| Hong Kong Celebrations |
|
|
|
| Viewpoints | |
| Wednesday, 21 February 2007 | |
 These words were written on the second day of the year of the pig, in a cafe on the sixth floor of Times Square in Causeway Bay. I suppose I should be at home with family making dumplings and serving tea, but such is the life of an undercover expat. Suffice it to say that, in this our Special Administrative Region of notoriously crass commercialism, it took the actual passing of the highly mediatized event to finally inspire me to write about my own experience of Chinese New Year in Hong Kong. The party-poopers might begin with the politically correct – for at least one international news network I know of makes a point of referring to the holiday as Lunar New Year, which is also celebrated in South Korea, Vietnam, and other "lesser" countries of Southeast Asia, so to speak, independently of Chinese cultural imperialism. Furthermore, if only to give the astrologically correct equal airtime, a savant few are quick to point out that February 18, 2007 marks the start of the Fire – and not Golden – Pig year. Nevertheless, the piggy baby boom has been in full gear, as prospective parents time pregnancies in order to yield at least one fiery – if not golden – piglet. Some expectant women are trying to delay their delivery dates to coincide with the auspicious birth year, while one scrupulous lady I know insisted on having a caesarian section with only partial anesthesia, so that she could supervise the minutely timed nativity of her firstborn child down to the very second. Such assiduous superstition makes me want to tell those Jehovah's witnesses who come knocking on my door every Sunday afternoon to just give it up already: You are in a minuscule minority of all the stuff out there that people can choose to believe in Hong Kong alone, so I don't care if you're offering me eternal salvation for an ounce of faith, I'd rather be one lucky pig in my next life. Madness So more people are wearing red these days, as lunar fashion dictates local trends. One popular hairdresser, who cut my hair exactly once several months ago, was entirely booked out for the two weeks preceding the New Year - 12 hours a day, 7 days a week. (Workaholics Anonymous would surely prosper in Hong Kong, if only people got off work in time to attend the late night sessions.) Then again, some industrious white-collar workers are shelling out several hundreds of HK$ to take lessons in proper enunciation, with the expectation of shedding off the pedestrian, and epidemic, "lazy cantonese" heard around the territory. So remember, it's "bai neen", not "bai leen". Speaking of which, the annual round of new year's greetings is not to be taken lightly. Here, it's not enough just to say "gung hei fat choy", or even "sun neen fai lok", or even "sun tai geen hong", or even "sum seung si sing"... No, in the land of confucian hierarchy and ancestral flattery, eloquence and reverence are the double-happiness keys to prosperity. In other words, there's no free lei-see. So if you're in it for the real money, don't just wish the elders a happy new year - use your imagination, and you shall be richly rewarded. Everyone knows there's the night parade on the first day, the fireworks on the second day, and the mega-fair throughout the week leading up to the explosion in Victoria Park. There's also a smaller, slightly more civilised fairground in Mongkok, but anybody who's anybody who wants to experience the true mecca of mass consumerism knows to congregate in Causeway Bay. Mayhem The New Year's Fair abounds not only in the traditional flowers and colorful pinwheels for good, clean family fun, but also in aggressive young touters, from teenagers to twentysomethings, frenetically trying to sell enough gizmos to cover their prime-spot rent fee, let alone make a profit on their wares. These include giant inflatable lollipops, bulging pig-shaped balloons, pillows, puppets, inflatable hammers, and other overblown, kitsch, mostly larger-than-life toys for children and girlfriends. Once in a while, however, you just might find something interesting to take home with you. Last year's hot item was a deck of playing cards faced with local political figures, while this post-dog year I spotted a cleverly designed canine balloon on a leash, weighed down by four plastic feet as it tiptoed along behind its master. But to me the highlight of the spectacle are the motor-mouth salespeople with clip-on mics touting everything from food blenders to window cleaners, each one making their product look and sound like the eighth wonder of the world. Not only do they demonstrate its miraculous powers with a magician's legerdemain, but they spew out their spiel with the hypnotising rhythm of a Nuyorican poetry slammer. Now that's what I call art meets commerce in cantonese. And I had the luxury of wandering through the fair on leisurely opening day, before all the mounting pressure to clear out all stock on the eve. Since then, I have conscientiously given the cattle crowds a wide berth. So what did I do after work on the eve, first and second days of the year of the pig? I went to see all the cheesy Chinese New Year movies, of course, as would any self-respecting HongKong-film chauvinist. Movies CNY movies are a genre all their own, as the likes of Feng Xiaogang on the mainland and Wong Jing in the SAR can confirm: slapstick comedy, local in-jokes, B-list actors and feel-good atmosphere. The most obvious example this year is the explicitly titled "sum seung si sing" (non-literal English title: "It's a Wonderful Life"), named after the pret-a-parler CNY greeting about wishing all your dreams come true. Not only starring, but also directed by beady-eyed clown Ronald Cheng, the film lives up to the reputation of the genre, at one point even parodying Feng Xiaogang's recent attempt at serious filmmaking, The Banquet. But besides an angelic cameo by Kelly Chen, the movie owes its relative success to every single scene with Teresa Mo, Hong Kong's undisputed diva of deadpan. Meanwhile, "seung ji sun tau" (Twins Mission) is one of those cheap action flicks you'll find on the bargain racks of HMV in a few weeks. But until then, the big-screen projection serves to remind us that Wu Jing is hot, that identical twins are not, and that Charlene is way finer than Gillian, because malicious gossip is precisely what makes the local entertainment industry go round. Fortunately, Derek Yee's "mun to" (Protégé) provides a thoughtfully dark alternative to the holiday fun fare, starring Andy Lau and Daniel Wu in another bleak tale of a mole among the triads. Cinematically, it's good stuff - but just remember, kids, drugs are bad. So it should come as no surprise that, as soon as I exit the cinema through the back door of the theatre onto the street, I have to make my way through another crowd of people browsing a compact table display of pirated DVDs. The seller is just one of many illegal street hawkers who have set up makeshift stands on the sidewalks outside the official Victoria Park fairgrounds. The next day, the stands are gone and police are on patrol, but the streets are just as crowded. Meanwhile, inside the cinema, nearly all the seats are filled with the carefree laughs of families, couples and friends. Alas, Hong Kong is forever floating between earnest tradition and cynical exploitation. More often than not, the SAR finds itself arrogantly looking down on its backward mainland roots while licking the boots of its wealthier western(ized) patrons – and yet, the lunar holiday is one of those times when Hongkongers are exuberantly proud to be Chinese. It so happens that this lunar new year follows close on the heels of Valentine's Day, yet another highly commercialised red holiday. Where I work, one true gentleman offered a single red rose to every female at the office, a gesture that admittedly left me tickled pink all the way home. The next day, a British gent distributed red packets to his colleagues – with only two little glitches: 1) he wasn't the boss, and 2) he wasn't married. Well, it's the thought that counts – the thought and the generosity to give, the willingness to participate, the effort to understand, and above all, the desire to share. Because at the end of the day, maybe that's what this whole global new-pig-year thing is all about. |
|
