from behind the audience, or from the ceiling, or shot out of a spring-loaded trapdoor so that he’s thrown 10 feet straight up in the air before landing perfectly in his dancing shoes, ready for business. He dances like he doesn’t think he’ll get another chance in this life, and he makes it count - Every. Single. Time.

When the entire routine of himself, the dancers, the lights, the music, the audience is just right, you can see it on his face. It’s the most beatific expression you will ever see - he knows everything is on point, he knows the audience is screaming because it’s perfect, and he lets himself enjoy it. That’s what you can see on his face - like Gene Kelly’s smile as he looks up because he’s not even trying and it’s still perfection.

A recording can only tell you so much, of course. Everyone who’s ever gushed over a painting but also understands that it can only include what’s within the confines of the dimensions of the canvas, and leaves out so much more landscape and the feel of the weather, or the time of year, knows what I mean. The sounds, the smells, the atmosphere, that electric feeling of being part of a group of people elevated by excitement and enjoyment - in a harmless, fun way - can never be transferred to a recording. If you weren’t there, then you just didn’t feel it, it’s as simple as that. —And I say that as someone who wasn’t always able to get to every concert I wanted. I can tell - the collection of Aaron concerts on my shelves have different feelings associated with each of them, depending on whether I attended or had to settle for the recording. (Every recoding I bought was signed personally by him - but those are a different set of stories.)

In short - I miss Aaron Kwok concerts. I miss them so much I can taste them.

Soopytwist.

If one door opens when another door shuts, you have a ghost problem

How do you put your finger on why you like/love a place so much? How do you define what it is that keeps bringing you back?

A few things in the last 10 days have helped me answer those questions, but not achieve my ultimate goal: to understand why I like/love Hong Kong and its permanence.

I'm in HK at the moment, on holiday. I'm busy buying up local films on DVD or blu ray and going to the old haunts and hang-outs. I'm getting souvenirs for people back at work in Manchester, and just people-watching and navigating public transport (mostly on autopilot).

I'm going to dinner with friends and having a great time - we like the same things and having access to the places or clubs they go to is a bonus. I am aware that if they weren't here, my holiday would be very different. I would probably sleep later and miss half the day, but be up all night. I would probably spend one or two days just in my temporarily adopted home instead of going out - and then I'd miss out on being in HK.

Knowing what I do, this may be my last holiday to HK for a while. I'm surprisingly ok with that, as I have had time to deal with it and realise that I need to get all the things I need to right now, as I won't have access to them later. I do at least have a chance to do that.

It's also been brought to my attention that 3 people I come here to see may not be here in a few years. Retirement, ends of contracts, changing politics - all these have an impact on ex-pats and if these 3 close friends do actually leave HK to relocate to a calmer place to retire, then what am I coming to HK for?

And there we have it. Something I once wrote about a long time ago, but am now only just grasping: it's not the place, it's the people in it.

Every time I've left a job and got a new one, I haven't missed the job itself or the town or place it's in. I have missed a select few people with whom I used to work, but nothing more than that. And with the slow rise of social media and connectivity over the years, this is nowhere near as big a problem as it used to be.

With me leaving HK, perhaps for good this time - no take-backsies, no do-overs - and them moving on, then perhaps it was never really the city for me. Perhaps it was the people who made the city, and my life here, so exciting. I could come back here, get a job, start going out and doing all the things I like, but where would I find more people like them? And would I want to?

I've always had a certain flexibility with time, and especially emotions that go with it. I'm not good at emotions anyway, and it takes me a while to understand what I should have been feeling yesterday when something went down. But in the grand scheme of things, time and place are relative and if these people should end up in another East Asian country, then that's where I'll head out to for my next holiday. I'm not good at trying new things because I stop and think it through, and see the ending where I get it wrong or mess it up somehow. But knowing someone is there for me to see, and I have a goal, is different. I should be fine with it.

And I think I am. Perhaps HK is over for me. Perhaps I've got one more visit before everyone leaves and my time here is well and truly done. But what does that mean for the part of me that's still always here? Who am I when you take away the mish-mash of languages and culture and humour and context that came out of me living here for 11 years?

That's the problem I have. Will everything I know and do and say slip away, or change, with the passing time where my subconscious processes the fact that I'm done with HK? What's going to replace everything I lose?

And that's the thing. I may live in Manchester and have access to thousands of bars, loads of nightlife, and lots of different cultures, but I don't have my circle of friends with me to pass the time.

It looks like I'll just have to get some. How and where, I suppose time will tell. Once I have the all-clear from the chiropractor, I'll be looking at several clubs in the Manchester area (kickboxing or wing chun? Private or field archery?) and probably something will come out of that. It won't be HK, but it'll be a newer version of me, I suppose, coming out of what I want to spend my time on. I've been out to Manchester every weekend since November when I moved there, and I've still only scratched the surface of places to go and things to see, so I'm pretty sure there's something waiting for me, something that will become my new favourite thing. Until then I'll just keep on keeping on, and something will happen.

And that's all the news that's fit to print, I think. Until next time.

Soopytwist.

HK drama: Fist Fight (兄弟) - a review

Ok, first of all: full disclosure. If anyone has ever heard of Mat Yeung (楊明) then you may know why I like him. He’s a TVB actor with a fair few series under his belt, and apart from a little real life police trouble a while back, he’s your average TVB person. Except he’s got a Resting Bitch Face of Awesome and he’s also very easy on the eyes. Well, I think it’s his attitude to the characters he plays rather than his appearance, but still, it all helps.

