I have a relatively small amount of health related posts on this blog at the moment. But it’s becoming an area that’s impossible to ignore. Health and wellness is becoming central to mainstream culture.
Anxiety and loneliness have sparked what is considered by many to be a mental health epidemic and a corresponding reduction in societal resilience.
High income countries were spending as much as 14 percent of government spending on health before the COVID pandemic. The number is likely to be even higher now.
According to an article in medical journal The Lancet, poor mental health cost the global economy approximately 2.5 trillion US dollars per year and this was expected to rise to 6 trillion by 2030.
It’s an area that can’t be ignored, because of the financial burden and size of market that the sector represents.
In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic a UN report said the following:
Psychological distress in populations is widespread. Many people are distressed due to the immediate health impacts of the virus and the consequences of physical isolation. Many are afraid of infection, dying, and losing family members. Individuals have been physically distanced from loved ones and peers. Millions of people are facing economic turmoil having lost or being at risk of losing their income and livelihoods.
The report went on to recommend solutions such as:
Crafting communications to be not only effective but sensitive to their impact on the mental state of the populous
Community events looking at cementing social cohesion
Extending tele-medicine to include tele-counselling for frontline health-care workers and people at home with depression and anxiety.
I started to look at trends in March 2020 and there was a singularity developing around innovation and technology in the area, together with some interesting cossumer behaviour trends. Young adults made up a sizeable chunk of telemedicine non-users and as resistors to public health initiatives. Their much vaunted ‘online literacy’ saw them fall for the same tropes and older audiences considered more gullible like pensioners and retirees in Facebook groups
Riding The Wave Into China’s Latest Hype — Land Surfing | Jing Daily – land surfing is what a lot of people would know as a long board in skating. I first came across them 20 years ago, when I used to know a dreadlocked German photographer who got around London on one. South Korean app developer Ko Hyojoo, brought style and strong Instagram game to long boarding. From her style cutting and spinning on her board, I can see where land surfing came from. She has collaborated with a lot of fashion brands, getting an international profile with her land surfing.
Films like this one from Vogue in 2016 blew long boarding / land surfing up across Asia. I have former colleagues from Hong Kong who took up land surfing in the winter as they missed the feeling of water-skiing which they did some summer weekends.
It was only a matter of time before China’s Taobao culture picked up on the idea of land surfing.
The Professional Try-Hard Is Dead, But You Still Need to Return to the Office | Vanity Fair – It’s Malcolm Gladwell waxing emotional about how much he loves return-to-office and pleading, “Don’t you want to feel part of something?” as if the man has never heard of, like, recreational softball. It’s Mark Zuckerberg reportedly getting mad about an employee asking if Meta Days (extra vacation days introduced during the pandemic) are still on this year because, shouldn’t the pleasure of working for Meta be enough? It’s any number of investor-type herbs who’ve been warning about how quiet quitting will cause you to lose out on x dollar amount of earnings later in life
Pro-China media slam ‘minority’ of Hong Kong mourners in wake of Queen’s death — Radio Free Asia – Hong Kong historian Hans Yeung, who now lives in the U.K., said Hong Kongers’ nostalgia for colonial times was a complex emotion. “The reason we are seeing these mourning activities is that the current way of governing is different from the way it was in Hong Kong more than 20 years ago, and the emotions that result from that difference between the old and the new,” Yeung told RFA. “It’s not necessarily the idea that we miss colonial times because things were so good back then, but because the current government is so poor,” he said. Yeung said some mourners were too young to remember an era in which the Queen’s portrait was in every classroom, and TV stations shut down every night with “God Save the Queen.” He said younger people likely have read about Hong Kong before the 1997 handover to Chinese rule, and drawn their own conclusions
Ideas
Simple models predict behavior at least as well as behavioral scientists – we analyzed data from five studies in which 640 professional behavioral scientists predicted the results of one or more behavioral science experiments. We compared the behavioral scientists’ predictions to random chance, linear models, and simple heuristics like “be- havioral interventions have no effect” and “all published psychology research is false.” We find that behavioral scientists are consistently no better than – and often worse than – these simple heuristics and models. Behavioral scientists’ predictions are not only noisy but also biased. They systematically overestimate how well behavioral sci- ence “works”: overestimating the effectiveness of behavioral interventions, the impact of psychological phenomena like time discounting
