The Fashion Police
"Am I the only person in Hong Kong who didn't know that 'Delay No More' was a pun for diu leih lo mouh?". My Korean-American friend Leslie, a 9 year resident of Hong Kong who is my only non-Chinese friend completely fluent in Cantonese, rolls her eyes and laughs at herself. Then she gets back to our important business at hand, which is enjoying the excellent Cantonese lunch laid out before us. The restaurant, Wun Sha Kitchen in Tai Hung, is one of those trendy places that have sprung up thanks to the recent boom-boom economy. At Wun Sha they take classic old-school Cantonese dishes, refine the presentation and cooking, add smart touches from the culinary traditions of other parts of China, and, voila!--contemporary Cantonese fusion cuisine.
Even a non-Cantonese customer can appreciate the sublime flavors and textures in Wun Sha's braised pomelo skin, goose "web" (literally, ngo jeung, goose palm. Or, in plain English, foot) and mushrooms. But to really understand and appreciate how the si fu, the chef, is playing around with the homely dish, presenting the slow-cooked, starchy fruit peel in a smartly carved rectangle as if it were polenta, arranging the goose foot just so--you have to have some Hong Kong in you. What makes this food creative is the way it riffs, like a jazz musician would do, on Hong Kong's local culture and its food traditions.
What makes a city cosmopolitan, sophisticated, urbane? The government of Hong Kong's PR says it's all about skyscrapers (with a couple of token pagodas thrown in), an "international" population (at a ratio of one Western banker for every 10 HK citizens), a sleek and expensive transport infrastructure (quick, hide those exhaust-belching red-light jumping mini-buses!).
But I don't think sophistication is something you can build or buy into existence. It takes time, space and freedom to simmer, to deepen. For me the most sophisticated thing about Hong Kong, what raises this place to World City league status, is that here (as in New York, or Rio de Janiero, or Rome) people have a sense of who and what they are that is strong enough to support critical and creative commentary. When you know and feel confident about where you're coming from, you feel free to re-arrange and get creative with it. You can take your grandmother's braised goose foot, and re-invent it as a nouvelle cuisine. As I bite into the most brilliant dish we've ordered, a mini-sandwich of Yunnan ham slices dressed with a honey, lotus seed and osmanthus-flower sauce, it occurs to me that restaurants like Wun Sha kitchen are the culinary equivalent of Hong Kong's beloved bad-boy design store G.O.D.
I'm sure you've read about what happened the other day: the Hong Kong Police Department staged a simultaneous raid on all of G.O.D.'s shops. The fashion police arrested 18 people, including clerks and G.O.D.'s head honcho Douglas Young. Why? Because of a t-shirt. A G.O.D designed t-shirt that says, in the old-style Chinese numerical characters, "14K". Which happens to be the name of one of the big Hak Se Wooi, Triad gangs.
Already I can hear you saying, "Wait a minute. In Hong Kong, where every other movie is about Triad gangs, where the best filmmakers are mainly working in the gangster noir genre, and where the biggest-grossing film of the decade begins with a Triad ceremony...the police staged a massive three-pronged bust because someone was selling a Triad T-shirt?"
Really, if the cops truly want to protect the fashion sensibilities of Hong Kong citizens, I could recommend any number of better raid targets. (The Shatin mall, Joyce boutique, and innumerable streets in Causeway Bay are just a few Hong Kong areas that are desperately under-served by the Fashion Police.) The police department says their action against G.O.D. was prompted by a little-known law that prohibits the display of Triad gang names in public. This law, as far as anyone's been able to tell, hasn't been enforced in years. (The G.O.D. director maintains the t-shirt had nothing to do with Triads anyway.)
What's really up here? A little digging turns up a Perfect Storm of the usual sorry suspects: The ailing, bankrupt pro-Mainland newspaper, Sing Pao (currently involved in a lawsuit because it hasn't paid its journalists in something like 9 months.) The "True Light Society", a quasi-religious group that's Hong Kong's local equivalent of Jerry Falwell. And Legco representative Wong Kwok-Hing, member of (no surprise here) the pro-Beijing flack party, the DAB.
