Le plus important événement politique de l’année se déroule en ce moment à Beijing. Il s’agit du Congrès national du peuple, dix jours durant lesquels le gratin du pouvoir politique chinois se réunit dans la capitale chinoise. The Economist appelle l’exercice une session de béni-oui-oui, tandis que d’autres médias internationaux traitent la réunion de cette assemblée législative comme du spectacle avec beaucoup de bling-bling.

Comme j’étais en Chine continentale, à Guangzhou, par hasard, j’ai donc eu la chance d’être exposé à ce qui se passait. Par exemple, lors d’une matinée dans ma chambre d’hôtel, j’ai pu constater que la conférence de presse de Yang Jiechi, ministre des affaires étrangères, était sur toutes les chaînes disponibles de CCTV. Y’avait un journaliste français dans la première rangée.

Dans les journaux écrits, oubliez le Quotidien du Peuple / China Daily. Pas juste que personne ne le lit sérieusement, mais on ne le trouve que rarement dans les multiples stands à journaux que j’ai croisé à Guangzhou. Le quotidien le plus populaire et le plus souvent vu est le Southern Metropolis, aussi connu sous le nom chinois de Nanfang Doushi Bao (南方都是报), du même groupe médiatique que le Southern Weekend, un hebdomadaire généraliste.

J’ai un niveau assez élémentaire de chinois, mais je peux me débrouiller pour lire les titres et regarder les images. D’abord, en regardant la couverture, on voit déjà une photo plus excitante. Celle-ci a été prise par Reuters et a aussi été utilisée par le China Daily (journal officiel en anglais).

Il faut prendre en contraste la page frontispice du Quotidien du Peuple (Renmin Ribao / People’s Daily), le journal officiel, comme le montre cette image issue d’un article sur Danwei.org samedi dernier:

Ce matin en classe, ma prof a parlé longuement de la couverture du NPC et du CCPPC dans la presse chinoise et internationale. Les photos sont aussi officielles qu’avant, mais la mise en pages a changé dramatiquement (ha-ha).

Southern Metropolis, 2010-03-06 (le jour après l’ouverture du congrès)

De retour dans le Southern Metropolis, on reprend des bouts du discours du Premier Ministre Wen Jiabao. On a parlé de cet article dans la copie du SM que j’ai rapporté (le journal n’est pas officiellement distribué à Hong Kong selon mes observations et mes collègues) cite le Premier Ministre qui a parlé de « dignité » (le mot entre guillemets chinois) comme pièce angulaire des politiques du Parti, ce qui donne en anglais, via Associated Press: “Everything we do, we do to ensure that the people live a happier life with more dignity and to make our society fairer and more harmonious.”

La page couverture de la même édition, en haut complètement de cette entrée de blogue, parle d’action forte (la police de caractères parle d’elle-même) pour contrer l’écart entre les pauvres et les riches. Un thème assez universel dans n’importe quel discours politique, quoi, y compris en Chine continentale.

Ça c’est la caricature dans le cahier des sports. C’est le spécialiste du 110 m haies, aussi membre du congrès national. Le China Daily parle de lui comme une distraction.

Dans les deux médias québécois en ligne que j’essaie de suivre, je n’ai rien vu sur Radio-Canada.ca concernant le Congrès (rien trouvé sur Google News), tandis que Cyberpresse a repris un billet de l’AFP.

What if you are in a city that you never visited before, and it’s 11pm, in a remote area and you are hungry? We were hanging out near Xinghai Music Conservatory in the northern part of Central Guangzhou, and wandered slightly off to get a really late dinner.

We were previously at the Ping Pong, an arts and music bar right next to campus (opened by a Frenchman, and also serving trademark French/Chinese-style rhums), with occasional performances by some brand names of Chinese independent music. Using the advice from one of the school’s security guards posted nearby, we set off to a nearby street some five minutes away.

As we arrived to it, we picked the one of the two that had more people. Seeing and hearing the foreigners that we were, patrons of the nearby table started chatting us. They were nice and soon helped us order some American beer (while we wanted some local Zhujiang) as well as some food, more importantly.

