Hong Kong turns Bruce Lee's home into a memorial

Kung Fu legend Bruce Lee was spending a night with his girlfriend, fellow star Betty Ting Pei, when he complained of a headache and took one of Betty's painkillers.

Within hours he was dead from swelling of the brain, at the age of just 32.

His death on 20 July 1973 deprived an avid worldwide audience of more epoch-making films such as his Enter the Dragon, Fist of Fury and The Way of the Dragon.

He created the martial arts genre in movies and gave Chinese people around the world something to be proud of.

So intense and loving is the aura that still surrounds Bruce Lee that it also extends to an average two-storey house in a Hong Kong suburb called Kowloon Tong.

Donation

The house at 41 Cumberland Avenue is where the star lived officially with his wife, Linda Lee Cadwell, son Brandon (who also was to die tragically young) and daughter Shannon.

Currently it is a love motel, a place where couples can check in for a night, or less, with their cars parked behind curtains to obscure their number-plates and secure anonymity.

It is a nondescript place, but the fence, the arch over the gate and the basic shell of the house are original.

After the tragic earthquake in Sichuan last year, noted billionaire philanthropist Yu Panglin thought of selling various properties around Hong Kong, including the HK$100m (US$12.9m, £8.8m) love motel, to donate the proceeds to the quake victims.

Outcry ensued. This was the home of the great martial arts star, a part of Hong Kong's heritage - and local people weren't going to let it simply disappear.

So Mr Yu changed his plans, and decided to donate the home to Bruce Lee fans around the world.

"Mr Yu has had the house for more than a decade and many people go there, even now," said Raymond Chan, the surveyor and member of the town planning board to which Mr Yu has entrusted the property.

Quite what will happen to the building remains unclear - will it be given to the government to manage? Or will a trust be set up to manage the site?

A committee is being formed, of architects, planners, government representatives and others, to work on moving the project forward.

Fans, friends and film buffs around the world are being asked to contribute designs and memorabilia, and Mr Chan has set up a new email address to manage the influx: bruceleehouse@gmail.com.

Bruce Lee's daughter Shannon has said she is happy to help. She leads the Bruce Lee Foundation and has been working on the establishment of the Bruce Lee Action Museum in Seattle, where the Lees lived between 1959 and 1964.

"Reviving my family's old Hong Kong residence is a unique opportunity which I believe should be seized if at all possible," she told Hong Kong's South China Morning Post.

For Mr Chan, Bruce Lee is the legend who created a new identity for Chinese men.

A stroll along Hong Kong's waterfront "Avenue of the Stars" shows Mr Chan is not alone in this view - a statue of the star draws tourists and fans every day, many of them from mainland China.

Last year, China's state broadcaster, CCTV, ran a 50-part series about Bruce Lee in a belated recognition of the star's symbolism for the Chinese - even though people living on the mainland must have been barely aware of him during his lifetime.

Jackie Chan

Somehow the pull of Jackie Chan, another action star, has not captured the Hong Kong public's imagination quite as much.

Jackie Chan has told reporters of his desire to donate his collection of antique sandalwood houses from the Ming and Qing dynasties to Hong Kong, to help spur interest in his heritage and provide Hong Kong with more tourist attractions.

The seven houses, stored in pieces in a Hong Kong warehouse for years, are reportedly worth US$67m (£46m). But he claims the government has dithered for 10 years, and refused him access to adequate sites, sending him to seek a home for the constructions elsewhere.

Singapore and Shanghai are to receive some Jackie Chan houses, but their Hong Kong welcome remains uncertain.

The recent howls of protest after Jackie Chan said that Chinese people "need to be controlled" to avoid the "chaos" of societies such as Taiwan and Hong Kong, will not have helped his search or home-town validation, the pundits have said.

Heritage

The newfound focus on the heritage values of Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan has raised questions about what it means to be a Hong Konger.

"Hong Kong is much more interested in heritage now," said Christine Loh, leader of the Civic Exchange think-tank.

An environmental and heritage campaigner and a former legislator, she points to a growing number of cases where public debate about preserving what makes Hong Kong special has become intense.

