Goods of Desire:

Worked till I dropped yesterday & today, as Christie's HK is holding auction previews till Sat., then auctions on Sun and Mon. Being an intern with not much to do (or rather, an intern so inexperienced that she's unfit to handle fired clay worth a cool US$ 2.5 million) I happily sneaked into the 20th c. Chinese art, Asian contemporary art and SE Asian painting sections, rooms that were more my natural habitat. Unaware that art can instill that strong, impulsive desire to own the way designer fashion does, my heart pounded when I caught sight of the works below. Purely love at first sight.

Boats at the Beach by Indonesian artist Srihadi Sudarsono.
This is something I can look at forever, especially at the end of a long day. Rothko meets the Impressionists. And oh so out of my price range. *deep sigh*


Anchang Village, collage sewn with denim scraps by Korean artist Choi So-Young. (Born in 1980?! She's the same age as me!) *feelings of incompetency creeping in*


The Grain - Chest by Korean artist Kim Duck-Yong, collage with wooden blocks and bronze locks inlaid.


Iron wire sculpture imitating crackled celadon ceramics, by Korean artist Cheong Kwang-Ho (Wow I'm "discovering" a whole nation of talents here)
Now I'm tempted to prod / blackmail / guilt trip my dad into buying the cheapest works ("Hey I never asked for a graduation present, and I'm never gonna pass the driving test..."), or even digging into my own savings... *red finance siren lights flashing*

In the name of Art?!

Interning for approx US$ 8 per working day. Either faxing / "film queen"ing by the photocopier / filing / cutting and pasting old catalogue pictures onto cardboard sheets for archival, or worse, polishing windows on knees for entire afternoons before auction previews. Earning less than the Filippino maid at home. All this after spending US$ n00,000 on tuition. *despair*

The trouble with living in a high culture vacuum

is that whenever anything of vague significance takes place, the whole town flocks to see it. This past Sunday, I joined other fellow sheep citizens to see Picasso's Parade, a mofo-sized three-storey-tall painting (or rather, to put it correctly, a ballet theatre screen) , the artiste's largest known work, displayed in all places, at the IFC mall next to a bunch of high end cosmetics and fashion stores. (Seeing how the average HKer never sets foot in a local musuem, wouldn't it make more sense to display it at a newish mall that needs a major attraction?)

Word had it that Pompidou only shows the work once in 20 years, and never before had it been shown in Asia. The queues were long. The tickets for a guided tour were sold out through Monday. The popularity of the event raised my expectations.

I was quickly disappointed. The work is far from Picasso's best; inspite of its size it's definitely no Guernica. It looked like the work of a starving artist, trying to earn some extra pocket money. (Though Picasso couldn't have been too starved, since this was his Rose Period.) The fact that I had to elbow through crowds of people just to see the bloody painting didn't exactly enhance my art-appreciation mood. Everyone had their cell phones and digicams out, snapping away. (Wouldn't a Picasso make a great cell phone wallpaper?) Security guards yelling at people taking pictures with flash.

Damn, have some respect for art people!

Heck, I'm a tourist too.
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The Andrei Tarkovsky Filmfest is on.
And it conveniently coincides with Christie's auctions, the only time that I'd be really busy during my internship. Hope I won't be too dead after work to catch this.

Team America:

As recommended by my bro. Looks like a fun, silly, piss-taking ride.
(Apologies to Stateside folks, I now live in the Land of Narrower Bandwidths: little contact with Internet -> delayed news. Ya know, Fahrenheit 911 is only just released on these shores.)

Sam Hui, the People's hero 許冠傑 人民英雄 :

Thanks to me mate Peaks' generosity, I finally got to see Sam Hui live in concert, 12 years after his retirement. With 40 odd sold-out concerts and a total audience of 420,000 (that's 7% of HK) , there can be little doubt that Sam Hui's still the King / Godfather of Cantopop. And for a 56 yr old singer who hasn't publicly performed in more than a decade, he did a damn fine job, singing almost non-stop for four hours (making this the best valued concert I've EVER been to.) In stark contrast, his 40-yr-junior guest stars Cookies , Cowgirls (wtf?) and his Barbie-like students merely highlighted the fact that HK aint making popstars like we used to.

If Leslie Cheung and Anita Mui were relics from the 80's decadent, lavish excesses, then Sam Hui must be the icon for the 70's tougher times. Sam and his two brothers almost singlehandedly invented Cantopop, with their folksy numbers and cheeky lyrics throughout the 70's and 80's. Their songs about economic hardship, droughts, shanty towns and salarymen's daily grind made the grassroots' voice heard. For a post Asian economic crisis and SARS stricken HK, there is no better soundtrack.

