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Blogging: Hemlock, ‘the obnoxious expat’ By Alexandra Harney in Hong Kong Published: September 19 2005 16:53 | Last updated: September 19 2005 16:53 
Hemlock’s blog stands out for other reasons as well: he is anonymous, for one. He also claims to be an executive at a Hong Kong company, putting him in the path of some of the city’s elites and giving him at least a patina of credibility. The blog’s daily entries blend discussion of newsworthy events with a heavily fictionalised account of the life of a privileged expatriate in Hong Kong. Friends “Polly the lipstick lesbian”, “ex-Mormon Odell” and “Winky Ip, the shapeliest administrative officer in Central Government Offices” make frequent appearances, as does his flat at “Perpetual Opulence Mansions”. He frequently lampoons his colleagues at S-Meg Holdings, as he calls his company, for their appreciation of feng shui, the Chinese belief that the positioning of objects can bring harmony and prosperity. But Hemlock is at his best in his commentary on current affairs. He is deeply critical of the civil service and its pay levels, brooding about the power of the big tycoons. He admits his identity is not a complete secret – some people, including his mother, know he is the blog’s author. But he agreed to be interviewed for this article on the condition that his age, the length of his stay in Hong Kong and his appearance not be disclosed. He did not divulge his real name or phone number. He says he started the blog in 2002 “just to see if I could publish something on the internet”. He was also dissatisfied with the quality of commentary about his adopted city. “The place has been very good to me,” he says over coffee at a local café. To Hemlock, though, the city is not moving in the right direction. “I am 99 per cent positive it’s going to be a shadow of what it could have been.” His instincts for the local political scene are often astute. After it became clear in March that Donald Tsang, then the chief secretary for administration, would be taking over from Tung Chee-hwa as acting chief executive, Hemlock accurately predicted the resentment of the pro-Beijing faction.
Hemlock says he was banned in Singapore after he wrote a list of reasons why he thought the city-state was “pathetic”. His website’s location on the geocities network means that his blog cannot be viewed in China. But, even in Hong Kong, he is not well known. He does not seem worried, since his job at the real-life version of S-Meg Holdings affords him ample time to write and an anonymity not dissimilar to his online existence. “I’m the only westerner [at the company],” he says. “You can do anything and nobody bats an eyelid.” |
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He has called former chief executive Tung Chee-hwa “tofu-for-brains”, pro-business politician James Tien a “slimy mental dwarf“and his party, the Liberals, a “pathetic band of mucus-oozing gastropods.” He is banned in Singapore and blocked in mainland China. Hemlock, the blogger who bills himself as “Hong Kong’s most obnoxious expat”, has carved a niche for himself as an acerbic social and political critic in the only city in China that enjoys free speech.