The idea of heritage has grown exponentially in recent years, as the change from British to Chinese sovereignty in 1997 alerted people to a passing of an era.

A sense of Hong Kong identity as distinct from mainland Chinese or British colonial identities has animated passionate debates about saving icons such as the Star Ferry, which crosses the harbour, or old neighbourhoods where stone shop-houses are propped up by steel hoists to survive.

(BBC)

Vice PM Wang Qishan: Distant Neighbors

The most pressing task facing all countries in the world today is to restore global economic growth as soon as possible. Yet it is worrisome to note that the surge of trade protectionism has made the prospects of the already fragile world economy even worse.

China and the European Union, two major economies and stakeholders in the world, should take a responsible attitude and demonstrate their common, clear commitment against trade protectionism at the second China-E.U. high-level economic dialogue.

Trade liberalization is the engine of economic growth. It has served as a strong propeller of economic globalization and benefited people around the world. On the contrary, trade protectionism — featuring the pursuit of benefits for one country at the expense of others — will only lead to retaliation. It serves the interest of no one.

The world economy paid a heavy price for the prevalence of trade protectionism during the Great Depression in the 1930s, which led to the contraction of global trade by two thirds. We should make sure that the same mistake is not repeated.

Europe is the birthplace of free trade theory, and the E.U. is the product of successful free trade practices. The removal of trade barriers promoted formation of a single European market and enhanced development and prosperity in Europe. As a result, the E.U. has grown into the largest economy in the world today.

China is firmly committed to reform and to opening up. Since its accession to the World Trade Organization, China’s market has become much more open and its trade greatly liberalized. The current overall tariff level of China is only 9.8 percent. Its average tariff on industrial products is only 8.9 percent, the lowest among all developing countries. Its tariff on imported agricultural products is only 15.2 percent, which is not only lower than other developing countries but also far below that of many developed countries.

The openness of China’s trade in services has reached a level close to that of an average developed country. China has taken steady steps to improve its market economic system and legal system. In particular, it has made remarkable progress in intellectual-property rights protection, product quality and food safety, environmental protection and labor security. China has also taken concrete actions against trade protectionism — the Chinese government recently sent Chinese enterprises on procurement missions to Europe and the United States.

The economies of China and the E.U. have much to offer each other and our two-way trade holds a huge potential. The E.U. is now China’s largest trading partner and China is the second largest trading partner of the E.U.

China and the E.U. should make full use of the platform presented by the high-level economic dialogue to strengthen communication and cooperation and jointly oppose trade protectionism. This would better enable us to tackle the current crisis and promote economic recovery and growth. It would also reinforce the trend of economic globalization and facilitates a further growth of two-way trade.

The two sides should work actively to put in place the agreement reached at the G-20 summit in London, promote early, comprehensive and balanced outcome in the WTO Doha round negotiations and uphold an open, fair and equitable international trading regime. An early conclusion of the Doha round is of symbolic significance to curbing protectionism.

The two sides should further open markets to each other. China will continue to lower the threshold for market access, improve trade and investment environment and encourage Chinese enterprises to increase procurement and imports from Europe.

We hope the E.U. will relax restrictions on the exports of high-tech products to China, enhance cooperation with China on the development and application of clean energy, new energy and renewable energy and support cooperation among our small and medium-sized enterprises. Meanwhile, our two sides should step up efforts to update the E.E.C.-China Trade and Economic Cooperation Agreement.

The two sides should work in a cooperative spirit and properly resolve trade differences and disputes. Each side needs to take proper care of its own interests. Yet, more importantly, both sides should accommodate the concerns of the other, taking into full account national conditions and their stage of development, and steadily broaden the scope of our common interests.

We should strengthen dialogue and consultation, refrain from taking protectionist measures and avoid politicizing trade issues. China hopes that the E.U. will evaluate the conditions of the Chinese economy in an objective and unprejudiced manner and recognize China’s full market economy status as soon as possible.

Trade liberalization was, is and will continue to be the only way to global economic prosperity. The Chinese side is ready to work with the E.U. and take effective measures to oppose trade protectionism, promote better growth of China-E.U. trade and jointly move the world economy out of the current difficulties at an early date.