Anyway, now that’s out of the way, how about I try to cover the whole emotional rollercoaster of the TVB Hong Kong drama Fist Fight (兄弟) in three words.


Warning! Danger, Will Robinson!
Here be SPOILERS for the TVB drama FIST FIGHT!

Convoluted

tiptoe, through the meanies...

Oh my dog - you thought the mighty Marvel ‘it’s all connected ’ web of interlocking plots and subplots and hints was overly complicated? Then clearly you’ve never seen a Hong Kong drama on Speed. Much like this series, in fact. You have three blokes who couldn’t seem more disparate - one of them, Ha Tin-Hang (夏天行) played by the aforementioned Mat Yeung (楊明) is looking for any connection he can find to his real parents. This is when he’s not being very very good at his day job, which is working for a private security firm. Through no fault of his own this firm gets lumbered with protecting the arrogant and obscenely rich Fever Cheung (張非凡), played with flair and creativity by Vincent Wong (王浩信). He’s basically a gaming and web genius, who’s also very good at using social media and people to promote whatever he wants and win big. He’s not a bad person per se, but it always seems as though he’s working on something nefarious because he doesn’t see the point in trying to explain himself to others.

Add in the hot-tempered and impulsive Ho Tiht-Nam (何鐵男), played by the very capable and very bendy Philip Ng (伍允龍), a copper who’s done with all the secretive bollocks preventing him from getting evidence enough to take down proper bad guys, and you have a triumvirate who don’t seem to have very much in common other than determination.

Actual King of the Resting Bitch Face strikes again

But wait, what’s this? Tin-Hang starts to unravel a rather unsavoury plot that involves his real parents dying in a fire - or did they? Fever appears to be part of something else entirely, with his hands in many pies, but one of them is inexplicably mixed up in who set the fire that killed Tin-Hang’s parents. Tiht-Nam is out for anyone breaking rules, but the very smart Interpol agent Madam Yeung / 楊青青 (or Ching-Ching, as she’s later called by her friends) played by the awesome Rebecca Zhu (朱晨麗) stops him from making a career-wrecking arse of himself and also ends up supporting him in more than just his job. Throw in a very positive role-model in the form of Si-Ting (馬斯婷) played with amusing gusto by Kamen Kong (江嘉敏), a host of other extras and some unbelievable plot twists, and you have an exhausting yet satisfying 30 episodes. Did I say it was a drama? I was wrong; it’s an über drama. Heart attacks, early-onset dementia, shoot-outs, lying in a coma, car chases, boxing matches, ransom demands, street fights, godmothers and grandmas, VR ghosts, X Files-esque telepathy (epic twist, by the way - and a big part of what follows), family squabbles, the economic future of Hong Kong itself - even the ICAC gets a quick look-in. I think there isn’t a plot line or twist that wasn’t used in this. It certainly made it impossible to stop binge-watching, and I have to say I never knew what they were going to get away with next. And you know what? I liked it. It was like a BBC drama on res Smarties with no brakes, and it was unpredictable.

Heart-breaking

Heard you were talking shit about my Resting Bitch Face

You want long-lost brothers finding each other, only to lose them again? People finding love and having it whipped out from under them as if it’d never been? Being alone in the world, finding one person you trust, and having them taken from you so that you’re left with nothing? Basically all the cruelest twists of fate that the grumpiest, most cantankerous writer could come up with? Seriously, writers - who hurt you? Who did this to you that you had to take it out on innocent character creations for a mainstream soap / drama production? I know the old writer’s adage that you only torture the characters you like, but if that’s the case then bloody hell, you lot must have loved every single of the main cast with a fiery passion.

Everyone gets a chance to suppress their feelings for only so long, before they have to either scream and cry it out or beat the crap out of someone. Don’t worry though - the recipients totally deserved an epic beating.

Misnomer

Go ahead, ruin my jacket. Seriously, I've got like 50

So the title Fist Fight (or in Cantonese, 兄弟 - ‘hing daai’, or ‘brothers’) is basically a massive hint that a bloke or few in this series is more to the other than we know. As the mammoth, 30-episode story unfolds, we find it’s not just them that it affects - no spoilers, but if you weren’t suspicious of the two best mates that work in the gaming / tech company, then turn in your soap / drama card right now. However, seeing as it took the brothers an eternity to work out who they were and how, and then how to exist without arguing or whumping on each other, maybe a more fitting name for this series should have been ‘Fuck Me, It’s a Free-For-All’. There were allusions to people being brothers not through blood but through sacrifice and help, and at times there were some really good ideas bandied about as to how you measure what is and what is not considered a brotherly thing.

peekaboo

That’s not to say the women were left out; Interpol Madam Yeung certainly had her moments and to date she’s the only person I’ve seen use a sturdy boot heel to cock a gun because she’s been shot in the other arm and it no longer has strength enough. The young security guard who successfully fought her way into the private security job and way waaaay beyond was amusing at first but as you discover her tragic back story, you decide you can accommodate her apparently constant need for cash and to be honest, her tenacity and drive impressed me before we knew what she was really made of. The only lesser character was the boxing near-champion turned coach. To be honest, more could have been done with her character (and I hate to say it, but the actress’ accent irritated me the more I tried to ignore it and let it go). The godmother was excellent and although I suspect she was in there to provide a richer back story for Tin-Nam, at least it was a godmother this time and not another wise old granddad character.

