Just an update:

The Democracy Wall is dead for now!

There was a big meeting yesterday morning when the local top politicians, Lammadonna, Chairman Chan, Vice-Chairman of the Rural Committee Chow and some of their assistants had a very short meeting with some of the owners of the Democracy Wall, all of them visiting the owners in person, the powerful family behind Man Lai Wah hotel above it. Lamma-Por and I were having Dim Sum with Chairman Chan when he had to rush off for the short meeting. Returning, he updated us first-hand.

Even though this private Wall is on public land, the Govt. depts. acknowledge the ownership and will not interfere with the wishes of the owners, even though the Govt. paid for the complete, expensive renovation and painting of the Wall recently, and the FEHD's cleaning ladies have been cleaning the Wall for decades, usually once a week or so (which was ideal for keeping the posters fresh, up-to-date and relevant).

The Wall owners saw the amateurish graffiti on the seawall and elsewhere and took that as an excuse to stop any efforts of "beautifying" it with any artworks. So no Democracy Wall contest and no more posters. They don't want anything on that steel-grey Wall anymore, no painting, no artwork, no more posters.

Despite the former explicit permission from the Govt. that posters are still allowed and will not be cleaned off, the owner's wishes take now preference and the Govt. will follow their wishes, not interfering and not cleaning the Wall anymore. The Wall owners will have to clean posters themselves now, but would unlikely spend any money on painting or maintaining it. The person(s) ripping down any and all posters recently appearing on the Wall, even pure charity-related ones, might be connected to the Wall owners, maybe...

If a lot of posters would appear they might get tired of cleaning up daily, but that's a slim chance as everybody seems to have given up already on posting anything there.

That's probably the end of that for now. For quite a long time the Wall will probably remain steel-grey, ugly and unwelcoming to visitors, till somebody can convince the large family with many siblings otherwise, or illegal artwork appears, or the owners get tired of cleaning off the posters.

A really sad outcome, a cleaning up operation backfiring, stuck indefinitely in the middle, in a "temporary" state, ending up looking much worse than it was before....

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In what world does that makes any sense?

This wall, maintained by the government, on government land, is private?

The well-connected can do whatever they like on public property*, and tell everyone else to fuck off. And the government just kowtows.

*cf Man Fung reclamation, just up the street.

I've asked Man Fung about the extension. They've got official and full permissions from the Lands Dept. now, it took several years, they say.
The extension construction workers just had their Lunar New Year dinner there when I was stopping by to ask, stopping now for the long Lunar New Year break.

This will increase their seating area from 200 to 260 seats and should be ready in about 1 month. Not sure yet about the outside look and the type of railing they'll use but it'll be new and different from the current one, promised to look "nice".

If the extension's wall doesn't look nice enough, the Lamma graffiti "artist" (or vandal as some call him) behind most of the local, very controversial graffiti paintings might have a field day (or a late night.) I might ask him about this as I've discovered his identity a little while ago, but had to promise him anonymity first.

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