At home and in the world at large, societies seem to be getting more polarised and many are seeing a pushback against globalisation. Boundaries are becoming more apparent. In this issue’s Periscope, Varsity looks at the boundaries and divisions between different groups of people in Hong Kong society:
That Which Divides Us – Editor’s Note
The year 2016 will be remembered as one marked by conflict and rupture. Britons voted to leave the European Union in the Brexit referendum, Americans elected Donald Trump in a presidential election characterised by fear and vilification of the “other” and in Hong Kong, localism emerged as an electoral force. These are all signs of a world facing great political change. Boundaries between those of different political affiliations are widening and reflect deeper, not always visible lines dividing groups of people in society.
In this issue, Varsity looks at these boundaries from an interpersonal angle and tries to explain the divisions between different groups of people in our society.
Much as the gulf between and even within political camps is becoming more pronounced, so too is the gap between generations becoming more visible. The young and the old criticise each other for political stands taken and behaviour in daily life.
Stereotypes exist for both young people and the elderly. Youngsters are labelled “useless youths” and they take revenge by creating anti-elderly memes that make fun of older people on social media. Both groups believe that other generations are unable to understand their own and they have little interest in communicating with each other to reduce the gap.
Another boundary that exists in Hong Kong is that between racial groups. We may consider our city to be a highly inclusive society, with people of different races, religions and ethnicities. It is not unusual for a local Hongkonger to wake up in a traditional Chinese community and end the day at a concert at Asia Expo with foreign audiences. However, racism exists in Hong Kong, even if people seldom mention it.
Many people in Hong Kong have experienced “microagression” – a term describing commonplace daily verbal and behavioural insults to people of colour. Even those who are considered to have a “privileged” racial background find it difficult to integrate into the local community. Their experience should alert us to the fact that racial discrimination does exist in Hong Kong. Varsity looks at how people of different races experience discrimination and react to it.
Besides the division between races, there are also boundaries within local Chinese Hong Kong communities. Our story, “The Walls Within” looks at the boundary in one of the traditional Hong Kong communities, indigenous villages.
Indigenous villages in Hong Kong are called “wai”, which means “walls” in Chinese. Walls separate and protect indigenous inhabitants from the outside world. Even though most of the physical walls have been demolished now, the word “wall” remains and separates indigenous villages from the rest of Hong Kong. Inside the villages there is another boundary – between the indigenous residents and the non-indigenous residents who increasingly live alongside them.
Since everyone is an individual, boundaries cannot be eliminated and will always exist between individuals, groups and societies. However, reducing the gap and enhancing communication should still be the aim of a modern society. As members of this rapidly changing world, we hope you enjoy reading about these and the other issues covered in this edition as much as we enjoyed reporting on them.
Managing Editor
Achlys Xi
Mind the Generation Gap
The gap between the young and the old has widened into a chasm since the Umbrella Movement. How can this generational conflict be resolved?
By Megan Leung & Lynette Zhang
“There are so many old people this year, this is the first time I have hated them so much,” wrote one commenter.
“This is the first time I have wanted the elderly in Hong Kong to die. They’re dragging everyone else down,” wrote another.
These comments on September 4, the day of the Legislative Council (Legco) election, were in response to a post on the Facebook page of 100-Most, a youth-oriented satirical magazine and website.
The boundary between generations has always existed, but in Hong Kong in recent years the generation gap has widened into a chasm, especially since the Umbrella Movement in 2014. Two years later, it intensified further as a record number of candidates representing different parties and factions competed in the first Legco election since the movement ended.
The election brought out a record number of voters with a turnout rate of 58.28 per cent. Among all eligible voters, the turnout rate of the 61-and-above age group increased the most – by 23.7% compared to the 2012 Legco election.
While increased participation may indicate more people are taking their civic responsibilities seriously, many youngsters question whether elderly people made informed and conscious decisions when casting their votes. During the election, footage circulated of elderly voters being briefed to vote for a specific candidate before voting and being brought to polling stations in groups.