Don’t (necessarily) let yourself be fooled by the looks. Indeed, the hygiene is questionable, and it’s not very clean-looking. They had live shrimp, but our friend Nick picked the dead and cooked ones b/c the former dwelled in too murky waters. Neither of us got sick on the next day, so we can assume that the stir-frying does its sanitizing job.

The shrimp was were in fact some of the best that I ever had, just because they were bite-sized, and have been perfectly fried such that the meat was still tender, and the shells crisp enough to be eaten whole. It was minus the head, most of the times, but I can believe that the fatty heads were perhaps the tastiest part of the poor animals.

Also had a garlic stir-fried veggies platter (choy sum) and “pork” fried with noodles. I wish I was hungrier so to be able to try more. But the shrimp were like the popcorn/chips with the beer (eventually a mix of Zhujiang and Bud in the same glasses that our newly-made friends and the place’s regulars poured for us).

The owner of the place is a quiet man surnamed Liu, who worked the kitchen with his wife.

In all, the three dishes (and lots of beer bottles) set us back about RMB60 for all three of us. Don’t be fooled by this post: there are tons of places like this one. The take-home message is that it’s always a good and safe bet to try a place that has a lot of locals eating at.

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.

J’ai apporté ma caméra au travail ce matin, et ai pris cette photo de l’arrière de mon traversier. Il y avait une petite brume ce matin dans le port de Hong Kong. Après une semaine et plus de froidure depuis le Nouvel An Chinois, il a fait subitement super chaud et humide (27℃ et plus) depuis mardi.

La grappe d’immeubles au loin est le complexe Union Square, amassés autour de l’ICC, ou International Commerce Centre. Si on s’en approche par voie terrestre (à pied, disons), ces immeubles ressemblent carrément à une colonie lunaire ou martienne, comme dans les films de science-fiction, tant les lieux autour sont vides. Imaginez d’avoir juste des terrains vagues ou parcs en bordure de mer à un kilomètre à la ronde de cet énorme complexe immobilier, et pis voilà, vous avez le “District culturel” de West Kowloon.

Les nuages ces jours-ci sont aussi parfaits pour tester mon nouveau filtre polarisant, mais un peu moins pour le moral. C’est mieux que les -40℃ et les 30cm de neige qui caractérisent d’habitude mes févriers.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Qui est le monsieur avec la moustache et la manne de cheveux grisonnants? C’est John Tsang, secrétaire aux finances dans le gouvernement de Donald Tsang (aucun lien de parenté). Je ne verrais pas John Flaherty ou Claude Bachand faire des pubs pareilles au Canada/Québec, alors avant de me renseigner, je croyais que c’était une sorte d’acteur, star du Cantopop vieillissante.

Voici ce que Harry, caricaturiste du SCMP, en pense:

Les deux personnages en avant-plan sont les deux monsieurs récurrents des caricatures de Harry. Souvent, on les voit assis autour d’une table, avec un moineau dans la cage qui fait des simagrés.

Pour en savoir plus sur ce budget, en général très généreux (on a tendence à sur-budgéter en faisant des prévisions relativement pessimistes), y’a Twitter et aussi la copie du discours sur le site du gouvernement.

My friends have a new music show on Radio Centre-Ville (102.3FM in Montreal or anytime on the Web). It’s in Chinese, with Sabina doing the Mandarin parts, and Simon doing the Cantonese ones. The music? It’s mostly in English and French (this is Montreal after all) from all over the world, presented by two musically erudite hosts.

On the first show, they talked about the collaboration between Cocteau Twins and Faye Wong. Wong was very influenced by the Cocteau Twins’ music, especially in her Cantonese album Random Thoughts (1994), heavily featured in Chungking Express (重慶森林).

The second show focused on the theme of death, or actually recently deceased Montreal artists, Lhasa de Sela and Kate McGarrigle (also known as the mother of Rufus and Martha Wainwright).

音乐大同 Yinyue Datong (Music community) airs live on Radio Centre-Ville (102.3FM) from Montreal every Tuesday night at 10:30PM.

