Celebrating Corey Perry’s goal, Canada’s second

2nd intermission. 2-1 for Canada vs. USA. Unlike an all-star game, you can imagine, players are playing competitively and hard-hitting like there was no tomorrow. Take into account that this is Canada and the US, two teams known traditionally for their physical play.

How is it, watching the game here in Hong Kong? First of all, there is an official (non-pirated) live Web feed provided by i-Cable Sports, as shown on the picture here above. Unfortunately, the feed mysteriously interrupts at various random moments that are not for advertisement (unless it’s timed advertisement for the Hong Kong Olympics provider). That’s not really nice, and I hope that the actual television feed isn’t as such. It stopped just one second before Toews’ first goal for Canada.

The commentary on the i-Cable feed comes from England, and the commentator is experimented (knows his hockey vocabulary), but you are not necessarily used to this accent. Like soccer with an American accent. Color commentary is given by a guy presumably North American.

Otherwise, some people might be in bars in Wan Chai watching the game on a real TV, reports CNNgo. On Lamma, where I live, one of the co-Canadian-owned bars, the Island Bar, said that they were not planning to show the game.

Edit (later that day): We won the game, in OT, but I missed the goal as I was making breakfast, and i-Cable interrupt just two seconds after it went in.

Au fil des défaites à plate couture et des victoires à la pelle en temps supplémentaire, je suis mon équipe tout aussi passionnément de l’autre bout du monde. Tandis que des American-born Chinese prennent pour les Angels de LA, et que la plupart des Hongkongais friands de sports contemplatifs (et pour les gageures) préfèrent leur English Premier League, les Canadiens de Montréal demeurent mon équipe de sport préférée.

Je rencontre à l’occasion des Québécois (ou néo-Québécois même) expatriés à Hong Kong avec lesquelles j’échange sur la maudite blessure à Markov ou la passoire à Price (qui a bien joué hier), mais le culte pour mon club se pratique généralement seul.

Et à l’occasion, on lit les dernières nouvelles (vieilles de 36 heures) du Canadien dans le SCMP, journal en anglais lu généralement par la soit-disant élite, ou bien on voit apparaître Carey Price sur notre petit écran au moment où on s’y attend le moins. C-à-d à la toute fin des nouvelles sportives.

C’est en marchant avec une Québécoise vivant sur l’Île de Lamma que j’ai découvert le Hong Kong Petanque Club (anglo pour l’internationalisme, mais français de fondation). J‘aurais pensé trouver un club de boulingrin avant un club de pétanque sur ce territoire pourtant anciennement britannique.

Le club existe depuis 2007 et a été fondé par Éric, un Parisien originaire du sud de la France. Le club se réunit tous les dimanches au village de Tai Peng (大坪) sur Lamma, mais des parties peuvent être organisées par le club à tout autre moment. Quand je me suis présenté dimanche dernier vers 17h, il y avait une bonne dizaine de joueurs.

Photo: Jeyhun Abdulla/Associated Press.

Eh bien, finalement une médaille pour le Canada! Et je me demandais bien si elle était d’origine chinoise: selon un article dans le Vancouver Sun, son père Viem est effectivement un Chinois du Vietnam. “Huynh”, ça donne “Huang” en mandarin ou “Wong” en cantonnais (黃, c’est le caractère pour “jaune”) – le même nom de famille que ma mère.

Mise à jour: En me réveillant le matin, j’apprends qu’elle a gagné l’or en battant la championne du monde Icho! L’or, en chinois, ça s’écrit 黃金 (huáng jīn), ou “jaune métal”!

***

Finally a medal for Canada! And I was wondering whether she was of Chinese origin, and according to a Vancouver Sun article, her dad Viem is indeed Chinese from Vietnam. “Huynh” gives “Huang” in mandarin, and “Wong” in Cantonese (黃 is the character for “yellow”) – my mother’s maiden name.

Update: As I woke up this morning, I find out that she wins gold by beating the wold champion Icho! Gold, in Chinese, is written 黃金 (huáng jīn), or “golden metal”!

Nope, Canada hasn’t won a single gold medal yet. One of the feel-good stories for Canada prior to the Games has been Luan Jujie, the Chinese-Canadian fencer who won Olympic gold in Los Angeles in 1984, while defending China’s colours (see article and video on Radio-Canada.ca).

My friend Rob Parungao used to fence, and his coach in Vancouver is a good friend of Luan, who now resides in Edmonton. He met her when she came to town for workshops. Rob has a new blog called When we see the Ocean, and he wrote about his encounter(s) with the fencer:

As I’m pretty good with kids I remember playing with her two daughters and son a lot back when they were kids since Paul, Mike and Jeremy were pretty much content hanging out in her basement listening to music and chatting. I remember her six year old Jerrica was rally outgoing had a crush on me which was kind of cute and her other daughter Jessica had Down’s syndrome. Her son was kind of quiet, but I won him over by giving him most of my Halloween candy which made him open up to me a bit.

