48 posts tagged “china”

Surprisingly, I have never pasted this video on my blog before. About time that was redressed.

   The YouTube comments include one that reads, ‘Balls of steel’.

Not that I have time but when I am tired I seem to add new cars to Autocade, just to feel productive. Unlike Twitter, etc., it is not fleeting, and I feel I’ve contributed to the knowledge base of the internet. Here were a few that were out of the ordinary in the most recent series of updates.

Lotus Élan S2 (M100). 1994–5 (prod. 800). 2-door convertible. F/F, 1588 cm³ (4 cyl. DOHC). Lotus finds a way to use up the remaining Isuzu engines by issuing a limited-edition S2, while under Bugatti ownership. Handling better sorted after criticisms of too-safe original.

Dongfeng Citroën C2 (T21). 2006 to date (prod. unknown). 5-door sedan. F/F, 1360 cm³ (4 cyl. OHC), 1587 cm³ (4 cyl. DOHC). With the Peugeot brand less successful than the Citroën one in Red China, Dongfeng launched a facelifted Peugeot 206 with fairly well integrated Citroënesque front and rear ends. Mechanically identical to the 206 (which is also made in China). Fairly able, competent if a little dull.

Kish Khodro Sinad Veek. 2004 to date (prod. unknown). 5-door MPV. F/F, 1598 cm³ (4 cyl. OHC). Iranian version of Renault Mégane Scénic I, manufactured under licence by Kish Khodro. Different front end.

Pontiac G8. 2008–9 (prod. 30,693 sold to June 2009). 4-door sedan. F/R, 3564 cm³ (V6 DOHC), 5967, 6162 cm³ (V8 OHV). Americanized Holden Commodore (VE) with Pontiac grille. Critically praised by motoring journalists as a value-for-money sports’ sedan but sold very poorly, leading to cancellation after the 2009 model year, along with the Pontiac brand itself. GXP from 2009, with 6·2-litre V8.

Found on Andrew Lau’s Facebook page, a video with Martin Yan (甄文達), probably the most famous guy in my whanau. Martin and I were both interviewed a few years ago for a book on our clan.

Martin begins with his past in China and his subsequent emigration to the US. It’s a great video and one of the few times we see him speak Cantonese on TV. (He is Taishanese, as I am.)

This had me captured for a while today:

A letter from Dr Sun Yat-sen, the father of modern China, to Henry Ford, discussing the economic and international development of the country. An amazing historical document backing up how Dr Sun saw China, combining his Confucian beliefs and his knowledge of democracy and self-determination. He was also prescient in saying that China could be the centre of the next world war if it did not set itself straight. Naturally, a man of Dr Sun’s knowledge and training had perfect written English—much like modern Chinese.

The Opel Insignia’s shape has grown on me but it is almost too contemporary—suited to today’s trends, so how will it look come 2011? Still, it is miles better than the Daewoo Tosca that is sold in New Zealand with Holden badges. The Vectra C’s replacement should always have been the Insignia in this market, too—I am seeing the Tosca trounced by Camry, Mazda Atenza and Ford Mondeo.
   The first video is a bit dull but the second has interior and exterior shots, filmed against the London background.
   This car has won Car of the Year in Europe and the Gelben Engel from ADAC (the German Automobile Club). In other words, some people think it’s a world-beater, but I don’t believe it will head to the US. There are rumours it could come Down Under to supplant the awful Tosca.
   We do know it sells in China with Buick badges.
   What a shame it has come while GM is in such deep trouble—everyone is focusing on the troubles and not the car.

For those of you outside New Zealand, Radio New Zealand National has put up the episode of The Golden Tide that features yours truly. Sonia Yee, who produced the series, introduces it, and I have had a lot of good comments already about it. (It seems a lot of people, even in New Zealand, prefer to listen to the MP3 online than wait for the programme to air.) My comments seem to have struck a chord with other Chinese men about the media’s perception and treatment of our race. Here’s the MP3.

