What's happening is that we and Mainland China are currently at odds and it's gone beyond random fistfights in trains and on the street and has turned into a slanging match in the media, with them calling us "Dogs" and us calling them "Locusts".
"Locusts" for a reason!
This is what the typical
Mainland China's Golden Week looks like
for us in HK.
I don't intend to join the Hot-Heads in this Mass Hate-On although I am willingly taking my part in conversations about how we can always tell who the Mainlanders are. For years, I've been watching Mainlanders get off the bus at Wan Chai, and they're always so different-looking that I've long been studying them to work out HOW they manage to look so exactly like Mainlanders. And they truly do, always, and have decided that the difference is that Hong Kongers always appear sleek and chic - even the sad old ladies going through the rubbish bins for recyclables - while visitors from China appear not to understand the shape and proportions of clothing PLUS they wear haircuts that don't suit 'em PLUS ALWAYS the wrong shoes.
But the nastier conversations I'm keeping away from. Yes, they do pick their noses. Yes, they do slag great globs of phlegm onto the streets. Yes, they do encourage their kiddies to pee and poo on the floor no matter where they are, even on our sublime MTR and the shiny marble floors of our beloved shopping malls. Yes, they do never pooper-scoop after their children. Yes, they do deliberately bump into Gweilos ("foreign devils") in the streets although that's more because they love the way WE always apologise even when it's obviously their fault rather than to hurt us or see us thrown back. Yes, they do throw food-wrappers over their shoulders with absolute indifference to what or who is around them. Yes, we do have to wade through knee-deep garbage when the Golden Week is over.
And yes, they do pour over the border every Golden Week in their millions, like locusts, Hermes suitcases packed full of yuan to buy us out of our stocks of Christian Louboutin, Vacheron Contantin, Prada, Stuart Weitzman and Patek Philippe.
We know all this and were happy enough just to spit out our worse expletive "Mainlander!' whenever these "cultural misunderstandings" occurred in our vicinity until Dolce and Gabbana made all this trouble for us.
But how is this the fault of Dolce and Gabbana you ask? Well, what happened is that they set up a flagship store over in TST to take advantage of this Mainland spending power and then inexplicably announced that any Mainlander was welcome to photograph their store while Hong Kongers were forbidden. But why? To curry favour? To announce their allegiance? Whatever it was, it's just bizarre!!
Naturally, HK "got on the fiesty" and poured out in vast numbers to take photographs of the store ... but bunches of Mainlanders started attacking them for it. Like, seriously, gangs of them would beat up Hong Kongers who were taking snaps of the D&G building.
Is there any word for "somewhere way beyond bizarre"?
And then this appalling piece of Chinese media began doing the rounds. I wonder if I can find it:
It comes with a sort-of translation, but is just so unbelievably awful you do have to watch. It's a seven minute rant by some Beijing Professor - that could only have been aired with the approval of CCP - that is frighteningly and dangerously stupid, and the upshot of it, to me, seems like he's saying "Of course we're allowed to poo and pee in your MTR, and it's only because HK is a pack of British DOGS that you think you have the right to object!"
Even Beijing's lapdog - "Chip" - is so shocked for once he's sided with Hong Kong.
And if that isn't strange enough, this rant was followed up with gangs of Mainlanders attacking Hong Kongers any place and every place and it just got so stupid and nasty that one of the Universities tried to discover why it was happening so ran a survey ... and got the exact same results as the Legco survey run in 2003 and published back then in ALL the newspapers: that Hong Kongers love being Chinese, love China's longstanding civilisation, love China's beautiful material culture, love the exquisite workmanship of Chinese products, love the physical landscape of Mainland China ... but hate the Chinese Government and detest the peeing, pooing, picking Mainland visitors forever pouring into our fair city.
But then the Dean leaked these results to the media and things got even nastier and thus he had to resign in shame. I don't mind in the least that he's gone because I think this is the same Dean who ordered the police beatings of the "V for Vendetta" protestors - protesting the official visit of "a Beijing Nasty" - but I do have to ask why he should be sacked for telling people exactly the same things they were told back in 2003.
Anyway, that's how things stand at the moment. We're resenting being called Dogs and they're angry we called them Locusts ... and it's certainly not over by a long shot with many many more volleys of nastiness still to come.
However it's all so strange that it can only seem like a Beijing Beat-Up however to what end? This is probably just me being paranoid but I'm feeling most uncomfortable mainly because there's the awkward timing issue involved:
As you probably know, Our Very Own Donald's term in office is over so our Punti 900 are shortly to vote for the new Hong Kong Head Honcho. It isn't much competition since we've only got 1) Henry "I'm too stupidly rich for my own good" Tang and 2) The Other Guy who we actually know nothing about because he refuses to debate or make statements or discuss policies ...
... although I have heard rumours that he's Beijing's man ... and now Beijing has come out and ordered the Punti to vote for Henry ... but they're making us so angry with their "dang-their-hides fighting-words" that I can't help think that it's to make us so riled that we refuse Beijing's choice and vote for The Other Guy who is really Beijing Man, which is what Beijing is really after.
That it really is all a very clever double-bluff that we really should be seeing through ... unless it's a double-double bluff and we're meant to see it so we ...
AAAHHHHHHH!!!! That Wong Tai Sin fortune stick really nailed it this year, didn't it: #29: that it will be hard for Hong Kong to tell angels from demons this year. However, if we can just work out what the rest of that prophecy means - "Heaven and Earth will know the difference." - maybe ... just maybe ...
Oh Lordy, who really knows!
Thus despite HK showing its best "feisty", that can be my only choice for this week:
THREATDOWN
Getting the Hate-On and not knowing why!
Posts
2 comments:
(Written at 4am 'cause I can't sleep.)
I remember once that I referred to Chinese as "Cheats, Cheapskates, and Dog-Eaters." And then I got flamed for my trouble. (Search the quote if you're interested.)
My point is that it's one thing to idealize them from a distance - The Good Earth, Inn Of The 6th Happiness, The Keys Of The Kingdom, etc. - but quite another to deal with them on a daily basis.
It sounds like you're discovering by degrees what I already know. (And what's gotten me shunned on occasion by persons with an stary-eyed and idealistic frame of mind.)
And no, it's not racism - a term you've no doubt tarred others with in the past. (And are perhaps being tarred with yourself as of late.) It's cultural bias, and there's a difference.
(Pooping on the floor???)
Indeed, it sounds like the biggest racists in the room are the Main-Landers you describe.
(But then again that's something I've known for quite a while as well.)
Just a thought.
VicB3
The British in HK always referred to the Cantonese as "honest and honourable; hardworking, healthy and handsome" and I've never discovered differently. Mainlanders just don't know how to behave in globally-appropriate ways. And, at the moment, they're being particularly aggressive about doing what they damn well feel like no matter where they are. It isn't pleasant.
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