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Mes amis à Montréal ont une nouvelle émission de radio! C’est sur les ondes de Radio Centre-Ville (102,3FM à Montréal, ou sur le Web en tout temps) et ça parlera de musique et de culture… en chinois. Mais attention! La langue de l’émission est peut-être en chinois (Sabina s’occupe de la partie en Mandarin, tandis que Simon s’occupe de la partie en cantonais), mais la musique viendra d’un peu partout et sera en anglais ou français en majorité.

Comme on est pas dans un film de Wong Kar-wai, les animateurs ne se conversent pas en langues différentes pendant le show, et ce sont en fait des demi-heures aux saveurs sensiblement différentes.

De quels sujets traite-t-on? Pendant la première émission, on a par exemple parlé de la collaboration entre les Cocteau Twins et Faye Wong.

On a enchaîné pour la seconde émission avec un Spécial Morbide, avec des artistes nouvellement morts (pour commémorer la Lhasa de Sela et Kate McGarrigle).

音乐大同 Yinyue Datong (Communité musicale) est transmis en direct sur les ondes de Radio Centre-Ville 102,3FM à Montréal tous les mardis à 22h30.

Franchement, oui pour les hymnes nationaux avant les matchs de hockey, et puis au début et à la fin d’une journée de diffusion. Mais en plein milieu de la soirée télévisuelle, juste avant les nouvelles de 18h30?

J’essaie de retrouver des trucs sur Google parlant de celà, mais de mémoire, ça avait fait un tout petit peu jaser quand on a commencé à mettre « La marche des volontaires » (义勇军进行曲) avant le bulletin de nouvelles sur TVB, la chaîne la plus écoutée à Hong Kong.

(Someone in my readership knows more about 6:30PM broadcasting of the Chinese National Anthem on TVB? Do you find it unusual that a national anthem goes on air at such time? From a Canadian perspective, our anthem goes on TV only at two very particular times: 1- beginning/end of daily TV programming and 2- before any professional ice hockey game…

Bowrington Road Market in Wan Chai

Johnston Road in Wan Chai

Southorn Playground in Wan Chai

Sunday afternoon at 5PM, in Causeway Bay and Wan Chai on Hong Kong Island. But where is everyone?

It’s of course Lunar New Year today, one of the few days in Hong Kong during the year where shops won’t take your business (they are even open as usual on January 1st).

It’s me, the HK Central Library!

After spending part of my Sunday afternoon two weeks ago exploring Tin Hau and Fortress Hill, I set out to another area that was kind of a black hole to me on Hong Kong Island: the enclave of Tai Hang (大坑) near Victoria Park.

Previously, I only knew Tai Hang, as the name for Tai Hang Road, leading up to the mountain which forks into the “Tai Hang” drive (now with an opulent new development called The Legend). However, this does not represent Tai Hang proper, as the “real” Tai Hang is in fact a valley accessible by road only through Tung Lo Wan Road from the north side.

If you know the Hong Kong Central Library, then you can locate Tai Hang as being towards the mountain, a tad to the east. It’s out of everyone’s way, a 10-minute walk from Tin Hau MTR.

Tai Hang is perhaps also a remarkable spot because it is very slightly built-up, with relatively narrow streets and little traffic. From what I gather, listening to relatives who lived there, or people of my age living in nearby areas, many of the new businesses opened shop only in the past few years, with the neighborhood’s increasing gentrification. To the north of Tai Hang, closer to Tung Lo Wan Road, trendy bars go elbow-to-elbow with fashionable clothing stores and cute dessert houses.

As you walk further to the south, inside the valley, not only does it get darker (because of the taller nearby buildings on Tai Hang Road), but also the “interesting” businesses aforementioned tend to diminish, replaced with motor shops that service taxis and expensive vintage vehicles alike.

Two weeks ago, I set out to Tin Hau MTR for a walk in a new random neighborhood that I did not know. When I came to Hong Kong in 2008, I stayed in North Point, with Causeway Bay as one my frequent hangouts, as it is for a lot of returning overseas Chinese. You can either take the tram or the MTR from North Point towards the more popular/international neighborhood to the west. In between North Point and Victoria Park are two MTR stations which eventually lent their names to the neighborhoods they serve: Tin Hau and Fortress Hill.

