Bring back the Hong Kong that eats together without table dividers
We didn't discuss anything too deep or life-changing, but our exchange was engaging and insightful and soon we were leaving, the experience having enhanced what was already a pretty good weekend meal with family.
In contrast, although tables are also shared in the teahouse my family and I typically frequent, that restaurant still uses
Covid-era dividers for shared tables . It occurs to me that this is one aspect where Hong Kong has yet to make a full comeback (like the few souls who still wear masks even when they are not sick) and needs to.
It's not so much about letting the world know we beat Covid-19 and it didn't beat us; it's more about keeping an aspect of Hong Kong culture alive. Hongkongers have an amazing capacity for goodwill, kindness and building connections.
Remember the public flats in the 1970s, when neighbours felt more like family members, or the local businesses and
dai pai dong that once filled the streets in some of the more populated areas. People in this compact, robust city have always taken pride in caring for one another in ways I never knew possible.
This type of engagement is a part of Hong Kong that cannot disappear for new generations. As parents or grandparents, we need to keep the tradition alive and underscore its importance to our children or grandchildren. Take down the barriers at the restaurant next time. Join another group at a large table if you can. Meet other interesting Hongkongers and be that much richer from the experience. These are experiences that make all of our lives richer.
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South China Morning Post
9 hours ago
- South China Morning Post
A Hong Kong head of fauna conservation on ecology in the region
I WAS BORN in 1961. I'm the middle one. Our family base was in Salisbury (in southern England) during some of my primary years. I travelled around with my father, who was in the armed forces. His name was Jim Ades. So much of my childhood was spent seeing my father either coming back or going away to do something somewhere in the world. The only place we went that was a little bit dodgy was Bahrain. We went when I was about three. There were actual hostilities going on and, in the end, my mother, sister, brother and I had to be evacuated. So that was my early life and then, after that, short stays in the UK and then travels again to Hong Kong, Cyprus and Germany for a little bit. I followed my parents rather than going to boarding school. I was at St George's School in in 1961. I'm the middle one. Our family base was in Salisbury (in southern England) during some of my primary years. I travelled around with my father, who was in the armed forces. His name was Jim Ades. So much of my childhood was spent seeing my father either coming back or going away to do something somewhere in the world. The only place we went that was a little bit dodgy was Bahrain. We went when I was about three. There were actual hostilities going on and, in the end, my mother, sister, brother and I had to be evacuated. So that was my early life and then, after that, short stays in the UK and then travels again to Hong Kong, Cyprus and Germany for a little bit. I followed my parents rather than going to boarding school. I was at St George's School in Kowloon Tong from 1975 to 1977. My father ended up in Hong Kong in a retired officer's role as the head of welfare in Shek Kong . And so he had the Gurkhas, RAF and army in that area. Throughout my childhood, my father was always saving birds. He had a special licence from the director of the then AFD – Agriculture and Fisheries Department. So outside his office in Shek Kong he had a few falconry stands with birds all sitting on them. A young Gary Ades (centre front) with his mother and his siblings in Bahrain, in 1964. Photo: courtesy Gary Ades WE LIVED in Kowloon and my brother and I used to spend a lot of time wandering the streets. At that time, there was blatant selling of all sorts of wild animals and we found warehouses with everything from bears to eagles. The sad thing was everything that you were looking at was going to be sold for food. In those days, in the markets, lots of quails were being sold. They were all treated like commodities, not like living animals. The stallholders would pick up a bunch of quails, wrap a string around their necks and then pull it tight so that you had these five quails all being strangled and then they hung them up until they died, and that was that. We saw grass owls and eagle-owls being sold on the side of the road for food. We would try to buy them to release them. In those days, I wasn't thinking about ecology. We just wanted to save everything because it was so sad. Advertisement MY FATHER WAS focused on birds of prey, but I had bats, shrews and scorpions, anything. My mum was OK with it. She had a lizard that she called by name and it would run around the house. My first degree at the University of London was in zoology, the technical grounding for what I eventually did. Ecology is like the interaction of plants and animals and I realise that's where I am. It's not individual animals or individual trees and things. I'm interested in how they behave together, how they interact. And that's the most important thing because that relates to biodiversity. Saving habitat, not just saving species. Gary Ades' father, Jim Ades (right), holding a grass owl, while talking to orchid expert Gloria Barretto (left) and Sir Horace Kadoorie (In wheelchair), outside his office in Shek Kong, Hong Kong, in 1993. Photo: courtesy Gary Ades AFTER UNIVERSITY, I did a course in teaching English as a foreign language in Bournemouth, and had an Italian girlfriend, and lived in Italy for two