To look at how the younger generation’s opinions about the elderly changed after the Umbrella Movement, Varsity conducted a social media analysis of posts in 100-Most’s Facebook page, since it was established a year before the movement and reflects the views of young people.
We picked three events: The Umbrella Movement, the 2016 Mong Kok civil unrest and the 2016 Legco election. We collected posts and comments over a month, starting from each of the three events and studied the posts and comments about the elderly.
Umbrella Movement: No extremely negative comments, the focus is more on the conflicts between blue ribbons and yellow ribbons. Most of the posts do not talk about the elderly or generational problems.
Mong Kok Civil Unrest: Obvious negative comments appeared, but the wording is not so aggressive.
Legco election: Negative comments appeared which were obvious and extreme, containing words like “fogeys” (老野) “all die” (死嗮) “may you have nothing to depend on in your old age” (祝老無所依) “useless oldies” (廢老廢中) etc., but many neutral comments tend to link the election result to the elderly.
Right after the Legco election, anti-elderly Facebook pages began to appear. Most of these did not gain many followers, but one, “hkelderlymemes”, had more than 36,000 as of the beginning of November.
The “hkelderlymemes” page presents itself as a “just for fun” Facebook page that publishes funny elderly-themed posts. It was set up a day after the Legco election and quickly built up a following.
The posts published tend to be related to news and politics, but they also feature stereotypes and send-ups of the elderly. The page administrators also assume the persona of elderly people to mock their mindset and show how different it is from that of the younger generation.
Granny Lam, 70, resembles one of the typical elderly people targeted by anti-elderly pages. She disagrees with the political views of most youngsters although she rarely discusses it openly, even with her friends.
Every afternoon, she and her neighbours gather on and around benches in the pavilion outside the Wong Tai Sin MTR station, chatting and spending their day together. The neighbourhood has one of the largest elderly populations in Hong Kong.
Granny Lam was born and raised in the area and says she has witnessed how much the district and Hong Kong have changed over the years.
“Your generation has never had a taste of how hard life can be, like in our times. You lot are blessed,” says Lam who thinks the younger generation fails to realise how fortunate they already are.
She also expresses her disappointment with Hong Kong’s political situation in recent years, particularly with the social movements in which many young people took part.
“I have made it clear to my grandchildren that whoever gets into such trouble will have to leave the house,” says Lam. Comfortingly for her, Lam’s three grandchildren all “behave well and make no trouble”. She says a young person’s duty is to get a proper education and contribute to society instead of creating disputes.
Many of Lam’s peers feel the same way about youngsters. Older people use labels such as “useless youth” and “Kong kids” to describe the younger generation as they are considered to be troublemakers who make a mess that society has to clean up afterwards.
Colour Lines
Interaction and knowledge about others are key to reducing racism and microagressions
by Li Sunpin & Verena Tse
One day in August, Anne-Marie Butundu Ilunga, walked into an MTR carriage and sat down. Immediately, the Chinese woman sitting next to her pulled out a tissue to cover her nose. It was not the first time the 18-year-old, who is black, has faced discrimination. This time, she decided to do something about it. She whipped out her phone, recorded the incident and posted it on Facebook. The video went viral, was picked up by news outlets and gained thousands of views and shares.
Some people were sympathetic and apologised to her but others messaged her saying they did not believe racism existed in Hong Kong. Her experiences over the past five and more years of living in the city contradict this.
Butundu Ilunga moved to Hong Kong from the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2011, but she says she still feels like a stranger. “No matter how long I stay here [Hong Kong], I am not going to feel it is my home,” she says.
It was particularly tough when she started school. Butundu Ilunga attended Sir Ellis Kadoorie Secondary School (West Kowloon) – a school with a mix of children from Nepali, Pakistani, Filipino and local Chinese backgrounds, and a handful of black students.
She says her local Chinese classmates were narrow-minded and racist. “They would call you monkey,” she recalls. Butundu Ilunga says many people in Hong Kong have pre-conceived ideas about ethnic minorities – for instance, many students think of Africans as poor people who go around naked or wearing very little.