Chinese bankers Jailed in U.S. for 20-Plus Years

May 7 -- Two former Bank of China Ltd. managers, convicted last year of defrauding the lender of $485 million, were each sentenced to more than 20 years in jail by a Nevada court.

U.S. District Judge Philip Pro in Las Vegas yesterday sentenced Xu Chaofan to 25 years and Xu Guojun to 22 years in prison, the Justice Department said in an e-mailed statement. Pro sentenced the former bank managers’ wives, Kuang Wan Fang and Yu Ying Yi, to eight years each.

A grand jury in Las Vegas last year convicted the couples of defrauding Bank of China, racketeering, money laundering, transporting stolen property, and passport and visa fraud. The former bank managers created shell corporations in Hong Kong, and funneled money through those companies as well as bank and investment accounts in Canada and the U.S., prosecutors said.

“Despite the best efforts of these defendants to avoid detection, their scheme first to steal nearly $500 million from a Chinese bank, and then to hide themselves and the money in the United States, was exposed,” Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer said in the statement.

Prosecutors claimed the couples emigrated to the U.S. using false identities, and presented evidence of their transactions at Las Vegas casinos, including bets of as much as $80,000.

The two men and their colleague, Yu Zhendong, former employees of Bank of China at its sub-branch in Kaiping County in Guangdong, laundered funds through Las Vegas and Macau, and then used fake passports to flee to Canada in October 2001, the Chinese bank said in 2002.

Plea Bargain

Yu accepted a plea bargain and returned to China in 2004, where he was convicted for embezzlement. His wife was allowed to remain in the U.S. to look after their children, according to yesterday’s Justice Department statement.

Bank of China’s Beijing-based spokesman Wang Zhaowen said he wasn’t aware of the sentence and declined to comment immediately.

China’s banking regulator is stepping up efforts to prevent irregularities and fraud at its lenders, which helped create a surge in bad loans in the past decade.

Several senior bank executives including Liu Jinbao, former chief executive of Bank of China’s Hong Kong operations, and Wang Xuebing, who headed China Construction Bank Corp., have been sentenced to prison terms on corruption charges in recent years. Wang Yi, a former vice president of China Development Bank, was arrested in January for allegedly accepting bribes.

Mitchell Posin, an attorney representing Xu Chaofan, and Bret Whipple, a lawyer representing Xu Guojun, didn’t immediately return calls seeking comment.

Lawrence Jay Litman, a lawyer representing Kuang Wan Fang, and Travis Shetler, a lawyer representing Yu Ying Yi, didn’t immediately return calls seeking comment after business hours.

(Bloomberg)

Flu spat cools budding Mexico-China relationship

MEXICO CITY, May 5 - China's decision to quarantine dozens ofMexicans to guard against the spread of a deadly new flu has soured therelationship between the two exporters, which compete for access to the U.S. market.

Still, a desire on both sides to boost bilateral trade and ship moreMexican raw materials to fast-growing China means the diplomatic flap should only be a temporary setback.

Mexico accused China of discrimination after Beijing, worried about theH1N1 flu strain, ordered some 70 Mexicans, including a honeymooning couple, into seclusion, even though none had symptoms.

Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa called the isolation measures"unacceptable" and "without foundation" and advised Mexicans against traveling to China.

China rejected the criticism, saying the steps it had taken were purely medical and not discriminatory.

"This should not affect the relationship in the medium-term because weare talking about an overreaction on both sides," said Enrique Dussel,an expert on Mexican-Chinese trade at the UNAM University in Mexico City.

Across China, a Mexican man in Hong Kong was the only person found to beinfected with the new flu strain that has killed 26 people in Mexico,two in the United States and made more than 1,500 people ill in 22 countries.

China sent a plane from Shanghai on Tuesday to pick up about 100 of itscitizens from Mexico, mainly tourists, students and business people.Some Chinese had been holed up in hotels in northern Mexico for days waiting to leave.

The spat has revived old tensions between the two nations, which
established diplomatic relations in 1972. There has been intense trade
rivalry in recent years with Mexico blaming China for muscling in on its
top export territory by flooding the United States with cheap goods made
in low-wage factories.