All in all, I have to say this was an 8 out of 10; not bad at all for something that started out built on boxing matches and ended up working out who was whose family and how.

My only hope is that it did well enough to warrant a second series next year. After all, I hear they’ve just started production on ‘The Exorcist’s Meter 2 ‘, I series I really enjoyed about a year ago.

And that’s all the review that’s fit to print. Now I feel a bit lost, as I was marathoning that show 3 or 4 episodes a night. Guess I’ll see what else TVB has to offer.

For now though, soopytwist everyone.

Wonton of good food

A poor pun, I know. But hey, I’m not a stand-up comedian.

Here’s basically another recipe I use - it started out as a scrapbook cutting and I’ve scribbled updates and changes to it ever since, so this is the first time I’m actually writing it out so that the damn thing’s legible.

Wonton Soup

Ingredients:

2 litres boiling water
2 chicken stock pots
1 veg Oxo cube
Shaoxing cooking wine
Soy sauce
Toasted sesame oil (from a brand like Lee Kum Kee 李錦記)
Lotus root - about 4 large slices
Chinese leaf - 3 good size leaves
Choi sum / similar green leafy veg - one stalk plus leaves
Chinese mushrooms (soaked in cold water for 20 mins first)
Couple of small pinches of fine ground black pepper
Wontons - 8 to 10, from frozen
Vermicelli - 2 half handfuls

How to make it taste good:

Mushrooms first because they take the longest: put them in cold water and make sure they stay under the surface for 20 minutes.
Get a LARGE pan / cooking pot - this makes a lot.
Boil the water (I pour it in from the kettle because I’m lazy and can’t be arsed to wait) and add in the 2 chicken stock pots and the veg Oxo cube. Make sure it all dissolves properly.
Put the lotus root in first and bring to the boil - lotus root can be hard and needs time to soften.
Chop the leafy veg roughly (large pieces) and throw it in. Add like half a teaspoon of the toasted sesame oil and soy sauce (a little soy sauce goes a very long way). Add the pepper.
Keep it simmering and put in the vermicelli. Drain the mushrooms properly, maybe give them an extra rinse, and throw them in whole.
Add the wontons and then 2 tablespoons (yes, tablespoons) of Shaoxing cooking wine.
Let it simmer for about 5 minutes - make sure it’s stirred properly the whole time. Turn it on a low heat for about another 10 minutes to make sure the wontons are properly cooked through (especially if you used them frozen like I do).
And that’s it - remember it’s very watery soup so it’ll be bloody hot for the first 10 minutes after you’ve put it into a bowl. Then eat it!

I make a huge batch because I can then dip in and eat as much as I want over the whole weekend, but obviously halve or quarter this if you don’t want it to last that long.

Sorted. Peach and lube everyone.

Recipe of the week

I never cook. I can, I just don’t enjoy it. Other people love the chemistry of it or the fun of the process or producing something epic over the space of a few hours. Me? I can’t be arsed.

Now I have a new job though, making dinner to take with me is different. Normally I’ll make up a batch of rice and a batch of meat, veg and sauce and then just tip a bit into a tupperware box every night ready to take in the next day. This has worked fine so far, except sometimes what I’m eating isn’t the most inspiring of foods.
I dug out a very old cookbook - barely a book, more of a collection of oddities I’ve gathered along the way. The one recipe that’s blown my socks off this week is:

Black Bean Beef and Rice

Ingredients:

1 tablespoon of sesame oil (I use Lee Kum Kee 李錦記)
Either 5 cloves of garlic or 2 tablespoons of ‘lazy’ ready-made garlic
2 tablespoons of grated ginger
2 tablespoons of black bean sauce with garlic (I use Amoy or Lee Kum Kee 李錦記)
Either strips of sirloin steak or steak mince - 1lb (450 grams)
2 tablespoons of Shaosing rice cooking wine
1 green pepper, cut into thin strips
1 yellow pepper, cut into thin strips
150ml beef stock (Oxo!)
Light soy sauce
Cornflour (2 tablespoons, blended with 5 tablespoons of cold water)
Rice - I prefer red ‘cargo’ rice but you can use jasmine or brown

How to make it taste good:

Rice first as we’re all multi-taskers here. I have a rice cooker so I just pour in 2 small cups of rice per person and add boiling water, a tablespoon of cumin seeds and a sparrow’s gobful of olive oil. Stick it on to cook as this could take 20 - 35 mins and the black bean beef bit will only take about 30.

Get all your other stuff done - chop and slice and mix everything ready.

Use a wok or a large pan (preferably non-stick). Slap in the sesame oil. When it gets hot enough to look like it’s smoking, throw in the garlic and ginger. Fry this for a few seconds, then whack in all the meat. If it’s mince, make sure it separates properly or you get chunks.

Glob the black bean sauce in and make sure you stir it around to try to spread it evenly through the meat. When the steak / mince is looking less red and more brown, pour in the Shaosing rice cooking wine.