I entered Hong Kong as many of us old colonials would: with a British passport (air hair lair, what) and a falling-apart Hong Kong Permanent Identity Card (PIC).
   I did have a few problems with the latter, because it was issued in 1995, and it did not have much of the information that the new ones now contain, like your thumbprint, a photograph without a Melrose Place hairstyle and samples of my DNA contained in hermetically sealed vials of sweat, or whatever these newfangled things they have nowadays on identity cards.
   (In fact, I had problems with my British passport, notably at Waterloo Station where the passport controller insisted I was not British and had to queue up with foreigners. It was ironic that she was black and was herself practising apartheid. I had been British for longer than she had, thank you very much. The matter was ultimately raised with the PM after correspondence with the British High Commissioner, the Foreign Secretary, and the Shadow Foreign Secretary was ignored. I was going to expose all this and had some Fleet Street friends willing to aid and abet in the cause of true patriotism, but then HRH Princess Margaret went and inconveniently died on us.
   Since then, armed with this correspondence, I have not had any problems entering the United Kingdom on a British passport. I was under the impression we overseas British had the same Queen whose ‘Secretary of State Requests and requires in the Name of Her Majesty all those whom it may concern to allow the bearer to pass freely without let or hindrance’. Funnily enough, this is respected in France and Germany, even the US where we are allies on the War on Terror, but not Britain herself. But I digress.)
   I was still let through because the PIC number matched what was noted on my passport, though the controller, a very charming lady by the name of Y. T. Chan, advised I should get the PIC changed ASAP.
   Fast forward to today. We are very law-abiding, we British, so I began checking. There’s nothing at the British High Commission site about the PIC, but the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region website does have an application form and some notes.
   The problem, as I discovered, is that Britons like me cannot get a new PIC without applying for a HKSAR passport at the same time, which entails becoming a Communist.
   And I know from experience that my definition of ‘Chinese citizen’ somehow differs from that of the Politburo politician and the Beijing bureaucrat.
   My father did not escape from the Commies in 1949 just so his son could get into bed with the Reds.
   My mother did not insist on emigrating in 1976 to avoid the perceived peril of 1997 just so her son could get into bed with the Reds.
   I am proudly Chinese. I am proud of my culture. I am proud of my heritage. But I do not believe that the chaps who came to occupy my family’s land in ’49 have much of a right to it.
   Or the chaps that overran Beijing.
   Not while the Chinese people lack self-determination, a basic requirement under the UN Charter if China wishes to call itself a state.
   Some of my family members are technically, if not willingly, communists, but it doesn’t mean I have to join them.
   All I want is to retain my nationality as a British subject and get a PIC to which I believe I am rightly entitled by my domicil of origin.
   Back in 1995, this was perfectly feasible and I was under the assumption that the Reds would continue respecting the status quo ante when it came to administrative matters like this for an uninterrupted 50 years. And since when have Hong Kongers gone and pissed off Beijing? Well, apart from every June 4?
   We have contributed quite nicely to the Pekingese capitalist public purse, and the sayings of the old Chinese profit.
   I do hope, one day, there will be a united China, possibly a commonwealth of independent states. I also hope to see self-determination by the Chinese people exercised in my lifetime. But I have zero affinity with communist régimes, anywhere in the world, and certainly won’t be looking at changing my allegiance from HM the Queen, even if modern Britain is in a mess and it gave us Gary Glitter and selected nonces. There are some of us who are proud to be old colonials, who remember what it used to mean to be British, even if it is couched in some idealist, double-decker-bus-and-cobbled-street world where John Steed could poke a baddie with his brolley—and without us colonials kowtowing to any body, thank you very much.
   And quite simply, I agree more even with a faded modern Blairbrown-shaded Britain subservient to some Brussels Bonaparte than with a totalitarian régime that did its best to try to knock some of my family off, or shove them into jail on no charge.
   There is quite a price to be paid for loyalty to Her Britannic Majesty, but there you have it. It is a choice I quite publicly make.
   Tomorrow: a visit to the High Commission to see what HM Government can do. If they even care. Let’s hope they do, more so than after the Waterloo incident.

I had never heard of Intopic until I bought one of its keyboards in Mongkok in Hong Kong. It turns out it’s a Taiwanese firm with a full line of keyboards and mice, as well as other products.
   So far, so good. I need a keyboard around 39 cm wide (this is 8 mm beyond that): any wider, I find that I develop RSI problems because of reaching for the mouse. This one is about one column of keys wider than what I generally like, but these days, in Hong Kong, it’s the narrowest multimedia keyboard money can buy.

