Thoughts on a Couple of Incidents

Anyone else seeing parallels in the Richard Li-Isabella Leong breakup/payoff and the pathetic state of our own relationship with the Hong Kong government? To us, the angelic Isabella’s split from the rodentish Li just cuts too close to the bone…

But honestly, we’re surprised this little thing we had with the unelected Hong Kong civil service has lasted as long as it did. Think about it—we’ve just been going through the motions for years. In retrospect, we probably shouldn’t have gotten back together after that whole Article 23 incident in 2003. We tried to spice things up with the functional constituencies, but that just got real weird real fast.

It’s the same old cycle over and over again—you pretend to reform, and we quiet down for a little while and pretend to trust you. We wanted to believe you changed, we really did, but we can’t change who we really are in our hearts. We see how you look at every property cartel floozy that flits by—if that’s who you really want to get in bed with, then why not get out there and make yourself happy? Why continue torturing yourself? Trust us, a clean break is best for everyone.

That’s why we’ve written one of those Dear John letters. We just want to make it, you know, official. No hard feelings.

Dear Hong Kong,
We had some good times together, such as the 80s. Well, all good things end. It’s kind of sad that everyone thought we had the perfect relationship. But you know we never really loved you—you were just that rich city that offered a sense of security. And, admit it, you never really loved us either—you just wanted us for our stability and pliancy. We never signed a pre-nup, or elected you or anything, so how about you just give us that $96 billion surplus you seem to generate every year and we’ll go our own ways? We have lots of expenses, such as paying landlord and commodity cartels and raising our reunited cross-border families. And hey, we had a good run.

Thanks for the memories,
The Hong Kong People