Hong Kong, March 16, 1992

香港深井麗都花园 1992年3月16日
St Patrick's day tomorrow

In American large cities, the automobile is king. While motorcars are important here [Hong Kong], most people don't have them. Nor is there much cycle traffic. Therefore most people walk and ride busses. Despite this, the roads are very busy and there are therefore many overhead walkways [across roads] and underground subways [way for pedestrians to cross under a major road] to accommodate pedestrians.

The preponderance of busses has meant that many busses are two-tier ("double-deckers"), in particular those of Kowloon Motor Bus (KMB), the main bus company [note: in my part of HK at least, in March 1992, I hadn't seen much of HK Island which has other bus companies]. This in turn dictates that the minimum clearance on roadways be larger than in the uS, where it is, I believe 14 ft, not enough for a double-decker KMB vehicle. This makes even the simplest motorway (superhighway) interchange an imposing sight.

Topographically, I suppose HK might be compared to Monte Carlo. The populated areas are mostly along the coast (Kowloon peninsula the main exception) with steep mountains not far inland.

This creates incredible challenges when it comes to building roads and apartment buildings [housing estates, as they're called here]. For example, a monster development is going on just NW of me, right on a rock face it seems, and Tuen Mun Road [an elevated superhighway] clings to mountain sides most of the way from Tsuen Wan to Tuen Mun The apartment development here has a shuttle to the MTR (Mass Transit Railway, i.e. metro/subway train) station which happens to be next to the Nan Fung Centre (南豐中心) where I work. The [shuttle] bus travels the Tuen Mun motorway and I behold man's audacity and power for creating this road. I can't help remembering the Nimitz Freeway in Oakland [As I remembered it then, California route 17, an old low-quality freeway, but now greatly improved since the earthquake and now called Interstate 880]


002+ International dialling

In Australia, HK, and other places there is a special fax long distance service [there is no toll on any call within HK, so all "long distance" calls are IDD]
In HK you dial 002 + number instead of 001 + number. My hypothesis [theory] is that this guarantees undersea cable routing [editor's note: later, HSBC got a court ruling against HK Telecom that it was just an excuse to charge more money]

Right this minute I can't call out at all because my telephone has stopped working in the 90% humidity. Later tonight, when the temperature [and humidity] falls, the phone will work.

About 4 years ago, telephone numbers here were re-organized. There used to be a 1 digit area code + 6 or 7 digits, but now all numbers have 7 digits [Editor's note: this was later changed to 8 digits for all numbers, by adding a prefix 2 to all 7-digit numbers. The effect of this is that you can sometimes tell the location of a 2008 HK phone number from the SECOND digit: 24xx xxxx = New Territories, 23xx xxxx = Kowloon, but number portability could mean the phone is now located on Lantau Island]

--
Hong Kong, Sham Tseng, Lido Garden Block 5 20/F Unit A, March 16 1992

Midnight masses -- cancelled!

Here in Vancouver, midnight masses all over the city were cancelled Christmas Eve. And last year I was worrying if I'd have the strength to do it.

And later I was planning to resume my career as church organist.

Whereas I can hardly get up before noon.

This cannot continue.

New Year's resolution time .....

Hong Kong Diary entry for Feb 15, 1992

This is my diary entry from my Hong Kong diary for Feb 16, 1992, after less than 2 weeks in HK, but after being in my new apartment in Sham Tseng. The previous week I spent in 竹園 (Chuk Yuen) housing estate.

Diary entry:
I seem to have a cold

Went to the Macau ferry ticket office at Shun Tak Centre. Actually there are several services to Macau. Two leave from there, one leaves from Central and the fourth leaves from Kowloon.

I went to the Macau Tourist office at Shun Tak [Note added March 18, 1992: Met a nice Macanese (Chinese) young lady there]

HK Diaries

I am starting to post some diary entries, with annotations about my earlier days in Hong Kong in 1992.

At the time I had no computer, only a cheap notebook I bought at a cheap store in Hong Kong.

Points of reference:

I arrived in Hong Kong approx Feb 4, 1992 (Chinese New Year)  Gung Hei Fat Choy! --- A phrase I never heard until it was shown on the plan monitors just before landing.

At first I stayed with a friend (and boss) in his parents' council flat in northern Kowloon. After about a week of that I moved to a flat in Sham Tseng, in New Territories West, a few miles west of Tsuen Wan, the HK suburb where I would be working.

I was fleeing joblessness in Canada. My friend offered me a start in life -- in effect he got me started in life.

Push hands (推手)

In my efforts to learn taiji, the area that has been hardest for me is "push hands".

So I decided to do a little research on it.

First I discovered that the Chinese name is 推手

推 (tui1) is easy enough, it means "push, shove", and contains 隹 (zhui1 dove) which I also learned recently. And of course I've known 手 (hand) for a long time.