How China Has Added to Its Influence Over the iPhone – The New York Times – More than ever, Apple’s Chinese employees and suppliers contributed complex work and sophisticated components for the 15th year of its marquee device, including aspects of manufacturing design, speakers and batteries, according to four people familiar with the new operations and analysts. As a result, the iPhone has gone from being a product that is designed in California and made in China to one that is a creation of both countries. The critical work provided by China reflects the country’s advancements over the past decade and a new level of involvement for Chinese engineers in the development of iPhones. After the country lured companies to its factories with legions of low-priced workers and unrivaled production capacity, its engineers and suppliers have moved up the supply chain to claim a bigger slice of the money that U.S. companies spend to create high-tech gadgets. The increased responsibilities that China has assumed for the iPhone could challenge Apple’s efforts to decrease its dependency on the country, a goal that has taken on increased urgency amid rising geopolitical tensions over Taiwan and simmering concerns in Washington about China’s ascent as a technology competitor.
Chinese mercenaries have been around longer than the belt and road. You can come across Chinese mercenaries protecting in the border areas of China such as the warlord regions of Myanmar. But now Chinese mercenaries are increasingly linked with the Belt and Road Initiative. China claims that it isn’t building an empire in Africa, across the former Soviet Union and Sri Lanka. Yet all of the private security companies that Chinese mercenaries work for are state owned. The Chinese mercenaries come out of the PLA, the PLAN marines and the PAP. That doesn’t mean that they are well trained or even well disciplined and they exist in a Chinese legal vacuum.
There is more connecting China to its empire with these Chinese mercenaries than there was for the army fighting under Clive of India for the East India Company a few centuries before. Task and Purpose goes into the subject of Chinese mercenaries in more depth.
Inside Missfresh’s hunt for investor cash ahead of collapse | Financial Times – probably one of the best comments on this article – Missfresh is only one of a number of Chinese domestic startups that sought US investors, as their own domestic private investors were unwilling to invest. For a Chinese investor, they always consider when and if the CCP may want a piece of the business, or worse take action against the promoters and management. for non performance. The lighter loss being financial and. the greater loss, life.
China’s Growth Sacrifice by Stephen S. Roach – Project Syndicate – Japanization of an increasingly debt-intensive, bubble-supported Chinese economy. An overly leveraged Chinese property sector fits this script, as does the debt-fueled expansion of state-owned enterprises since the 2008-09 global financial crisis. For China, this became the case for deleveraging, well worth the short-term price to avoid the longer-term stagnation of Japan-like lost decades. Finally, a major reversal in the ideological underpinnings of governance is also at play. As the revolutionary founder of a new Chinese state, Mao emphasized ideology over development. For Deng and his successors, it was the opposite: De-emphasis of ideology was viewed as necessary to boost economic growth through market-based “reform and opening up.” Then came Xi. Initially, there was hope that his so-called “Third Plenum Reforms” of 2013 would usher in a new era of strong economic performance. But the new ideological campaigns carried out under the general rubric of Xi Jinping Thought, including a regulatory clampdown on once-dynamic Internet platform companies and associated restrictions on online gaming, music, and private tutoring, as well as a zero-COVID policy that has led to never-ending lockdowns, have all but dashed those hopes – China was on a rocket ship that it couldn’t control, it is now trying wrestle back control at the expense of growth
Eurostar to axe direct trains from London to Disneyland Paris over Brexit | Eurostar | The Guardian – “We have taken the decision not to run the direct Disney service … in summer 2023,” it said. “While we continue to recover financially from the pandemic and monitor developments in the proposed EU entry-exit system, we need to focus on our core routes to ensure we can continue to provide the high level of service and experience that our customers rightly expect.” – not enough demand from the UK and too much hassle to run
In Myanmar, Vietnamese firms learn the political risks of backing the junta — Radio Free Asia – interesting that Burmese consumers are boycotting military-owned businesses including MyTel – a mobile carrier that VietTel has a major stake in. Also: Vietnamese firms have begun investing abroad, and, in particular, have sought a place in the 5G marketplace, especially in markets where there is residual fear of China’s communications giant Huawei. – Also: Vietnamese conglomerate THADICO, which has invested in Myanmar Plaza, the largest modern mall and office space in Yangon, ran afoul of the local population when the plaza’s security attacked civil disobedience protesters in November 2021. This led to a sustained boycott that hit the plaza’s 200 retail units hard, compelling the firm to publicly apologize
I have had my head in PowerPoint presentations and market research reports so haven’t paid much attention this week until I read in this weekend’s FT about the Korean drama trade.
