Maybe the teachers did have to be flashed the red card. OK, so the students were ejected from the terraces. Even the Bar Association was refusing to play ball. But China still managed to win support for the Provisional Legislature from the First Division.
Happy Valley Football Club and their Third Division stablemates Tung Sing placed advertisements in the pro-China press declaring their support and promising to try their best to preserve the stability and prosperity of Hong Kong.
This may not be unrelated to the clubs' ties with Preparatory Committee Vice Chairman Henry Fok Ying-tung, President of the Hong Kong Football Association. He founded both. Score: Chris Patten 3 Lu Ping 2.
Also from Happy Valley, our sharp-eyed spies report a curious formation of drain-covers at the rear of the Xinhua office there. One is the normal Hong Kong Government issue. But two others, of more mysterious purpose, bear an inscription linking them with a Wuhan foundry. We have our suspicions. Could these in fact be a secret back-door for Lu Ping's low-profile exits? Do they hide a secret tunnel direct to Xinhua's Stanley Villa? Our observers also noted the arrival of a van from the Nixon Cleaning Co., Pest Control Division.
Whether this was in any way connected with that old friend of China the late Richard Nixon, we cannot say. But Quarry Bay seems to remember he was better known for putting bugs in than cleaning them out. Perhaps the security boys down at Xinhua ought to have a good sniff around.
Mr Patten told the Legislative Council he would never sneak out by the back door, and had never done so in his four years in Hong Kong.
True. Never the back door. A story in the South China Morning Post from last September 29 relates how after an encounter with rat-wielding demonstrators in a temporary housing area 'The Governor was hurried out of a side-gate.' Starting tomorrow Hong Kong people looking for a bolt-hole in the United States will find themselves following Mr Lu's example rather than Mr Patten's.