Then you lump in the peppers and the stock. Boil it for about 1 minute, then add in soy sauce as strong as you like (go easy; a little goes a long way). Once it’s all mixed in and bubbling nicely, add in the mixed cornflour and stir it in to make sure it thickens evenly. Give it like a minute, then turn off the heat - you’re done.

Serve it straight away on the rice, or in a serving dish next to your little rice bowl. Ta-da!

For my next trick, I shall attempt another recipe once I’ve cherry-picked it from my scrapbook of notes.

Soopytwist, everyone.

Missing, presumed lost

We have so many things - stuff - cluttering up our lives. There are polar opposites in my own family to demonstrate this. Some of us hoard things stretching back to the first half of last century; some of us have moved continents a few times and no longer have attachments to material things and keep the place as bare as possible in case they have to move again.

Case in point: I moved back from Hong Kong 4 years, 11 months and 3 weeks ago (Hallowe’en 2013). I sat down with every single thing I owned and put it all into 2 piles, Keepers and Donators. The Keepers were packed up and I paid to have them shipped back to the UK. The Donators went to either friends, colleagues or charity shops. I didn’t have that much to go through, as I moved every 3 or so years and didn’t have time or space to amass much.

I’m moving again in a few weeks. And now I have to sit down and go through my life and evaluate what I actually want to keep hold of.

As I’ve got older I’ve definitely got colder. I have so much stuff I just don’t need and so much of it is going out, either to places like Music Magpie or charity shops.

However, I will be very careful with my stuff this time. After moving back from HK, over the years I’ve found a DVD missing here, a CD missing there. I would put it down to me thinking I would never need it again, and then needing it after all, except these are items I would never part with. Trying to get them replaced? Like searching for the frelling Holy Grail without the aid of Indiana Jones.

Take for example my back-catalogue of Tony Leung Chiu-Wai (梁朝偉) movies and the handful of CDs I had. For some reason the only movies that survived my move back were ‘Infernal Affairs’ (無間道) and Chinese Odyssey (天下無雙). This is against all my instincts - he may be one of the finest actors of this generation (in any country), winning awards left right and centre, but he’s also got marvellous comic timing and his penchant for Chinese New Year slapstick comedies never fails to make me figuratively piss myself laughing. He also has a voice like hot chocolate on a grey and rainy windswept day, and he could read me the phone book and I'd be instantly happy. So the fact that I no longer have a copy of 風沙 (Wind and Sand) to listen to infuriates me. That is not something I would ever willingly part with. The worst part? Oh, let me tell you:

Hong Kong films from inception to the mid 2000s were shot on cheap film stock, and treated with about as much respect as commercials for toilet roll. The upshot is that if you want to find a film from before 2010 the DVD will be the poorest quality invented - if you can even find a copy. All the companies that used to make the DVDs (and VCDs - remember them?) have let them go out of print, so there’s just no stock. Can’t we just get a company to go about restoring and reissuing classics, then? Sounds like a good idea, until you factor in how the original film is probably in a mouldy old tin at the back of some office, bearing in mind a lot of production companies went out of business or have been bought by others. Good luck following the trail to these original prints and where they may be languishing now.

It’s absolutely enraging that in this day and age, when we can put astronauts, cosmonauts and taikonauts on the International Space Station and they can tweet us and send videos and such, that we can’t do something as easy as round up the top 100 films from HK history and put them on iTunes, Netflix, or a similar paid-for streaming service. And the problem is two-fold: the stock may be missing, but no-one is bothered about finding said stock, or originals. They don’t consider it important at all, and that’s very very depressing.

A while back, the BBC had a fire in their archives department and a lot of their early Doctor Who footage was destroyed (among other things). Everyone panicked, and then set about getting animators in to reconstruct damaged or lost episodes so that they still fit the soundtrack (that had miraculously survived in most cases). This was a resounding success, as anyone who now possesses a DVD of the Patrick Troughton era Cybermen story ‘Invasion’ will attest to.

I’m not saying that someone needs to go and reconstruct every slapstick or mou lei tau (無厘頭) HK movie from 1975 onwards - they were the 3rd busiest movie industry in the world, after India and then the USA - but something has to be done and it’s clearly not impossible. As anyone who has ever seen a film in their life will tell you, films/movies are more than just stories put on celluloid/digital record. They are a snapshot of the time, the place, the situation, society and people’s attitude to them all. They are anchors to how we were, why we were, and how we need to move forward. They record everything you ever need to know about the universe; to make an apple pie, you first need to invent the universe from scratch as Carl Sagan once said, and so the creation of each film in existence is a testament to everyone working on it. There’s the lighting technician that came up with new bulbs, the camera master that fine-tuned Dykstraflex because nothing at that time was good enough for the ‘Star Wars’ films, the stunt men and women that became stars in their own right (Jackie Chan, Michelle Yeoh), the script writers who went against convention and came up with zeitgeist masterpieces, the people who got together to prove that everyone saying there weren't enough people of colour available to cast a lead were wrong, and ended up making ‘Black Panther’ - the list goes on.