   My old one was a Genius keyboard, which always presented a few problems. The first was that it was very easy for things to get between the keys and to mess up its operation. The L key never worked properly from scratch and needed cleaning. The full stop or period key was inexplicably narrower than the rest. But I loved that keyboard because it spoiled me: direct buttons to calculator, browser controls, volume, etc. It was also under that 39 cm limit. It was a pity that it wasn’t that well made: a slightly longer thumbnail soon put a dent in the space bar, and I had to take it apart on numerous occasions to clean it so its keys would continue working. It never stood a chance when some Glaceau Vitamin Water flew out of its bottle on opening.
   Basically, it was the least robust keyboard I have ever owned, dying in about three years. It’s meant to be laptop-style, but if I had a keyboard like that on a laptop, I would be very upset.
   Beautiful to look at, and not bad to use; plus the keys sounded nice when you pressed them. With hindsight, however, it was not the best ownership experience, regardless of the very low price I paid.
   The new one isn’t trouble-free, but quality-wise, it seems to beat the Genius hands-down. For starters, I paid a low HK$98 (plus HK$10 for a USB–PS2 adapter, which, I might add, needed a quick fix from me due to a piece of metal inside being flimsy). The keys feel a tad too soft, not in the materials, but in the springing action beneath them. There is an illogical addition of the backslash key to the left of the space bar, where I expect Alt to be. (It is unnecessary: there is another backslash key beneath the backspace one.) And the extra column of keys to the right of backspace and enter is a bit annoying: this is where Intopic has relocated home, page up, page down and end to, but this seems to be a common design now among narrower Chinese keyboards.
   The good news is that the keys have stood up to constant use better than the Genius; I finally have the luxury of a normal-sized full stop; the build quality is less flimsy than the Genius’s; and it turns out, according to the Intopic brochure inside the box, that this KBD-10 model is the narrowest it makes (39·8 cm). I have fewer hot keys, sadly, and only a couple are for browsing, but since narrow keyboards with these additional keys are hard to come by these days, I am not complaining. My brain is slowly rewiring itself to the new Alt key, and the fact that the home key is in a slightly more logical place than on the Genius (between Control and the Windows start menu keys).
   Genius still makes a multimedia keyboard which would have been the logical replacement to my old KB-19e, but I am happy to have the Intopic instead. Originally I had some doubts but the better quality, even in its first week, speaks for itself. I was lucky, in that case, that the computer mall in Mongkok didn’t have anyone importing the Genius brand.
   The only other one that could have been a contender in Hong Kong was a Logitech keyboard, which was also available here from Dick Smith Electronics at a mere NZ$30. However, there were no hot keys and I noticed the one in stock at Noel Leeming had Arial on the keys: a no-no for someone who detests the look of that typeface family. I was going to show you the picture of that one, but the Logitech website is not loading: not a good sign. (The one at left is from the Dick Smith site.)
   A hunt around the computer malls of New Delhi resulted in nothing suitable: either there were the laptop-style ones with no numeric keypad (since I write in French and German, I need the keypad for a PC) or ultra-wide ones which I could get anywhere else in the world.
   So, the keyboard search was successful: here’s to a reliable Intopic-owning experience. And as the first week has revealed fewer problems than the Genius, I hope the company gets to export its wares more widely.

[Cross-posted] Sonia Yee was kind enough to provide me with a preview of Part Three of her series, The Golden Tide (see earlier post here), which appears on Radio New Zealand National each Sunday at 2.30 p.m. from December 28. I’m thrilled with this episode, which airs January 11: she chose some of my better quotes and discarded my non sequiturs, for which I am very grateful. This is required listening: this is not “a Chinese programme” per se. The musical score is outstanding, as is the post work. It is a commentary about cultural identity, and about what it means to be a New Zealander. In a nation where everyone, including the Māori, can trace their roots to another land, we need to understand issues such as pigeon-holing, marginalization, stereotypes, assimilation and identity.

[Cross-posted] Half the country likes National Radio—or Radio New Zealand National, to give it its proper name these days—during the summer, and half the country dislikes it. The programming changes from the usual formula and I have often said that shows like Matinee Idle (not a misspelling) are among the highlights of the wireless year. While my loyalties still reside with Groove 107·7 here in Wellington, New Zealand for most of the day, National does some great stuff that’s worth tuning in to.
   This summer, there is a new highlight, and not just because I have been interviewed for it. The Golden Tide is a series by Sonia Yee beginning on Sunday, December 28 at 2.30 p.m., running to January 25 (weekly). It will appear on the RNZ website, I believe, after broadcast.
   Sonia wrote one article in issue 26 of Lucire (which also appears online) but our connection is that I was at school with her cousin; and, of course, we are both of Chinese ethnicity, which was one qualification for being a subject in her series.
   The Golden Tide ‘takes a fresh, contemporary look at the changing nature of the Chinese community in New Zealand,’ according to Sonia, and ‘interweaves interview material with poetry, short stories and scripted scenes to create a rich, textured documentary, with original composition by musician Riki Gooch (Fat Freddy’s Drop, Trinity Roots), and film and theatre composer Stephen Gallagher.’
   If we promote TV shows and film on occasion in Lucire, then why not radio? And good radio, too—things which you feel richer for having listened to. Based on the questions that Sonia asked me, I think it will be a very insightful series that tell a story common to so many of us who have travelled and settled in a new country, or those who have had ancestors who have done the same. Most of us got here from somewhere, and it’s an interesting cultural experience to share.