Last Tuesday, the desperate-for-circulation Sing Pao ran a full page "investigative" story about G.O.D.'s latest new t-shirt with the 拾肆K design (see picture above). Inside was the usual handwringing about how G.O.D. uses, (oh dear!), puns and profanity on its products (the shop's main slogan these days is the above-mentioned " Delay No More", printed on shopping bags, shirts, retro-vintage flight bags, etc.). Add canned quotes from representative Wong, and the True Light Society, and wrap it with a flashy headline and blurry picture of a Triad meeting. Then cross your fingers that it will sell enough papers that you'll be able to pay your editorial staff this week.
Such a cheezy ploy should never have gotten above the radar. But this is an election year (c.f. DAB member Wong Kwok Hing), and there's something else about G.O.D. that you should know (and that none of the local papers mentioned in the ensuing media storm about the shirts). A few months ago, after the Star Ferry protests, and just before the struggle around the Queen's Pier, my local G.O.D. emporium, the flagship shop, put up some interesting window displays. The shop, on Hollywood Road across the street from the historic Central street market that's scheduled to be demolished for urban "renewal", placed in its window several mannequins dressed in shirts. The t-shirts said "DELAY NO MORE: SUPPORT LOCAL CULTURE" and "DELAY NO MORE: SAVE LOCAL MARKETS".
Anyone tuned into the Hong Kong scene, and to G.O.D.'s cheeky design style, got the message: hipster store G.O.D. was coming out to support Local Action--the loose coalition of protest groups who are leading the charge against the destruction of Hong Kong cultural icons like the gaai sih, the Star Ferry and Queen's Piers, and the Wedding Card Street, Leih Tung Gaai.
The support makes perfect sense. Indeed, you could say that G.O.D.'s designers are the godfathers of the current Local Culture political movement. It was G.O.D.'s design style that transformed local Hong Kong objects, customs and landscapes into signifiers of "cool", and made many people re-think the value of Hong Kong's everyday cultural life. If you can sell a t-shirt covered with a photo of a shabby but vibrant Mongkok apartment block for $250 HKD, then that Mongkok building must truly be worth something!
The Triad 14K thing is just an excuse. It's G.O.D.'s status as a supporter and purveyor of "Local Culture" that's got these designers in trouble with certain powerful people. The DAB along with the Hong Kong government, would rather suppress than support any genuinely local Hong Kong cultural expression. Because to support the young hip protesters of Wedding Card Street, or to promote the wise-cracking, knowing sophistication of G.O.D. is to suggest that there is something about Hong Kong that is special, distinct, and intrinsically different from Mainland China. (Hong Kong, according to this great study by think-tank Civic Exchange, is particularly scary to the mainland authorities because it demonstrates there is a different, and very successful, way to be Chinese in the modern world).
All this is dangerous, not part of the master plan. The master plan is "Integration with the Mainland." The master plan is "Patriotic Education and Flag Raising Cermonies". The master plan is spending 200 million dollars changing the language of instruction for Chinese literature in Hong Kong's public schools from Cantonese to Mandarin.
I walked by the G.O.D. store yesterday, after the raid and the public apology from Douglas Young. The window display was changed, the pro-Street Market and Local Culture signs were gone. I went inside, and not only were the 14K shirts gone from the racks, but the "Delay No More" shirts were missing, too. Looks like the Fashion Police have won, for now. But I hope that this is only a temporary diu leih.
POSTSCRIPT: SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 4th:
Like I said, the police raid of G.O.D. wasn't really about Triad symbols. The police were being used by the government and the pro-Beijing political cabal to launch a shot across the bow in Hong Kong's simmering political/culture wars. But don't take my word for it--check out this morning's photo of Local Action's most celebrated activist, Ho Loy, in Sing Tao Daily:
Ho Loy gets it. She's becoming one of the most interesting figures in HK. (One sure sign that you're getting interesting in HK: the local papers start referring to you as "The [fill in adjective here] Long Hair".) Yesterday, when I wrote the article above, I wanted to try to drop in a quote or two from the outspoken interview Ho Loy gave to HK magazine a few weeks ago. But I couldn't figure out a way to make the connection. Now she's done it for me:
"I am a Hong Konger, but I am not quite sure if I want to be Chinese."
"The urge for preservation will only grow stronger as young people in this generation, those who have grown up in a non-colonial society, begin to question their own identity. This isn't some pop song everyone will forget in six month's time."
