Dirty Foreign Mud

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It's been 10 years since Britain handed back Hong Kong Island and the New Territories to China; to be exact the 10th anniversary of the hand over will be on July 1st. Tony Blair looked a lot younger back then in 1997.


A few grey hairs is not enough punishment for his war crimes in Iraq. Tony, how do you sleep at night? Talking about Liberal Imperialism (Toxic Tony calls it something else) brings me back to Hong Kong and its filthy foreign mud.


The sanctimonious excuses for foreign adventures haven't changed much over the years. In the 19th Century it was called 'Liberal Imperialism'. The noble crusade back in 1840 was the defence of 'free trade'. That's not how the Chinese interpreted events.

The Great Wall

The Opium War, also called the Anglo-Chinese War, was the most humiliating defeat China ever suffered...


By the 1830's, the English had become the major drug-trafficking criminal organization in the world; very few drug cartels of the twentieth century can even touch the England of the early nineteenth century in sheer size of criminality. Growing opium in India, the East India Company shipped tons of opium into Canton which it traded for Chinese manufactured goods and for tea. This trade had produced, quite literally, a country filled with drug addicts, as opium parlors proliferated all throughout China in the early part of the nineteenth century. This trafficking, it should be stressed, was a criminal activity after 1836, but the British traders generously bribed Canton officials in order to keep the opium traffic flowing. The effects on Chinese society were devastating. In fact, there are few periods in Chinese history that approach the early nineteenth century in terms of pure human misery and tragedy.

In an effort to stem the tragedy, the imperial government made opium illegal in 1836 and began to
aggressively close down the opium dens.

(Source:Ch'ing China - The Opium Wars; Website url http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/CHING/OPIUM.HTM )


I found this quote on the Internet, it was one of the few mentions of the Opium Wars that wasn't hidden behind China's new Great Wall. It's virtual wall. It's maybe no surprise that the Chinese state hasn't put this website behind its wall; but a lot of mainstream English Language content on the Internet appears to be hidden behind walls. That seems to include the whole of the BBC's news site and the whole of Wikipedia (the online Encyclopedia). (I'm writing this in Guangzhou in mainland China not Hong Kong).


The Great Firewall is flawed, like it famous fore-runner, The Great (or Long) Wall(s). The Great Wall didn't stop barbarian invasions of China.


The trouble with walls is that people go around, beneath or above them. When I was researching this blog I found that although a lot of content was hidden behind walls, I found the same content mirrored elsewhere on the web. It remains an open question; can the Chinese government stop the flow of the foreign mud from the web?

Opium Wars

Although China had banned Opium it didn't stop British merchants. In 1839 Lin Zexu, a mandarin of integrity had orders to stamp out the opium trade. Lin surrounded the British in Guangzhou (Canton) and cut off their food supplies. After 6 weeks the British turned over 20,000 chests of 'foreign mud'. Lin then burned the Opium chests in central Taiping, in a public show of punishment. The British sent an expedition to extract compensation and secure their right to sell opium in the name of 'free trade'.


The British won the first Opium War. The Treaty of Nanjing opened 5 treaty ports to British residents, exempted British nationals from all Chinese laws and ceded the island of Hong Kong to the British in 'perpetuity.' Some years later the 'New Territories' were added to Hong Kong on a 99 year lease.

Under the weather in KL

Hong Kong was the most recent stop on my multi-year around the world trip. I flew out of Solo in Java on April 17th, (see my last blog 'Tinted window BMWs turning left at the Gucci shop into muddy lanes of begging street children - Jakarta, Bandung, Yogya and Solo' ). It was a cheap flight to KL on Air Asia. I was using KL as a transit city before flying elsewhere. I have visited Malaysia a number of times on this trip (click here, here, here, and here.)


I arrived in KL with a sore throat, which got worse. In fact I felt quite unwell. So, I stopped in KL for a week. I needed that time in order to recover. Eventually I booked a flight from Singapore to Hong Kong. It only cost me 50 pounds. I took the bus from KL to Singapore in order to catch the flight. It's a 5 hour bus ride.

Hong Kong

I arrived in Hong Kong on April 24th late at night. I couldn't be bothered looking for a cheap hotel, so I booked into a relatively expensive mid range hotel. (Hong Kong is expensive compared to most of the rest of Asia). The next morning I moved to cheaper digs around the corner.


I also went to a travel agent who arranged my Visa for mainland China. I was in Hong Kong for 5 nights. Whilst in Hong Kong I visited various sites, which included:


1) The Avenue of Stars. This is Hong Kong's tribute to the stars of the Hong Kong movie industry.

2) Almost a full day in the Museum of History. The mission of the Hong Kong Museum of History is to 'preserve and promote the historical and cultural heritage of Hong Kong.' The permanent exhibition has 8 galleries.

i)The Natural Environment.
ii)Prehistoric Hong Kong.
iii)The Dynasties: From Han to the Quing.
iv)Folk Culture
v)The Opium Wars
vi)Birth and early growth of the city.
vii)The Japanese occupation.
viii)Modern metropolis and the return to China.

I spent so long in the museum because I watched all the multi-media presentations. There was also a temporary exhibition which I also visited. The other exhibition in the museum was Ancient Chinese Civilization, treasures of the Xia, Shang and Shou Dynasties from Henan province. After nearly a full day in the museum I was suffering from information overload.

3) A trip out to Lantau island in the New Territories. Lantau island is twice the size of Hong Kong island, with few people but a lot of hilly walking trails and uncrowded beaches. I took the cable car for Tung Chung to the Ngong Ping Plateau. The Skyrail journey was a 5.7km cable car ride up the side of a mountain. At Ngong Ping I visited the Tian Tan Buddha Statue, which is the worlds largest outdoor seated bronze Buddha.

4) I rode the Peak Tram. This is a funicular railway which rises from 28m to 396m above sea level. The track is 1.4km long with a gradient of between 4 to 27 degrees. The buildings that I passed on the
journey up the hill looked as if they were leaning at 45 degrees.


I left Hong Kong on the 28th of April, catching the high speed train to the mainland city of Guangzhou.

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Photos

Avenue of Stars
Kowloon, Hong Kong Island is in the background across the bay. This is a trubute to Hong Kong's film stars

The 'Sky Train' (Cable Car).
This Cable Car is 5 km long, on Lantau Island. It leads to the Tian Tan Buddha statue.

Hong Kong Cultural Centre
This building in Kowloon has a windowless brick wall that faces a spectacular view of Hong Kong Island.

View of Hong Kong Island from Kowloon
The big building in the middle is the Bank of China.