This year I decided to attend the hugely popular Chinese New Year Races at the Shatin Racecourse in the New Territories.

While gambling on the third day after Chinese New Year is moerse auspicious to the locals, they couldn’t have chosen a worse day: the mercury dipped to an all-time low of 7 degrees celsius.

The anticipated cold weather didn’t deter the Hong Kong Jockey Club (HKJC) as they laid on the usual off-course entertainment including the usuals: the Fortune Market, various Variety Shows, Fortune Tips by Fung Shui masters, etc.

In stark contrast to last year’s huge crowds, this year’s sparse crowd as well as online and off-course betting still netted the HKJC a whopping HK$ 1,2 Billion! You read that right… I did say BILLION. The Hong Kong Government netted a neat $149 Million in betting duties.

Word to the HKJC though, for those of us who couldn’t get into the premium boxes with their restaurant food and waiting staff, you could do better than offering dumpling joints and sickening KFC fare. Just saying.

I stayed until Race 5 when the cold forced me to back to my warm apartment in Hung Hom.

This race’s winner (and the stand-out horse all-round) was aptly-named Kung Hei Fat Chong which means ‘Happy New Year‘ in English. I played that horse in my first-ever Hong Kong races bet (see video of Race 5 below) and yes… I won $74.50 !

Happy Year of the Dragon!

Kung Hei Fat Choi.

Thankfully I had my iPhone4S with me and snapped some footage:

This is our second and final year in an apartment that undoubtedly has one of the best views for anything that happens in Victoria Harbour.  The sea is so close, I can literally throw a stone in the water from my window.

Last night was unfortunately also our final Chinese New Year fireworks display from this vantage point because we’ll be moving to another apartment after 3 years in this building.

Maybe I’ve become jaded but last night’s show, while it was great, did little to eclipse last year’s spectacular.  Maybe the rain and bitter cold also had something to with it.

As usual, the hordes of pleasure craft started assembling about half an hour before 8pm and I could hear the merriment and jingling glasses from my lounge.  Clearly the party-makers down below had enough ‘fire water’ on board to fend off the sniping 9-degree cold. Here is a clip of all the boats departing immediately after the display:

This year, the fireworks were launched from 4 barges parked in Victoria Harbour, more or less in front of the Starbucks outlet on the Avenue of the Stars. (Last year the organizers employed only 3 barges.)  The fireworks display also coincided with the daily 8pm laser-light display, so in the clips below you will also see some of the multicolored lasers atop some of the Hong Kong Island skyscrapers ‘playing along.’

I put together a longer clip (filmed on my iPhone4S) of last night’s show:

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A stunning shot from last year’s fireworks display (Pic: Mike Jansen)

In Part 1 of this on-going saga, I posted about comments attributed to Su Birch, head of the SA Wine Export Marketers (WOSA).

In his November 20, 2011 article for TimesLive.co.za, Neil Pendock, who describes himself as ‘South Africa’s leading independent drinks commentator…’ writes about Birch’s  war-of-words with Hong Kong businessman and socialite Sir David Tang (formerly he of Shanghai Tang).

I am happy to say that Su has since contacted me and clarified her side of the tiff as follows:

Dear Mike,

I want to assure you that WOSA is totally committed to the Hong Kong and Chinese markets and are doing as much as we can with our very limited funds.

We were active at 4 shows in China last year, one of which was in Hong Kong and brought WOSA Wine Workshops to Hong Kong and Guangzhou.

These master classes were presented by some of our best winemakers to a large audience of Hong Kong sommeliers and trade.

I presented at the Wine Futures Hong Kong seminar in November.

We are planning to be at 5 shows this year, the first of which is Vinexpo Hong Kong in May.

We have translated our promotional material in to Mandarin and building our first Mandarin website in the next few months.

WOSA does not sell wine, we just try to grow awareness and promote a positive image.

If you have some great ideas on how to get more wine sold in Hong Kong,we’d like to to hear them. But budget is always a problem.

Our bottled wine exports to China (unfortunately I don’t have Hong Kong separately) are up 90% for the 12 months ended October 2011.

I guess everywhere in the world you have politics, and quite why Mr. Pendock found it necessary to make such a huge fuss about my comment in an online lifestyle magazine about not wanting to go on holiday in China (where I have done some travelling) is not something I understand. Going on holiday and doing business are two very different things.

I hope this sets the record straight.

Best

Su

On my usual Sunday-morning walkabout, I took some images of the SA shelf at the Jason’s store in Tsim Sha Tsui’s K11 mall.

(from BlitzBokke.com)

The Hong Kong Rugby Football Union (HKRFU) announced that after today’s public ticket sale, the Cathay Pacific/HSBC Hong Kong Sevens is now officially sold out.