Next, I researched the Chinese names of the movements of 推手, and tried to match them to what Master Liang taught in class. In his class they always say "peng lu ji an", but I didn't know these words and couldn't find some of them in my dictionary.

The first part is hardest. After research on the web, I found that the character for "peng" is 掤 but when I look up this character in a dictionary, the meaning and the sound do not match. But I'm sure it's the right character for two reasons

• the right hand part 朋 (friend) has the right sound
• the characters are listed on a web page on Taiji.

According to this page, we have

Jings(勁 )are mental power which utilize Qi to maintain the body postures. "Eight Jings" are Peng (掤 ), Lu (履 ), Ji (擠 ), An (按 ), Cai (採 ), Lie (列 ), Zhou (肘 ), and Kao (靠 ),

The page never gives the meaning of this word, but it does say
"Peng is to pressurize the body and to project the Qi to the outside edge of the body" To get the meaning, I went to another page:

• Peng (掤) - An upward expansive energy, forward or backward, yielding or offsetting usually with the arms, often translated as "Ward Off."
  

Peng is the first part of a push hands exercise: you push your arm (say your right arm) against the arm (right arm) of your partner. Of course he pushes against you too. He uses his body weight, and you use yours.

At some point it's time for 履 (rollback). The dictionary says this character means "shoe" or "tread/walk on", but in Taiji it means "a sideways, circular yielding movement", usually translated as "roll back".

In practise, at the 掤/peng stage, both partners stand face to face, right feet forward, right arm against right arm, palms inward, each pressing on the other (warding the partner off). The action begins as my partner exerts more force by leaning towards me (adding his body weight to his arm strength). I answer this with 履. The are various ways to do this, but the simplest way is this. I use my left hand to grab his elbow on the outside, and move my right hand to his right wrist, then drag his arm to my side, and twist my body. This means he is no longer leaning on me, but falling to my right side. He was trying to use his weight to knock me over, but now he is falling and I am stable.

Next my partner answers this with 擠 (simplified form 挤). He brings his left arm on top of his right arm and uses the extra strength of both arms to continue to try to knock me over. This requires pushing back to centre instead of the side (in 履 I dragged his arm and his whole body to my right, his left).

Now he has the advantage. At the beginning, he was using the strength of his right arm only plus the weight of his body. I answered by trying to take control of his right arm and drag it to my right, neutralizing the "attack" (not really an attack, just an exercise). He answered this part by bringing his left arm into play, on top of his right arm, and continuing the attack, this time with the force of both arms. At this point my left hand is still on his right elbow, and my right hand is on his right wrist but not helping. However, I have some extra time to react because he has to return the action to centre (I dragged him to the side). During this extra time I position both hands to do the final part of the exercise:

按 (an4, àn, press down)

As the final stage of the first cycle begins, his arms are locked together, his left arm on top/on the outside. I put both of my hands on top of his arms, mainly his left arm), and push/press him down and away

As this part ends, we are back to the beginning, except that the arms are opposite: we take our right arms away and the left arms are now in the same position the right arms were at the beginning. Now we change roles, I attack him, he pulls my left arm, etc.

士 and 土

土 tu3 (earth, dust) and 士 (scholar, warrior) look very similar. In fact mistakes are often made.

For instance, at the english version of a Chinese website we see the following
2008 3rd Asia Solar PV Exhibition attracted many companies come from more than 20 countries and regions, such as Germany, France, Switzerland, the United States, Hungary, with their ears, Italy, Japan, Singapore, South Korea,China Taiwan,and so on.

The strange part "with their ears" was supposed to be "Turkey". However, the Chinese original text has

士耳其 (shi er qi) which means nothing, but it's actually a misprint for
土耳其 (tu er qi) sounds like Turkey and that's what it means.

Then somebody used automatic software to translate the Chinese original and that's why we see "With their ears" instead of Turkey.

干 and 千

干 (gan1) is a new character today. My dictionary says it means "shield". Another online dictionary adds "concern, interfere".

干支 (gan1 zhi1) is listed as the sixty year cycle of Chinese years
The dictionary lists 支 as a measure word, or can mean "to erect", or "branch", or "division".
But 干嗎 (gan1 ma) apparently means "What the hell!" or "What's this all about?" or "What should we do?"

千 (qian1) is of course a completely different character, meaning "thousand", but looks similar. The top stroke of 干 is level and left-to-right, but the first/top stroke of千 is written from right to left and higher slanted down a bit. The character is Radical #51 in the traditional list, but has been dropped from the list of radicals in the simplified system. Since it's not a modern (simplified) radical, the modern dictionary places it under the 二 radical, and 千 goes under the 十 radical.

干 is #87 on the Yale list of 1020 basic characters
千 is #251 on the Yale list

隹 - zhui1

This is a new character I learned today. It means "dove".

It's inside 誰 (traditional form of "who") and 谁 (simplified form)

I also learned that 誰人 (shei2ren2) means the rock group "The Who"