For so many reasons, we need to keep ‘classics’ available. How many people scrambled to get a copy of Fritz Lang’s ‘Metropolis’ once it was restored and made available on new formats? A shit-tonne. Why? Because it was a milestone. And once the high-brow, ‘Empire’ magazine people were done gushing over how important it is in the universe, the rest of us enjoyed a surprisingly fresh and modern-feeling movie. Again - watching it for the first time in 2010, we were shocked how forward-facing and up to date it felt. It changed people’s minds on how ‘primitive’ movies were back before colour and sound and other add-ons. It provided us with a reference for how people felt and how they worked hard to bring us that vision and message.
You may argue that a Stephen Chow mou lei tau (無厘頭) movie, or a John Woo heroic bloodshed film, or a kitchen sink drama like ‘Love in a Puff’ are not in the same league, and some may agree with you. (And yet there are others, like ‘Happy Together’ and ‘Rouge’, that people are desperate to save because they fit in with other people’s idea of what’s ‘worthy’.) However, the social commentary and how invaluable the insight into how Hong Kong was, especially now, cannot be overstated. If there was ever a time to make sure Hong Kong culture is not erased or simply left to quietly disappear through apathy, it’s right now. So much is going on between Peking and Hong Kong, the people caught between Lion Rock and a hard place, that this is the time to quietly and efficiently restore and protect the legacy from the 50s - 2010s.

So it looks like I need to quit my job, go to HK, and set up a company to start tracing all the major production companies from back in the day. Make them cash offers for their collections, get everything in one place, back everything up, get a team to start cleaning and restoring, get a new team to do fresh, accurate subtitles (in 30-odd languages), and then start doing deals to get them on platforms where people can actually access them. Or even - and here’s a shock - get providers like Sky, Virgin, Freeview or whoever - to run our own channel of ‘classics’ - all HK, all the time. We'd take a loss, or course. Then we’d move our entire catalogue to Netflix - imagine the billboards and advertising. Jackie Chan’s entire back catalogue! Chow Yun-Fat in all his John Woo bullet ballet glory! The original ‘Young and Dangerous’ saga! Michelle Yeoh restored and awesome in her ‘Wing Chun’ days! And everything in its original Cantonese soundtrack, not the attempt by Peking to erase Hong Kong culture by dubbing everything into Mandarin and claiming it’s the official language of the territory.

Until then, if anyone hears of someone already doing this who needs help, then let me know I’ll be right there. In the meantime I’ll continue to scour eBay, Amazon, YesAsia, Play-Asia.com, Taiwanese one-stop-shops, HMV HK etc. for copies of the much-loved classics that I’ve mysteriously lost in my many moves.

UPDATE: There is one organisation who restores film, but to date they’ve only been commissioned to restore John Woo’s ‘A Better Tomorrow’ from 1986. So there is hope - but what about all the other films? A while ago Time Out produced their list of top 100 Hong Kong films. I’m not sure I agree with all of them or their places in the list, but it’s still a good place to start

Soopytwist everyone.

Move along home

We all want to be somewhere we can’t. A new job, a holiday, your bed. For me it’s Hong Kong.

For those of you just joining us, I lived there for 11 years. Then, due to my gradually increasing dissatisfaction with the political struggles, work visa problems, and money, I returned to England. I adjusted all over again - the cold weather, the stodgy food, the moaning people (fuck me, but the people), the expensive money, the slower pace, the whole Brexit palava. For the first few months I had shoulder and neck problems; I returned in October and it was cold, and try as I might I couldn’t stop myself from unconsciously hunching against the lack of constant bone-warming humidity. I also did the thing where you convert all prices into something that makes sense in your head; a £10 cinema ticket was $110 to me so I could figure if that was good or not. As time went by I unlearnt to do these things and I had pretty much been assimilated to Blighty again.

However - movies; music; city life… All these things were missing and were missed. I kept up with Eason Chan’s new albums, with Donnie Yen’s new films, with news of Andy Lau Tak-Wah and his horse-riding accident. I discovered the TVB box that lets you watch HK TV (kind of like a Sky box for overseas subscribers), the band ToNick and their awesome sound, the growing political unrest and the HKFP’s efforts to keep the news open to all.

The one thing I couldn’t have was the city life back. Where I live now it’s basically a sleepy hollow, made up of people who obsess about the tiny things because they’ve never seen bigger ones. They’re small town people, and while that’s ok and fine for them, I find it very limiting. It’s talking to people who not only fail to realise that not everyone’s right handed, but have literally never heard of countries whose newspapers and popular press write/print right to left, top to bottom, because that’s the formal way to write. It’s chatting with these people who think that going vegan is bad for you, and when I say that Buddhists have been doing it for thousands of years and most of them seemed ok, they’re surprised. It’s recounting the story of the night you and your mate went out and got hammered at the bar, closed it at 4am by dancing on the table, setting fire to the noodles in 7-11 (I am still absolutely sure there was no mention of water in any of those instructions) on the munchies detour home, strolling back to the flat with a couple of coppers who found us fascinating - and they think this is something you’ve made up. No mate, you say patiently, that was par for the course pretty much one random Friday night a month.

So I want to be somewhere I cannot be - Hong Kong of 2013. It’s gone, and nothing will bring it back. My choice now is stay where I am or find a new city, one where I can work by simply flashing a passport. Somewhere fun, and vibrant, and alive - and preferably cheaper to live where I am now.

When it’s all concrete I’ll let you in on it. For now though, I’m checking Zoopla and RightMove, and I’m making lists and checking ‘em twice. Moving is tricky to be sure, but it’s a damn sight better than staying out here in Bumblefuck Nowhereville, waiting for something vaguely exciting to happen.