The world-renowned Cathay Pacific/HSBC Hong Kong Sevens expects to welcome 120,000 visitors over three days from March 23 – 25, 2012.

Remaining 4,000 tickets

After an initial pre-sale period for international package buyers and local rugby clubs and supporters, the last remaining 4,000 event tickets were sold today to members of the Hong Kong public. To ensure the widest possible distribution of tickets in the local community, each buyer was allowed to purchase a maximum of two tickets in today’s sale.

Following today’s sale, and the pre-sale period for members of local rugby clubs from adult to youth and mini rugby and other HKRFU stakeholders, fully 75% of the 40,000 tickets available in 2012 were sold to local residents.

Trevor Gregory, Chairman of the HKRFU, commented on today’s sellout saying, “This year’s Cathay Pacific/HSBC Hong Kong Sevens has once again attracted extraordinary demand. On behalf of the HKRFU, I would like to thank the Hong Kong community for their continued support. The 2012 Hong Kong Sevens will again provide a significant boost to the local economy and Hong Kong’s international reputation. We look forward to hosting another full house at the Cathay Pacific/HSBC Hong Kong Sevens this March.”

Online frustration

A quick social media scan among local South Africans revealed that, as in previous years when tickets where sold by local online retailer HKTicketing, this year’s vendor CityLine didn’t fare much better.

“I gave up after 20 minutes.” said Eugene Wong. Katharine Schäfli concurred: “Meanwhile Cityline’s servers groan under the strain of the number of hits……. no improvement from HK Ticketing then!”

However, Monique Tenderini had more patience and was luckier. “(It) took nearly 3 hours but I managed to get 2. Was using 2 iPads, a pc and a laptop…”

See you at The Sevens!

My late father was a huge fan of Nat King Cole’s and often regaled us with his classic Christmas Song (Chestnuts roasting on an open fire) during the Cape Town Christmas holidays.

Of course Cape Town temperatures often exceed 30degrees celsius so we had no understanding of that song, other than our dad doing it so well… all the time pottering around on our Yamaha electric organ. He did too. Also, chestnuts aren’t big in South Africa so that entire experience was lost on us as kids.

Until I moved to Asia.

I first encountered chestnuts (and cold Decembers) living in Northern Taiwan.

Roaming Taipei city, shopping for Christmas gifts, I often encountered street vendors selling hot, roasted chestnuts to eager passers-by.

But it was here in Hong Kong that I grew to love not only the hot nuts, but also the smell of the coal fire and roasting nuts being churned manually on the streets of this bustling city.

I bought some today just outside the Tin Hau MTR and took some pics:

One pound of roasted chestnuts coming up…

Here’s the great Nat King Cole…

(From BlitzBokke.com)

The Hong Kong Rugby Football Union (HKRFU) today announced that the public ticket sale for the 2012 Cathay Pacific/HSBC Hong Kong Sevens will be held via local ticketing service Cityline this Saturday, January 14, 2012.

To further enhance the ticket purchasing process and convenience for local consumers, tickets for the 2012 Cathay Pacific/HSBC Hong Kong Sevens will be retailed via ticketing service Cityline.

Tickets will be sold exclusively online via www.cityline.com. No tickets will be sold via Cityline Outlets or Call Centres.

Online ticket sale will begin at 10.00am on January 14, 2012.

To ensure the widest possible distribution of tickets in the local community, each patron will be limited to purchase only two tickets. Each applicant will also be required to verify their local residency with a valid Hong Kong or Macau SAR postal address for registered mail or courier services.

Tickets will be distributed to successful applicants starting from March 1, 2012 via registered mail or courier service only (additional cost may incur and details are available at www.cityline.com). There will be no personal collection of tickets.

Following the increased demand from Hong Kong rugby clubs, Youth and Mini Rugby Sections and members of the local rugby community as well as other HKRFU stakeholders during the initial pre-sale period, the HKRFU today announced that 4,000 tickets will be available for sale to the public.

The 2012 Cathay Pacific/HSBC Hong Kong Sevens will be held from March 23 – 25 at the Hong Kong Stadium.

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Those of you who have been following my ramblings here on Howzit-HongKong.com will know full well about my bitching about the lack off South African wines on the Hong Kong shelves.

Since my first post on this issue I’ve been at a loss of words on this issue but today, on my usual trawl of the South African daily papers, I probably found (one of the reasons) for the discrepancy.

Seems the head honcho of the SA Wine Export marketers (WOSA), one Su Birch have been in the thick of things as far as SA Wines’ import attempts into Hong Kong/China is concerned. And NOT in a good way.

Read this report from TimesLive…

Seems Su Birch has not exactly endeared herself into the local wine inport/export community with her comments.

More to follow…

Mike Jansen

(Hung Hom)