What Kills Us This Week!

HK is in a snit at the moment regarding Christmas decorations.  Word, undoubtedly straight from Beijing's polit-buro, is that "Chinese have no culture of Christmas so it doesn't belong here." which has led to HK intellectuals saying "None of the symbolism relates to us in any way." and so, in consequence, this has trickled down to HK designers now saying they want to do away with reindeers and Christmas trees and all that jazz and instead choose their own symbolism.

OK, I get it!  I'm even a little on their side, despite thinking HK has, over the century and a half, done the most amazing job of hybridising of the day, calling it "Family Gathering and Gift Giving Day" and distributing gifts by "Papa Whiskers" or their own God of Abundance, Luk ...

... BUT Beijing has spoken and so it's now all off ...

... and I must say I find ...

... some of the ideas they are currently setting up as a brand new type of STUPID!!!

Like this one that went up last week in Times Square:

Say wot?????  Spray cans as Christmas symbolism????

Apart from everything else, yes, we all agree that HK has no organic relationship with the Culture of Christmas ... but even moreso that it has less relationship with the Culture of Graffiti!

HK doesn't have graffiti ... apart from that wonderful calligraphy by the old man, recently dead, who wrote letters all over doors and mailboxes to world figures in the most exquisitely formed Chinese ideograms, pleading for their help in getting him a visa so he could return to China to die, and who always signed himself as The King of Kowloon ... and whose graffiti-ed doors and mailboxes et al are now sold by Christies at auction and getting prices like US$55,000 a piece.

However, what we don't have are teenage gangs who roam the streets with their pants down to their knees and their caps on backwards, spraying graffiti tags all over the place, like dogs with lamp-posts, and it's that Graffiti Culture that is being celebrated here.

Seriously, WHY???  Why would anyone replace something they say has nothing to do with us, with something that has even LESS to do with us!

So unless this Times Square display is intended as ironic,  I have to say that sometimes I really don't GET Hong Kong.

There's currently other OUR OWN CHRISTMAS symbolic displays going up around town but I haven't seen them yet.  I'll go around town over the next few days and photograph them too ... and let's just hope that the others aren't getting it all so terribly terribly wrong!

So that's my choice for this week:

THREATDOWN

Replacing inappropriate cultural symbols

with things that make you go 

AAAAHHHHHHHH!!!