Category: Entertainment
Lantau’s own Folk Ups in farewell gig tonight
Lantau’s teenage indie-folk outfit the Folk Ups farewell their home fans tonight as they move on to the next stage in their careers.
They’re not moving to LA. Having just completed high school, Ryan and Jasmine are going abroad to study.
In their brief time as a duo they’ve built an impressive resume, thanks to Jasmine’s golden voice and Ryan’s melodic, well-constructed songs.
They’ve done more than 50 gigs, including Clockenflap and Rugby Sevens and have recorded half a dozen of their own tunes. They released their second EP, Shelby, just two weeks ago (available for free on Spotify and Bandcamp).
The pair spoke to Lantau News in Mui Wo this week.
Do you both live on Lantau?
Jasmine: I was born in Thailand, lived there until I was ten, and then moved to Malaysia. I came to Lantau seven years ago.
Ryan: I grew up in Lantau and I’ve lived in Mui Wo for ten years.
How did you get together?
Jasmine: We met at school – YMCA in Tung Chung. We were in the same class. I don’t remember how exactly but somehow we found out we each did music and we started playing together. Then we won a school talent contest.
Where was your first gig?
Jasmine: It was in a doorway at the school in front of about 50 people. I was so nervous. It was a promo for the talent contest – I don’t know why because everyone had to attend.
Ryan: Our first paid gig was for AIA Carnival [in January]. We got a letter saying there was a $500 fee and we said – ‘do we have pay $500 to play?’. And they said ‘no, we’re paying you.’
Which was your biggest gig?
Jasmine: Clockenflap last year. We played on the Sunday morning. We met Lucy Rose and Shura and got to eat the catering. It was great.
Describe your song ‘Red in the Sky’?
Ryan: It’s a murder ballad. Someone dies.
Jasmine: But you don’t find out until the end
Why the farewell gig?
Jasmine: I’m going to Tainan to study Mandarin.
Ryan: I’m off to Ireland to study music.
Will you play together again?
Jasmine: We have two more gigs this weekend (Comix Home Base in Wanchai and Island Bar in Lamma). After those we aren’t sure if we’ll play again but we will try to collaborate and make more original songs.
What: Isara Sessions: Folk Ups, Pop Fugitives, Ed & Ruth.
Where: Café Isara, Mui Wo
When: 7-11pm, Friday
Price: Free
Saving the rhymes of Shui Hau
A team of Hong Kong artists, writers and documentary-makers has mined the rich 300-year-old folk history of Shui Hau for its latest work.
Producer Christopher Law and curator Chloe Lai from Urban Diary went to the coastal village last year to collect villagers’ stories. The result is a a documentary and exhibition that will be on display in Shui Hau this weekend.
One revelation is that most of the indigenous villagers speak a Cantonese dialect called Wai Tau.
“I was surprised as I had always thought that it was the language of the indigenous people in Yuen Long. I didn’t expect to be heard on Lantau Island,” Lai told HK01.
They found three older women who speak and sing in Wai Tau and made them the stars of their documentary, Rhymes of Shui Hau. Lai points out that Shui Hau has little written history, making these women’s memories even more valuable.
Local resident Terry Boyce, who saw the documentary, said on Facebook:
The “stars” of the film are two Shui Hau “grannies” who talk about their childhood experiences living in Shui Hau in the 1920s/30s (one is now 91) and the oral tradition of singing songs in their native Wai Tau dialect. Of particular interest is that one of the “grannies” was born in Shek Pik village (which is now at the bottom of the Shek Pik reservoir). I think it is vitally important to try and preserve these oral histories and this small group of filmmakers are to be applauded for their efforts
The documentary and exhibition premiered in Shui Hau last weekend. They are on again this Saturday and Sunday, along with guided tours around the village and the nearby coastal area.
Theatre production comes to Mui Wo
A first for Mui Woo – Hong Kong’s first Afrikaans theatre production.
It’s based on the true story of Wolraad Woltemade, a South African hero who in 1773 rode his horse into the sea off Cape Town to rescue shipwreck survivors but eventually drowned himself.
Lymari Alberts and director Jan Brink, the two performers in the play, first staged it in 2015.
Lymari had been inspired by a novel about Wolraad’s fiancée Mimi, who was waiting for him to propose to her on the night of the accident. The play Mooi Annie focuses on Mimi and her impatience and anxieties over her future husband.
From the 2015 production
Lymari said she and Jan are both recently-arrived in Mui Wo and Hong Kong. “We’re still testing the waters with this being our debut production on Lantau.”