She believes such stereotypes exist because of a lack of interaction and understanding among classmates. “When somebody asks me even a stupid question like, ‘is it your first time to wear clothes in Hong Kong?’, now I will try to explain to them,” she says, noting the racial discrimination she experiences decreases the more she interacts with those around her.
The small acts of discrimination which Butundu Ilunga encounters, for instance when people move to another seat on the MTR and on buses, or call her names, are acts of microagression – a term describing commonplace daily verbal and behavioural insults to people of colour, regardless of intention.
Innocent Mutanga, a 25-year-old student studying anthropology in the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) has similar experiences. He recalls an incident in which a woman on the MTR saw him with a young Chinese woman, the teaching assistant of his class, and accused him of using her for ulterior motives. “She was screaming that I was just with this girl because I wanted to get the Hong Kong ID,” explains Mutanga.
He says that on the bus, the seat next to him is always the last to be taken and he attributes this to a lack of knowledge about people of different races. Mutanga thinks mainland students are less likely to discriminate against him because they have had less access to negative portrayals of ethnic minorities on television and in advertisements.
In the three years he has been in Hong Kong, Mutanga has observed the negative influence of the media portrayals of ethnic minorities. He jokes that judging from the various advertisements posted in the streets and on the walls of buildings, a visiting alien would think the city is occupied by white people. For him, racial stereotypes are “delusions” and racism is a kind of mental affliction where the sufferers do not even realise they are carrying out acts of microaggression. .
Raees Begum Baig, an assistant professor in the Department of Social Work at CUHK, agrees that microaggression occurs because of the limited interaction between majorities and minorities. This lack of contact and interaction leads people to make generalisations about ethnic minorities based on their appearance and skin colour.
Baig believes parental education is an important channel for overcoming racial boundaries but that this is hard when some Chinese parents “do not want their children to mingle with ethnic minorities”.
Consequently, many local Chinese are unable to differentiate between the different groups of ethnic minorities living in Hong Kong today. They tend to blur the lines between migrants, refugees and ethnic minorities.
Migrants are people who recently moved to Hong Kong and plan to stay for long period of time. Refugees may have already spent some time in Hong Kong but do not plan to stay for good. Ethnic minorities are a very diverse group – some have been in Hong Kong for a short period of time while some have been here for several generations already.
Deepen Nebhwani, a 19-year-old student of Indian ethnicity, was born and raised in Hong Kong. As a local, he has a different view of racial discrimination. “I’ve grown up seeing this [discrimination] around me,” he says. “I’ve been here long enough to be immune to all of this.”
After nine years of studying at a school where a majority of students were from ethnic minorities, Nebhwani transferred to the Diocesan Boy’s School (DBS) in 2012. He recalls the first year in DBS was tough. “I can single-handedly count the number of non- Chinese people in the school. At that time we had like 1,400 students; I think less than five were non- Chinese,” he says.
At first, his classmates were a bit apprehensive about interacting with him, but eventually Nebhwani managed to find a group of friends. He suggests it takes longer for minorities in Hong Kong to fit in because people often do not want to leave their comfort zones. “Even though we call ourselves an international city, there are people who are unwilling to branch [out] to people who are not [one] of them,” he says, adding “if you try to fit in, they will accept you.”
The Walls Within
Identity politics rears its head in New Territories indigenous villages
By Gloria Lee and Avery Tsui
Take a 10 minute walk from Sheung Shui station and you will leave the skyscrapers behind you and arrive at Sheung Shui Wai, a collection of indigenous villages and the home of the Liu clan,
The “wai” in Sheung Shui Wai means walled. Walled villages used to be common throughout southern China, including in the New Territories,walls were erected to protect inhabitants from pirates and other marauders. Many of the walls have now been partly or completely demolished and recent decades have seen big changes to tradtional village life.
Liu Oi-ting, 20, is an indigenous Sheung Shui Wai inhabitant, who takes pride in her indentity. “Being an indigenous inhabitant in the Wai village gives me a special sense of identity,” Liu says, but she acknowledges the bond among villagers is not as strong as it once was.
