I could make some cheap and facile remark about the one child policy and desperate measures for desperate times, but I won’t! I’ll just say: Long live China and may she never eradicate wonderful MANGLISH!!!
Monthly Archive for November, 2008
The Chinese have, as we all know, invented everything; gunpowder (which they stupidly only used for fireworks- it took savvy westerners to put the stuff to its real use) paper, golf and recently also the kangaroo. They invented the US, football and Tibet. Therefore it is to be presumed they also invented advertising.
Maybe around the Tang dynasty adverts for this and that gout remedy, hair dye and gold fingernail extensions were all the rage in China; maybe people stood around the cleverly drawn adverts ooh-ing and aah-ing, gagging to buy, buy, buy! Who knows. Because of the transient nature of paper, if there were any ads they’re all gone now.
Then came communism, something of a godsend for subtle and discreet but still powerful ads: Follow us or be shot!
Since then, although advertising has taken off in China to the point where no wall, floor or other space is allowed to be ad-less, I have to say it’s all been a question of style and no substance. I’ll say that again: Relentless quantity with not an iota of quality. They’ve taken the worst, most inane of Western (US) advertising and made it theirs. Put a vapidly smiling bint with her shirt half off next to any product and it will sell, seems to be the idea.
Therefore I was so happy TWICE this year to see something well thought out and innovative in the world of advertising; the last time was last weekend in Guangzhou:
So simple, smart and clear I had to stop and take a photo. The second one I’ve posted before but that’s no reason not to commend it:
When I say China, I include Hong Kong, naturally. Would appreciate it if my irate readers could alert me to funny, innovative and striking advertising ideas here in HK. They are certainly not to be seen on TV (the adverts on which made me turn it off for good about 10 months ago), in the papers or on billboards. But surely there must be creative people working in the ad industry even here? Or do all HK Chinese have anyything resembling creativity hammered out of them from childhood.
Just to make sure potential turners-up will find it (not everybody can read “Wellington street” and the number “15c” it turns out): Here is the place where the PODCAST 100 party will be. Friday at 7. Should be a good crack. If anybody still can’t find it they probably don’t deserve to be there.
After my last posting singing the praises of Guangzhou a bit further down on this page, I was asked “if it’s so great, why don’t you live there?”
I suppose this comment makes a change from the incessant:”If you don’t like it (the Hong Kong government/the molly-coddling of developers/pollution/excessive use of cars) why don’t you bugger off?” I’m normally met with. So I thought I’d post some pics from my neighbourhood to show at least a couple of reasons why HK’s not so bad.
I love Guangzhou and always have. It’s probably the only city in China where you can walk and walk for at least an hour and not see a modern monstrosity. There are, what, 9 million people? At least 6. Still, it’s a place I go to breathe mentally. Half an hour’s walk among the narrow backstreets running like car-less lungs all the way from the Pearl River almost to the central train station and I turn into a different person, a friendly nodding neighbourhood … ghost.
Oh, the washing lines! The exquisitely wrought wooden doors! The trees growing on verandas and rooftops, the bougainvillea, the laid-back yet extremely industrious life, pulsating, restless, everywhere right there in front of you …
And it’s all so well suited for human life. Everywhere are huge old trees just made for old people to sit and yack under. In the backstreets, the temperature is at least 5 degrees lower than on the wide, ghastly thoroughfares, where apart from being fried, you’re also dazzled to death by shiny, chromy, mirror-y modernity. But you don’t have to venture outside the southern warrens at all. Everything you need for your whole life is there, and at less than half the price of the more swanky, unlivable, unwalkable areas of the city. A place without cars, where no house is higher than four floors and where you can sit on the doorstep of your own gaff shooting the breeze with neighbours while your washing dries naturally overhead and the scent of frangipani wafts through the air - what could be more civilised?
I can’t for the life of me understand why “some” people - unfortunately, it seems, most people on the mainland and almost all Hong Kong people - would want to exchange scenes like these …
for THIS??!!!??
Back to basics, this one: Two men, a greasy spoon - a battle of wills. Of course the waiter wins as usual. They always do, don’t they. And if they don’t, they can always spit in your food.
This is the very greasy spoon where we’ll have our big party Friday the 28th by the way. Please do come to help us celebrate our 100th podcast on RTHK (see sidebar on this blog.)
Everybody’s welcome. The beer is cheap and the food is crap.
Now … now it’s enough. Enough! Watch out Jimsee, this post will have you scurrying for the “if you don’t like it you can bugger off” keyboard, like so often before. But really, how much must we take?
In a world where everything is faster, more frequent, more convenient and more - just more of everything, my life is becoming more and more like living in the remote Norwegian countryside (remote countryside, what tautology - everywhere in Norway is remote, obviously) with only a couple of sticks bashed together for transport.
So the good people at First Ferry, after doing the normal “consultation” (a hectoring meeting where people are assembled to have explained to them why the company has no choice but to etc etc) where we were given the choice between having the price increased or the ferry service reduced, of course did both. Before I had a choice of getting home (at night) at 9.40, 9.50, 10.40, 11.40, 11.50 or 00.40. Now, for an increase in the price, it’s 9.40, 10.30 or midnight. Take your pick.
