Bachelor Noodle

"I'm sure everyone's seen those crappy, stereotypical pot noodle ads on the tv, bus shelters, seems everywhere recently. what course of action? boycott/complain to supermarkets carrying the product? put "this is racist" stickers on the adverts? (oh my, can't do that, may be construed as "terrorism against property under the new terrorism" law).

I was about to go on about english sterotypes eg illiterate, white-trash teenage mothers sitting around chain-smoking and screaming at babies while living off may whopping tax bill, un-employed healthy youths drinking and pissing on the train platforms, not to mention that inscrutable gibberish that's supposed to be english. but that wouldn't be fair, would it?

Beidak

I am writing with reference to an article entitled 'Bachelor Noodle' by Beidak. I personally do not find the advert in any way offensive, maybe at best at bit stereotypical, but having tried to see from Beidak's perspective, I really can not fathom the cause of offence. I personally find the Amoy advert featuring Adrian Pang as a Chinese Chef cooking noodles more difficult to stomach in comparison, in that it could be seen as stereotyping Chinese as cooks. But aside from this, would Beidak find Kung Fu films stereotypical and hence offensive, or the Lipton advert featuring a Monk?

I think that the question is where do we draw the line?

Would you rather be another brick in the wall with no characteristics - melting into a sea of blandness - rather then risk being stereotyped. Or are we going to rejoice in all the aspect that makes our culture so rich and vibrant, because remember stereotypes tend to have some element of truth behind it, however old and ridiculous. So surely we should be celebrating all the wonderful things that makes us different -both good and bad.

Vivienne

Is Hong Kong the Kaliningrad of China?

Yesterday, Thursday 14th, early afternoon, I was listening to the radio whilst driving. I switched on to Radio 4 and there was a report on Kaliningrad which was described in quite negative terms - crime, high incidence of HIV infection, drugs etc. Then Chris Patten was interviewed and he finished by making a comment after a question whether Kaliningrad could be the Hong Kong of Russia? I think that the presenter wanted to know from CP whether Kaliningrad had the potential. CP proceeded to say something like - ..when I was in HK, we used to call HK the Kaliningrad of China.

I wonder what he meant by that? Is CP's opinion of HK so low or was it wishful thinking?

RLMC