Liu’s sister is nine years older than her and she thinks her sister has a stronger bonding with other villagers because there used to be frequent activities that involved the whole village. “It is not the same in my generation.” says Liu.
Over the years, indigenous villagers have moved out of the villages and outsiders have moved in. This changing demographic has also influenced village culture, says Liu. However, she thinks relations between indigenous and non-indigenous residents are generally good, except when there are conflicts over different living habits. For instance, there was a conflict between her family and the new immigrant family next door who would throw rubbish from their terrace that accumulated outside the Liu family’s front door.
In Sheung Shui Wai, non-indigenous residents are welcome at many village events, such as the mid-autumn festival gatherings and ‘poon choi’ feasts. But clan-based events, like the worship of ancestors rarely involve non-indigenous participants. Liu says this is more about clan membership than any kind of segragation. “No matter how integrated they are with us, they can never be part of our family, our ties can only be that of friends.” she explains.
Lee Hoi-choi who lives in Kam Tsin, an indigneous village not far from Sheung Shui-wai echoes Liu’s sentiments – but from the perspective of a non-indigenous villager. “Actually we [non-indigenous villagers) don’t want our ties with the indigenous people to be too intimate either,” says Lee who moved into Kam Tsin, the home of the Hau clan, 19 years ago. Lee says that overall, he enjoys good relations with his indigenous neighbours and there is little difference between the indigenous and non indigenous Kam Tsin residents.
However, Lee knows there is one big difference between himself and his indigenous neighbours and that is they have “ding” rights. This means that male indigenous villagers who are descended from the male line from a resident of a recognised New Territories village in 1898, can apply to build a house for himself in his own village as long as he owns his own land or can get government land at a premium.
This is sometimes easier said than done and Lee understands that some villagers cannot get the land or have financial difficulties in building their ding house for self-use. However, he also sees indigenous people selling their ding rights and he questions why they can retain this privilege when they are just profiteering from it.
“The biggest beneficiaries are not those who build the house,” Lee says, “it’s the people with power.” In the villages, those with the power are the village leaders and representatives on rural committees and the Heung Yee Kuk.
While the boundary between indigenous and non-indigenous inhabitants is not usually visible, it comes into focus when there are conflicts. Lee recalls a dispute he had with an indigenous villager who tried to build his ding house where it would block his carspace. Lee sought help from the village resident representative but nothing was done until he directly complainted to the Home Affairs Department.
“The resident representative [who is also an indigenous villager] is on their side.” Lee says, “It makes sense if he helps the indigenous people, right?”
In 2003, the government introduced a “dual representative” system in an attempt to balance the rights of indigenous inhabitants and non-indigenous villagers. Regardless of where they were born or live, indigenous villagers as defined by the clan register, have the right to elect an indigenous representative for the village, Whereas all residents of the village, including non-indigenous villagers who are Hong Kong permanent residents and have lived there for at least three years, can vote for the resident representative.
Fix it!
DIY enthusiasts insist on repairing, rather than tossing old stuff away
By Rubie Fan, Karin Li
Apliu Street in Sham Shui Po is lined with shops and stalls selling electronic components and parts for appliances. But it is getting harder to find any that will also do repairs. Mr Ma, who is in his sixties, is one of the few handymen who still repairs appliances for a living.
In a run-down stall with signs that read “repair old sound equipment”, Ma is fixing a speaker, screwdriver in hand. He has been doing business on Apliu Street for more than 40 years and over the years, he has noticed that people are less willing to get their appliances mended.
In the past, a new electrical appliance would cost a big chunk of a workers’ monthly wage, so they would use it for as long as they could – decades or even most of their lifetime. In contrast, consumer goods are now much cheaper in real terms and people tend to discard things without much thought when they malfunction or break.
Ma says that even when people do want to fix their old appliances, it has become harder to do so. Most production processes are now automated and use machines whereas appliances tended to be assembled by workers in factories in the past.
