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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 18px;"><b><font face="helvetica, arial">Chow </font><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">and choice </font><font face="helvetica, arial">at Central</font></b></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: helvetica, arial; font-size: 18px;">It was 1974 in Hong Kong when a colleague showed me her
family's business at Aberdeen. They made
votive candles, she said, so I was expecting a storefront shop in one of the
buildings. I was shown a highly
mechanized production of candles for Hallmark and the operation made them
afford a 20-story building when Aberdeen was just a fishing village. They also lived in a compound on classy <i>Pok Fu Lam </i>Rd. It did not hurt that her father also traded the
ingredients for making candles into what cities use for fireworks and armies
used for armaments.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: helvetica, arial; font-size: 18px;"> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: helvetica, arial; font-size: 18px;">She was the eldest in the family who attended college in
Regina, Saskatchewan, cut short when her father died. She wanted the best for her family. She wanted to bring it out of HK as Britain
and China began talking about the return of the colony to Beijing's
administration. I met her in the
Philippines on her first trip to scout possible investment in real estate. She had no qualms about China. In fact, she had the classical "round
face" of the Tang Dynasty, and the full plump body to go with it!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: helvetica, arial; font-size: 18px;"> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: helvetica, arial; font-size: 18px;">I came through Kowloon nine years earlier on my voyage to
San Francisco as a student bound for the US via Kobe, Yokohama, Honolulu before
going under the Golden Gate. I remember
being asked when I was eight after I opened a Postal Savings Bank account that
my mother equaled any deposits I made, what I would do with the money. I answered, "I will take a trip to
China." I was twenty when I made
the trip to Hong Kong. The coolie-drawn
rickshaw and the deceptively rowdy but well-orchestrated sidewalk <i>chow mien </i>noodle shops
at night were China enough to my imagination.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: helvetica, arial; font-size: 18px;"> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: helvetica, arial; font-size: 18px;">In 1989, I finally visited the mainland, hitting Beijing's
Tiananmen Square and its Forbidden City four months after the June workers'
uprising, the Xi'an of Qin Shi Huangdi's terracotta army, then Shanghai with
the Bund looking abandoned and dilapidated, Huangpu overcrowded and the French
Quarters neglected, to the well-tended gardens in Suzhou and the tranquil West
Lake of Hangzhou. It was an experience
traversing the space by air and rail when Deng Xiao Peng and China went into
reform and opening up in earnest.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: helvetica, arial; font-size: 18px;"> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: helvetica, arial; font-size: 18px;">I was in and out of HK in the '70s and early 80s, then in
and out of the mainland since '89 to the present. Thus, it came as a big surprise to read t<span style="mso-bidi-font-family:Georgia;color:#1E1E1E;mso-font-kerning:.5pt">he
Oct. 5 online edition of Time Magazine quote David Shambaugh of George
Washington U's China program as telling the New York <i>Times</i> that China
was going through its most repressive period in 25 years. That would be since 1989 when I first visited
Beijing. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: helvetica, arial; font-size: 18px;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family:Georgia;color:#1E1E1E; mso-font-kerning:.5pt"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: helvetica, arial; font-size: 18px;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family:Georgia;color:#1E1E1E; mso-font-kerning:.5pt">I was resident of Washington DC within the beltway on
the Virginia side half of the 90s being Mr. Mom while married to an officer of
the State Department. Shambaugh directs
the GWU China program so he presumably gets his materials from the CIA, a par for the course.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: helvetica, arial; font-size: 18px;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family:Georgia;color:#1E1E1E; mso-font-kerning:.5pt"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: helvetica, arial; font-size: 18px;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family:Georgia;color:#1E1E1E; mso-font-kerning:.5pt">The current prominence of Alex Chow and Occupy Central
in Hong Kong hinges on the perception of "choice" in the nomination
process of HK's projected universal suffrage of 2017. The Occupy Central has annual marches through
the financial district of HK in July, and this year Alex as the newly elected
chair of the Federation of Students in HK went off script. After the march, locked arms-in-arms with
fellow students, he led a sit-down on the main traffic of the Central District
chanting, "Our Government, our choice."</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: helvetica, arial; font-size: 18px;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family:Georgia;color:#1E1E1E; mso-font-kerning:.5pt"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: helvetica, arial; font-size: 18px;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family:Georgia;color:#1E1E1E; mso-font-kerning:.5pt">With China's national week starting October 1, Occupy
Central for Peace and Democracy, et al, including a Baptist Minister, planned a
rally but 17-year old Joshua Wong led students aligned with his 3-yr old
Scholarism to protest on September 28.
The rally tapped into the energy of the anticipated weeklong vacation
and before he knew it, CY Leung, HK SAR XO, previously chosen by electoral
votes and approved by Beijing, was asked to step down.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: helvetica, arial; font-size: 18px;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family:Georgia;color:#1E1E1E; mso-font-kerning:.5pt"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: helvetica, arial; font-size: 18px;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family:Georgia;color:#1E1E1E; mso-font-kerning:.5pt">The "choice" at Central in HK is clear about
what it is against rather than what it is for.
For many students who had been taught imaginal rather than actual
democracy, it is being against China.
Unfortunately, vested interests in the west fan the flames of protest as
a matter of reflex action, often, involving US policy that has moved less
inclusive and more assertive of the claimed prerogatives of American
exceptionalism since Jimmy Carter. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: helvetica, arial; font-size: 18px;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family:Georgia;color:#1E1E1E; mso-font-kerning:.5pt"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: helvetica, arial; font-size: 18px;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family:Georgia;color:#1E1E1E; mso-font-kerning:.5pt">US "meddling", a claimed prerogative of the
self-appointed world police, fomented the Arab Spring, and now, Occupy Central
in HK. It quickly lent its support of
pro-democracy forces.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: helvetica, arial; font-size: 18px;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family:Georgia;color:#1E1E1E; mso-font-kerning:.5pt"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: helvetica, arial;"><span style="color: rgb(30, 30, 30);"><font size="4">I watched my own denomination, the United Methodist
Church, move from the fresh progressive air of its General Conference of 1968
to the alliance ironically between US evangelical missionary forces and the
critical presence of third world countries. I resigned.</font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: helvetica, arial; font-size: 18px;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family:Georgia;color:#1E1E1E; mso-font-kerning:.5pt"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: helvetica, arial; font-size: 18px;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family:Georgia;color:#1E1E1E; mso-font-kerning:.5pt">I am not one to condemn the US of A as malevolent. After all, a country that elected a
"Black" President cannot be all that bad. But I am also clear that less than a third of
registered voters exercise their rights.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: helvetica, arial; font-size: 18px;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family:Georgia;color:#1E1E1E; mso-font-kerning:.5pt"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: helvetica, arial; font-size: 18px;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family:Georgia;color:#1E1E1E; mso-font-kerning:.5pt">Choice, not ideology, but the practice, is the democratic
call of the times. </span></div>
<br>
<div style="font-family: helvetica, arial; font-size: 18px; clear: both;"><i>j'aime la vie</i><br>
<a href="mailto:pinoypanda2031@aol.com">pinoypanda2031@aol.com</a><br>
<div><i>yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today. participate. In all, celebrate!</i></div>
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