Director and performer Jan Brink describes the show, which will be staged at Stoep at High Tide, as “very interactive. We have simply forgotten the meaning of ‘fourth wall.’
“We have done this before though, so the audience is in safe hands.”
While Mooi Annie is in Afrikaans only, Lymari says her next production, Lungs, by Duncan Macmillan, will be staged twice, once in English and once in Afrikaans, in November.
What: Mooi Anni
When: 6-8pm, Sunday August 20
Where: Stoep at High Tide
Bookings required: Call Stoep 2980 2699 or message via Facebook/Messenger
A taste of the Caribbean at Cheung Sha
We’re going to be liming at Cheung Sha this summer.
Di Jerk Shed, Lantau’s first Caribbean restaurant opens today at the site vacated by the Stoep, just a few steps from the Cheung Sha sands.
Lantau News spoke to Larry la Guerre, a Hong Kong Airlines captain and Tung Chung resident, and co-founder Phil St Hill, a fellow pilot who hails from St Vincent.
Larry (left) and Phil: Bringing the Caribbean experience
Q: What makes a successful airlines captain jump into the Hong Kong restaurant scene?
You can find Caribbean food in places like New York, London and Toronto but there’s nothing in Hong Kong. We have so many expats here and the Caribbean is a long way away. We want to bring the Caribbean experience here.
Q: What is Di Jerk Shed going to offer?
There will be Caribbean food, like Jamaican jerk – chicken, pork, wings. Plus doubles from Trinidad, which is like pita, with split peas in the middle, and roti.
You can’t get alot of the ingredients here. There’s nothing remotely like pimento in Hong Kong, so we’re bringing them from North America.
For drinks there is rum Julep punch, and we’re trying to order in Red Stripe lager from Jamaica.
And there’s music. Reggae and calypso – Bob Marley, Might Sparrow, Peter Tosh – classic reggae from the 70s to the 90s.
Q: What kind of vibe are you aiming for?
You go to a restaurant in the Caribbean and you don’t see just one colour or culture. There’s a huge diversity and that is reflected in our food.
We also have a word ‘lime’, which means to hang out. We want people to lime – relax, kick back, enjoy the music, the beach, the food.
Q: This is a very seasonal location – most of the business takes place in the space of four months. What will you do for the rest of the year?
Getting here is the biggest challenge people face. We will offer free transportation to Cheung Sha with our van – that will be a scheduled service to North Lantau.
We’re going to get local residents involved. We’ll hold events like Latin dance night, we’ll have a residents’ VIP card with special offers, and we’re also marketing to airline crews. We will have crew nights, with 30% discount.
Q: How did the two of you get together?
[Larry] I worked here from 2002 to 2007 and then came back to work for Hong Kong Airlines in 2012. My wife loves it here.
We bumped into each other last year. Phil used to run a chain of successful bars on Phuket, and we both had exactly the same idea of bringing the Caribbean experience to Hong Kong.
We were looking for a location and when this spot became vacant we both thought this had it all – beach, sun, sand. Perfect for liming.
What: Di Jerk Shed
Where: G/F, 50 Lower Cheung Sha Beach, South Lantau
When: Daily
Phone: 2234-JERK
Website: www.dijerkshed.com
When the movies came to Lantau
Lantau has never played a big role in Hong Kong’s storied movie history, but it has picked up enough cameos create its own, occasionally fleeting, back catalogue.
Without further ado, let’s find Lantau’s greatest movie moments.
Enter the biopic
Bruce Lee & I 李小龍與我
Lantau made two cameos in the Bruce Lee biopic, Bruce Lee & I, made three years after his death.
The movie is told from the point of view of girlfriend, Taiwan-born actress Betty Ting Pei. It was at her Kowloon Tong apartment that Bruce died after she gave him a headache tablet.
A scene with Danny Lee, who played Bruce, shows the pair strolling along South Lantau Road above the Shek Pik Dam, apparently chosen because of its spectacular setting. It’s a scene almost impossible to create today; the road carries far too much traffic to be closed down for several hours for a shoot.
We also see the couple hand-in-hand on Lantau’s favourite stretch of sand, Cheung Sha beach. Where else for a romantic stroll?
It’s not much. But it is Bruce Lee.
Cable car climax
Nightfall 大追捕
The 2012 thriller Nightfall isn’t related to Lantau at all except for a spectacular fight scene in the Ngong Ping 360 cable car.
The thriller stars Simon Yam in a battle of wits with ex-con Nick Cheung over a series of murders. As it nears its climax, they slug it out 20 metres above the hills of west Lantau. Spoiler: they don’t make it to the vegetarian special at Po Lin.