The new appliances are more complicated, and are difficult to fix using simple tools, says Ma. Sometimes he finds it difficult to disassemble the appliances, let alone fix them. “Even if you want to fix it, you basically can’t,” he says.
Alung Wong Chun-lung, an experienced electronics engineer, has the same problem as Ma. Wong volunteers for a post-Umbrella Movement group that helps people in the community to mend electrical appliances – Fixing Hong Kong. People take their malfunctioning appliances to be repaired at the The House of To Kwa Wan Stories, in Hung Fook Street, Kowloon, where the group is based.
In the cramped store room where Wong works, household appliances, such as electric fans and induction cookers, are stacked up waiting for his “cure”. Wong can repair 60 per cent of the appliances brought here. The rest are too difficult to fix due to their intricate design, complicated assembly or easily breakable parts.
Sometimes, he has no choice but to give up on repairing an item although he knows it is repairable. This is often because the electronic components are too small and precise to work on without a microscope and specialised tools.
For example, there is a crucial chip on a television circuit board that can only be replaced by prising off the old chip and soldering on a new one. Wong says it is unlikely that ordinary people would possess the technical knowledge and skills and the soldering tools to carry out the repair.
What is more, Wong says it is getting more difficult to find components. Even when he can find them on the mainland e-commerce site Taobao, the purchase and transportation costs can add up to around HK$100. Wong thinks this is a deliberate strategy on the part of producers.
Another strategy is known as planned obsolescence. This is where producers design products with shortened lifespans in order to get repeat sales. Sometimes they might do so by using what they call “environmentally friendly components” that have a shorter lifespan.
Wong has observed that fridges and washing machines normally last around 10 years. Television sets last for a shorter period of three to five years. Mobile phones are the most short-lived, with a lifespan of two years.
Whereas producers used to stress the durability of their products, they now no longer make long-lasting appliances in order to protect future sales. As consumers are forced to buy new ones more frequently, the flow of goods is faster.
The relatively high cost of repairing items relative to buying new ones discourages Hong Kong people from mending equipment. “Small domestic appliances have no repair value,” says Wong. “[Even if] it is repairable, no one is willing to repair it,” Wong says.
Wong takes a broken electric fan as an example. The cost of repairing would be upwards of HK$200. Many people would rather buy a new one for HK$400. He adds that it is expensive to fix things not because of the cost of materials but because of the cost of labour. After all, it is reasonable for professional technicians to charge HK$200 to HK$300 for an hour’s work.
However, some appliances are still considered to have repair value and there are still shops and small mobile stalls on the street that collect large electrical appliances like computers, televisions and washing machines.
After they are collected, many are taken to a recycling site at the Kowloon City Pier, where you can see electrical appliances piled up on cargo ships. The repairable items are sent to developing countries like Vietnam and Cambodia where the labour costs are significantly lower than in Hong Kong.
Visible and Vulnerable
Greater visibility hasn’t stamped out discrimination, now the LGBT community faces a blacklash
By Eunice Ip, Maggie Suen
Raymond Chan Chi-chuen realised he was different from other boys when he was in primary school.
“I had two uncertainties as many others had at that time. First, am I the only one? Second, if I’m not the only one, how could I seek out others?” recalls Hong Kong’s first op
enly gay legislator. At the time, a child of his age had no concept of what it meant to be gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender (LGBT).
“Students today do not have those confusions. By simply searching on the internet, they can access texts, pictures, videos [regarding LGBT], as well as forums and dating sites,” says Chan.
Chan came out in 2012, the same year that pop singers Anthony Wong Yiu-ming and Denise Ho Wan-see did. Apart from these high-profile figures, recent years have also seen more realistic and positive portrayals of gay characters in mainstream films and television programmes, such as ViuTV’s acclaimed Margaret and David – Green Bean series.
The increased visibility of LGBT in public life and popular culture means individuals no longer need to feel alone. But visibility itself does not necessarily create a more favourable environment for being more visible. Young LGBT can still face a harsh reality.