The premise of the Korean drama trade is a paradox, that while Netflix as a business isn’t doing well with investors and has experienced a lot of short selling, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing for the companies who produce content for the platform.
In many western and developing world media markets, consumers have been used to international content. Media industries that more closely match their own values tend to do better. For instance, there has been a brisk Korean drama trade in Middle Eastern countries because there was less sex and violence on display than American media.
Cracking foreign language markets
In the English speaking western world, foreign language media has had a tougher time to gain mass market acceptance. Things opened up a bit with the popularity of Scandinavian media, in particular ‘Scandi-noir’ dramas. The ironic thing is that prior to 1964 the films available to broadcast in the UK were either old b-movies, pre-war pictures from smaller studios or foreign-language films. Hollywood saw television as competition, so there was an informal blockade. This ended in the UK when Samuel Goldwyn and MCA began selling films as packages to the BBC and ITV. This wasn’t necessarily a good thing however.
Netflix then became the world’s entertainment broadcaster*. This meant that over time Netflix had to build up a body of content for lots of different markets. And if you want to be successful in Korea, you need Korean dramas and movies.
Freedom through the Korean drama trade
One of the standout aspects of the Korean dram trade has been that it has allowed Korean writers and directors to push the limits of the genre. A classic example of this is Hellhound. Hellhound gets to explore interesting questions around religion, morality, hysteria and power.
Or you have the nihilism of Squid Game.
This meant that Korean dramas have got a bigger creative palate and become exposed to a far larger potential audience than previously possible on niche streaming platforms like Rakuten’s Viki or Kocowa. Warners must be kicking themselves, having bought and then shut down early K drama streaming service DramaFever in 2018. Bob Cringely talked about innovation in terms of surfing waves and the danger of wiping out by being too early was as big as missing the wave altogether.
Back to the Korean production companies that have made these films. June Yoon over at the FT noticed what is now a well trod short term investment play
See what K-drama performs well when launched on Netflix
Buy shares in the production company if it is listed on the Korean stock market
Hold shares and then sell before the price starts to decline to a more reasonable level (after four weeks or so)
According to Yoon, this is the Korean drama trade. You have seen a similar bounce in the entertainment agencies of K-pop bands with international success already. So this surfing of the wave in Korean stocks makes sense.