years. Then, on a visit to my parents in Hong Kong, I met David Melville, the director of WWF-Hong Kong for many years. He needed someone to do a study on bats. There was a lot of development going on and it was not known if their localities were being destroyed. I was very happy when he said that but then it meant moving from Italy to Hong Kong in 1989. My girlfriend only stayed a year. My PhD was in the ecology of Hong Kong bats. During my study I found two or three new species that had never been recorded in Hong Kong. By the time I'd finished, there were 20 species and now there are 25. I was crawling around in old mines, places like Lin Ma Hang, near Sha Tau Kok, at the border. Gary Ades with a little bittern he rescued in Cyprus, in 1979. Photo: courtesy Gary Ades I'D HARDLY finished my write-up when I met Andrew McAulay, a nephew of Sir Michael Kadoorie. Kadoorie Farm at the time was a menagerie of animals, including a kangaroo and a few parrots. Wild-orchid expert finished my write-up when I met Andrew McAulay, a nephew of Sir Michael Kadoorie. Kadoorie Farm at the time was a menagerie of animals, including a kangaroo and a few parrots. Wild-orchid expert Gloria Barretto was the botanic head at the time, but there was no real animal side. Andrew was interested in me leading part of Kadoorie Farm's rebirth as a conservation and education centre. He became the new director. My remit at the beginning was everything to do with animals because there were lots of birds here and we wanted to start a rescue programme for birds of prey – some of these birds cannot be released back into the wild. So there's an area just up the hill called the Jim Ades Raptor Sanctuary, with a focus on education. Gary Ades holding a reptile at the Kadoorie Farm and Botanic Garden Rescue Centre. Photo: courtesy Gary Ades AROUND 1999, scientists across the world were starting to make noises about a crisis that was bigger than that of the dinosaurs, and it's the loss of reptiles around the planet. We started to get Buddhist associations coming to us saying they'd just saved some massive Bornean or Malayan freshwater turtles they'd found in a market in Hong Kong. In those days these animals were not protected. It was like the traders were ahead of the scientists. They started to move these animals so fast that there were no laws in the export country and then the import country to protect these particular species. So there was one big effort we did in 2001, which was to receive over 7,000 turtles from all over Southeast Asia that had been on the way to food markets in southern China. There were 12 species among those turtles. We had lots of open pigsties that hadn't been developed yet and we just used all of those, we used all of our indoor space. Many of the turtles needed heating because they were a tropical species and it was winter when this all happened. It ended up with renowned turtle experts flying in from America, from the UK, from Holland. They were all coming in to help us deal with what was a tipping point for massive education programmes and turtle protections. We deal with every snake case that the police (and the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department) are called for. The snakes come here and we make sure they haven't been damaged while they were being captured. We have a 95 per cent release rate. We're doing a scientific study with the government where we microchip all the pythons and we take measurements before we release them. Ades conducts bat research in a cave in Hong Kong in 1991. Photo: courtesy Gary Ades I DO HAVE A LIFE outside. I've got a Hong Kong wife called Vivian. We married in 2010. Her work life is very different from mine; she works for an insurance company. She's really into animals now and we have a pet lizard at home. I'm a musician and I used to play in a band with David Dudgeon (emeritus professor of ecology and biodiversity at the University of Hong Kong). He was the bass guitarist and I was the guitarist. We had several bands but one of them was called Walk on Water. The drummer was (former RTHK DJ) Gerry Jose, whose daughter was a singer. It was rock music, so we played all sorts of things, from the Foo Fighters to David Bowie to the Police to Sting. I'm still playing, but I'm acoustic now, so I play in a small acoustic band, which I love because the days of being cool with my electric guitar are over.
South China Morning Post
a day ago
- South China Morning Post
South Korean fishers forced to dump US$1.9 million of bluefin tuna due to quota
A bountiful haul of bluefin tuna by South Korean fishers earlier this week came with a catch: they had to throw away more than 1,300 tuna valued at about US$1.9 million into the waters after exceeding an annual regional fishing quota The mass dumping has sparked calls from the local industry for more flexibility in balancing between fulfilling obligations on fishing limits and maritime conservation. The tuna was accidentally caught by fixed nets meant to trap smaller species like mackerel and squid off the coast of Yeongdeok county. The big fish were believed to have been chasing mackerel and sardines when they became entangled in the net, the Korea JoongAng Daily newspaper reported. As each fish was between 1 metre and 1.5 metres (3.3 and 5 feet) long and weighed between 100kg and 150kg (220lbs and 330lbs), the catch should have been a windfall for the fishers. Similar bluefin tuna had sold for 14,000 won (US$10) per kilogram at an auction in South Korea on Sunday. At an average of 140kg, the 1,300 tuna could have fetched about 2.55 billion won (US$1.9 million), The Korea Herald newspaper reported. The fishers had to throw all their catch on Tuesday as their county had already met its yearly bluefin tuna limit.
