ONCE people came to Hong Kong and wrote about the mystery of the East; about taipans, opium dens, the smell of burning joss-sticks and junks gliding across the morning mist of the South China Sea. Now they write about David Tang.
'David Tang, creator of Shanghai Tang, Chinese entrepreneur, huckster, friend of Baroness Thatcher and smoker of the best Cuban cigars,' fawns Victoria Mather in the Financial Times, ' ... is a social jack-in-the-box, popping up everywhere from Los Angeles - where he was one of the chosen at Vanity Fair's Oscars' party - to the Le Caprice [London] where he takes Diana, Princess of Wales, to lunch.
'In a world which has become a global village, with a Chanel on every corner of every street ... the problem is finding the unique. There is no point travelling to exotic places and returning with something you could have bought in Bond Street. The unique comes easily to David Tang.' Which is why he's about to open stores in New York, Milan and London.
by george JONATHAN Manthorpe, sees nothing unique in the departing Brit's goodbye festivities. He informs The Vancouver Sun readers that, 'hyperbole is running riot in the streets of Hong Kong' and that Leonie Ki Man-fung's Better Hong Kong Foundation has produced $140 million to celebrate the first day of Chinese rule.
The British approach, he concedes, is 'a rather quaint approach that reads like a mammoth Scouts or Guides jamboree' 'In the final weeks of British rule Hong Kongers are to be offered such festive treats as travelling health exhibitions, group tours to the new Chep Lap Kok airport, an essay-writing competiton and a cello recital by Andrew Lloyd-Webber's less famous, and cheaper, brother Julian.
He concludes: 'Britain's final act of cultural munificence to the people of Hong Kong will be a pop concert featuring the ageing Boy George.' sounds familiar JUST where is Craig Brown of Canada's The Columbian newspaper talking about. 'There's more neon than in Las Vegas, more Rolls-Royces than in Beverly Hills, more fancy shops and more designer clothes than Manhattan. More entrepreneurs with cellular phones. More double-decker buses. More of the world's tallest buildings ... more noodles. More people.' So far so good.