Here, go check out the entire article.

This is the photo of a crowd surrounding a reporter from TVB, Hong Kong’s top television channel, during the Wan Chai portion of the torch relay in Hong Kong.

A very happy crowd assembled along Hennessy Road, the main artery passing through the centrally-located district of Wan Chai, nearby which are several Hong Kong landmarks, like the Convention Centre. Flags of China were flying or drapped around bodies and umbrellas, among Samsung flags.

I was semi-expecting protesters, because of my exposure to Western press, but coming from a regular proudly-Chinese family, I should’ve known better, that it wasn’t in Hong Kong that you would see dissent.

There was a single occurrence of disruption, fifteen to thirty minutes before the torch’s passing, on Luard Street (perpendicular to Hennessy), at least 15 to 20 meters behind the crowd: a young blond-haired Caucasian male in a yellow t-shirt made a ruckus with the crowd. I never figured out what happened, and it was quickly suppressed by the crowd within a minute. Ten minutes after the torch passage, and after the crowd more or less dispersed, there was a police van barging in on Luard Street, with photographers snapping whatever they could through the van’s fenced windows.

Ironically, of the 300 pictures snapped yesterday, this previous pic is the only of two good ones that I managed to get. The carrier looked like some big business person or local politician. Only 40-something percent (approx number from memory) of the runners in Hong Kong were sportsmen, lower than at relays in St Petersburg and San Francisco.

Other than that, there was nothing worth mentioning. The best is to look at this Flickr set of pictures of the event, or check at these chosen pics below.

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I arrived in Hong Kong on Tuesday night. Tomorrow, the Olympic torch relay is coming to town!

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Two Chinese-Canadian Montrealers visiting Beijing… who were big enough fans of the Montreal Canadiens to carry their jerseys with them across the world!

Yes, we won! 5-0 in Game 7.

I am in Beijing right now. They are honking outside the apartment, but I doubt that it is for the Habs.

There may not be a part two to this post… I have been following hockey from Beijing as well. On Sunday morning, I watched Game 6, with a distant relative, also a Canadian-born Chinese from Montreal, and another Quebecer expat. It was pretty awesome, even though it was slo-mo at times, and even sound-less in the last part of the third period, when the Canadiens lost their grip on the game.

Tomorrow morning, I will be watching Game 7 of the Bruins-Canadiens series.

I was told that the Rickshaw bar is open 24/7 and might be willing to switch you to a channel showing hockey. But, unverified info, and I am not going to verify it tomorrow morning.

While my hometown is hockey, my temporary one is Olympics. While not overly in-your-face to the point of seeing only that, the Beijing Olympics are quite noticeable in Hong Kong. It is a lot more than it is in Canada (more so because of the volume of advertisement here, I think) and the ads are not necessarily associated with commercial partnerships, as demonstrated in the previous picture of a Hong Kong tramway. Hong Kong people strongly support the Olympics (see opinion poll), and the feeling about the Olympics here is a far cry from the sentiment felt in Western countries.

Moreover, equestrian competitions for the 2008 Olympics are to be held in Hong Kong, for hygiene reasons, and probably also because of the territory’s long horse racing tradition.

I was in Taiwan last week for a week, and any Olympics-related advertisement was nowhere to be seen (but I did not go look for it).

I am about to board my flight for Beijing, so I might be able to tell you in a week how it compares!

Yesterday morning, for Game 2 of the Montreal-Boston NHL playoffs series, I again went to Lan Kwai Fong to see whether I could find a bar that was open, and showed ice hockey live… The answer was a simple no. The bar most often cited as showing hockey, often taped in advance, but sometimes live, if the game’s in afternoon, was The Keg, located up the slope on the LKF block. Unfortunately, just like most of the other establishment at this hour (8AM), its doors were closed shut, and noone was to be seen.

I left a message under the door, and the lady managing The Keg called me back. She said that the bar, of Canadian ownership, only opened for business at 5:30PM, and closed at 4AM. If there are games in the afternoon in North America, it was possible that they can be shown live… This is how it goes here for hockey! So, either receive it on some special satellite channel (don’t know how) or watch it illegally on the web!

I am flying to Beijing tomorrow, and will be looking there again. A few names have been mentioned, but who knows…

Hockey Day In Canada est une présentation spéciale annuelle de Hockey Night In Canada, avec Ron McLean dans une petite ville quelconque (Winkler, MB, cette année), et de trois matchs incluant des équipes canadiennes. Ce qu’il y aura de spécial pour cette édition, c’est la diffusion sur le web d’une description alternative des matchs en mandarin et cantonais, deux dialectes du chinois, et en hindi, la plus parlée des langues en Inde (voir article).

Detroit vs Toronto @ 15 h (Mandarin)
Montréal vs Ottawa @ 19 h (Hindi)
Colorado vs Vancouver @ 22 h (Cantonais)

Les liens vers les streams en direct seront disponible sur le site de Hockey Day In Canada 2008 dès le début des matchs.