“There was a TV programme about gays. My father disliked it,” says 22-year-old Michael Li Hon-ting. Li will openly talk about his sexual orientation if anyone asks but he still keeps it from his family.
Li was not sure of his sexual orientation until he started a relationship with a girl in Form Four of secondary school. Until then, he had told himself he was bisexual rather than gay. “There’s at least half-normality when you say you are bisexual. This matches with social norms more,” Li says.
After he graduated from secondary school, he plucked up the courage to tell his teacher. The teacher, who was a Catholic, found it hard to accept. “She asked me to think clearly [whether I really love guys],” says Li. She also attributed the emergence of homosexuals to the increasingly open discussions about LGBT in society.
Li observes that university campuses have a relatively free environment where LGBT individuals can talk openly about their issues, but secondary school students are still reluctant to say or reveal much.
Charles Chan, a 17-year-old international school student, agrees. “It’s a taboo at school,” he says. Chan moved to Hong Kong in 2011 from the Philippines, where he had a miserable time in primary school.
“I was quite feminine. I would do those hand gestures, and run weirdly. So I was called gay or stuff like that,” he says. “I didn’t really have friends at primary school.”
Chan was under great pressure as he hid his identity and disguised his orientation, all the while not daring to seek help from teachers or social workers. He only opened up to intimate friends who gave him their support.
He was also afraid to tell his family because his parents are traditional Asians. Chan says his family once came across a transgendered person in the street. His parents made fun of the person and admonished his little brother, “don’t be like that.”
“I had sunglasses on, so I was just crying throughout the whole thing, and they just didn’t realise I was crying,” recalls Chan.
This April, it was Chan’s mother who was crying when she guessed that her son was gay. First, his parents pressured him not to tell others but now he feels they have gradually accepted it.
Chan plans to go to university in the United States, which he believes has a more gay-friendly environment. To him, Hong Kong is still not ready for greater LGBT visibility.
“I can’t really talk freely because I would be discriminated against,” he says.
Sun Sets on Evening Schools
Once a thriving alternative to day schools, evening schools now struggle to survive
By Chloe Kwan, Venice Lai
When the sun sets and workers pack into buses and trains for the journey home after a long day at work, students at evening schools hunker down for their classes. They come from diverse backgrounds – some have day jobs and some are fresh out of conventional schools.
Although they have been in decline since the 1990s, evening schools were very popular up until the 1980s. In the 1950s, the arrival of large numbers of young refugees from the Chinese Civil War overloaded Hong Kong’s education system. The government and some non-profit-making organisations set up evening schools to satisfy the demand for schooling in the absence of free universal education.
There were two main kinds of evening schools. The first taught the conventional secondary school curriculum, while the others aimed to provide education opportunities for young workers.
Paul Yeung Siu-Hung, 62, co-founded the New Youth Study Society (新青學社) in 1977 with his college mates after graduation. It became well-known as the “workers’ evening school”.
At that time, only 60 per cent of students could enter secondary schools, while the rest worked as apprentices or child workers. Many of them were exploited because of their low education level.
Yeung and his friends hoped to empower these young workers through education. They taught a tailor-made, three-year course which included conventional subjects such as Chinese, English and mathematics, as well as industrial safety, the labour law and healthy eating to cater to workers’ needs.
Each founder invested HK$100 a month to rent a two-roomed flat in Tsuen Wan, which they transformed into classrooms. They even made furniture and donated books to set up a library corner. They promoted the school by posting street bills and attracted more than 20 workers in the beginning.
The government rolled out its policy of nine-years of universal education in the 1980s and this led to a sharp decline in new admissions. Finally, the New Youth Study Society closed seven years after it opened, in 1984. Yeung was content to accept the change. “We fulfilled our historic mission,” he says with a smile.
Today, workers’ evening schools no longer exist, and not many evening schools providing conventional secondary education are left. There are currently 10 government designated centres, and also some private evening schools. In the 2015/16 school year, the designated centres served around 1,300 students of all kinds and with different aims.