Soopytwist.

The 37th Hong Kong Film Awards (2018)

Just in case you didn’t know, the Hong Kong film awards happened on Sunday 15th April 2018 - Hong Kong time. A star-studded event taking place in the HK Cultural Centre, every year it promises to either enrage or delight people who are nominated, people who win, people who report on it, and people who try to censor the winners.

Here you go (don't say I never do anything for you) - the nominations, and the winners in yellow:

Best Film (最佳電影)


Shock Wave (拆彈專家)

Co-Presented by: Universe Entertainment Ltd, Infinitus Entertainment Ltd, Bona Film Group Co Ltd, Xiaomi Pictures Co Ltd, Tencent Penguin Pictures (Shanghai) Co Ltd, Sublime Media Co Ltd, Yinming Culture Communication Co Ltd, Shanghai Tao Piao Piao Movie & TV Culture Co Ltd.
Produced by：Alvin Lam, Andy Lau, Chan Pui Wah, Esther Koo, Alice Chan, Jeffrey Chan, Simon Li, Thomas Tang, Chang Bin, C.K. Wong, Xingbo Guan (監製：林小强、劉德華、陳佩華、古玉芬、陳惠中、陳永雄、李啓承、唐沐、常斌、黃俊淇、關興波)

Our Time Will Come (明月幾時有)
Co-Presented by: Bona Entertainment Co Ltd, Tencent Penguin Pictures (Shanghai) Co Ltd, Shanghai Entertainment Team Media Group, The One Media Group Co Ltd, Shanghai Bona Cultural Media Co Ltd

Produced by：Roger Lee, Stephen Lam, Ann Hui (監製：李恩霖、林炳坤、許鞍華)


Love Education (相愛相親)

Co-Presented by: Beijing Hairun Pictures Group Ltd, Dream Creek Production Co Ltd

Produced by：Patricia Cheng (監製：莊麗真)


Chasing The Dragon (追龍)

Co-Presented by：Mega-Vision Project Workshop Ltd, Infinitus Entertainment Ltd, Sun Entertainment Culture Ltd, Sil-Metropole Organisation Ltd, Bona Film Group Co Ltd, Red Carpet Cultural Industry Investment Fund, Rock Partner Film

Produced by：Wong Jing, Donnie Yen, Andy Lau, Connie Wong (監製：王晶、甄子丹、劉德華、王雅琳)


Paradox (殺破狼．貪狼)

Co-Presented by：Sun Entertainment Films Ltd, Sunny Side Up (Never) Ltd, Sil-Metropole Organisation Ltd, Bona Film Group Co Ltd, Shanghai Alibaba Pictures Co Ltd

Produced by：Soi Cheang, Paco Wong (監製：鄭保瑞、黃柏高)


Best Director (最佳導演)


Kearen Pang (29+1) 彭秀慧（29+1）

Herman Yau (Shock Wave) 邱禮濤（拆彈專家）

Ann Hui (Our Time Will Come) 許鞍華（明月幾時有）

Sylvia Chang (Love Education) 張艾嘉（相愛相親）

Yip Wai Shun (Paradox) 葉偉信（殺破狼．貪狼）


Best Screenplay (最佳編劇)


Kearen Pang (29+1) 彭秀慧（29+1）

Ho Kei Ping (Our Time Will Come) 何冀平（明月幾時有）

Pang Ho Cheung, Jimmy Wan, Luk Yee Sum (Love Off The Cuff) 彭浩翔、尹志文、陸以心（春嬌救志明）
Sylvia Chang, You Xiao-Ying (Love Education) 張艾嘉、游曉穎（相愛相親）
Cheung King Wai (Somewhere Beyond The Mist) 張經緯（藍天白雲）


Best Actor (最佳男主角)


Ronald Cheng (Concerto Of The Bully) 鄭中基（大樂師．為愛配樂）
Andy Lau (Shock Wave) 劉德華（拆彈專家）
Tian Zhuang-Zhuang (Love Education) 田壯壯（相愛相親）
Louis Koo (Paradox) 古天樂（殺破狼．貪狼）
Ling Man Lung (Tomorrow Is Another Day) 凌文龍（黃金花）

Best Actress (最佳女主角)


Chrissie Chau (29+1) 周秀娜（29+1）
Zhou Xun (Our Time Will Come) 周迅（明月幾時有）
Stephy Tang (The Empty Hands) 鄧麗欣（空手道）
Sylvia Chang (Love Education) 張艾嘉（相愛相親）
Teresa Mo (Tomorrow Is Another Day) 毛舜筠（黃金花）

Best Supporting Actor (最佳男配角)


Philip Keung (Concerto Of The Bully) 姜皓文（大樂師．為愛配樂）
Philip Keung (Shock Wave) 姜皓文（拆彈專家）
Yasuaki Kurata (The Empty Hands) 倉田保昭（空手道）
Paul Chun (Love Off The Cuff) 秦沛（春嬌救志明）
Lam Ka Tung (Paradox) 林家棟（殺破狼．貪狼）
Yasuaki Kurata (God of War) 倉田保昭（蕩寇風雲）

Best Supporting Actress (最佳女配角)


