You may have thought that the big story out of Hong Kong last week was the slumping Hang Seng Index or continuing pressure from Beijing to crack down on the Falun Gong. But no, something much more fascinating was going on, and it was going on right inside one of the places that break, but don't usually make, the big stories -- a newspaper office. In this case, the suddenly reluctant newsmaker was the English-language South China Morning Post.
According to the Post's own account, Buddhist monks were brought in Tuesday to conduct a traditional ghost-cleansing ceremony in the newspaper's new premises, after staffers became convinced that an unquiet spirit was haunting the "ladies' toilets in the north wing." One of the monks confirmed staff fears that something or someone from "the nether world" was inconveniencing the conveniences. "There is . . . an absence of life in that room, like a vacuum," he said. The ceremony, in which top management people participated, included ritual chanting, the burning of incense and repeated bowing to a Buddhist deity. In a stroke of masterful neutrality, the paper reported that Post staff observed the rites "with keen interest."
Now this kind of ceremony is not at all unusual. Ghost-appeasing rituals were common in traditional Chinese society, and the Buddhist master called in by the Post said that, though they are becoming rarer, 40 to 80 such ceremonies still take place in Hong Kong every year.