October revolution

It's Golden Week in mainland China at the moment, and everyone downs tools and, typically, travels thousands of miles to their home towns. All the factories in the Pearl River Delta are shut and as a result the skies in Hong Kong were a Turner painting today. Looking out of my office window, the sun was shining and all the buildings, even across the harbour, were sharply defined and perfectly visible. It was like seeing them for the first time.

Of course, HongKongers' proclivity for blaming the mainland for all our ills is somewhat hypocritical, given that most of the factories belching out the pollution which drifts down the Pearl River Delta and attaches itself to Hong Kong are owned by Hong Kong residents looking to source their production somewhere cheaper and less well-regulated than Hong Kong.

When I go out paddling on the water at night I try not to think about the correlation between the clearly visible swathes of pollution obscuring the hillsides of South Island and the air I am breathing.