Joyce Cheng (29+1) 鄭欣宜（29+1）
Deanie Ip (Our Time Will Come) 葉德嫻（明月幾時有）
Estelle Wu (Love Education) 吳彥姝（相愛相親）
Susan Shaw (Vampire Cleanup Department) 邵音音（救殭清道夫）
Baby Bo (Somewhere Beyond The Mist) 寶珮如（藍天白雲）

Best New Performer (最佳新演員)


Larine Tang (The Yuppie Fantasia 3) 鄧月平（小男人週記3之吾家有喜）
Stephanie Au (Love Off The Cuff) 歐鎧淳（春嬌救志明）
Hanna Chan (Paradox) 陳漢娜（殺破狼．貪狼）
Ling Man Lung (Tomorrow Is Another Day) 凌文龍（黃金花）
Rachel Leung (Somewhere Beyond The Mist) 梁雍婷（藍天白雲）

Best Cinematography (最佳攝影)


Nelson Yu (Our Time Will Come) 余力為（明月幾時有）
Tam Wai Kai (The Empty Hands) 譚運佳（空手道）
Lee Ping Bing Mark (Love Education) 李屏賓（相愛相親）
Jason Kwan (Chasing The Dragon) 關智耀（追龍）
Tse Chung To Kenny (Paradox) 謝忠道（殺破狼．貪狼）

Best Film Editing (最佳剪接)


Chang Suk Ping William, Shirley Yip (In Your Dreams) 張叔平、葉婉婷（以青春的名義）
Azreal Chung (Shock Wave) 鍾煒釗（拆彈專家）
Mary Stephen, Kong Chi Leung (Our Time Will Come) 雪蓮、鄺志良（明月幾時有）
Li Ka Wing (Chasing The Dragon) 李嘉榮（追龍）
Wong Hoi (Paradox) 黃海（殺破狼．貪狼）

Best Art Direction (最佳美術指導)


Yoshihito Akatsuka, Liao Huei-Li, Guo Zhongshan (Journey To The West : The Demons Strike Back) 赤塚佳仁、廖惠麗、郭鐘山（西遊伏妖篇）
Man Lim Chung, Billy Li (Our Time Will Come) 文念中、利國林（明月幾時有）
Irving Cheung (The Empty Hands) 張蚊（空手道）
Eric Lam (Wukong) 林子僑（悟空傳）
James Cheung (Chasing The Dragon) 張英華（追龍）

Best Costume & Make Up Design (最佳服裝造型設計)


Bruce Yu, Lee Pik Kwan (Journey To The West : The Demons Strike Back) 余家安、利碧君（西遊伏妖篇）
Man Lim Chung, Polly Chan (Our Time Will Come) 文念中、陳寶欣（明月幾時有）
Bruce Yu, Lee Pik Kwan (Wukong) 余家安、利碧君（悟空傳）
Yee Chung Man, Bruce Yu, Kwok Suk Man (Chasing The Dragon) 奚仲文、余家安、郭淑敏（追龍）
Dora Ng (This Is Not What I Expected) 吳里璐（喜歡．你）

Best Action Choreography (最佳動作設計)


Li Chung Chi (The Brink) 李忠志（狂獸）
Yuen Cheung Yan, Yuen Shun Yi (The Thousand Faces Of Dunjia) 袁祥仁、袁信義（奇門遁甲）
Ku Huen Chiu (Wukong) 谷軒昭（悟空傳）
Yu Kang, Yuen Bun, Yan Hua (Chasing The Dragon) 喻亢、元彬、嚴華（追龍）
Sammo Hung (Paradox) 洪金寶（殺破狼．貪狼）

Best Original Film Score (最佳原創電影音樂)


Wong Ngai Lun, Yung Wai Ying Janet (29+1) 黃艾倫、翁瑋盈（29+1）
Peter Kam (Concerto Of The Bully) 金培達（大樂師．為愛配樂）
Joe Hisaishi (Our Time Will Come) 久石讓（明月幾時有）
Veronica Lee (The Empty Hands) 李端嫻（空手道）
Kay Huang (Love Education) 黃韻玲（相愛相親）

Best Original Film Song (最佳原創電影歌曲)


Fake A Smile (For Hector)（29+1）

作曲 Composer：李拾壹 Subyub Lee

填詞 Lyrics：李拾壹 Subyub Lee

主唱 Sung by：李拾壹 Subyub Lee


An Unheard Melody (Concerto Of The Bully) 沒聽過的歌（大樂師．為愛配樂）
作曲 Composer：金培達Peter Kam

填詞 Lyrics：陳少琪 Chen Shao-qi

主唱 Sung by：鄭中基 Ronald Cheng


Flowers In Blossom (Love Education) 陌上花開（相愛相親）

作曲 Composer：黃韻玲 Kay Huang

填詞 Lyrics：林珺帆 Lam Kwun Fan

主唱 Sung by：譚維維 Tan Wei Wei


Vampire Cleanup Department 長相廝守（救殭清道夫)

作曲 Composer：ToNick

填詞 Lyrics：梁栢堅、薑檸樂 Leung Pak Kin, Gingerlemon Cola

主唱 Sung by：ToNick


When I Love You (This Is Not What I Expected) 我喜歡上你時的內心活動（喜歡．你）

作曲 Composer：陳光榮 Chan Kwong Wing

填詞 Lyrics：韓寒 Han Han

主唱 Sung by：陳綺貞 Cheer Chen


Best Sound Design (最佳音響效果)


