Following the outing and doxxing of Kong Tsung-gan as a white person with a Chinese-sounding pseudonym, I am in danger of being revealed as a human despite my herculean – and long-successful – efforts to pass myself off as a botanical species.
For copious links on the saga, try this.
Kong’s flawless English should be enough to mark him as someone who is probably not a standard ethnic-Chinese Hongkonger brought up to be mainly Canto-speaking. But so what? He is basically a tweeter and author whose output includes some sharp analysis and an invaluable up-to-date list of all the arrests, charges and court cases arising from Hong Kong’s protest movement.
The people behind his outing and doxxing are an obnoxious bunch – primarily a website called Greyzone that is so dogmatically left it supports dictatorships, denying such atrocities as genocide against the Uighurs and denouncing the mass-opposition to regimes in Hong Kong (and I guess Thailand and Belarus) as CIA-led plots. Their angles of attack seem to be that only authentic yellow people can write about Hong Kong from residents’ standpoint and/or Kong is committing a political-correctness sin (‘yellow-face’) by using a pen-name indicating a different ethnicity and/or he is somehow and for some reason being deceitful, and/or ‘CIA plot’.
The tankies are perverse. What’s disturbing is that local media (and no doubt blue-ribbon nuts) have latched onto this absurd mouth-froth. They include Nury Vittachi in the Standard (who seems to have fallen into this mentally ill online milieu as part of his pro-CCP positioning) and the SCMP, which splashed the Kong story as if it were newsworthy and a scandal.
With only the man-in-green-shirt-set-on-fire to run with, the blue-ribbon brigade are always desperate for something to use against the protest movement. But note that the doxxing of Kong has led to death threats.
Finding themselves using a freakish site like Greyzone as a source and pushing its weird inverted-racism agenda, SCMP reporters are trying to worm their way out of the embarrassment – which obviously results from an editorial decision to ramp up the story as a smear against the protest movement.
Not sure how well the SCMP’s subscriptions drive is going.
For whatever it’s worth, it’s Grayzone with an “a.” Apparently they are funded by Russia. This is further info on them. https://medium.com/muros-invisibles/grayzone-grifters-and-the-cult-of-tank-fbd9b8e0dbe2
Pulling up Kong Tsung-gan for using his Chinese name as a pen name as being yellow face or cultural appropriation is deliciously ironic in a town where thousands of ethnic Chinese proudly use English names to work and indeed write under. Natalie Wong for one.
It also shows that his critics can find nothing wrong with his actual writing if they have to resort to trivial, fallacious argumentum ad hominem to try to counter it and discredit him.
Vittachi should be outed and doxxed for masquerading as a writer and journalist all these years.
Lots of wumao use fake Western names and actively pretend to be non-MLers. The SCUMP comments section is full of them
Kernal Mustard – Keep in mind that quite a few locals of Han ethnicity that use English/Western first names are using the only first names they have, and the they are becoming more numerous these days. Don’t mock them for the decisions made by their parents.
So the powers behind the throne have sussed that the pipsqueak “keep your mouth open while I blow my trumpet’ dentist, main claim to fame being an advisor to Our HK Foundation and a serial and malleable advisory board member, does not possess the gravitas to pull off a hatchet job on RTHK and has appointed some ‘middleweights’ to man the guillotine.
@ poor man “decisions made by their parents” – Isn’t it the case that the kids choose the “English” names themselves in school as they learn the language? Or was that a colonial thang?
More recently, the kids have been getting more adventurous with their westernised name choices. I’ve met a Money, Rainbow, Pinky, Mars and in Thailand: Telephone, among others.
The SCMP’s subscription drive is going on without any of my filthy lucre.
@A Poor Man
Your point just adds to the delicious irony.
@ HKJC Regular
Not just youngsters being adventurous, about 25 years ago there was a Chlorophyll and a Vagina (no, not Wire Hair the Public Intellectual). In my current collection that seems to encompass most ages, Squall, Tangerine, Bilitis, Hello, Orange (with the less than polite family name of Wang), Giraffe, Glacier, Macarena, Harbour, Nectar, Density, a female Icarus…and the list goes on.
HKJC Regular – I am talking about locals who do not have Chinese given names, only English/Western ones. For all I know Natalie Wong is really her full and only legal name. It seems that for some local parents, giving only an English/Western name to their child/children became a trend about 30 years ago and this trend accelerated about 20 years ago. Nowadays quite a few locals younger than 25 or so do not have Chinese given names. This can be a serious issue if they try to use a foreign passport to enter the Motherland since Chinese looking people with non-Chinese names and non-Chinese passports are asked for their Chinese name by the immigration officers manning the counters. If you answer by saying you don’t have one, you can be denied entry, even if you are really telling the truth. This started several years ago when the Central Goverment tried to claim sovereignty over all people of Chinese descent, regardless of where they were born, where they live or what nationality they have.
Don’t forget Boogie, the name of a competent young person presently employed by one of the HK government agencies. Several years ago Hitler caused a stir. I have met an Apple and a Colour.
A case of nominative determinism with local politico Scarlett Pong.
I work with a Circle and an Atlas but credit was go to Wan King-man who refuses to adopt and English name
I see we are deteriorating into Nury territory. Remember ‘Lee Kee Plumbing Company’? Wanco? ‘The elevator is out of service until prior notice. We appreciate your inconvenience.’
@where’s my jet plane – given her nickname, don’;t you mean “Pubic Intellectual”? Two names I’ve come across here are “Puffer” and “Whisker”.
@ Low Profile
That, indeed is an acceptable alternative. The reason I used Public Intellectual is that she so describes herself on her FB page – as well, incidentally as “single mum (eligible!)”
Never thought he was a local Chinese. I don’t think people understand anything anymore. Fake name with real news is worse than real name writing nonsense? Come on…
The waiter was named Herod. I asked him, “Where’s Pontius Pilate?” Blank stare.
@Stanley: “He is in the kitchen, washing his hands.”
@HKJC: It varies. Some HK parents do give their children English names at birth, some kids acquire English names from relatives or teachers in childhood, and some choose monikers for themselves and may go through several versions through their teenage years. Most of the more unusual names tend to be a 14 year-old’s idea of what sounds cool.