cotton trees

One of the things I like most about Hong Kong, especially in springtime, is the sheer number of ornamental trees. Blue jacarandas (a native of South America) and royal poincianas (a native of Madagascar and frequently described as ‘flame trees’—you will understand why if you see one in full bloom) are quite common, but both of these flower in late spring. However, there is one native species that is even more spectacular and is flowering as I write: the cotton tree.

Cotton trees are also among the largest trees in Hong Kong, with the oldest specimens reaching 30 metres in height with trunks up to 3 metres in diameter. The tree seen in silhouette at the bottom of this page is a large cotton tree. The morphology of the cotton tree is also unusual: like pine trees, several branches split from the main trunk at the same height, and this is repeated all the way up the tree. And, unlike most other Hong Kong trees, cotton trees shed their leaves during the winter.

However, the really interesting characteristic of these trees is that flowers appear before the leaves in spring. And when these flowers eventually drop, they are so heavy that they hit the ground with a thud. Last year at this time, my wife fell into conversation with a fellow passenger on the minibus taking her to the station.

“Aren’t the cotton trees looking beautiful at the moment?” she remarked (there are a lot of cotton trees around these parts).

The reply stunned my wife, which is why she told me about the conversation:

“But they leave a mess on the ground!”

Some people have no soul.

However, because I've felt a little better today, I decided to take a few photographs, so you can judge for yourself.

Three small cotton trees, with typical Hong Kong countryside in the background.

Cotton trees are commonly found on roadsides.

Looking up from directly below the tree in the previous picture. The distinctive branching structure can be clearly seen.

“They leave a mess on the ground.”

At this point, you may be wondering why they are called cotton trees. The next photograph will explain.

A single cotton tree seed.

game of death

One of the more interesting minor news items of the past few days—so interesting that I felt it necessary to ignore my own illness in order to comment—concerns a French TV documentary, Game of Death, which was aired recently on a major terrestrial channel in France. The program used eighty participants, each of whom thought they were taking part in a pilot for a new game show. It was filmed in front of an audience.

Each contestant, in turn, was led out before the audience and told that their role in what was to follow was to administer an electric shock to a man in an adjacent cubicle, whom they believed to be a fellow contestant and whom they could hear but not see, every time he gave a wrong answer to a question, the voltage being increased each time. The truly horrifying part of this story is that only 20 percent of the participants refused to continue before a potentially lethal final shock was administered.

What none of the participants knew was that there was no electric shock, and the man in the cubicle was an actor whose job it was to scream in pain as and when required. I have no wish to condemn those participants who were prepared to torture, even kill, another human being whom they did not know, especially as they were under pressure from a glamorous presenter, a man in a white coat (the universal code, even in porn movies, for a ‘scientist’), a studio audience baying for blood, and dramatic background music.

In fact, I can afford to be a little smug here. When an advance trailer for this item appeared on BBC World News, our TV had been set to ‘mute’ and all we saw were images of a slider being pushed up to maximum and a man writhing in agony. I was immediately reminded of the experiments conducted by psychologist Stanley Milgram at Yale University in 1961–62, purportedly to investigate how ordinary people can become mass murderers. The trial, in Jerusalem, of Adolf Eichmann had begun three months before the first experiments and probably inspired them, but in addition the actions of Reserve Police Battalion 101 in occupied Poland during the Second World War were just beginning to be more widely known; nevertheless, only professional historians and book editors are likely to be aware of that story, and only students of psychology (and book editors) are likely to be aware of the experiments, so any smugness on my part is simply not justified.

There are several points to be made here: first, in Milgram’s experiments, only 65 percent of participants went ‘all the way’; the higher figure in the TV program is likely to have been influenced by peer pressure and the widespread infatuation among the public with so-called ‘reality’ television and celebrity.

Second, no university ethics committee would countenance this type of experiment nowadays, because there can be no guarantee that participants will not be traumatized by their experience. Milgram’s experiments were controversial at the time for precisely this reason. Unfortunately, TV companies are not constrained by such niceties; viewer figures are the only yardstick of success. And it is almost certain that some participants in the bogus game show will have continuing psychological problems as a result of their experiences.

Third, in both cases the experiments established that people can behave in appallingly inhumane ways given the right circumstances, but this was already known, and the much more important question of why people do behave in this way remains unanswered.

Finally, it should be noted that extreme public humiliation is a key ingredient in all successful reality shows, whether it be The Apprentice, Big Brother, America’s Next Top Model, Survivor or countless others. It is what the audience expects. And what participants are more than happy to endure in the pathetic belief that they will become ‘famous’. Personally, I find it all not just depressing but actually disgusting: prurient interest provided for and regarded as somehow important. Nothing could induce me to watch a single episode of any reality show, and I’ve never even heard any of the winners of The X Factor, Pop Idol or American Idol. I have much better things to do. And I certainly don’t take kindly to crude efforts to manipulate my emotions by pernicious nonsense that belongs in the garbage.

sick note

I think I was being much too optimistic in my last post. After two weeks, I feel worse than I did when I first fell ill. I don't normally seek medical advice for something as trivial as an upper respiratory tract infection, but the worst symptom has been generalized muscle weakness/tiredness and a total inability to concentrate on anything, so I'll be paying a visit to my local doctor tomorrow. And I have a horrible feeling that I won't be the full shilling again for at least a couple of weeks. I hope that those of you who have been following my ramblings will bear with me. I am keen to restart regular posting just as soon as I can shake off this debilitating malaise. At least I have a few ideas in the pipeline.

more reasons to be cheerful

Regular visitors to this site will have noted that not many posts have been made this month. There is an explanation: I've been ill for almost two weeks and have been unable to focus on writing. I've not yet fully recovered, but I'm optimistic that normal service will be resumed quite soon. Thank you all for your patience. The following post will probably be expanded once I'm feeling better.

I was born in a small market town in the north of England in August 1946. I was smart enough to be able to attend the local grammar school and thence to go to university—a mundane background that has allowed me to do more or less what I have wanted to do throughout my life. In other words, I’ve been more fortunate than the average. But what if I’d been born in another part of the world, into a different family?

I could have been born in southern Appalachia (Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama or Mississippi), in which case I may still be addressing African-Americans as ‘Boy’. I probably believe that science is a cult and that the theory of evolution is a conspiracy to subvert the word of God. I may even think that Barack Obama is a Muslim. Worse still, I might be looking forward to voting for Sarah Palin in the 2012 presidential election.

I could have been born in China. Although I would now be enjoying some degree of economic prosperity, I would probably be parroting government slogans such as “The Chinese People Love Tibet” without understanding their significance or questioning whether the Chinese presence in Tibet has any legitimacy.

I could have been born a Muslim in British India. My family may have decided to remain in India after independence, in which case communal violence between Muslims and Hindus would be a constant threat. If my family had moved instead to the newly created Pakistan, suicide bombings would now be an even greater threat.

I could have been born in the Palestinian village of Deir Yassin and at the age of twenty months seen almost my entire family massacred by Irgun and Lehi (aka Stern Gang) Jewish terrorists. I could now be rejoicing because my grandson has just blown himself up, taking with him several Israeli civilians.

I could have been born in the Belgian Congo. I’d probably be dead now.