And the Whistle of Honour goes to…

It’s barely Wednesday, but it looks like we already have a winner for this week’s Pass The Sick Bag Prize: Hong Kong Customs Commissioner Hermes Tang, who declares… 

It is an honour and yet a grave responsibility to be a member of the Committee for Safeguarding National Security of the HKSAR. I have a particular deep feeling in holding the capacity and must express my sincerest gratitude to the Central Government.

(I have a particular deep feeling that the ‘and yet’ in the first sentence is a bit odd.)

Of course, there’s more (the Pass The Sick Bag isn’t that easy to win). Commissioner Hermes goes on at far greater length – more than the most verbose or literary of us could manage even if we were paid – on the adoption of that oh-so elegant Mainland-style goose-step marching for his staff’s parades…

The Chinese-style foot drill has long been a shining icon of our country in the international community. It is also a spiritual outlook that our 1.4 billion compatriots are proud of. Good practice of the Chinese-style foot drill helps in better integrating ourselves into the country’s governance system and enriching the exercise of ‘one country, two systems’. Apart from spreading a positive message to members of the public, it also adds a vibrant colour of patriotism to the city.

Now read each sentence again carefully, and each time ask yourself whether it is true, or even logical. Really Hermes?

That’s just a small portion of a lavish bout of patriotic NatSec-era shoe-shining – though this is not so unusual among the disciplined services, who take orders, and everything else, literally.

Hermes is shown on the right presenting the Whistle of Honour (I wish I’d made that up, but no) to the best recruit. “Don’t blow it all at once,” he said. Maybe.

At the other end of the rhetorical scale… Several CUKH students have been sentenced for rioting in 2019. One, nursing student Foo Hoi-ching, wrote a defiant letter to the judge – a translation here.

From rhetoric to semantics… another Hong Kong court hears an expert’s view on how, based on 1,900-year-old Eastern Han Dynasty texts, ‘Liberate Hong Kong, Revolution of Our Times’ might be a seditious slogan.

Tam Tak-chi, nicknamed “Fast Beat,” appeared in the District Court before Judge Stanley Chan on Monday … People in the public gallery made heart hand gestures and … shouted “You’re so handsome” to Tam, who at one point waved, pulled down his mask and smiled back.

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17 Responses to And the Whistle of Honour goes to…

  1. Formerly known as... says:

    So once again some of Hong Kong’s brightest, most idealistic, and give-a-shit about the future of the community youth get sent to prison while this clapped out fool that would make Stalin’s useful idiots blush spouts this kind of cringe-worthy garbage:

    https://epaper.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202110/18/WS616ca6fba31019b029ba111a.html

    #bloodboils

  2. Probably says:

    Is that a Hermes Sick Bag? The son of Zeus has fallen a long way down.

  3. Low Profile says:

    I don’t know if TPTB are aware of it, but to Europeans of my generation, the sight of anyone goose-stepping immediately calls to mind images of Nazi stormtroopers. Is that the association they want?

  4. Londen Yahoo says:

    Herpes wants to be secretary for security after Chris Tang gets promoted, doesn’t he?

  5. Chinese Netizen says:

    “The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.”

    But anything contrary to the views of the China Daily/CCP will get short shrift.

  6. Chinese Netizen says:

    @Low Profile: Nazis, Soviets, East Germans and pretty much any system with some megalomaniac calling the shots.

    @Londen: Definitely seems some suckups are “elbowing” their way to greater recognition.

  7. AHW says:

    Pray, Hermes, exactly how does Hongkongers doing the goose-step “enrich the exercise of one country, two system”?

    Seems more like “one country, one fascist march”.

  8. Joe Blow says:

    @ Formerly known as…

    Is Mr. Pinkstone aware that the NED financially supported the DAB (yes, THAT DAB) when it was founded?

  9. A Poor Man says:

    Yahoo – Vag Yip and Herpes Tang sound like a match made in a brothel.

  10. Red Dragon says:

    Formerly known as…

    That link certainly led to some pretty emetic reading.

    Just goes to show that one shouldn’t expect too much from a knackered old Aussie Uncle Tom in a cravat.

    While we’re on the subject, I’ve just had a cracking idea for a cartoon about a group of rather dim troglodytes and the scrapes they get themselves into.

    Working title: “The Pinkstones”.

    Yabba Dabba Doo!

  11. lickspittle love lost says:

    That sordid display of a flagrant, promiscuous combination of arse kissing and cock sucking definitely requires the Commissioner’s immediate renaming to “Herpes Tongue” à la Londen Yahoo.

  12. Kwun Tong Bypass says:

    Is that Hermes of Wanchai Hot Pot cum „mainlander guests“ dinner? Well, I guess he owes his protectors a favour, or two….

  13. Mjrelje says:

    Surely anyone named ‘Hermes’ and looks like he went through life with a sissy man name, is the epitome of a sissy man and should be expelled? Just by being called Hermes immediately makes you a sissy man. Get that sissy man off the macho man black hair parade.

  14. Gromit says:

    @Low and CN, I believe goose-stepping is a Prussian military tradition, so that would explain why the GDR kept it, in spite of the link with Nazi hordes (memories of which were very fresh when the GDR was set up).
    Why China would adopt it, and why a HK official would praise a decadent bourgeois western imperialist tradition (does this count as sedition? I have no idea), is an interesting question.
    Perhaps the expert can find a mention in the ancient Eastern Han text showing that it is actually of Chinese origin.

  15. Chinese Netizen says:

    @Gromit: “Why China would adopt it…”

    Commies liked it so much they kept it. Reminded them of stomping on The People to keep them in their place…

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-German_cooperation_(1926%E2%80%931941)

  16. Red Dragon says:

    I’ve just learned that Hermes has been given the bum’s rush.

    The Curse of Hemlock, perhaps.

    https://www.info.gov.hk/gia/general/202110/21/P2021102100164.htm

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