Among those who are bywords for fickleness to the Hong Kong Chinese, jockeying for top spot in a pretty open field would be Allen Lee Peng Fei – memorably described as a "weather vane" in Jonathan Dimbleby’s The Last Governor – and (Sir) – in brackets, because he can’t seem to decide whether he wants his knighthood or not - Ti-liang Yang .
Setting to one side his heroic but ultimately doomed struggle to resist the lure of that magical three-letter word, Yang is perhaps best known for running for the position of Hong Kong’s first Chief Executive against Tung Chi-hwa. It is a measure of just how highly Yang is thought of by his peers that he managed to pick up a meagre 42 votes, compared to 320 for the cropped haired one. No wonder he took upEnglish teaching in an attempt to find solace.
Despite these various setbacks, Yang, a former Chief Justice of Hong Kong, has soldiered on the best he can, giving an interview to Next Magazine in 2003 in which he explained that he didn’t take an English name because Sun Yat-sen didn't either, quipping – at least, I hope he was quipping – that he was "as famous as Sun".
I don’t think it’s doing a disservice to Yang to say he belongs to the old school, much like his old chum on the bench,Benjamin Liu , who drew comfort from the "flexibility" of a judicial system under which "both sound and less sound judges may be appointed". One wonders what the Guildford Four and the Birmingham Six – and all others wrongly convicted – would make of that kind of flexibility.
And flexibility is a mainstay of a new Government initiative called theHong Kong Spirit Ambassadors , which has seen the usual suspects (Bernard "Charnwut" Chan, Rosanna Wong, etc.) rounded up to urge us to "resourcefully adapt and energetically overcome" and, if we’ve got any energy left over after that, to "persevere with optimism and a relentless, can-do attitude".
In other words, we must continue working as cogs, as in Chaplin’s Modern Times, and turning a blind eye to the cartels and to the Government cock-ups and U-turns. And Lord save us from "global competition", for it is that which has "resulted in a sense of gloom and negativity in the community".
So, bring out your Hong Kong spirit and unleash your endless possibilities now. You know it makes sense. A leashed possibility is as dangerous as a repressed sexuality. I don’t think I could put it any better than (Sir) T.L. Yang – actually, I probably could, but certainly not as idiosyncratically: “We may all help to make Hong Kong a better tomorrow.”
Setting to one side his heroic but ultimately doomed struggle to resist the lure of that magical three-letter word, Yang is perhaps best known for running for the position of Hong Kong’s first Chief Executive against Tung Chi-hwa. It is a measure of just how highly Yang is thought of by his peers that he managed to pick up a meagre 42 votes, compared to 320 for the cropped haired one. No wonder he took up
Despite these various setbacks, Yang, a former Chief Justice of Hong Kong, has soldiered on the best he can, giving an interview to Next Magazine in 2003 in which he explained that he didn’t take an English name because Sun Yat-sen didn't either, quipping – at least, I hope he was quipping – that he was "as famous as Sun".
I don’t think it’s doing a disservice to Yang to say he belongs to the old school, much like his old chum on the bench,
And flexibility is a mainstay of a new Government initiative called the
In other words, we must continue working as cogs, as in Chaplin’s Modern Times, and turning a blind eye to the cartels and to the Government cock-ups and U-turns. And Lord save us from "global competition", for it is that which has "resulted in a sense of gloom and negativity in the community".
So, bring out your Hong Kong spirit and unleash your endless possibilities now. You know it makes sense. A leashed possibility is as dangerous as a repressed sexuality. I don’t think I could put it any better than (Sir) T.L. Yang – actually, I probably could, but certainly not as idiosyncratically: “We may all help to make Hong Kong a better tomorrow.”
6 comments:
What about the Dave Clark Five?
Fumie, you've made me come glad all over.
The difference is that The Dave Clark Five deserved being locked away.
There the kind of band where the tribute band sounds just as good.
"They are" - homophones!
Further corroboration that TL Yang is of the requisite calibre for sitting on innumerable committees and chairing meaningless quangos from 1997: Hong Kong's Struggle for Selfhood:
"The quality of the judiciary has also been called into question ... What Anthony Duckett [a former deputy director of public prosecutions] observed about the behaviour of senior judges is not without foundation (he particularly named Sir Ti Liang Yang, Hong Kong's Chief Justice) ... 'His Lordship will sit through days of learned submissions from counsel without comment or response ... His judgments can bear little or no relationship to issues that counsel on both sides actually understood to be the subject matter of the proceedings'."
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