Thumbs Up:

* The whole "family affair"-ness of the concert -
Little did I realise how sorely I missed the Hui Brothers' unique s.o.h. : cheeky without being too offensively crass, witty and smart in their not-too-high-not-too-low way. Even Stephen Chow 's "mo lei tow" movies pale in comparison. Sam's two sons Ryan and Scott are particularly to be applauded for not being embarrassed about performing with Dad in front of a stadium jam-packed with 12, 000 people.

* The goodie bag -
Love the cheap and cheerful small red white and blue polystyrene bag, (the type that amah's and Filippino maids use when they go home) packed with equally cheap thrills: a giant rubber band, glow-in-blacklight paper boat, a miniature Sam action figure, whistle and all.

Thumbs down:

* The guest stars -
They sucked. Groups of 4 and 16 girls singing off pitch does some serious goosebump spiking. And with 16 voices you can't even hear what they are singing. Not even qualified to be backup singers.

* The leopard costume theme -
on a 56 yr old can be a bit strange. Oh well, he's Sam and we HKers love him anyway, however weird his dress sense.

Movie watching... the old skool way

Rewatched Sergei Eisenstein's 1925 classic, Battleship Potemkin last night. This time round, instead of watching the Soviet silent film in a cramped classroom with popcorn being passed back and forth, I watched it in a concert hall with live music: Dmitri Shostakovich's symphonies 5, 10 and 11 played by the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra. With heroic bits of brass and drums rolling, the experience was electrifying, to the point of being almost religious. * At the triumphant end of the film I was almost tempted to shout, "Workers of the world unite!"

Wonder if Stalin would turn in his grave if he knew the Communist films he commissioned would be viewed by "bourgeois" concert-goers in an age when consumerism dominates?

* Though my parents thought otherwise - saying that the film was super-Communist (it's a propaganda film to start with) - and sporadically dozed throughout the film.

Gonna stay

in HK till Thankgiving at the earliest, as have decided to do a non-paid internship at Christie's Hong Kong, just to see their upcoming auctions, learn about their operations and what not. Think I'd be working in the Chinese Ceramics dept... not as exciting as say, Fine Jewellery or Watches and Clocks, but it sure beats being unemployed. So I'd be donating myself to the elitist bandwagon, to serve over-priviledged high society types for the next 1.5 months. Just hope my malcoorinated self doesn't break any heirloom-type treasures.

Movie magick:

Woah. Still mildly star-dazed from meeting two heavy-weight names in the HK film industry today. Thanks to Auntie Linda, sister to Vincent Kok Tak-Chiu (comic actor / director / producer) , I got to meet Hai Chung-Man, of art direction / costume & production design fame in hits like Three Extreme: Dumplings, Golden Chicken I & II, and erm... The Twins Effect @_@ [that trashy vampire movie with Twins?! I guess ppl have to make $ one way or another]

Half way through the meeting, Peter Chan Ho-Sun walked in (I was sitting in the conference room of HIS production co. afterall) I was even briefly introduced to the director of Comrades: Almost a Love Story and He'a Woman, She's a Man. I even caught sight of thick scripts for upcoming projects sitting on the table: Perhaps Love, a musical of some sort (wonder who will be the lead singers?), and Waiting. In today's quality-film-starved HK, I'm sure I am not the only person waiting to see these in cinemas.

Hope this won't be the end of the story... when when when will it be my turn to break into the movie-makers' hall of fame?
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Finally.
Gonna see 2046 tonight, as I'm done with mad porfolio compiling, interviewing, making calls and all other job-hunting errands for the day.

For a sneak preview, I hopped over to TST to see some costumes and props used in the movie, on show at a local mall.

Bai Ling's cheongsam, worn by Zhang Ziyi; Carina Lau's paper-like android costume


Props for Mo-Wan's makeshift study in Room 2047

People Mountain People Sea:

Popped up to Guangzhou yesterday. Was overwhelmingly crowded (roughly 3x the flow in Mongkok or Causeway Bay) as it was the National Day long weekend. Being pushed by and shuffled along the flow of a slow moving 10-million-strong human trampede can be overbearing after 5 mins - but now I know why EVERYONE wants to break into that Chinese market.

Irony spotted - A sign at the HK-China border on the Shenzhen side reads: "Let's make Shenzhen a civilised model city for modern socialism." Hmmm... where are the signs of socialism in this skyscraper-cladded, HK-wannabe city?

The jade and antiques market


"Old Comrade" brand tea brick (note: comrade = gays and lesbians in Cantonese); circular tea bricks




The old Guangzhou town center