Ivy Yip Yuk-lan, 55, is studying Form five with her 18-year-old son at Holy Cross Lutheran Evening College in Tsuen Wan. Her son quit day school because he was bullied in Form Four. Yip, who completed a five-year evening school course 20 years ago, persuaded him to complete his secondary education in evening school. She hoped this will make it easier for him to find a job later.
At first, he refused because he had little incentive to study, but to encourage her son, Yip suggested studying together for three years so he would “not be alone”.
Her positive attitude worked and now mother and son study subjects such as biology and economics together. Yip is happy to be learning new things about subjects she has never studied before. She recalls the fun she had learning about enzymes in biology and gross domestic product (GDP) in economics. “If I do not learn new things, I will lose touch with society,” she says she always reminds herself.
A Proverb Speaks A Thousand Words
Cantonese sayings preserve traditional folk wisdom in a new era
By Fiona Chan
If you were born in a Cantonese family, chances are you have heard the saying: “I have eaten salt more than you have eaten rice (我食鹽多過你食米).” In fact, you have probably been told this by your parents or other senior family members.
It means “I have more experience than you” and is one of the Cantonese sayings, proverbs and idioms commonly used by the past few generations of Hong Kong parents when they scold or advise their children.
These sayings, characterised by allegory and metaphors, are the oral creations of ordinary local people, inspired by their everyday lives and passed on by word of mouth.
Au Yeung Wai-hoo, senior lecturer in the Department of Chinese Language and Literature at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), says people in the past often had a limited education but they still wanted to convey folk wisdom and pass it on. They expressed it using simple and brief wording.
Au Yeung gives the example of the idiom, “straw covering pearls” (禾稈冚珍珠), which means pretending to be poor or putting on rags over glad rags. “Say ‘straw covering pearls’ alone and that’s it. The whole picture stands out,” he says. “But if I explain the whole message instead of using the proverb, it is time-consuming and doesn’t have this instructional function.”
Au Yeung points out that Cantonese proverbs and idioms often involve images of specific things that aid memorisation. Therefore, it is sometimes easy to guess what the proverbs mean from the literal meaning. As in the case of “straw covering pearls”, the images of straw and pearls are both easily conjured up. The images also stand in stark contrast with each other – the former is cheap and plentiful, but the latter is precious and rare. This contrast alone makes the saying vivid, its meaning clear without the need for elaboration.
Apart from the characteristics of Cantonese itself, the settings in which the sayings are spoken can encourage people to use them. Tsui Wing-shan, a 25-year-old YouTuber, spends her free time producing Cantonese-themed videos for her “The Wingshantsui Channel”. She says using Cantonese proverbs can help her build relationships with others.
Tsui was born in Vancouver, and grew up there. She says she is lucky to have learned Cantonese at a Chinese language school as a child and she started to love it as a teenager. Tsui says her mother often used Cantonese proverbs in their conversations. Although this gave her the impression that her mum was trying to mock her while giving her advice, she did not resent it. Instead, she found it very interesting.
Tsui thinks Cantonese proverbs and idioms seem more casual than English, which she finds formal and courteous.
“I think compared to English, Cantonese proverbs have a hint of sarcasm. It is not a bad thing but rather can make people closer,” says Tsui.
She began to collect Cantonese proverbs and idioms and introduced them in her videos as a way to save them.
“Producing videos allows permanent preservation. Everybody can view them,” she says.
Although Cantonese proverbs and idioms may seem ubiquitous, there is a chance that some of them are in danger of fading out.
In October, Varsity made a list of eight Cantonese sayings and randomly asked 11 students at The University Mall of CUHK which of the sayings they knew. Most of them knew four or five on the list. One saying that none of the students knew was “Watch the horses fighting from the top of the fort tower” (企喺城樓睇馬打交), which means to keep your distance from or observe from the sidelines. One of the respondents said forts no longer existed and they had not heard of the saying before.