Zurich
The reason why I hadn’t been paying much attention is that I had a workshop in Zurich. The preparation was all-consuming. This all sounds very glamorous but it wasn’t. I flew in and went to the client office near the airport. Co-hosted a workshop and departed via Zurich airport after seeing next to nothing of the city. It was a long 19-hour day of work and travel. No Instagrammable moments or even shots grabbed by the departure gates. The few observations that I did have:
The pound now almost has parity with the Swiss Franc, which gives you an idea about how much Sterling’s depreciation since Brexit must be driving inflation
Mars had a really strong presence in the duty free shops. Which was really strange given the strong association of Switzerland with chocolate. It was a major win for the Mars brand that manages to associate its brands with the Swiss country brand in the minds of travellers
Switzerland still has a strong presence for tobacco advertising and promotion. The Marlboro chevron was on view in the duty-free store and there was a Winston smoking lounge for the nicotine addicted. I wouldn’t have batted an eyelid at this 20 years ago, or even 10 years ago. But it caused cognitive dissonance on this visit. (Disclaimer: I grew up around tobacco advertising, having had Uncles who ran cigarette machines in Ireland and were wholesalers to Irish bars, shops and petrol stations. I still have somewhere a few packs of Jordan B&H playing cards, a couple of Carroll’s Number 1 ash trays for keeping change in and a Reemtsma-branded Maglite torch.)
*With the exception of China, given that the media industry is one of many sectors that China views as being central to its state interests. This has meant that Taiwanese dramas and documentaries on the Hong Kong democracy movement have been given a platform on Netflix.
Over the weekend, Darya Dugina was blown up in a car bomb under the Toyota Landcruiser, her newsworthiness was down to her being the daughter of Aleksandr Dugin. News stories covering the bomb blast described Aleksandr Dugin as a political commentator close to the Putin regime. But that descriptor doesn’t really tell you that much.
Aleksandr Dugin is a political philosopher, published author and commentator. But most importantly he is the founder of the Eurasian Movement. This movement supports neo-Eurasianism. This means opposing and rolling back the Atlanticism of western nations and having Russia to rebuild its influence through annexations and alliances, underpinned by an ultranationalist and neo-fascist ideological logical world view that considers America and liberal values the scapegoat for every ill.
https://flic.kr/p/2nFvPwm
Dugin’s written work
Foundations of Geopolitics: The Geopolitical Future of Russiapublished in 1997, outlined in how Aleksandr Dugin saw the future of Russia. it would form an alliance with Iran in the middle east. Reassert control over former Soviet republics, dismantling some completely like Ukraine and Georgia.
Dugin on re-engineering the world’s borders
It would look to address what it perceived as a threat from China, encouraging China to look south to its neighbours on the South China Sea rather than north to the former Qing empire lands now full of natural resources. This would allow China to solve the Straits of Malacca problem in its favour. The constraint to its move west would be India inside the Eurasian empire.
Aleksandr Dugin wanted the UK was to be isolated, as he viewed it as an aircraft carrier of the US, (echoes of Orwell’s 1984 in that viewpoint). Europe is to remade an anti-Atlanticist Franco-German bloc, that would affect a ‘Finlandisation of Europe’. Countries like Poland, would become a vassal like state of Russia. Orthodox countries would look towards Russia as the home of their mother church and cultural lodestone. Finland would be absorbed into Russia. Eventually, due to an over-reliance on Russian commodities, Aleksandr Dugin hoped to engineer an economic shock. Germany’s dependancy on Russian gas and oil would ultimately allow Russia to pick up the pieces in Europe and create an empire stretching from Dublin to Vladivostok
Aleksandr Dugin maybe at a distance from the Putin administration, but his political ideas have influenced Vladimir Putin, Russian foreign policy and military thinking.
Uneasy Euroasian detente
One can only see Russia’s relationship with China as reminiscent of the von Ribbentrop – Stalin detente of the interwar years, based purely on timing and mutual convenience.
Demographics
Aleksandr Dugin’s ideas are challenged by demographics. In the Middle East, Iran and Shai Muslim community are outnumbered by their Sunni counterparts. Russia’s own population growth is in terminal decline and not a match for China should it decide to go north. Which probably explains why Dugin tries to shoehorn India into part of the Eurasian empire.
The current war in Ukraine is as much a product of Aleksandr Dugin as it is of Vladimir Putin. President Putin is merely implementing Dugin’s vision slavishly. It is also interesting that the attempt on the life of Aleksandr Dugin seems to have given new ideological impetus to the invasion of Ukraine in Russia.