You can catch it in this trailer at the 1:40 mark.
Logging on
Project A 1983 A計劃
Lantau plays a brief but entertaining part in this much-loved Jackie Chan effort from 1983.
Set in the early 1900s, Jackie plays a marine police officer trying to take down a powerful pirate. Among other adventures he gets caught in a scheme by Sammo Hung to sell rifles to the pirate gang. Sammo hides the guns inside a floating log but Jackie discovers he’s been played and pulls a ruse of his own.
The log scenes (beloow) were shot at still-recogniseable Sunny Bay on Lantau’s north coast. The logs have gone but some of the uprights are still there (though possibly not for long).
These days of course Sunny Bay is best-known as the jumping off point for Disneyland, Lantau’s lasting connection to the fantasy worlds of Hollywood and Hong Kong government finance.
The rifles-in-the-log scene may not be a box office draw, but Chan’s 60-foot jump from a clock tower and the slapstick bicycle chase in Project A have become Hong Kong classics.
Andy and Maggie
Oh What a Hero 嘩！英雄
Here’s a whole movie starring Andy Lau and Maggie Cheung as young lovers from Lantau.
But the island takes a back seat to the plot in which a youthful Andy is a policeman and a successful taekwondo artist up against a rival policeman-taekwondo artist. Eventually they settle things in a taekwondo tournament.
Despite the presence of the megastars the 1992 movie didn’t register strongly with audiences or critics.
There isn’t a great deal of Lantau, either, apart from a running gag about Andy being from Mui Wo. Maggie’s house looks to be at Chung Hau, and Cheung Sha Beach racks up another credit.
For the emotional high of the Maggie-Andy kiss scene (above) the film’s producers snubbed Mui Wo’s grand ferry terminal in favour of the Tung Chung pier.
You can relive it in full here (Cantonese only).
Two Van Dammes
Double Impact
A police boat chase, exploding Mercedes, a climactic factory fight scene, and not one but two Jean Claude Van Dammes: the 1991 action movie Double Impact has all of those and a Lantau hideout, but still managed to earn a critics’ score of just 14% on Rotten Tomatoes.
JCVD plays twin brothers born in Hong Kong but separated as babies after triads murdered their parents. One has grown up a cigar-chomping bad boy, the other a businessmen with a penchant for plum-coloured shirts. Yet they both have the same Belgian accent and martial arts moves.
When things get a little hot the Van Dammes head to a safe house in Mung Tung Wan (above). A quarter century on, it still works as a movie hideaway. It’s as remote as ever and it hasn’t changed; the shots of the jetty, bay and houses could have been taken today.
Unrelated, but a highlight anyway, is the marine police boat chase (it may even be off Chi Ma Wan). The Van Dammes evade capture by forcing Chinese gangsters and two Mercedes overboard. The discarded vehicles explode in the water, exploiting the well-known inability of a police boat to manoeuvre around a burning car.
If that’s not enough Lantau for you, the final death battle scene appears to have taken place in Tsing Yi.
Bonus fact: merely playing the part of a martial artist from Hong Kong wasn’t enough for Van Damme. He had to be one, and has lived here since 2006.
You can watch the whole Van Damme thing here. The Chi Ma Wan scene kicks in at 32:20.
The Lantau of the mind
As Tears Go By 旺角卡門
The Oscar for best Lantau-themed movie goes to this 1988 romance-drama, the first by Wong Kar-wai who later became famous for Chungking Mansions and In the Mood for Love.
It’s another Andy-Maggie love story and another in which Maggie plays a Lantau ingénue – though there the resemblance with the Mui Wo slapstick four years later ends. The two meet when she goes to stay with Andy, a distant relative, in Mongkok where he and his brother (Jackie Cheung) are minor gangsters.
It’s mostly set in gritty Kowloon but Lantau has a small but critical part. We follow Andy as he heads to Pui O to find Maggie at her family restaurant. He decides to return home, and we see the ferry leaving Mui Wo, but he changes his mind again. Maggie runs to meet him and once again there’s a stirring ferry pier kiss.
They spend a couple of days together in Pui O before Andy hurries back to Mongkok to clean up his brother’s latest mess, the start of a downward spiral. At one point he offers to take his brother away with him to Lantau – but too late.
The brief shot of the ferry aside, there are no identifiable Lantau locations, yet it creates a mental view of Lantau as a distant other or refuge – not a million miles from the Lantau of popular imagination today.
You can relive it here.
Lantau Confidential 