One is named after a temple to the Chinese deity Tin Hau, and the other took its name from, well, a hill with a fortress on it (although I’ve never seen it). On the mountain side of TH and FH is a relatively well-off high-rise residential area.

Closer to the sea, around the MTR station and the main arteries of King’s Rd and Electric Rd, lie some more popular apartments. The neighborhood is clearly gentrifying because of the proximity to Causeway Bay and relatively new office skyscrapers around Fortress Hill MTR like the AIA Tower (1999) and the Manulife Tower. While walking on Electric Rd, close to Tin Hau, you would recognize a strip of mid-scale, clean-looking Southeast Asian restaurants.

Maybe one-third on my way from Tin Hau to Fortress Hill, along Electric Rd, I stumbled upon a bakery, which was by no means fancy, but had a lineup in front of it, while the staff scurried to provide with freshly baked egg tarts, pineapple cakes — I had one of those and it was very good, especially warm, fresh out of the oven. I also bought a loaf of bread, eight slices for cheaper than Garden bread, and also straight out of the oven.

As I progressed north, half-way there to Fortress Hill MTR, I passed by a street of motor shops, at the ground floor of old manufactures, probably transformed into office space today.

Disclaimer: I am not vegan, let alone vegetarian. But my friend Kim, who happens to be vegetarian, was in town a few weeks ago. Often I would take the tramway from Central to Causeway Bay, and notice this shiny, flashy new fast-food restaurant along it in Wan Chai on same block as the gas station. The restaurant is called Loving Hut and is in fact a chain originating from Taiwan, but with branches all across the world.

Kim told me that the Chinese-style fake meat she gets in Montreal is often imported from Taiwan. In the Buddhist tradition, followers would have these “vegetarian” days, which I know as “sek zai” (my grand-mother would do these once a week or so, and have tofu-based meals for an entire day).

Just like at a Maxim’s or Cafe de Coral, you must order from a menu next to the cashier. Then, you pick up your receipt and present it to the kitchen counter.

When I went for the first time, I had red rice with mini tofu cubes. Now, I probably ate or saw this dish before in its full-meat version. The vegan version was no less tasty (maybe a bit salty) and I would definitely have it again.

I also had a lemon basil seed (?) drink, which was served warm, and tasted sour with translucent seeds collecting at the bottom of the cup. There were char siu buns too without the char siu.

On a different occasion, now with three other friends, none vegetarians, we tried a larger variety of dishes. One was a classic yu hsiang eggplant, just without the ground pork. And then there was a bunch of noodles and a sweet and sour fried tofu.

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A days after Loving Hut, we went again for vegetarian food, but this time in a real sit-down restaurant. It’s called Gaia Veggie Shop and is situated in Goldmark, right by the south side of the Sogo intersection in Causeway Bay, in the building next to the empty lot (old Mitsukoshi).

My photos are super low-res, so I am not going to post them. It’s good to know that the goal of this restaurant seems to be to fool you as well as possible. I never had fake sushi fish before, but let me tell you that it practically has the same texture, The menu in fact never specifies that such and such meat is “fake”, and dishes are always simply listed with meat names in it (only that you won’t find any meat in the actual order). Thinking about what we ate already makes me hungry… Aside from the sushi, we had a broth served in a coconut, and beef-wrapped enoki mushrooms. There was perhaps a sweet and sour chicken in there as well.

IFC mall

2 International Finance Centre 國際金融中心二期 et Hong Kong Station

Entrée du quai des traversiers pour l’île de Lamma

Pâtisserie-restaurant Callia (嘉莉／麵包茶餐聽)

Side of Pâtisserie Harmonie 麵包蜜語

Whereas the Chinese “food scene” (you can hardly call it a food scene when a city lacks quality Beijing and Shanghai cuisine) in 2009 has been dominated with the arrival of numerous restaurants and eateries opened by Mainland Chinese immigrants in Montreal’s new Chinatown, that of the traditional Chinatown on De la Gauchetière (between St-Urbain and Clark) was mostly revamped in the past two years with new Cantonese-owned shops, three of which happen to be bakeries.

