Beautiful Gardens at Sunnylands

Gorgeous reflecting pool at Sunnylands Garden

We finally made it to the Sunnylands Center and Gardens, and glad we did. It was the winter home of Walter and his second wife Lenore Annenberg who bought more than 900 acres at Rancho Mirage and started developing it in 1963. 

The home includes a golf course and the gardens have 13 lakes, 6,000 trees, and 180 acres of turf -- in a desert.

Carefully arranged cacti and succulents

At Sunnylands he entertained royalty, celebrities and presidents. The garden which was opened to the public in 2012, features carefully planted cacti and succulents which match the arid environment. When we arrived around lunchtime today, dancers from the Nickerson Rossi Dance Company performed contemporary dances within the grassy areas of the gardens. 

In the gardens is a labyrinth made from low hedges and there's a replica of a bench gifted to Chinese leader Xi Jinping from then US President Barack Obama.

They two met in June 2013 in Sunnylands and there's a picture of the two of them, Obama with his easy smile on the left, and Xi kind of looking awkwardly at him on the right. The redwood bench says: "Presented to His Excellency Xi Jinping President of the People's Republic of China By Barack Obama President of the United States, Sunnylands Annenberg Estate, June 7-8, 2013.

The garden was opened in 2012 to the public

Near the bench is a reflecting pool and my cousin who is an architect marvelled at how beautifully constructed it was. He explained that to make it so that the water looked completely still, the whole thing had to be completely level and flat. Also it is designed such that viewers can't even see the water falling down the sides -- you can only hear the sound of the water running.

Annenberg came from money -- his father Moses was a newspaper publisher, who published the Daily Racing Form and The Philadelphia Inquirer.

When Moses Annenberg died, Walter took over the family business and bought other print media along with radio and TV stations. He made his money from publishing TV Guide which he started in 1952, and made some US$600,000 to US$1 million a week.

He also started Seventeen magazine, a publication for teenager girls.

Replica bench for Xi from Obama

In 1988 Annenberg sold his print publications to Rupert Murdoch for a record US$3 billion -- soon afterwards print would disappear with the advent of the internet...

Apparently getting tickets to visit the Sunnylands House are hard to get -- will try to do that next year.

Defiance Punished with No Mercy

Koo is a well-known pro-democracy activist in Hong Kong

Hong Kong demonstrates it has practically zero tolerance for dissent with the convictions of two elderly protesters on two consecutive days. 

On Tuesday 75-year-old Koo Sze-yiu was sentenced to nine months in prison for planning a protest against the Beijing Winter Olympics in February. He was arrested before he could even carry out his plan. 

Koo is a well known pro-democracy activist, and before 2019 his protest would have garnered some attention, perhaps arrested and then released after a few hours in jail. But now he is in jail for endangering national security because he wrote slogans like, "democracy and human rights are above the Winter Olympics" and end one-party dictatorship". 

Koo planned to protest the Beijing Olympics

Not only is Koo getting on in age, he is also suffering from terminal cancer.

Then yesterday, another pro-democracy activist known as "Grandma Wong" was jailed for unlawful assembly. Prosecutors accused Alexandra Wong, 66, of participating in two unlawful assemblies on August 11, 2019, shouting "offensive words", and her waving the British Union Jack flag encouraged illegal gathering.

Wong was sentenced to eight months.

More than three years ago she would probably have been detained for a few hours and then let go, paid a fine or a few days in jail.

These two are defiant in their criticism of the government, and it wouldn't be surprising if the Department of Justice found more evidence to charge them with other crimes before they got out of jail.

Grandma Wong jailed for illegal assembly

Meanwhile freedom of expression and free access to information are being further challenged.

The famous or infamous Hong Kong Book Fair begins on July 19 at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre in Wan Chai.

Run by the government, it has become even more strenuous on how it vets the exhibitors. Before it allowed "lang mo" or pseudo models who have no experience walking fashion catwalks to have booths to hawk books filled with soft porn pictures of themselves.

But now independent publishers who publish books deemed to be politically sensitive are banned.

What did those publishers do?

They rented a space elsewhere to hold the "Hongkongers' Book Fair", but it was cancelled the day before the launch after the landlord was worried about the attention it was getting on social media.

Yeung's alternative book fair suddenly shut down

"Even though the authorities have been saying Hong Kong people still have the freedom to publish, the reality is that people do have certain fears and pressure, leading to these irrational decisions," Raymond Yeung, a former teacher and organiser of the book fair said.

He said the venue had held small market events before, and when they signed the lease, the landlord was aware of what they were planning to do. "I have no idea why their attitude changed so rapidly," Yeung said.

Some people cannot withstand the pressure, whereas others are willing to walk into the fire for the greater good.