UNEASY RELATIONSHIP

President Felipe Calderon visited Beijing last July in a push to improve bilateral trade and Chinese President Hu Jintao came to Mexico in 2005 promising more investment in areas like auto parts manufacturing and mineral exploration.

Yet China has leaned more on South American commodities producers like Brazil and Chile for the materials it needs to fuel its export-oriented economy.

Mexico exported just $2 billion worth of goods to China last year, Dussel said, but imported $34 billion of Chinese products, from clothing and electronics to tourist trinkets.

"Of all the major countries in Latin America, China has the most tense relationship with Mexico," said Dan Erikson, an analyst at the Washington-based Inter-American Dialogue.

"The swine flu crisis has just revealed once again that they haven't built the partnership that both countries say that they want," Erikson said.

Other flu-affected nations have had citizens ensnared in China's quarantine measures, including at least four from the United States and more than 20 from Canada, but Mexico, the epicenter of the outbreak, said it has been unfairly targeted.

The person-to-person spread of the virus has kept alive fears of a pandemic, though scientists say this strain does not appear more deadly than common seasonal flu, which can kill 250,000 to 500,000 people a year globally.

Governments around the world are reacting to the outbreak with different levels of severity. Many suspended flights or warned their citizens against travel to Mexico.

Even as Mexico said the flu crisis seemed to be dissipating and prepared to reopen closed businesses, Chinese nationals wearing face masks and loaded with luggage streamed aboard a Chinese-chartered jet that stopped in Mexico City and the northern city of Tijuana.

"There is a lot of mutual ignorance and no strategic framework. This just shows there is a lot of work to be done" to improve ties, Dussel said.

(Reuters)

Mexican plane to pick up nationals in China

BEIJING, May 5 - An aircraft was due to land in China on Tuesday to take home dozens of Mexicans who have been under forced quarantine, straining diplomatic relations, as a protective measure against a new flu strain.

The confined Mexicans have become players in a larger drama about how far governments should go to stifle fears that the H1N1 virus could creep through their borders.

Mexican Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa accused China at the weekend of discrimination after Beijing ordered dozens of Mexicans into seclusion across the country, although only one, a man now in Hong Kong, was found to have the H1N1 flu.

China has denied the charge, saying isolation was the correct procedure, but both countries have agreed to send aircraft to pick up their respective nationals.

A Chinese aircraft has already left for Mexico to pick up Chinese left stranded there after China suspended scheduled, direct flights to the country, the Foreign Ministry said.

An Aeromexico flight will arrive in Shanghai on Tuesday and fly on to Beijing and Guangzhou, an airline official said.

None of those quarantined had shown any signs of being infected, the Chinese Health Ministry said.

The state-run Xinhua news agency said the Mexicans in Beijing were doing well inside a hotel where they have been confined, though the air conditioning has been turned off to prevent any spread of disease despite temperatures reaching 30 degrees Celsius (86 F) outside.

They were put in the best rooms and sent fruit and flowers every day, Xinhua said, citing Deng Xiaohong, deputy director of Beijing Municipal Health Bureau.

"The Mexicans said they were grateful for our work. They said they feel it was understandable to be quarantined as it was a necessary method to avoid the spread of the virus," Deng was quoted as saying.

Staff at the hotel contacted by telephone would not let Reuters talk to any of the Mexicans.

A Mexican embassy official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said it was in regular contact with its nationals. "They feel okay," the official said, declining further comment.

In Shanghai, the Mexicans -- including a honeymooning couple -- had been quarantined at a four-star hotel with a sea view, Xinhua said.

"They can contact people outside, watch television, listen to music, read books or surf the Internet," it added.

In a further diplomatic tussle, Canada said it would pursue World Trade Organization action against China if it maintains its ban on pork and hogs from the province of Alberta [nN04406901]. China's Commerce Ministry had no immediate response.

The one Mexican in China found to have the H1N1 virus arrived in Hong Kong on Thursday after passing through Shanghai. Many of the confined Mexicans were on his flight to Shanghai.

China's vast population and patchy medical infrastructure make it vulnerable should the virus take hold. But even Mexicans residing outside their country have been held by Chinese authorities, the Mexican Embassy spokeswoman said.

(Reuters)