I haven’t posted a blog in a while and I was trying to keep the blogs travel related, at which I’ve failed miserably. However, this is an interesting story that Jerry and I have been following. We happened upon the main video on January 20, 2024 the day after it was posted while it was going viral but before it became an international story picked up by several news outlets and it turned into quite an ongoing story. Hence the blog post.
A bit of background. In St. Pancras station in London there is a piano that was donated by Elton John for free use by anyone (we saw this piano when we were in St. Pancras last summer). Last Friday, January 19, 2024, a musician named Brendan Kavanagh, AKA Dr. K., was playing, as he does frequently, and an incident occurred. He was confronted
by Chinese supporters of the CCP at around the 9:14 mark.
This has gone viral, has made news in the UK and abroad and the story continues to grow. The CCP are trying to take this video down. The Chinese demanded he not record them (in a public place) and that he must delete the recording. In a side note, 2 of the people, the woman in fancy dress, Adilina, and a guy in a jacket, were there and interacting with Brendan and shaking his hand and the guy even played the piano.
Then the 3 "handlers" arrived and they caused the problems. The policewoman was also in the wrong. She should have at least watched the video before believing the Chinese people and condemning Dr. K., because everything they were saying was dispelled watching the video. It’s as though she just didn’t want to get into an incident with the Chinese and their (unfounded) claim of racism. She though she could just bully Dr. K. into taking the blame.
This police officer also says the policewoman mishandled the incident.
This occurred in the UK where they have free speech and this was in a public place and as Dr. K. says it’s all about freedom of speech.
The Chinese people in this video are the woman in fancy red dress Adalina Jeng, the insane shouting man is Newton Leng, and the woman who approached Brendan with the yellow flier Mengying Liu, Liu’s British boyfriend is in the background with another woman later tentatively identified as Christine Lee.
More on these people here:
And here:
The host of the previous video also identified the woman in the background as Christine Lee who is heavily involved with the CCP.
Since this has gone viral, every day something new has happened.
Dr. K appeared on TalkTV
Others say that the woman cannot be positively identified as Lee due to distance and video quality, but most agree that she is definitely a CCP handler.
Term of the day: “Little Pink”
I had not heard this term before, and I don’t know much about them, but it seems to be a group of Chinese Nationalists who criticize anyone who says anything negative about China. They seem to be mostly internet centric.
Mind you, we are watching this unfolding as it happened. It kept getting crazier.
Meanwhile, in the middle of the week, after the incident went viral, the piano was cordoned off and police officers were guarding it.
Also, Brendan received many threats and the CCP attempted to have the video removed from YouTube. The video has been reported multiple times but it, as of now, has not been taken down.
They have also started a smear campaign against Brendan.
There were also complaints from them (grasping at straws) that he was hogging the piano. Brendan played for about 10 minutes, and the Chinese gentleman in their group also played.
They also complained that Dr. K. called them Japanese. This was an honest mistake. You can tell it was an honest mistake because when Dr. K. is talking to his friend Jim, who played with him, about the group that was filming he was with and said Chinese, Jim said "Japanese." There were 2 groups, one Chinese and one Japanese and Dr. K. thought there was only Jim's group and that the group of Chinese were the ones with Jim and therefore he thought they were the Japanese group. If you watch the 2 initial videos it's clear, but Dr. K. does explain this in another video.
Because of threats Dr. K. says he went into hiding, sleeping in his van, but then on Friday, January 27, 2024 Dr. K. Brendan Kavanagh returned to play on the St. Pancras free piano.
What’s up with Winnie the Pooh? Winnie the Pooh, images and mentions of Winnie the Pooh are banned because people compared CCP general secretary Xi Jinping to Winnie the Pooh. So if you have Winnie the Pooh in your broadcast, it will not be shown in China.
The Chinese didn't want their faces shown, we their approach totally backfired and now their names and faces are plastered everywhere, especially "DON'T TOUCH HER" Newton Leng who now has several memes with him such as this:
They would have been better off just walking away.
It has been very interested following this as it unfolded. I’ll update if anything new crops up.
Watch Brendan Kavanagh on YouTube here:
He really is a fabulous and fun pianist.
