The Hong Kong anthem has a score…
The phenomenon of the anthem – a symbolic expression of local loyalty and quasi-sovereignty – should freak out Beijing far more than a burning MTR station. Geremie Barmé at China Heritage presents a translation of an Apple Daily mega-article on the tune and its composer, including the lyrics’ allusions to the May 4th Movement in the 1920s.
We don’t know whether Carrie Lam has heard it yet (seriously – you wonder whether she gets briefed on this sort of thing). We do know that she is having a serious bad-hair summer. This is further confirmed now Reuters has released the full transcript of the hapless Chief Executive’s remarks to her gathering.
Some of her telling comments, paraphrased… ‘The limited room for me to offer a political solution … is what causes me the greatest sadness’. (Beijing is ordering her administration to let the police beat and tear-gas the city into calm.) ‘I know some people think we should be tougher on protesters. But, given the majority of the public’s views and the people’s sentiments, this anger and this fear and so on, overly tough action could be counterproductive’. (She has some perception that this is a mass movement.)
She also indulges in some hilarious whining about the government’s inability to get its message across (no awareness that the substance, not the style, is the problem). And in the same vein, how future administrations will need professional communications help. Meanwhile, she laments, PR agencies are refusing to touch the Hong Kong government account because it would harm their reputation.
I declare this Friday the 13th/Mid-Autumn Festival weekend open with a selection of reading matter (no whining if some are behind paywalls, etc)…
An LA Times piece says ‘Police atrocities and government intransigence confirm for many that Hong Kong’s political system is rotten to the core’.
The NY Times asks whether Xi Jinping is mishandling Hong Kong…
…even senior officials are reluctant to make the case for compromise or concessions for fear of contradicting or angering Mr. Xi, according to numerous officials and analysts in Hong Kong and Beijing.
And to conclude the US coverage, Rolling Stone presents a (well-captioned) pictorial on the world’s hippest and most photogenic uprising.
The FT digs into Beijing’s problematic dependence on Hong Kong’s oh-so loyal tycoons…
…the Civil Aviation Administration of China told executives at Swire Pacific, the airline’s parent group, that their top managers at Cathay “are not patriots”…
…the executives the party recognises as patriots and, therefore, listens to are so scared of the party — and so bent on preserving their enormous economic monopolies in the city — that they only tell the party what they think it wants to hear…
…The party would have been far better served — and Hong Kong would now be in a far better place — if over the years it had instead listened to the alternative voices that could have warned of the unsustainable socio-economic pressures building in the territory.
Activist (and one of the better orators to ever set foot in the Legislative Council) Brian Leung provides a summary of his piece in The Economist.
One for all us convent-school-educated former altar-boys out there: British activist Benedict Rogers on why his fellow-Catholic Carrie Lam won’t be going to heaven.
An Asia Times op-ed sees Hong Kong at the end of an era, and notes that, for the CCP…
…there should be no advantage in absorbing Hong Kong just as there should be no disadvantage in keeping it at it is, a contention that would require the party to come to terms with the fact that being in control does not necessarily mean satisfying the need to control everything…
In case you haven’t seen the Hong Kong version of Delacroix’s Liberty, here it is. The SCMP has done a special feature on Hong Kong protest art, but with some patriotic anti-protest posters as well. It gives me no pleasure to say this – but they’re crap (it’s that sort of Socialist-realism-cartoon thing).
Also from the SCMP, their (excellent) Vancouver correspondent invites a pro-Hong Kong and pro-Beijing resident to a bubble-tea summit.
The second part of the Al Jazeera documentary Hong Kong’s Summer of Defiance by Lianain Films, plus a link to Part 1.
More from China Heritage: interviews with six Hong Kong high-school students on the protest movement.
As we all know, democracies are failing worldwide and the future belongs to the Chinese model – so how come China’s elites are stashing their billions in the West?
And finally, on a lighter note, some Sinic wackademia: the scholars who claim that English is a dialect of Chinese and the Western world has no history before the 15th century AD – Egypt, Greece, Rome, etc are all myths and legends.
Ah – one little last thing for meme fans…
Can you imagine that poor Ian Young probably has to meet Alex Lo in Vancouver from time to time, he should be given a Pulitzer just for that.
Somehow Greece and Egypt are myths and legends but “glorious 5000 years of han domination that sadly left no trace whatsoever” are not.
Will the coppers ever assign the shotgun toting Vin Diesel wannabe out on the streets of HK ever again? Will he become a recruiting poster boy traveling the territory (and mainland) for PR functions? Will he be given a palatial apartment in Shenzhen to retire to in order to write his memoirs (“I took no shit from kids”) and a nice fat pension with advisory body duties on “law enforcement” on the mainland?
In proud Hong Kong did Carrie Lam
A state of havoc bring about;
And sweet as honey, soft as jam,
The nubile girls did roam about
In shopping-mall and street.
