Press monitors at the Hong Kong Liaison Office of the Central People’s Government will be noting some serious lapses of ideological correctness at the South China Morning Post today. Thuggish parallel traders plundering Sheung Shui’s supplies of infant milk powder roughed up one of the paper’s photographers. To take revenge, the editorial staff at Asia’s finest English-language journal do their bit for the Big Lychee’s nascent independence/autonomy/city-state movement…
First, they use the word ‘border’, in flagrant violation of the unwritten rule that the great wall of Immigration, Customs and barbed wire running from Lok Ma Chau to Sha Tau Kok is a ‘boundary’ and no more. (Yes, we all know you get ‘borders’ between counties, provinces and other sub-national jurisdictions; my late mother even had a border in her garden, and national sovereignty remained intact. But the clumsiness of the rule is the whole point: to jolt us and reinforce the fact that this is ‘One Country’.)
Second – and even more subversively – they refer to the uncouth pillagers of baby formula as ‘Chinese men’. The correct phrase is, of course, ‘Mainlanders’ or, better still, ‘Mainland compatriots’. The clear implication of the word ‘Chinese’ here is that Mainlanders are Chinese, therefore Hongkongers are not, as claimed by 
some anti-locust protestors, much to the deep distress of patriots and the embarrassment of Hong Kong’s leaders.
Third, the SCMP carries an article on restraining dogs – an obvious reference to a particularly obnoxious insult sometimes hurled by overly irate local citizens against visiting Mainlanders. This, frankly, is uncalled-for.
Ironically, by violently objecting to being photographed, the two milk-looters got their faces in print and on-line. One looks almost but not quite like a neighbour of mine and could be anyone. But the other is a stereotype Mainlander – right down to that hairstyle no-one would be seen dead with on this side of the, er, boundary, and that rather stylish ‘FINGERCROXX BIGFOOTX’ sweat shirt. (I have to Google it, of course. Seems it’s going out of fashion.) In fact, he’s almost more like a Mainlander than a real Mainlander.
Which makes me wonder whether rogue elements in the SCMP didn’t stage the whole incident to spread unpatriotic feeling among the community. This might seem far-fetched, but astute readers will have noticed a cunning plot to bring Mainlanders into disrepute in the form of the occasional ‘Mr Shangkong’ column in the business section. Unless I am seriously missing something very deep, the pieces, ostensibly by a pinyin-named writer, are devoid of substance, information or ideas. SCMP opinion pieces vary in weightiness, but this is off the scale – lighter than air. And there are excellent Mainland journalists out there, so this can only be a slur. There is no other explanation. And to think all this anti-Beijing treason is going on right under loyalist SCMP owner Robert Kuok’s nose.
I declare the weekend open in the hope that the Liaison Office goes easy on them.
Slapped and abused. Is that all? And that in a world where even Justin Bieber photographers are killed and hundreds of journalists all over the world are murdered, tortured, imprisoned and hospitalized every year.
Get a life Posties. And Postie snappers.
Or at least watch Veronica Guerin.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E50_P4VUN5E
There are stories out there in Hong Kong which will really get you beaten up. You’re just too chicken to write them.
Start your own blog, write those stories, video tape the bashing, put it on youtube so we can all appreciate it.
You know you’ve been in HK too long when:
* you borrow ideas from Nuri
* you think the various avatars or personae of G Adams are making a little progress
* you sympathise with the legal position of people who object to being photographed in public
* you think fingercruxxx is obscene
* you think that by capitalising “mainland” you may be assimilating it to a foreign country
* you wonder why, when evil foreigners get into the SCMP, the occurrence of words like “foreign-born”, “not from HK”, “passport” or “15% tax” spikes, whereas “Chinese men” is negatively correlated
* you think the mere juxtaposition of articles is deliberate
* you abuse words like “obvious”, “blatant”, “purported” or “deliberate”
* you comment on commentaries that are themselves about other articles, which are themselves translations
* you start making ykyvbih lists.
