Word: tak
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...Westerners with empty pockets and overflowing dreams to the mainland refugees who made the city their own. Each of the three narrators of Fragrant Harbour has vivid memories of first seeing Hong Kong. Dawn in her business-class Cathay Pacific seat, enduring the white-knuckle approach to Kai Tak Airport; Tom hanging from the rail of his steam liner, drinking in the "junks like overgrown children's toys"; Matthew, the refugee, who crawled into Hong Kong through weeds and barbed wire. Those first impressions inform the life of their relationship with this fluid city...
...Their tactics are predatory. In brutal marketing campaigns with names like Plan A (inspired by a popular Jackie Chan action flick), they have cut prices by a gut-wrenching 40%. "I'm the worst one when it comes to challenging all the manufacturers with price slashing," Meijin founder Sher Tak Fa boasts with bravado typical in this rough-and-tumble industry. "I want to show my power...
...plus three on video surveillance, are able to handle the job of patrolling 4 km of a wire barrier they concede can be scaled in 12 seconds. The number of captured illegal immigrants fell from 16,000 in 1991 to 9,000 last year. Hong Kong police superintendent Hoe Tak-yan talks about phasing out all patrols in five to 10 years, even of dismantling the fence. "Living standards are getting closer and closer together," he says. Indeed, the border is becoming a dangerous blur. Last August, Yu Man-hon, an autistic 15-year-old boy, slipped away from...
...summer of 1954, air-crew briefing rooms at Hong Kong's Kai Tak Airport were abuzz with reports of construction at an air base near Sanya, a town at the southern tip of China's Hainan island. To date, the runway had been all bitumen, a surface suited to propeller aircraft but given to melting if hit by jet exhausts. Suddenly, concrete sections appeared at each end. Pilots flying along aviation routes past Hainan could see new, jet-fighter-sized dispersal bays under construction. One Cathay Pacific Airways pilot suggested to a Hong Kong official that, in view...
...late '80s, Ping's stature had grown so large that she was probably the best-known and most revered figure in Chinatown. Almost everyone in the Fujianese ghetto owed her something. She and her husband Cheung Yick-tak contributed $10,000 to buy the building that would house the Fujianese association, which police say soon became the center for human smuggling. He sat on the board. Both continued to work each day in the store or restaurant. There were no big cars or flashy clothes. When she traveled she took the subway, seemingly unafraid of the reach...