Clapped-out has-been stars singing, kindergarten kids goose-stepping, white-elephant projects sitting around unused, and a none-too-subtle bombardment of PRC/Mainland imagery – including sunset over a Covid isolation camp! Yes, it’s the guaranteed-to-alienate Handover 25th anniversary themed concept muzak video, with instantly forgettable all-purpose simpering Cantopop melody. (Grasshopper are still around???)
Tick the boxes. Logistics industry? Check. Athletes in wheelchairs? Check. Ethnic minorities (just briefly)? Check. Whoever produced this deserves a Gold Bauhinia Medal for courage while under threat of severe mockery. But what choice was there? Like all Hong Kong official communication/PR/marketing, this had to please superiors, not impress or convince other audiences.
China fails to get 10 Pacific nations to sign up to a trade and security agreement. Chinese officials’ presumptuous attempts to take charge of little island states’ media wasn’t a great start. Foreign Minister Wang Yi tries not to sound creepy about the rejection…
“Don’t be too anxious and don’t be too nervous, because the common development and prosperity of China and all the other developing countries would only mean great harmony, greater justice and greater progress of the whole world,” he said.
A little Mainland weirdness to brighten up your day…
Illustrations in textbooks have long courted controversy over aesthetics-related issues or inaccuracies. On Friday, a non-academic children’s photo book also apologized and pledged to retract photos showing two boys licking sweat off a girl’s abnormally long hand.
(If you’re into the ‘questionable’ textbook artwork, check out Henry Darger’s Vivian Girls.)
God, I have to repeat that…
…two boys licking sweat off a girl’s abnormally long hand.
I learned a long time ago to avoid places where the regime emphasises “Stable” among the top three selling points
I don’t know about you, but I felt that there was a key element missing from that distinctly emetic muzak video. An element, indeed, that may well have raised it from the level of cliché-ridden pap to something approaching a work of art.
Yup! You got it.
No Jackie Chan!
Accident or design? Could the China watchers in here please comment on what, if anything, we should read into this almost unprecedented omission?
“Check. Ethnic minorities (just briefly)? Check.”
Although I think “Mike” Tsang with his culturally misappropriated Afro is an insult to anyone that has hair like that naturally.
Those illustrations: It has GOT to be a piss take to stir the pot.
There’s one scene in the music video that looks like a dead body being wheeled past. That pretty much sums up the rest of it.
“Hold on to the best times and push forwards with our beliefs” I believe over one thousand people are now in prison in Hong Kong for doing exactly that….
CCP PR makes me laugh. It’s like they take the PR suggestions about how to sound and make those suggestions on tone the actual message. They are so utterly klumpty. They actually believe the world takes them seriously.
@Red Dragon: I thought the exact same thing. Couldn’t be bothered to watch it in entirety but was Seman dragged out as the token patriotic white man not owned by the CIA?
I miss the good old days when pep rally-videos would, invariably, include a shot of Happy Valley race horses, Run Run Shaw smiling and waving at no one in particular, school kids waving little flags at some snooty minor royal (Princess Ditzy or the Duchess of Pork), Brenda Chau stepping out of her gold Rolls Royce, a Guv with the feather hat and a sweeping shot of Aberdeen with a Hakka woman pushing a junk. Where did it all go wrong if all they can think of now is Alan Tam leaning on his Zimmer frame?
Joe I think Brenda’s Rolls was pink. The toilet seat was gold.
@Formerly Known As
In the proper tradition of old school HK nouveau riche flash, Brenda had both a pink and a gold Roller. Never mind the aesthetics, look at the price tag!
@Formerly Known: Rolled Gold is correct. Brenda had a gold Roller that went with her house on the Peak, Villa d”Oro and the gold toilet, and a pink one that went with her “marriage” to Beng Bong whats-his-name? Those were the days. It makes me wonder what happened to the 6 wives of Dickson Poon and to Terry Halliday. Not to mention Matt Hackett, Jacqui Stafford, Keith Kwan, Ted the Mophead who organized those parties, Diane Butler and Roman Tam.
Uninspiring tune and lyrics. There aren’t many ‘dreamers’ left in HK – unless they mean the China Dream. And they just had to put Lion Rock in at the end. Totally unconvincing and unappealing. Now as for Glory to Hong Kong…
The irony of the inclusion of Lion Rock image is that URA is working on a plan to ‘decant’ much of the current population of Jordan to New Territories in order to facilitate high end gentrification via a development that looks like a cloned Union Square, the most pedestrian unfriendly district in the territory, under the tag Kowloon Gateway.
Plans are to ‘review’ the current protection of the Kowloon ridgeline because it gets in the way of the construction of ‘iconic landmark’ buildings.
Enjoy LR while you can still see it. Like the Jumbo it will soon be reduced to sepia images on museum walls.