South China Morning Post
a day ago
- South China Morning Post
One-third of Hong Kong IB candidates achieve near-perfect scores
A third of Hong Kong students enrolled in this year's International Baccalaureate (IB) programme have achieved near-perfect or full marks, accounting for nearly 10 per cent of the top achievers globally, according to the latest data. Schools offering the curriculum attributed the students' performance to their strengths in languages, as well as the local culture that placed great emphasis on academic excellence. Pupils from Hong Kong achieved an average total points score that was significantly higher than the global one, according to figures obtained by the Post from the IB body. Over the weekend, 202,000 pupils worldwide, including about 2,600 in Hong Kong, received their results. A total of 9,456 students across the world scored more than 40 out of 45 for the programme, according to the IB organisation. Of them, 871, or 9.2 per cent, were from Hong Kong. This accounts for about 33 per cent of all the city's candidates. But there was no breakdown of the number who achieved full marks. To obtain a diploma, candidates must earn at least 24 points and satisfy specific requirements. No school like home: why Hong Kong parents are choosing home-schooling At least 37 Hong Kong pupils achieved the full 45 points in this year, with 15 from the English Schools Foundation (ESF), the city's largest international school group. According to IB figures, pupils in Hong Kong achieved an average score of 36.72 points, surpassing the global average of 30.58. Their average grade was 5.78, compared with the global one of 4.89. The pass rate of Hong Kong candidates was 97.02, well above the global rate of 81.26. Chau Chor-shing, principal of Po Leung Kuk Ngan Po Ling College, said Hong Kong students took their studies seriously and schools had been offering support measures to cater for their different needs. 'Hong Kong schools would offer supporting measures to cater for the needs of the less able students and high achievers. Western countries may not do so well in this regard when compared with Hong Kong,' he said. Chau added that parents in Hong Kong prioritised academic performance even if their children excelled in sports, and might arrange tutorial classes for them. Jenny Chong Mei-chun, head principal of Po Leung Kuk Choi Kai Yau School, said the local education system's strong focus on bilingualism paved the way for students to achieve success in the IB. 'IB requires students to know two languages while Hong Kong attaches great importance to Chinese and English since preschool. Students have been growing up in a bilingual environment and that makes their language proficiency up to IB's standard,' she said. Chong said Hong Kong parents gave strong support to children's academic performance and would try their best to address their study needs. Hong Kong's top or near-perfect scorers represent nearly 10 per cent of top achievers globally. Photo: Edmond So Belinda Ng, the IB coordinator for St Paul's Co-educational College, also said Hong Kong parents' support was essential to students' success. 'To some extent, I think it is because the parents take children's studies seriously; they spend plenty of time and resources to help their kids, like arranging tutorial classes and extracurricular activities in their early years,' she said. 'Parents want them to perform well at the starting line and parenting plays a very important role in their studies.' IB director general Olli-Pekka Heinonen said that this year's results inspired him. 'I'm inspired by the dedication, resilience, and compassion shown by IB students during such a complex time in the world,' he said. 'As IB graduates move forward – into higher education, careers or service to their communities – they carry with them the competencies, values and global mindset needed to thrive and make a meaningful difference. 'IB graduates leave not only with knowledge, but also with the perspective and purpose to lead, serve, and shape a better world.' The IB programme is a pre-university pathway and an internationally recognised curriculum, like its counterpart, the A-levels, which are more subject-specific. Apart from the ESF, the German Swiss International School and Victoria Shanghai Academy each had five top scorers. The Diocesan Boys' School had three. The Canadian International School of Hong Kong and Po Leung Kuk Ngan Po Ling College each had two of the city's top scorers. Singapore International School in Hong Kong, the Independent Schools Foundation Academy, Malvern College Hong Kong, Po Leung Kuk Choi Kai Yau School and St Paul's Co-educational College each had one pupil achieving 45 points.
