Hong Kong tourists caught up in Manila hostage incident

Truly awful news; A tour group including 22 Hong Kong citizens was caught up in an hostage drama in Manila. Tragically 7 people have been confirmed dead in the ensuing shoot-out. No information as yet on whether the Hong Kong tourists were amongst the casualties.

Story: Evening Standard

UPDATE: Video of the incident shows what must be one of the most incompetent police operations of recent times. It is being reported that officers took 45 mins to break their way into the bus after the first shots were heard.

Story: Hong Kong Standard

Miniature Hong Kong

Found this nice video online that shows typical views of Hong Kong but with a special camera effect that makes everything looks like it's a miniature toy set. Have a look:

Little Big City - Hong Kong Tilt Shift from Fershad Irani on Vimeo.

Large protests over attempt to 'push aside' Cantonese

Photos: China Droll

There have been reports that thousands of people in the Cantonese-speaking southern Chinese city of Guangzhou staged a peaceful protest when the government announced it would switch most local television programming to Mandarin, the official national language of China.

Beijing has promoted Mandarin for decades to unite a nation with thousands of dialects and numerous minority languages.

Cantonese is still widely spoken in the booming southern province of Guangdong, thanks in part to the spillover influence of Hong Kong's wildly successful and racy vernacular pop culture, but some people fear for its future.

Chinese newspapers and Internet sites have reported on companies where employees are fined for speaking Cantonese at work, prompting anger.

"I support Cantonese. If we don't speak it, we are shaming our ancestors," wrote "Bright Star" on the popular Chinese internet portal Sina.com.

I have to say, even as a rubbish Canto speaker living in England, I feel quite proud that people are willing to stand up for our language like this.

Language preservation is a contentious issue; The Communist party and its supporters see language adoption as an important tool in promoting homogeneity and unity in China. But for those whose native dialect is not Mandarin, language is a vital part of their identity and heritage.

How can China protect and - dare I say - promote local diversity in language without conflicting with its goal of homogeneity? Is that even possible?

Source: Reuters via SkyscraperCity

Related: The Changing Sound of Chinatown

Does your family have an interesting story to tell?

Can you help, or know anyone who can?

The BBC is making a 60-minute documentary about family life, to broadcast early next year as part of BBC Two's prestigious Wonderland strand.

The film will feature families going on car trips in the UK this summer. You could be going on your holiday, or for a weekend break - to visit friends or family, or even just for a day-trip. We'd film you on your journey to and from your destination, but while you are away we will leave you alone to have a good time.

We want to make a film that reflects the diversity of the modern British family and we are on the look out for a British-Chinese family to be part of this.

We want to get to know you over the course of the trip - who you are, and what life is like for you as a family. The biggest thing for us is just that you would be happy to have us along for the ride, and want to tell us your story.

If you are going on a car journey of longer than 2 hours between July and September this year, and would like to find out more about our documentary (with no commitment necessarily to taking part), please do drop me a quick e-mail or give me a call whenever is convenient.

Please get in touch with Rebecca Arnold on 0208 008 5587 (rebecca.arnold@bbc.co.uk)

Have you spotted any 'Frozen in Time' places?

A request to bbc blog readers: Have you noticed any 'Frozen in Time' Chinese restaurants or takeaways where you are? If so, please take a pic and send it in! I'd love to add to the ones already posted.

'Frozen in Time' is a bbc blog celebration of Chinese establishments that have stood the test of time and kept their original look in an age of constant revamping and updating.

Click here to see what I mean.

Big Spenders from the Mainland - two sides of a story

Just as the UK's Daily Telegraph publishes a wide-eyed article about the extravagant shopping habits of China's newly wealthy tourists, there comes a viral video from Hong Kong that shows a tour guide berating her party of Mainland guests for not spending 'enough' during their visit to the SAR.

The Telegraph article - which to be honest could have been written any time in the last 5 years - paints Chinese tourists as potential saviours of a struggling UK economy whilst at the same time pointing out some of the eccentricities of the new Chinese rich:

Nowhere is China’s confidence seen more clearly than in its demand for luxury goods. Last year the People’s Republic overtook the United States to become the second biggest market for the luxury sector; and by 2015 it will have overtaken Japan, with a market projected to be worth £11 billion annually.

...The eccentricity of Chinese buying habits takes other forms. Fine wine may be a status symbol in the high-end restaurants of Shanghai but many locals are not so enamoured of the actual taste.

“The Chinese used to water down the cheap wine they first encountered and now consider that the normal way to drink it,” says Mr Grant. “Which can be a bit of a shame when you’ve just opened a nice Margaux.”

The flip side of this story comes in the form of the viral video, in which a tour guide called Ah Zhen - thought by some commenters to be a Hong Kong based Mainlander herself - does a 'Bus Uncle' by launching into a long, insulting tirade against her clients who seems remarkably quiet whilst being chastised.

Some of the choice quotes being reported in the press are:

"It's you who owe me here, not me owing you. I provided you with food and accommodation but you people will not give."
"If you don't repay the debt in this life you will have to repay it in your next life."
"It's OK to be poor at home, but you can't act like this when you are outside. Don't tell me you don't need [the jewellery], I say you don't need to eat either. Tonight I will lock all hotel room doors, because you don't need accommodation."
"We don't do this for charity. Let me be responsible for charity. I donated 10,500 yuan [HK$12,027] for Sichuan earthquke victims."
"Why did you bother to come to Hong Kong?"

All this an not one person threw anything at her. What a polite group of tourists!

Who knows, if the UK economy were to decline even more maybe we'll start to see rants like this on the streets outside Prada and Gucci? Well, maybe not :)



Guide video via Living In Hong Kong

UK shopping article via The Daily Telegraph

Profile of a Walled City

Imagine a city with 30 times the population density of Manhattan. Imagine it was a lawless den of vice in which drugs, prostitutes and illegal gambling were all available. Imagine it sat directly under the landing path of one of the world's busiest airports.

That's Kowloon's walled city, as profiled by a number of websites listed over at oobject.com

...with no streets and little daylight, it was a rat infested, cockroach ridden filthy labyrinth. KWC was a no-man’s land that fell neither under British Jurisdiction nor Chinese

It had 161 unregulated doctors and dentists along with food producers from whole pig roasters to the suppliers of most of Hong Kong’s fish balls. Most of the people that lived in KWC never left.

Via: oobject

The hidden Tiananmen commemorations

Photos: CND.org

21 years after the massacre in Tiananmen Square, the issue is still too politically sensitive to be commemorated in China. But on the internet, discussion about what is obliquely referred to as 'May 35th' can still take place and ensures the events of June 4th 1989 will never be forgotten.

Twenty-one years have passed, how much longer must we keep commemorating this in a virtual space [instead of being allowed to do it openly]?

Gradually aging comrades, we must tell the story of what happened 21 years ago to the next generation. We cannot let these seeds, thirsty for freedom, be extinguished. We can not let our sons and grandsons continue to be slaves.

Link: Chinageeks.org