Today is the first day of LA county restarting mask mandate for indoors even for vaccinated people.  The CDC has not make the change in recommendation yet but LA is jumping ahead because of cases increase.  There are many states that doing worse than California but LA had been the hardest hit area in California so it is not surprising that it is making this move.  The question is will others follow suit and will it be effective in stopping the variant surge?

I think if things continue this way, California as a whole will follow LA in mandating masks indoors again.  Some states may follow but others will not, at least not until things are much worse.  Florida is having 20% of the cases in the country now and I doubt that DeSantis will add restrictions anytime soon.  Even here in LA, the sheriff has said that he will not enforce the mandate.  I think the people who has not been vaccinated and not been wearing masks are certainly not going to follow the mandate.  So I am pessimistic that this will work.  I think there will be a surge in the fall unless we can get at least 20% more of the population fully vaccinated before cold weather hits.

In sports I noticed that Nick Saban, the football coach at Alabama, announced that his sophomore quarterback has already rack up a million dollars of endorsement.  Saban noted that Bryce Young has yet been named the starter.  It maybe his way to say that it is easy money if you come to Alabama!  So the rich will get richer or continue to be rich, but in a legal manner now!

 After watching the NBA finals this week and the European soccer championships, I will not be surprised to see upsurge in COVID cases in Wisconsin, Arizona, Italy and the UK in the next few weeks.  Given the ease of restrictions in the U.S. and the UK recently, i am not surprised that there were fans in the arenas and stadiums for these championship games.  But I was disappointed to see fans were allowed to watch the games on large tv screens outside of stadiums where the games took place and also at venues of the visiting teams.

So if the game was in Phoenix, there were also thousands of fans in Milwaukee watching the game together.  Same in Phoenix when the Suns were playing in Milwaukee.  Venues in England outside of Wembley were fill with spectators as were those in many Italian cities.  Even cities in the U.S. where there are lots of Italian or English fans, there were crowds gathered to watch the game today.

Most spectators in whatever venue were not masked and they were closer together than those in the stadiums.  After big plays or at the end of the games, people were hugging each other.  I think these gatherings were probably more dangerous than the those inside the stadiums.  Also people will gather at bars and other crowded places after the games.  Given the variants in both the  U.S. and Europe, I will not be surprised that there will be an upsurge in the next two to three weeks. 

 When people ask me where I came from.  I would say Detroit.  Then they give me a puzzle look, obviously not satisfied with the answer.  Then I would say Hong Kong.  Then they usually say one of two things.  The first is that they will say that I am Chinese since I am from Hong Kong.  The second is that they feel sorry for the people of Hong Kong because they are being abused by the Chinese.  So that gets me thinking.  Are people of Hong Kong Chinese?

Ethnically 95% of the Hong Kong people are Chinese.  But there is a big division among the people of Hong Kong of whether they are Chinese or not.  Age of a person will likely shape his view but even within an age group, the views are not homogenous.  

Take people who are older than me, in their seventies and over.  Many had escaped from China when the country was doing badly and they may have been persecuted by the CPC.  Most of these people are wary of the communists.  They maybe less likely to identify as Chinese so as not been associated with Communist China.

The people who are in the forties to sixties and were born in Hong Kong during British rule would be more likely to realize that Hong Kong was not a paradise under British rule.  These folks may have heard about the failure of Mao and the CPC during the fifties and sixties but they did not live in China during that time.  But they have seen the rise of China and how that has helped Hong Kong becoming an economic powerhouse as well.  During their adult years, their standard of living had risen many folds and became greater than that of the UK.  So while they may not want to move to China, they are more likely to think of themselves as Chinese.

Then we have the young people who were born after the return of Hong Kong to China.  They never lived under colonialism.  They believe that Hong Kong always had democracy.  I think they believe that they are superior to the mainlanders.  At the same time, the economy of Hong Kong has not grown like before so that the young people's standard of living is worse than those of their parents.  The big problem is land prices are so high that it is virtually impossible for a college grad to buy a flat now a days.  As a result, it is easy to believe that they are more British than Chinese and that it is worse under Chinese rule.

There are exceptions to every group that I mentioned, of course.  Ultimately, it may not matter if individuals in Hong Kong believe they are Chinese.  Hong Kong will be part of China and Hong Kong's future depends on China and not the UK or Western countries.  Hong Kong is still a big asset for China and China will try to keep it happy.  Despite tough talks from the U.S. and the UK, Hong Kong's survival depends on China.