And if some humid, horrid night
Of fire and fume and fight
A demonstrator they did meet,
A soldier of the front-line,
With urgent hand and voice they said,
“My love, my hero, I am thine,
Take me to thy bed!”
The thought of fervid love and sex
So quick, so easy, and so free
My lonely heart did vex;
And to the street with endless turmoil seething
One night I ventured fearlessly
In black, and hotly as a dragon breathing.
And soon beside my heavy, manly tread
A lightsome damsel tripped and said,
“My love, where goest thou?
Let us leave the roiling city now
And I shall bear thee to a dome of pleasure,
A hidden room of joy complete,
With beer of Tsingtao foaming in the glass
And moon-cakes rich and soft and luscious sweet,
Where in the deepest love and leisure
Hours of passion we shall pass.”
So with this gentle, eager maid
I ate and drank till I was sated,
And consummation I anticipated.
At last, I thought, I’m getting laid.
And as I brought my lips to hers I saw –
I saw – the baleful face of Fanny Law –
And someone knocking at my door –
I woke – thank heaven – I
@Knownot: thank you once again! 🙂
Another indicator of Curry Lamb’s vanity: “what causes [her] the greatest sadness” is her OWN lack of freedom, and, presumably, her tainted legacy. Aah well, Curry, suck up your communist mooncakes and be a good little ‘patriot’.
On the positive side, art supply shops are now selling paint (oil and acrylic) in the hot new colour ‘Prince Edward Crimson’, one tone darker than Blood Red.
From the Geremie Barme link: “In the year 2019, however, Young Hong Kong is aspiring not to achieve a proffered radical future or some phantasmagorical utopia. They are part of a citywide protest that is agitating for a better, albeit deeply flawed, version of the past, one that can be realised by affirming the positive political and legal underpinnings of a society that has at times promised opportunity and progress.”
With apologies to Knownot:
All we want is to live in a normal city,
Where politics is boring,
And politicians discuss normal things,
Like bus routes and street cleaning,
And how to run the schools.
They would still be useless,
But they wouldn’t lecture us,
To be grateful to our betters,
And for the opportunities our children have,
To flog luxury handbags to tourists.
We want to live in a normal city,
Where we ride the trains,
And read gossipy books,
And say stupid things on Facebook,
Without being tear gassed, kidnapped, or fired from our jobs.
We want to live in a normal city,
Where 30 year-old political cartoons,
Are no longer funny,
Because we would have different problems.
But supposedly they tell us,
This too much to ask.
It’s a long game, but at the moment the protesters are winning.
9:55 13 Sep [Ming Pao]: Mid-Autumn: Carrie Lam Visits Elderlies; Warm Wishes for HK
Carrie Lam posted on Facebook that she visited some elderlies in this Mid-Autumn holiday to send her blessings. She also wishes everyone in Hong Kong a warm Mid-Autumn Festival.
Shau Kei Wan residents they saw Lam in and out of the back door of an elderly home in Yiu Tung Estate. “Photo-op and a show, then left.” As Lam was leaving, a resident with a woman called out to her “Mrs Lam, where did your conscience go?”, “5 Demands, Not 1 Less” and “I want mooncake”, etc. Lam did not respond and left. The residents described her as being sneaky.
Lets hope the elderlies display the same subversive streak when DAB and FTU wheel them to the polling stations in Nov!
What I want to know is how the West managed to have all those myths and stories without any language, as they patiently waited mute for ancient mandarin to be invented in the 12th century and its pronunciation codified in 1324 so that they could crack on with developing foreign languages based on that pronunciation.
Or — as they base their theory on similar pronunciation — was it the slightly later Late Imperial Mandarin which started in the 14th Century, or perhaps they mean when the pronunciation was finally codified by a bunch of foreign invaders (the Qing) in 1728? Back when Beijing actually sounded like “Peking”.
Or was it not the old mandarin based on the Nanjing dialect at all, and do they mean the current Beijing dialect-based mandarin that was phased in by foreign rulers (still the Qing) in the middle of the 19th century and was formally codified in 1932? Where Beijing finally sounds like “Beijing”?
Carrie Lam Ventures Out:
https://www.dimsumdaily.hk/carrie-lam-visits-elderly-home-in-shau-kei-wan-and-leaves-via-back-door-after-civilians-and-reporters-surround-the-entrance/
Sunday 15 September 2019
The tipping point may have been reached. What genius. Utterly crap renditions of Rule Britannia, Land-of-Hope-and-Glory and God Save the Queen might just have done it. No one wants to listen to that again. Embarrassing. Nauseating. Pathetic. Incredible levels of neveragainess. People talk about toe-curling experiences – I have just had my first one.
London – you have an obligation to take back the unwanted 22-year-old bastard child. You can feed it, water it, change its soiled nappies, and give it the vote.