Bun Festival blues: update

South China Morning Post's front page last Sunday included an item about the upcoming Bun Festival. The report was by Polly Hui, native to and resident on a little island in the South China Sea. The report included details about the Long March rocket, the festival, and the reporter's own ascension the previous day. Ms Hui, who is on the scmp payroll and more usually focuses on Education, recounted how, when she had climbed some way up the alien tower, despite wearing a harness and fitted out with ropes, she momentarily lost her nerve. I don't blame her. However much those sophisticated bits of the brain are telling you this is all perfectly safe, that much older, truly ancient -- more, dare I say it, reptilian -- part of the brain is shouting: danger! danger! flee! flee! Still, all in the line of duty, despite having suffered a momentary lapse of confidence, Ms Hui found the resources within herself to complete the climb. Good for her! Courageous, in deed. For what is courage but the willingness to go forward, fear and all.
I am not sure I would now be able to do what Ms Hui did. For starters, her knees are in better shape than mine. Plus, I have grown much more cautious. Perhaps, too cautious. When I was about Ms Hui's age, I once spent a day on a building site, four floors up, walking on an asbestos roof, picking my way guided by the rivets that attached the asbestos to the supporting girders. Sans safety equipment, sans safety net. This was, of course, a cash in yr hand, non-union site, run be Hammersmith flyboys. Me? I was broke. It seemed like a good idea at the time. It was only after I finished, I shook like a leaf. Ah, the wrecklessness of youth.
Back to Ms Hui. Thanks to her, we also learned that among the climbers ascending the Long March on the official day will be one or more women. This is a Good Thing. The traditional three bamboo-tower 'men only' climb, was certainly exclusionary, misogynist even. However, I am puzzled as to one thing. Ms Hui's report included mention of the view from up the tower, without mentioning the (competing) traditional three bamboo towers not a stone's throw away. I know, I know, at that time the three towers were still supine. But the bamboo structure that surrounds the trinity of towers was already up and in place. A photo accompanying that front-page story makes plain the scmp's intrepid reporter was not wearing glasses during her ascent. Maybe that's why. Or, perhaps mention of the tower trio was dropped in the scmp's editing process? Wherever that is, these days. A lot of the nitty gritty still takes place at Quarry Bay. But there was talk of moving the sub-editing offshore, to Bangkok. Did that ever happen? Who knows? Anyway, the absence of any mention of the adjacent towers struck me as an odd oversight.