Is Dugin’s Eurasian ideological purity a threat to the Putin administration?
Marx and Lenin were dead by the time that Mao came along, so the Chinese communist party was never threatened by the legitimacy of their thought leaders with a higher authority ideologically pure voice. If they were alive today, it would be impossible for Xi Jingping to accuse Marx or Lenin of being guilty of hstorical nihilism. But Aleksandr Dugin exists outside of the Putin administration, he could be a natural rallying point of Putin’s support basis as the philosophical centre. He could be even considered a rival leader to Putin, drawing support from believers across the military intelligence and political classes. Making Aleksandr Dugin into a martyr just at the point when Russia has been suffering setbacks has some obvious benefits for the Putin administration and arguably less benefits for the Ukrainian government.
From Drugs to Corruption: The Growing Presence of Chinese Organized Crime in Latin America – In 2021, China’s policy banks — the China Development Bank (CDB) and Export-Import Bank (Exim) — made no loans to Latin America for the second consecutive year. Beijing is now essentially focused on financing Chinese companies to operate in the region. This shift in strategy and the resulting proliferation of Chinese companies in Latin America will increase the circulation of people and money that are no longer under the direct control of local governments. Based on current trends, Chinese criminal organizations will likely thrive in this new economic environment. Extortion, money laundering through front firms, and smuggling are already increasing, posing a severe threat to the population’s safety in the region. Worthwhile reading in conjunction with: Will Kenya’s next president follow through on China contract promises? | South China Morning Post – William Ruto campaigned on threats to deport illegal workers and make big contracts with Chinese companies public. But politics and the reality of government are two different things, observers say
Interesting dive into what’s causing the ‘great resignation’ and what it will mean for productivity
Culture
Guy Ritchie talks about Snatch – as a film, its interesting, but I won’t bother buying my own copy of Blu-Ray. A few things of note:
The direct influence of Sam Peckinpah’s western films on Snatch was not a connection that I saw coming at all
Ritchie talks about directing a Jason Statham film remotely via iPad, rather than being on set. I presume that this was done during COVID but still very interesting
His use of amateurs as actors because they were the right kind of characters
The folkloric nature of pub stories. The bit that chimed with me is how I knew of similar characters growing up at a similar time to Ritchie and some of them I knew personally. As I moved in more middle class circles my exposure to that world declined
Design
Big Car have a great documentary on the development of the Renault Scénic including an interview with Renault’s head of design at the time Patrick le Quément.
Economics
Why Mexico is missing its chance to profit from US-China decoupling | Financial Times – While foreign companies have borne the brunt of López Obrador’s attacks, the handful of big Mexican businesses that control large parts of the economy have been less affected. When the president wanted to tackle inflation, his government invited Mexican business leaders for private conversations to agree an informal pact limiting price rises on basic groceries. “It wasn’t a big sacrifice,” noted the owner of one large Mexican group. Mexico’s oligarchs have reinforced the impression of a cosy relationship with the president by making supportive statements in public and confining any criticism to conversations behind closed doors. “All the Mexican business leaders complain about Amlo,” says the chief executive of one big foreign company. “But when they meet him, they all appear afterwards in public saying how wonderful he is . . It’s a circle of collusion.”
I hadn’t realised that 8-track cartridges were used as a karaoke medium in Japan. I thought that they had gone from vinyl to cassette and then on to laser disc. Vinyl based karaoke is what gave use the Technics SL-1200 series of turntables, which is why the speed control on the right hand side of the deck was called a ‘pitch fader’.
The reason why these karaoke featured have a common design with the US 8-track cartridge players is likely down to the relatively high tooling costs to create the plastic mouldings. You can see the ’round polished marks in the recessed section where the inputs and outputs are that show a tools has been amended and quickly cleaned up.
