"Everybody was so chickened out, so scared. He covered Chinese government abuses when other Hong Kong media wouldn't. Media are important, he said, because they deliver information, "which is choice, and choice is freedom." That inspired Lai to start a media company. I was very excited."īut then came the Tiananmen Square massacre. "China is going to be like Western country that I've been to. "I thought China is going to be changed," says Lai. After all, even the Communists were embracing some capitalism. Lai assumed that the Communist Chinese, seeing the prosperity in Hong Kong, would leave the island alone. Eventually we became one of the biggest sweater factories in Hong Kong." Gradually, his clothing business, Giordano, made him rich. Lai eventually saved enough money to start a clothing business. "Rule of law, free speech, the free market…. "The British gave us the institutions of freedom," says Lai. Police enforced law and order, but otherwise, the British rulers left people alone. The chance to have a future makes such a difference.Īt the time, Hong Kong was an unusually free country. But it was a very happy time…a time that I know I had a future." "We had to wake up before 7 and worked until 10 p.m. "I never saw so many things for breakfast. Once in Hong Kong, he was amazed at how plentiful food was. So he went there "in the bottom of a fishing junk, together with maybe 100, maybe 80, people, and everybody vomiting." There he learned about a little British-controlled island near China called Hong Kong, where people were less poor. When I was 8 and 9, I worked in the railway station carrying people's baggage." "We were just 5 or 6 and managing ourselves without an adult in the household. "My mother was in a labor camp," he recalls. But he chose to stay in Hong Kong and go to jail.Ī new documentary, The Hong Konger, tells his story. When Communist China crushed freedom in Hong Kong, Lai could have gone anywhere in the world and lived a life of luxury. He seems to like France a lot.This week, while we celebrate the work of America's Founders, I honor a living freedom fighter: billionaire businessman Jimmy Lai. Just about the only thing he’s not against is bitching – cuz he does a lot of that. Carl Christman seems to be as anti-French fries as much as he is against Bush, the war, the government, God, bumper stickers, Disney World, protest (unless he agrees with the cause), money, buying American, buying anything for that matter, etc. He’s not as bad as Michael Moore or Morgan Spurlock, but he does only want to present his opinion, and everyone else’s is stupid. Christman has a problem with President Bush, and made a movie to express his opinion – which is wonderful, because I am all for expressing your opinion, but for some reason he felt the need to sully the name of the favorite fried food to do it. It’s not about French fries, despite the title. I say movie, because even though it tries very hard to look like a documentary, but it’s basically an opinion piece by writer/director/producer Carl Christman. Why am I irritated by this all of a sudden? I just saw a movie called Freedom Fries: And Other Stupidity We’ll Have to Explain to Our Grandchildren.
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