Science for All
Citizens connect to the world through science
by Doris Yu
Twice a month, Masee Fung, his teammates and other volunteers ride their bicycles along narrow tracks the width of a hand span to reach the small farmland site they rent in Yuen Long’s Ching Tam Village. Then the citizen scientists turn on their flashlights and find their way through to the shrubs where, according to a year-long observation study, they will find the most fireflies.
As they turn off their flashlights, the insects glow brighter and they start counting the fireflies and recording their species based on the knowledge they gained in a two-hour training session.
In the two-hour training conducted by Fung’s team, city dwellers learn about the colour, size and flashing pattern of four kinds of fireflies. Even without a relevant degree, ordinary people can be transformed into citizen scientists who are capable of helping to gather data. “Even ordinary citizens, kids and primary students can [distinguish species] as long as they can see and distinguish colours,” Fung says.
“Citizen science” refers to scientific research conducted by enthusiastic amateurs. Data collection, in the form of recording all encounters with specific livings organisms, is the most common activity for Hong Kong’s citizen scientists.
Unlike large-scale citizen science projects, such as Green Power’s Butterfly Surveyor project and the Hong Kong Bird Watching Society’s Hong Kong Sparrow Census, Fung’s team prefers to keep their research project low-profile. Doing less promotion and holding fewer activities mean they have fewer volunteers and less funding and data. But it also means the team can avoid attracting people who join for the wrong reasons – such as photographers who want to shoot fireflies and people who are just looking for a quiet place for a picnic.
Fung is not concerned about how many volunteers he can get, what matters to him is whether they really appreciate nature and want to get involved in citizen science. His team’s main purpose is to learn about the habitat of fireflies and to create a firefly-friendly and biodiverse little corner in Hong Kong.
“Those who can really read our message will find us,” says Fung. “We do not have to sell it.” So far, this low-key approach has managed to attract two volunteers who are truly passionate about learning, enjoying and contributing to firefly biodiversity in Hong Kong.
Like Fung’s volunteers, Lau Yun-kwan, a third year environmental science student at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), finds that joining citizen science projects makes him more sensitive to natural surroundings.
Last summer, Lau volunteered to be one of Green Power’s 248 butterfly surveyors. Since 2008, the organisation has been recruiting and training citizen scientists to update its Hong Kong butterflies database.
After three months of lectures and field trips, Lau is more familiar with butterflies. He once spotted more than 30 Coliadinae butterflies, which may include very rare subspecies, on the CUHK campus. Much to his regret, they flew away in a few seconds, before he could verify them using his well-thumbed illustrated guide to Hong Kong butterflies.
DIYbio Hong Kong, a newly-established “community of DIY biologists”, wants to do more than concentrate on any one family or species. The group wants to record Hong Kong’s biodiversity by “barcoding” all species in its Hong Kong DNA Barcode Project.
The project’s organisers, some of whom are trained biologists, are inviting the whole community, especially students, to collect and transport samples of plants, insects or animals they have discovered to DIYbio’s community lab. Members will teach citizens how to extract DNA and process it through a polymerase chain reaction machine to undergo sequencing. Each sequence will generate a unique barcode for each organism.
The group’s founder, South African biologist Gert Grobler, hopes to inspire people to engage with nature.
“We want to get people in touch with nature,” says Grobler. “People catch Pokémons, [lead] virtual lives; they don’t know about the real lives.”
Through the process of learning about molecular biology and extracting and analyzing DNA, Grobler hopes citizen scientists will be inspired and motivated to conserve the natural world.
Maria Li Lok-yee, the director and secretary of DIYbio says: “You need to take ownership of your environment, your surroundings, in order to love it and preserve it.”
However, the high cost of purchasing DNA-sequencing equipment makes it difficult to achieve the project’s goals.
Like many citizen science projects, DIYbio does not have sponsorship from big companies and institutions. Mike Yuen Chun-kwong, another core member of DIYbio and a retired science teacher, tries to keep research expenses down by either buying cheap copies of equipment components from the Chinese online retail platform Taobao, or seeking second-hand donations from local universities. Sometimes, the do-it-yourself biologists make plastic components using a 3D printer to build their own machines for experiments.