Kinson Tsang, Yiu Chun Hin (Journey To The West : The Demons Strike Back) 曾景祥、姚俊軒（西遊伏妖篇）
Nip Kei Wing, Ip Siu Kei (Shock Wave) 聶基榮、葉兆基（拆彈專家）
Tu Duchih, Wu Shu-yao (Our Time Will Come) 杜篤之、吳書瑤（明月幾時有）
Hao Gang, Wang Chong (Wukong) 郝鋼、王沖（悟空傳）
Kinson Tsang, Lee Yiu Keung George (Paradox) 曾景祥、李耀強（殺破狼．貪狼）

Best Visual Effects (最佳視覺效果)

Park Youngsoo, Kim Wook (Journey To The West : The Demons Strike Back) 朴英秀、金旭（西遊伏妖篇）
Jang Seongho, Park Youngsoo, Son Ohhyoung (The Thousand Faces Of Dunjia) 張誠浩、朴英秀、孫五亨（奇門遁甲）
Yee Kwok Leung, Chui Tak Piu, Lin Chun Yue Jules, Ho Ka Chuen Loki (Shock Wave) 余國亮、徐德彪、林駿宇、何家全（拆彈專家）
Victor Wong, Eman Tse (The Founding Of An Army) 黃宏達、謝伊文（建軍大業）
Henri Wong, Eric Xu (Wukong) 黃智亨、徐建（悟空傳）

Best New Director (新晉導演)


Kearen Pang (29+1) 彭秀慧（29+1）
Jonathan Li (The Brink) 李子俊（狂獸）
Chapman To (The Empty Hands) 杜汶澤（空手道）
Derek Hui (This Is Not What I Expected) 許宏宇（喜歡．你）
Chan Tai Lee (Tomorrow Is Another Day) 陳大利（黃金花）

Best Film From Mainland and Taiwan (最佳兩岸華語電影)


The Great Buddha+ (大佛普拉斯)
The Bold, the Corrupt, and the Beautiful (血觀音)
Youth (芳華)
Duckweed (乘風破浪)
Wolf Warrior II (戰狼II)

Professional Achievement Award: Pauline Yeung Yung-Lin

Lifetime Achievement Award: Chor Yuen

Well it looks like I’ve just made a list of films I have to see, so I’m love you and leave you, and try to organise my life so I have more screen time.

Soopytwist.

Film review: Tomb Raider (2018)

Here we are with a rather short review of the new Tomb Raider adaptation, basically because there isn’t that much to say about it.


Warning! Danger, Will Robinson!
Here be SPOILERS for Tomb Raider (2018)

If you’re wondering if you should bother going to the pictures to see this, let me sum it up for you: Lara Croft does Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade , complete with missing dad possibly because he knew too much about his one field of devoted research, a secret underground resting place of a holy artefact, clues to get them through the booby traps and tests in the secret underground resting place that only her dad knew due to said research, finding out the artefact is not what you thought it would be, stopping the bad guys by inadvertently destroying the secret underground resting place, and a secret organisation bent on either saving or destroying the artefact.

That said, it’s constant action and has some very good set pieces. However, I didn’t feel wee Alicia Vikander was Lara enough to be Lara (but then I’m not a fan of Angelina Jolie, either), and the obvious plot ‘twists’ (let’s call them ‘bends’) were jaded. Also: sick of Daddy Issues as a plot device. Seriously, people, come up with something else. There were a few gaping plot points too, and a few moments where I literally giggled because I had a mental image of Stephen Spielberg hulking out and turning into George Lucas at the prospect of suing someone for plagiarism.

The one thing I did like, and latched onto because it was more interesting, was Daniel Wu (you may know him from such American films as Geostorm and the AMC series Into the Badlands). Let’s ignore the obvious gaff in giving him a Mandarin name ('Lu Ren') when he’s supposed to be a Hong Kong fisherman, son of another Hong Kong fisherman; in fact the name he was given in Chinese characters on the overseas poster clearly say his Chinese name is 陸仁, or ‘Luk Yan’. What’s interesting is the first character is often used to talk about China being ‘the mainland’, and the second character means merciful or benevolent. If you did this in a foreign language film guest starring Captain America he’d literally be called ‘America the Merciful’. But hey, no propaganda to see here - move along. Apart from being yet another example of the mainland trying to pretend that Cantonese doesn’t exist when in fact it’s thousands of years older than Mandarin, it’s just rude to keep telling everyone his name is Lu Ren when in fact it’s Luk Yan. The only saving grace is that the people running around Hong Kong after Lara were still allowed to speak the local language - Cantonese. I wonder how many more times that’ll be allowed before the Beijing Film Board get in there and start spreading lies to Westerners, portraying Mandarin as Hong Kong’s mother tongue.

Ahem.

Anyway, save yourself a ticket and have more fun rewatching Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

Verdict: 6.5/10. Been there, done that, bored of the ‘back story’ and Daddy Issues. And if I have to sit through one more tearful and overly-fixated-on-Daddy daughter listening to her oh-so-precious Dad tell her how she’s so “independent” (spot the irony) and “beautiful” (because obviously that’s more important than being capable) I’ll fucking vomit.

There. That’s all the news that’s fit to print. I may cheer myself up with something like 2000 A.D., starring a younger Daniel Wu and a cheeky Aaron Kwok.

Soopytwist.