As I suspected, there would be a Vietnamese connection, if this search were to be completed. And there was. Maybe a 10-minute walk from this room in Tin Hau is a tiny place, hardly more than a food stall, called “Aborigine Vietnamese Baguette House.” And they have some quite nice baguettes there. Now, they aren’t […]

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Funny, what you can blunder into while trying to complete a mundane task. For example, a division from the Army of Northern Virginia decided to raid a Pennsylvania town in July of 1863 because men in the ranks had heard there were a lot of shoes there … and that turned into the Battle of […]

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I missed the memo. Nobody told me October was going to be 89 days this year. Some calendar adjustment, maybe? The Mother of All Leap Years? This was a long month. And it’s not just because of the elections, which can make time slow to a c-r-a-w-l for anyone unlucky enough to have a functioning […]

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This country, which includes Hong Kong, has come a long way — even after Mao’s ill-considered five-year plans, including the infamous Great Leap Forward. I was thinking about this, anew, while reading “The Faces of War” by Martha Gellhorn, a woman who spent about 60 years as a war correspondent. (She started with the Spanish […]

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I could almost swear it was Steve Dilbeck. Well, no, there was no reason Steve Dilbeck should be striding along as I caught up to him on the track at Victoria Park. I don’t think he’s been to Hong Kong, or intends to go. But it could have been him. Instead, it was his Asian […]

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I’ve been in China, let’s see … seven of the last 12 weeks, so that makes me, I believe, a Sinologist. Not necessarily a Sinophile … but a Sino-expert. I know this country of 1.3 billion people backward and forward. You bet. I have learned that the Chinese invented … everything. Just ask them. You […]

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I was doing my 5.4-kilometer creep (jogging is far too ambitious a word) around the running track at Victoria Park the other day, and on Lap 1 I noticed a woman painting. The track is 600 meters around, so each time I went by I studied the woman and her work a bit more. She […]

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That’s how many people live on Hong Kong Island, 1.26 million. And about 1.16 million of them live on a strip of land about a half-mile deep along the north edge of the island. In one of the thousands of high-rises that crowd together in what is, mostly, a concrete and asphalt world. And a […]

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Turns out, we may go beyond just seeing most of Hong Kong’s neighborhoods. We may live in them. After one week in North Point (albeit, a hotel), and 16 days in the madness of Wan Chai, we packed today and moved to Tin Hau, which lies between North Point and Wan Chai. The area is […]

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I’m superstitious, but I’m not. I’ll do certain things a certain way … but if that way gets moved or switched or changed, I roll with it. I’ve lost “lucky” coins and had routines changed. I may resist it, but what are you going to do? Sit in a room with the door locked? So, […]

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