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David Evans

Today Lai See is going to talk about lights. Not street-lights, head-lights or house-lights, but Christmas lights.

 Lai See has decided to judge who has made the best efforts in lighting up their building this season.

 This years contenders are:   Cheung Kong Center   Central Plaza   Revenue Tower   Mr Leung's Wan Chai fish-ball stall.

 First entrant to step into the glare of the spot-light is Li Ka-shing's flag-ship construction, the Cheung Kong Center.

 Lai See got comfortable at the restaurant in Hong Kong Park from which to get a good view of the show, and settled down to see what building management had come up with.

 Oddly, the light display seemed vaguely familiar. Alternating coloured lights would sweep up the building in a wave motion.

 Then all became clear.

 This was the same display as at that other Hong Kong monolith, the inspiringly named, The Center.

 What happened?  Did management run out of ideas?   Or did they look out of the window at The Center in Sheung Wan and think, 'Hey, I know what we can do'.

 Credit where credit is due though, they have introduced a giant 2000 sign that appears intermittently between the waves.

 On the whole, the impression was that it was a bit bland.

 Lai See awarded management 4.75 points for its copying skills.

 But Lai See would guess that it is pretty good for the building described as the box the Bank of China Building came in.

 Jumping on a bus, Lai See headed towards Wan Chai to take a look at Revenue Tower on Gloucester Road.

 The rationale being that, judging by the size of our tax bill this year, the Government would have Revenue Tower lit up like a Christmas tree.

 After staring up at the tower for half an hour, Lai See developed a crick in the neck.

 While considering heading off to the next office-block the inexplicable suddenly happened.

 A light went on in an office on the seventh floor. Fabulous.

 It went off again 20 minutes later, so Lai See decided to move on.

 But not before awarding management 23 points for best use of taxpayers money.

 Central Plaza in Wan Chai claims to have 'the world's longest dragons soaring skyward', and represents the SAR's tallest lighting display.

 Now, this is more like it, Lai See thought, despite the dragons looking more like giant dollar signs which we guessed was a fair representation of Hong Kong.

 One, two, three, wow. There must be at least 40,000 light-bulbs in that display, guessed Lai See - with a little help from the press release.

  Apparently the lighting display was designed by Central Plaza Management, who had obviously spent more than the five minutes the boys over at Cheung Kong's management had spent on their effort.

 'This years lighting display is designed to be visually arresting, and it can be viewed by the public from different vantage points on Hong Kong Island and Kowloon,' croons the building's public relations machine.

  Let's hope Mr Li can't see it from the top of his ivory tower, or someone isn't going to get their Christmas bonus.

 Lai See decided to ask the man on the street what he thought of Central Plaza's festive attempts.

 ''You, man on the street. Do you think three flying dragons symbolise the vibrant energy of the Hong Kong people, and the new heights they will achieve in the coming millennium?' Reply: 'Chi sin gweilo.'  One for the developers then.

 We gave management 329,000 points, just to annoy those over at Cheung Kong.

 With the onset of hunger we headed off to the other bright lights of Wan Chai and wandered down towards Lockhart Road.

 It was while contemplating which lighting display to pick holes in next that Lai See spotted a string of fairy lights draped around a hawker's food stall.

 On approaching the cart, the proprietor beamed at us with a gappy smile and waved his fish-balls in the air, prompting swift evasive action to avoid the spray of curry sauce heading our way.

 After surveying the array of bits of rubber on a stick and bubbling cauldrons of evil smelling sauces, Lai See moved on.

 With that, Lai See came to a decision.

 Mr Leung and his Wan Chai fish-ball stall wins this year's festive lights competition for his simple and unpretentious stab at Christmas cheer.



Fishy delights beat off high-powered displays