CITY HALL, Central District, Hong Kong – Many Asian communities have homeless dogs wandering the streets or hiding in nearby hills. In Hong Kong, most such dogs live in the New Territories or on outlying islands.
Why do such dogs exist? Where do stray dogs originate?
Hong Kong Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) community-dog-program co-ordinator Vivian Or recently addressed such questions. She spoke at a public-consultation meeting to consider the need for a trap, neuter, release (TNR) program aimed at precisely such dogs.
Hong Kong has “many, many sources” of wandering dogs. In small villages, far from Tsim Sha Tsui and Central, the animals may be “loosely” owned. “They're active in the village areas by day, but return home at night,” Or said. Most of them aren't vaccinated, de-sexed or registered.
Fully feral dogs (those with no homes at all) usually fear humans and tend to hide. “They may be the offspring of abandoned dogs.”
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The University of Hong Kong's music department is proud to present a special concert celebrating its 30th anniversary in the centenary year of HKU's arts faculty. Admission is free on February 8 from 7:30 to 9 p.m. in HKU's Loke Yew Hall. Seating is limited. At the 1889 Paris Universal Exposition, under the shadow of the new Eifel tower, French composer Claude Debussy first heard sounds of the gamelan. It was an ear-opening experience that influenced Western music. We hope our concert listeners will hear resonances of an East-West encounter that still inspires composers.
University of Hong Kong
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ESCAPE FROM ASIA IN CRISIS (Part 1)
By Lily Bond
Editor's Note: Born in New Zealand, the author lives and teaches in Thailand. This is part of a work in progress that may become a future book. Although partly fictionalized, the story closely follows real-life experiences of two Asian immigrants.
Preface
By 1979, the New Zealand government and many others recognized a crisis in Asia. Hundreds of thousands of Cambodian and Vietnamese refugees had languished for years at refugee camps in Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia. Seeing the need for a repatriation program, the United States, Canada, much of Europe, Australia and New Zealand began to allow groups of refugees to settle within their borders.
To help the Asians assimilate, New Zealand adopted a “pepper-pot policy” that sent families to small towns across the country. While the planners probably meant well, their grasp of Asian culture proved dismal. Imagine a family from a tropical climate and a place brimming with people arriving in a remote town of about 1,000 people nestled in the foothills of southern New Zealand. Within five years, most newcomers had left the outlying areas and migrated to bigger urban centers with better work prospects and where they found compatriots.
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