Samuel Bickett had some really good insight into why Joshua Wong and several other people pled guilty to charges under the national security law : The Hong Kong 47 Committed No Crime…So Why Are So Many of Them Pleading Guilty? – Bickett points out that their actions were legal under the Basic Law article 52, but the National Security Law seems to supersede and reinterpret the basic law to anything the authorities want it to be.
The Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region must resign under any of the following circumstances: When he or she loses the ability to discharge his or her duties as a result of serious illness or other reasons; When, after the Legislative Council is dissolved because he or she twice refuses to sign a bill passed by it, the new Legislative Council again passes by a two-thirds majority of all the members the original bill in dispute, but he or she still refuses to sign it; and When, after the Legislative Council is dissolved because it refuses to pass a budget or any other important bill, the new Legislative Council still refuses to pass the original bill in dispute.
At the moment, this will be of most interest to more political types. Now if you apply that interpretation to short sellers like Muddy Waters Research, punchy buy-side equity analysts or a brief that an advertising planner like me might write where a client is competing against a connected Hong Kong or Chinese company – then legal, reputable and ethical commercial activities can result in national security charges at the whim of the Hong Kong government. This is something that many multinational companies seem to be sleep walking into. Work for a multinational like a VPN provider? That looks like colluding with a foreign power, subversion or even terrorism under the National Security Law.
The use of the term “national security” is particularly objectionable because the concept has frequently been used in China to criminalise the peaceful exercise of the rights of expression and to persecute those with legitimate demands like democracy and human rights. Its inclusion raises fears of extension of such Mainland Chinese practices to Hong Kong especially in the light of Article 23 of the Basic Law.
Hong Kong already had substantive security laws in place since British rule. Notably the 1971 Criminal Ordinance which remains on the books.
Then there is the way that the judiciary in Hong Kong has been shaped by the National Security Law. No defendant has won any points with regards the law and judicial decisions have allowed the law to be used in a retrospective manner in concert with older colonial era laws.
A film produced by a German film crew in 1966 to try and bring to life Japanese life for a European audience. I am sure that some of the manufacturing scenes are b-roll footage, but it is fascinating nonetheless. There is a style to the car and light truck designs which is a lovely aesthetic.
Vintage Studio 1 tracks mixed by Japanese sound system veterans Mighty Crown
1/ Chinese consumers overstretched themselves on luxury goods
2/ China is going through straitened financial times, 6 percent GDP growth feels like zero growth in developed markets. I have heard growth being described as being closer to 3 percent. Government control and intervention means that you won’t see the kind of collapse you saw in the west during 2008 and 2009 and internal security would stomp all over any ‘Occupy Wall Street’ analogue. Security forces are already suppressing depositors who have lost their savings in regional banks. There are also a lot of investors in property businesses: China Evergrande Shares Are Worthless, Top Fund Manager Says
Russia Holding Its Arms Expo With Weapons That May Be A ‘Hard Sell’ Now. | SOFREP – it is interesting that the Russians took steps to make sure the captured American gear on display was spotlessly clean, right down to the tyre paint. Who is to say that some of the gear came in by being bought or traded with the Taliban rather than from the Ukraine battlefield? I wouldn’t be surprised if Russia did a ‘homage’ to the M777. Russia has a wealth of experience in titanium fabrication from submarine hulls to aircraft, so the M777 carriage shouldn’t be that hard. The challenge would be the digital tools used to facilitate a higher degree of accuracy.
ViewSonic lays out plans for education metaverse – ViewSonic, which marks its 35th year of establishment in 2022, has been actively promoting digital transformation in recent years, shifting from a hardware company to a solutions company. Looking towards the future, company chairman James Chu has laid out the key development strategy of “ecosystem as a service,” announcing the Universe education metaverse software. Chu pointed out that ViewSonic has transformed in response to the rapidly changing environment. The company will focus on assisting the digital transformation of the education market. In the third quarter of 2021, ViewSonic’s electronic whiteboard was already no.1 in global market share, Chu said. Its Universe education metaverse software aims to level up the traditional 2D digital education into a 3D interactive virtual education platform. The goal is to solve the lack of interactivity and participation and make online education feel as if it is in-person. The proposed “ecosystem as a service” is about the integration of hardware, software and service, it said. Regarding software and hardware, ViewSonic will integrate its ViewBoard, a smart interactive electronic whiteboard, with myViewBoard, a digital teaching platform, to provide a complete education technology solution.