Already in the winter of 2008, Harmonie (麵包蜜語) shook Montreal’s Chinese bakery standards by opening at the corner of St-Urbain and De la Gauchetière. Buns left to die on a colourless counter were a thing of the past. Now, Chinese pastries and other bite-size delicacies or cakes would be served in a decor on par with at least what you would see in Hong Kong or other larger Chinatowns of North America: lit-up counters, uniformed staff, floral decorations.

A year later in April 2009, a first competitor Restaurant Callia (嘉莉) was opened (by the family owning Chinese restaurant Keung Kee) across the street. It added the dining space and kitchen that Harmonie did not have, serving Hong Kong’s famed Cha chaan teng-style food of milk tea, beef brisket noodles and Italian noodles in Cantonese sauce, under big TV screens spouting soaps from TVB.

Now on my last visit of Chinatown during the Holidays, I noticed that my grandparents’ favourite (and personal longtime favourite, for lack of anything else) M.M. Légende took over the trendy “Asian-style” clothing store next door and hid behind wooden planks as it is undergoing renovations. For the past two years, I believe that it was to become the first casualty of the Callia/Harmonie combination. So instead, it renamed itself as Pâtisserie La Légende (麗晶餅屋) and decided to expand. Follow-ups would be greatly appreciated!

Maybe now this first casualty would be Dobe & Andy (right under of Kam Fung) if they don’t change. I’m now curious to see what is going to happen with this new huge space for a cha chaan teng, in spite of more restaurant space made available with the imminent inauguration of Plaza Swatow (長盛廣場).

Saturation, or serious signs of Chinese Montrealers moving back to Chinatown? My opinion is that this will largely depend on affordable parking space made available in the area from the Swatow building. Right now, paid parking is prohibitively expensive (no incentive as in downtown Montreal) and free spots can only be found four or five blocks away. A pleasure for nearby residents and public transit users, but a chore for a certain class of car-going suburbanites that I grew up with…

For some reason that evades me, good local Northern Chinese food is a rarity in Hong Kong, where wonton noodles, curried meat soup and Chinese rotisserie dominate the local fast-food landscape. You won’t find roujiamo in a street food stall, while fried tofus, squid, eggplant, or egg tarts, and other pineapple buns are everywhere. (You might also easily find upscale-ish Shanghai or Beijing restaurants in Hong Kong.)

So I made sure that as a must-have meal in Montreal, as I’m spending the Holidays here, among smoked meat and bagels (although no time for poutine), I would eat dumplings, Northern-style. One of Montreal’s prime locations for dumplings is Qing Hua Yuan. They were on St-Marc when they opened last year, but reopened this Fall on Lincoln, close to St-Mathieu in our Chinatown Two, near Concordia University.

The boiled dumplings are nothing special, but now the steamed ones! In contrast to their boiled counterparts, they perfectly conserve their full taste, and if you are a connoisseur of food, you would be careful to pierce your dumpling, savour the broth inside, before engulfing the rest of the jiaozi. The flavours seem to have expanded by a bit (any combo of pork, lamb, chicken, eggs, vegetable, anise, coriander, Chinese cabbage, etc.), on top of the surprising fried dumplings. Extra goodness: the taste of the reed coming from the steamer.

The fried ones (see second picture of this post) are served with a fine film, which I am guessing comes from a dried-up flour mixture, which in itself puts up a nice show.

Unfortunately, they only staffed one person to take care of the whole floor at lunchtime (it was the Holidays though), and cooled-off dumplings and unusually slow service (one hour from sitting to getting meal at lunchtime) were the resulting minus points. On the other hand, they thought of giving shrimp chips as a free-of-charge snack now, like they would give bread in a European restaurant, because steamed dumplings usually take 25 to prepare.

But is not cheap. On my second time there, with my parents at dinnertime, we needed four portions to be full (depending of flavour, steamer/plate is $8-13, + taxes/service). But hey, you’re paying for hand-made top-quality dumplings.

Qing Hua Dumpling, (438) 288-5366, 1676 Ave Lincoln, Montreal, QC H3H