Beijing's Sheep Year resolution: Shear Hong Kong

Traditionally minded Chinese consider it bad luck to entertain negative thoughts at New Year, but for those who live in Hong Kong, the autonomous region’s unpopular chief executive, CY Leung, has tested their mettle.
Nicknamed “the Wolf” by his critics, Leung – in the customary New Year address (the British queen used to handle the speech) – seemed to be asking citizens to behave like sheep. It’s the Year of the Sheep, after all (apologies to any goats offended – they do indeed have more linguistic claim to the title), but how about being a little more, you know, tame this year, Leung said, a little more sheepish?
Certainly the orderly city on Victoria Bay had a bucking awful time during the Year of the Horse, something to do with the communist godfathers in Beijing wanting to jettison this silly democracy thing. So Leung said let’s show them what nice, amenable people we are and go along with whatever they want, you know, like sheep.
Wolves adore sheep, of course, and not necessarily roasted on a spit. Was Leung so ravenous that he didn’t even realise he was inviting voters to dinner – as the main course? His speechwriters must either be cowering under a table somewhere or laughing themselves wet.
Corralled by the cops in December, the Umbrella movement demonstrators vowed they’d be back on the streets this year. Now they’ve got some evocative new imagery for their protest signs.

The past is now mere pixels

Inevitably, one supposes, the cheerfully red ang bao envelopes containing gifts of cash that are distributed at Lunar New Year have gone digital. Behold the “eAng Bao”.
Singapore, which is made of money, has embraced a DBS PayLah mobile application, the Straits Times reports. DBS Bank is letting its customers send and receive eAng Bao via their smartphones. The bank has seen hundreds of daily eAngBao transactions since its launch on January 7.
The younger generation thinks it’s cool, or whatever word they use for cool these days. But a lot of people are seeing the advantages. The giver no longer has to queue up at the bank to get a stack of crisp notes and then painstakingly slot them into envelopes. And fresh, crisp notes are scarce at Chinese New Year. In Thailand you have to order them in advance.
The application is programming for dummies: Just enter the amount and the recipient’s phone number and hit “Send”. You can use the app for weddings and other annual festivals, too.
The Straits Times acknowledges there’s a little blowback, especially from anti-gadget sticks in the mud who remember getting their first ang bao money packet from Confucius himself. “Elderly relatives, being more traditional, will prefer to receive the physical red packets,” the paper quotes a local photographer as saying. “But I believe, with time, we’ll see more people being converted as the technology becomes accepted as the norm.”
Well, it’s always thrilling to see bigger numbers in the old bank account regardless of what makes them grow, but, as we keep subtly reminding our boss, nothing beats getting handed an envelope full of cash.