I have often idly thought that part of the reason that Donald Tsang is hellbent on removing the things that make Hong Kong a unique Chinese city is part of the Central government's embarrassment at Hong Kong being China's most successful city. The colonial heritage must be deeply galling to them - a repudiation of 50 years of Communist rule.
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I don't think that present-day Hong Kong culture is a result of colonial rule. Certainly the colonial experience is part of the HK mix, but what's here now is very, very Chinese, and I'd say it always was. But the honchos in Beijing think they've got the lock on the brand "Chinese (tm)". And they don't want any competition in the market, because it suggests that a real, vital and vibrant Chinese culture could possibly exist outside the national construct called "The People's Republic".
Until and unless these guys can chill about this--and right now I don't think there's a snowball's chance in hell they can--poor Hong Kong and its sophisticated Chinese-ness (and, I fear Cantonese language) will be continue to be under siege.
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HK Cultural Identity was established in the 60's, 70's and 80's and continued into the 90's.
To have cultural signifiers removed and freedom of speech (expression) challenged gives us a glimpse of the changes that are happening to Hong Kong. Cantonese as the main language in HK should never be changed, it seems like the officials are being too ignorant, selfish and disrespectful to Hong Kong and its established identity; an identity that found itself out of China closing its borders to HK in the first place.
I'm curious about the conditions of the "1 country, 2 systems" rule. How long will it be before the citizens of HK react to these changes? especially the younger generation who have no ties with the Mainland.
I'll be in Hong Kong next year for about 9 months working... but heres hoping.. :)
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I can't think of a better way to describe HK's present situation than by borrowing Iris Chang's book title and replacing Nanjing with Hong Kong.
And it is hard to believe that apart from this G.O.D. incident, the totally absurd lawsuit against Oiwan Lam was not politically motivated.
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always enjoyed the way u put those cantonese words in pinyin style - delay no more...... never thot of that
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To be honest, Johnny, I didn't get it either until one of my native Cantonese speaking buddies enlightened me. Because when you say the words in proper English with the right emphasis--de-LAY no MORE they really don't sound much like the Cantonese cuss phrase at all.
Of course, once it was pointed out to me, I ONLY hear the cuss phrase now when I see DELAY NO MORE. Ah, the power of suggestion. Not to mention commercial advertising.
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Have you heard of "小喇叭" (small trumpet)? If not, then I'd better keep you in suspense and let you find it out yourself. Long Hair is probably the right person to turn to if in the end you still can't make out what it is.
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Interesting post! If your theory is correct than I am sure this strategy will backfire. What better advertisment could the GOD shop get but this hillarious police raid!
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Actually, I think the government's strategy, for the moment, has worked. Yes, it has drawn attention to G.O.D.'s shops and merchandise. But it has also sent a message to the designers of G.O.D., and to any other would-be creative types in Hong Kong, that they need to be very careful about how far they go with parody, irony, satire, etc.
The next time some designer comes up with a clever, provocative idea, memories of the raid on G.O.D. will click in.
It's called self-censorship.
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As one of the boys in blue I have to admit the whole 14K fiasco was rather OTT. I'd disagree about the reason for enforcement - we haven't had to enforce this law in recent years simply because there is zero tolerance for triad symbolism. However, had it been up to me I would have had the GOD head lad & his lawyer in my office at 0900hrs Monday morning & said, "Pal, yer tees have to go. I know you didn't mean anything bad by it but that's neither here nor there. 14K are a bunch of bullying ratbag scum who don't deserve 'cool' PR. I'm executing search warrants at lunchtime today & providing there are no tees in the stores, no-one gets nicked & it's case closed. Ming m ming bak a? Good, now get cracking." As it was we ended up looking like Nazi brownshirts on Kristallnacht - so much for all the effort we put into positive spin & PR.
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Hello Inspector! Nice to hear from you.
Indeed, your method of dealing with the situation sounds eminently reasonable, practical and professional. You're right, it's very odd the Department didn't follow the procedure you outlined. That's why I suspect there was some political arm-twisting going on behind the scenes.
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DM, you are of course assuming that there is a "big plan", which from my experience is a "big if" if some of the things that go on day to day are anything to go by! More likely it was a knee jerk reaction to the paper report. It's journalists who pull as many strings as Beijing these days irrespective of the reasonableness or otherwise of their stories.
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