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China notebook

My Chinese week with Elle Macpherson, the Prince of Wales and Tony Blair

David Tang

Wednesday, 7th November 2007

David Tang's China Diary

Schnabel is larger than life and a control freak. I watched his extraordinary film The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, and was surprised to see how someone from Brooklyn could get all the French nuances so perfectly. I also wondered what would have happened if a Chinese from Hong Kong had contracted that rare disease which paralysed the French editor, who went on to dictate the famous book, on which the film was based, by merely blinking his single working eye. Maybe the hypothetical Chinese could have similarly rolled his eyelid and picked all the right shares on the stock market and made millions for his estate.

But the stock market plunged 5 per cent without any Chinese with any rare disease. Rather, it fell with the arrival of Mr Tony Blair. He himself remembered that when he was last in Hong Kong for the handover of 1997, the market also dived. He must be rather bad feng shui for the territory. Perhaps it’s best if he kept away? Not, however, for a special Chinese girl called Mui Mui, who has the extremely rare Harlequin disease. Her skin multiplies ferociously, and she ends up with raw skin. It’s a most debilitating condition. I know because I myself had severe psoriasis and even that’s 100 times less severe than Harlequin. A very fit and tanned-looking Tony Blair received Mui Mui and cheered her up no end. They took a photo together and the girl will never forget the former PM’s visit, irrespective of how the stock market behaves.

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