Warriors of the Future is a project of Hong Kong star Louis Koo. Koo has been almost single-handedly keeping the Hong Kong film industry in existence. A lot of Hong Kong‘s directors, cinematographers and stars go to work on ‘mainland co-productions’. Koo spent ten years getting Warriors of the Future off the ground. All the special effects that you see rendered in the film have been done by Hong Kong effects houses. The three years that the film spent in post-production seems to have been partly down to problems in accessing sufficiently large render farms for the CGI. The film cost just over 48 million pounds to make, but made only 39 million pounds in Chinese box office takings so far.
About those box office takings, on the face of it Warriors of the Future looks like just the kind of film that would do really well with Chinese cinema goers. They love Marvel, Transformers and the film adaption of Liu Cixin’s Wandering Earth. There are rumours going around that the box office takings for Warriors of the Future were spiked.
The usual scam goes something like this and has affected foreign films in the past. Cinema goer goes to the cinema. Wanders up to ticket office and asks for a ticket to Warriors of the Future, instead gets ‘Yet another remake of some made up chapter on the role that the Chinese communist party played during the great patriotic war against the Japanese’ – plot spoiler: the ‘heroes’ die. Cinema goer says ‘But I want to see Warriors of the Future‘. Ticket seller tells them to take that ticket to screen three where they can see Warriors of the Future.
Cinema goer gets to see Warriors of the Future, propaganda film gets the box office gross and cinema makes the quote of tickets that they have to sell in order to not get a visit from the security services. Given the high degree of support that the film enjoyed from stars like Daniel Wu who rented out screenings so that their fans could go and see the film for free; it seems like the Chinese government wants to stamp on the wind pipe of the barely alive Hong Kong film industry.
The film opens in Hong Kong cinemas on August 25th, and will hopefully make up for some of the lost revenue in the mainland alongside a sale of film related NFTs.
One Way
One Way is a documentary film that captures the ups and downs of Ah Man and Fiona who move with their two children to the UK from Hong Kong. Fiona is a teacher and Ah Man earns half of what she does. There is already a lot of stress in their marriage before they even plan to emigrate. There is naivety to them, which I also see mirrored in many of the other Hong Kongers I know who have been making the move recently. I am genuinely worried for how many of them will cope with the harshness of UK life.
In my experience, the British could learn a lot about civility and community from these new Hong Kong arrivals.
The bonesetter
Growing up in rural Ireland and an Irish household in England as a child I occasionally heard of a ‘bonesetter’. A bonesetter is part way between a chiropractor and a mystic. It was passed down through families and was considered to be a miraculous power. Doctors and medicines were expensive, so someone who could solve a slipped disc, trapped or a dislocated shoulder was highly valued.
You would hear around the dinner table tales of neighbours who were ‘crippled’ with pain, they were driven by a relative to a bone setter and were cured by the bonesetter. The bonesetter was said to have a ‘gift’ rather than medical training. It is generally thought of as a relic of Ireland past, like cocks of hay, cutting turf down the bog with sleán, tea made up in a recycled mineral bottle like a large Lucozade bottle, reading the Blondie comic strip the Sunday Press and getting covered with newsprint, The Old Moore’s Almanac and Ireland’s Own.
Jimmy Heffernan featured in the film, was a name I heard as a child. He was a farmer who gradually built up a reputation via word-of-mouth across the country and amongst the Irish diaspora in the UK, US and Australia. Heffernan is no longer with us, he died in 2003. Another member of the Heffernan family continues on the tradition to this day.
