A Tiring Sunday

Sunday was an extremely tiring day. In the morning, I went to the weekly mass at the Cathedral.  I had to resist with the utmost difficulties from falling asleep listening to the boring and unimaginative sermon on the proper way to pray from our former parish priest and now vice-Bishop. I felt really sorry for God. I spent the time doing my own meditation instead.

After the mass, I telephoned my daughter who arrived Saturday morning. She had just  got here from Shanghai after her 25-member summer course group had a brief visit to world expo there and had just woken up after the pub hopping last night in Lan Kwai Fong with her summer course friends following her dinner with me. She was then with Florence, my wife's God-daughter, a very tall, slim, young lady now just finishing G10 in Canada and whose eyes always smile with the kind of swiftly changing sparkle peculiar to the intelligent. She too had returned to HK for the summer vacation but had already been here for about a month. They were with her mother, Wendy, a very slim middle aged lady whose father was a doctor in the PRC and who married Florence's dad, a science graduate from the HK Polytechnic (now University), turned investment adviser. She is a very sensitive, self-confident, quick lady with a huge face on a very tiny frame, literally like a head on match-stick. She too always has a smile on her face. I suppose intelligence runs in the family. I like both of them, We always meet with them for lunch or dinner or a visit whenever any of my two daughters return from the States in summer. This time, they were both at a Japanese restaurant in Wanchai. I asked for directions and then joined them.

When I arrived, I saw the three of them. They were seated at a small table. I know that space is expensive. But the table was really super mini-size. At the opposite side was Wendy. She was in a simple short-sleeved beige shirt on a pair of like colour trousers. She gave me her usual big sunny smile and told me they had been there for more than half an hour and had already ordered and apologised for not having told my daugther to give me clear enough directions because the signboard of the restaurant was really small and I had to call several times to get clarifications before I could finally locate it. She asked me what I liked. I said I ate little and would take anything but poison so that she could order anything which she and her daughter fancied and not have to bother about me. I said that I had so little on my-home packed lunch that it always made the girls at my office twinge with guilt whenever they compared what they had on their plates or lunch boxes with what I had in mine. We chit chatted for a while and then my daughter said she wanted to go to Causeway Bay with Florence to do some window-shopping. Just "window-shopping"? I smiled. Florence was in loose fitting Indian style shirt but with small patches of emerald greens, sky blues dotted with tiny orange and yellow, a very tasteful casual shirt. My daughter told me she had an appointment with my niece at his exclusive brand-name fashion shop in Causeway Bay. She said she might want to intern at one of his shops. He also had another one in Central and also a newly opened one in Shanghai and I believe one in Tokyo. I said to them,"If you got your shopping location, your advertising, your brands, your style, your timing and your target customers right, fashion is a real money spinner. Prices could easily be marked up ten even twenty times production costs, depending on brand name. Young people now can really pay with with their dad's credit card or else treat their parents as their ATMs!". The two girls giggled knowingly, looking into each others' eyes and didn't say anything.

After the lunch, I headed off for the Book Fair. I did not want to waste the free ticket given to me by the head of the HK Taoist Alliance at Friday's talk at the HKSHP. I knew that I would probably hit incredible congestion there on a Sunday afternoon. But how could I not? I went through half of the stalls, mainly PRC publishers and also the publications arms of the two local universities and the two English universities and decided to call it a day. It was impossible to lug the books through the entire hall with at least 10 kilos on my shoulders and in my hands through those crowds walking cheek by jowl and being constantly squashed, pushed or bumped by their bags or their milling bodies. After about two hours, I had to sit on the pile of books I bought, leaning my back against the wall at the entrance to get a respite from the constant shoving. I thought I would continue after the rest. Whilst sitting there, my head was dizzy with all these feet in sandals, thongs, mock-straps, sneakers, high heels, medium heels, boots, boat shoes, clogs etc. moving in endless stream before my eyes. We laugh at women and the quantity of shoes they buy. What about book lovers and their books?! At first, I thought whilst resting, I would look at the faces of the owners of the passing shoes but after a while my eyes were so tired that I had to close them. I spent the time doing meditation instead. Then I left.

I bought some books at incredible prices, some at 70% and some even at 50% discount. Three 960-page English books with colour prints at $110 each ie. 1001 Books, 1001 Wines and 1001 Paintings One must see before One dies respectively and a 853-page book A Critical History of New Music in China by HKCU's Liu Ching Chih (劉靖之) for $173! But they weigh like 4 heavy bricks and contributed no small part in my decision to leave. Amongst others, I also bought The Unspoken Rule of Chinese History by 吳思 and 50 Reasons why China may  never be Great, by David Marriot and Karl Lacroix and another one on how "China is Stranger than Fiction" by 鐘祖康 , all books banned in the PRC and also another book by the cultural sociologist Suen Lung Kee (孫隆基) on the popular American mind called A Matricidal Culture (殺母的文化) . In addition, I bought a Biography of Garcia Marquez, a Memoir of Pablo Neruda,   A Chinese translation of one of the hottest French novelists called  Michel Houellebecq, his La Possibilité d'une île, another translated novel by Silvana de Mari's "L'Ultimo Elfo". On philosophy, I bought one on Buddhist Philosophy by 方立天, a further one on Jewish Thought by 柯友輝, and also the "Philosophic Notes"( 哲學筆記 I) by a radical Chinese thinker called 博浪沙 and another book called International Esthetics edited by 汝信.  I also bought a number of books on ancient Chinese poetry and a new so-called "poetic novel" in Chinese. It's impossible to list them all. How I wish I have the time to really read them! Before I do, they will add to the height of the books piling up on the floor of my small flat! Sunday was a day I really felt the "weight" of knowledge! Or is it the "weight" of the "illusion" of knowledge?