Can we hire those two nerds to go and slap Whiskers Tsang around a bit ? Nothing too rough though , but just enough for him to realize that 99.99% of HK are now totally convinced he’s a mustachioed dickhead ( to quote my alter ego yesterday) – whereas before they only suspected the fact.
Seems the ridicule he’s getting in the press these past couple of days is like water off a duck’s back ( or rather a walruses’ back ).
He needs something to give him a wake-up call … either that or a new calculator
… or, indeed, a calculator.
As I said before in these columns I have long since stopped reading the Pro-china and (sorry Hugh) listing to RTHK. I simply cannot buy into the theory that the CCP is a big warm teddy bear that will advance mankind.
Frankly there has been too many pages in the P(pro) CMP either trying to advance this horseshite or, and more usually, not reporting something deemed “sensitive” to the hair trigger cadres.
Despite having to rely on Porn to finance it the Apple Daily is almost alone in reporting the ills that affect this city most of which can be directly or indirectly attributed to the Party.
Tsang must have thought his RTHK chat this morning with Hugh & co was like being ‘savaged by a dead sheep’.
And at the same time could they give a good kicking to Richard Li for hijacking my Internet for two hours this morning and redirecting me to notification.netvigator.com which was entitled PCCW – Forced Portal.
The only silver lining to walking disasters like Jean Tsang is that they tend to self-destruct, albeit at an unsatisfyingly slow pace. He made a big step forward to oblivion this morning though. I’ll have a cup of coffee on that while playing the music from Les Miserables, which I am sure he thinks is a French movie. Can you hear the people sing?
Non, je ne regrette rien….
PD, good list, and Stephen, hell yes.
There is a castle on a cloud,
I like to go there in my sleep,
Aren’t any targets for me to keep,
Not in my castle on a cloud.
There is a room that’s full of dosh,
I like to keep it under lock,
Nobody shouts or talks too loud,
Not in my castle on a cloud.
Hemmers, how can you talk about dreadful SCMP columnists and not mention the execrable Tammy Tampax and her dispatches straight from CY and the liaison office?
Here lies John Tsang’s last vestige of credibility
27 February 2013
RIP
RIP = Rest In Pieces
New entry level test questions for Govt Finance Dept:
1. WHAT DO YOU USUALLY DRINK AT HOME ?
A) Tea
B) Beer
C) Wine
D) Coffee
2. WHAT KIND OF MOVIES DO YOU LIKE TO WATCH ?
A) Kung Fu
B) HBO
C) TVB / ATV
D) French
3. $800 BILLION MINUS $700 BILLION = ?
A) $100 billion
B) $100 billion
C) What number do you want?
D) Minus $3.5 billion
RESULT:
1. If you answered D , D, D you should immediately apply for the job of HK’s new FS
2. If you answered C to Q3, please apply to CK and/or Henderson for position as CFO
@’Second – and even more subversively – they refer to the uncouth pillagers of baby formula as ‘Chinese men’. The correct phrase is, of course, ‘Mainlanders’ or, better still, ‘Mainland compatriots’.
That’s bit mean! Out of yesterday’s 10 arrests for smuggling milk powder out of Hong Kong, eight of them, according to TVB News, were Hong Kong residents.
This must be the only count..er..special administrative region which locks people in jail for up to 2 years for being found with milk powder hidden in their knickers.
Try Googling “definition border” and “definition boundary”. The curious thing is that generally speaking, a border denotes the dividing line between two entities, whereas a boundary denotes the outer limits of one entity without regard for what lies beyond. Perhaps they should call it the frontier – a term that often refers to the outer edge of civilisation.
Taking a break from berating movie buff Tsang. It has been established by the police that both photographer-slappers are permanent residents of the big lychee. I wonder if this blog will also do an about turn from the above xenophobic remarks, just like the SCMP did today?
MM, Good point, but one of them looks like…an II.