This does not come from the man cave as I am working in the Far East for two weeks: one in Hong Kong and one in mainland China. However, the man cave is more a state of mind than a location. You can take the man out of the man cave…etc.
My office window overlooks an apartment block with a children’s playground next to it. I have been watching children running about playing tag. Nothing unusual about that you may think except that the temperature here is in the 30s and, due to the humidity which is only 77% (it gets much higher) the temperature ‘feels like 40C’ according to my weather app.
For those unfamiliar with this part of the Far East or similar parts of South East Asia, being outside here feels like you have your face permanently stuck in an oven. You can almost chew the air. The first few minutes are exhilarating, especially when you emerge from an air-conditioned building, the next few minutes are exhausting and, thereafter, it is unbearable. Rivulets of perspiration run down your back and down your forehead. When you enter another air-conditioned building, they form cold damp patches on your clothing. It takes at least a month to become in any way acclimatised and accustomed to this.
But, back to the children in the playground, they carry on enjoying themselves. Contrast that with schools in the UK which have been keeping children indoors during our feeble ‘heatwaves’. Children should be out in the sun enjoying themselves. Hats and sun block if necessary but, with a nation of couch potatoes in prospect, the last thing we want to encourage is being afraid of a perfectly normal phenomenon – sunshine.
Most of the civilised world was British at one time and a great deal of it was hot. We did that dressed in those great symbols of oppression, pith helmets and safari suits. Now we’re issued warm weather warnings every time the sun comes out.
Train of thought
This morning, I travelled to my office on the MTR (Mass Transit Rail) which is Hong Kong’s growing network of overground and underground rail that moves millions of its inhabitants around with barely a glitch. The train came a few minutes after the previous one and there will have been a following train a few minutes later. They glide quickly and quietly into and out of the stations.
The trains are spotless, as are the stations, as are the walkways and malls through which I walk to my office. Unskilled labour is cheap in Hong Kong. The minimum wage, which is what most cleaners and sweepers will be paid, is £4 per hour. The minimum wage for a 16–17-year-old apprentice in the UK is £7.55. We have more strikes in the UK than in Hong Kong and pay our workers more, yet our trains rarely run on time, they are filthy inside and our pavements are littered. Whatever it is they have in Hong Kong we need more of it back home in the UK.
Imagine if, instead of the thousands of terrorists and rapists in training to whom we pay benefits and provide housing, we had thousands of Hong Kongers arriving on our shores. I guarantee our economic woes would be over, our industry would thrive, and we would hardly know they were here. I suggest ten asylum seekers out for every Hong Konger we allow in.
As if to rub salt in an already raw wound, the South China Morning Post reports that a major rail link in the North of Hong Kong will be fast-tracked and finished two years ahead of schedule at a fixed cost. Knowing Hong Kong, it may well be finished ahead of that schedule. I can’t think of a single project in the UK that finished on time never mind ahead of schedule and never at the cost that was projected at the start.
Could I live out here? I hardly think so. They may have a lax attitude towards UV light striking their children but there is plenty of other nannying to contend with. The airport train runs a video on safe use of elevators and each elevator plays a recording in Cantonese, Mandarin and English telling you to hold the handrails. This morning a very bored looking young lady was waving a sign at the foot of an elevator which said ‘Stand within the yellow lines’. Nowhere is perfect.
In the World Happiness Index Hong Kong currently rates 88th, having fallen over ten places, whereas the UK rates 23rd. I am not sure what we have to be so happy about but, perhaps, we could export some of our happiness in return for an import of some of the work ethic that is evident over here.
Roger Watson is a retired academic, editor and writer. He is a columnist with Unity News Network and writes regularly for a range of conservative journals including The Salisbury Review and The European Conservative. He has travelled and worked extensively in the Far East and the Middle East. He lives in Kingston upon Hull, UK.
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I was in Hong Kong in 2004. While even back then everything worked Kowloon was something else. Soviet style towers of small apartments in grim concrete. I find Singapore much better.
Are you sure they didn’t mean ’23 people in the UK are happy?’
A quote from Pink Floyd’s ‘Comfortably Numb’: ‘Going on in quiet desperation is the English way’. Isn’t it just.