All this is bad enough, I’ve written about it before and will surely do so again. A pox on First Ferry and the mouldy transport department! But at the same time as all these wonderful (for First Ferry) changes have come about, the company has also decided to change the tune of the incessant public announcements pinging out of the speakers at head-splitting volume. About year ago, for the English announcement, they had a British voice saying things like “Beware of the moving gangplank” and “put rubbish in the rubbish bins and avoid noise nuisance. The life saving equipment onboard is for emergency use. Please don’t take away or damage it.” Bad enough, and impossible to block out of a morning when you’re still half asleep. Then there was something about taking care of the environment on Lantau - as you sailed away from it.
That soothing British voice was replaced by a screechy Chinese bint whose English was so awful you couldn’t make head nor tail of what she said. But now, for the increase in price we’ve got a brand new English speaking announcer. And this time it’s the real thing: An American Chinese. She sounds like one of those mailorder adverts on American television; chirpy cheerful and full of eagerness to sell, sell sell! In fact, not unlike the woman exhorting us to “enjoyshoppingatWellcome.”
For our extra money we now get three different pling pling pling PLINGGGG announcements. The last one is the best. After being adviced to “beware of the moving gengplenk” and “mind your head and walk over the gengplenk carefully” (I thought I’d do cartwheels across the gengplenk and jump in the harbour afterwards so thanks for reminding me!) and the third plingy message is this: (I’m not making this up) “Dear passengers. Stop smoking now! Give up your cigarette for cleaner air and a happier journey. Let’s work together for a smoke-free cabin!”
I’m working, bint. I’m working. And so is First Ferry. Working overtime to drive people out of their minds.
Didn’t I know it! I mean, I should have guessed it. Now the kangaroo too, has been found to have been invented by the Chinese. Not content with having invented gunpowder, paper, printing, tea and, more recently, football and golf, the Chinese can now lay claim to the kangaroo, formerly proud symbol of Australia, as being of true blue Middle Kingdom heritage. What next, one wonders.
Recently, after I promised Jimsee never to be sarcastic, scathing or critical of the HK government again, I’ve completely lost my writing mojo. It seems I just can’t do positive, sunny, optimistic, “if you’re not happy about something in HK you should bugger off” kind of writing.
It seems I may be forced to break my promise to Jimsee soon. (If you don’t know who Jimsee is, read the comments to almost every post this year.)
Meanwhile, I was very happy to find last Saturday something I could actually be happy about, namely the yam cha restaurant on the 7th floor of Hopewell Center!
The food is absolutely superb and the waiters so … so interesting-looking! They would certainly get hired to do the anti corruption posters, to put it that way. And the decor is out of this world interesting. The restaurant having been newly refurbished, it’s gone from your normal Chinese gold dragon-ed fare to … shall we say “deeply Europe as designed by Liberace and not a few guys from Shenzhen”?
We had the best, very fresh, not greasy lotus root cakes, the most succulent Ha Gau (prawn dumpling) and superbly executed Chin Cheung Fan (panfried ”Intestine” riceflour rolls) - oh! I’m going there tomorrow. And maybe the next day.
I’ve found my niche. It’s kitsch! It’s Nietzche!
This advert has pride of place on a wall in Causeway Bay MTR station. It’s one of those government jobs that immediately makes you change your evil ways, thinking: “Yes! After seeing this rousing ad I won’t throw rubbish in wicker bins/not wash my hands/or fail to cover my mouth while coughing or sneezing/ store meat together with old gloves in the fridge/let mosquitos breed in my flower pots EVER AGAIN!!!!”
And the above ad is supposed to make me fall into line even more than all others, for this particularly clever advert, as everyone can clearly see, is about not engaging in corrupt practices.
Apparently, if you do anything corrupt, one of your eyes will be covered by an eyepatch. And who in their right mind and with full use of both eyes (no matter how short or far-sighted, would want to wear an eyepatch?
But hang on, I think as I hasten to work through the catacombs of Causeway Bay station. The geezers in the ad seem to be having a lot of fun. If that’s what corruption is, maybe I should give it a go? Of all the people featured in the dreary, plastic, ten million to a dozen visual crap-fests we are bombarded with every day, these two are the only one who seem remotely normal.
Could it be that the government is using them as a scare tactic because they are normal - in other words, ugly? That the message is in fact: If you are corrupt, you will have a double chin and laugh with strange teeth?
I wonder how the ad people approached the geezers. Did they receive an email saying: You’re so ugly that we’re going to use you in an ad against corruption; please turn up at our office tomorrow at ten, wearing your worst, probably only, suit?
I’ve often thought the same thing when watching “hilarious” comedies where the hero wakes up next to, or sees approaching his table instead of what he thought would be Angelina Jolie, a fat girl with spots. And glasses. How do the film people approach her? “You’re so damned ugly that we’ll put you in a film where a handsome guy looks at you and starts vomiting. Ten dollars an hour - what say you?”
They obviously all say yes, but I wonder why they want to go down in history as the uncredited ugly woman who made Cameron Diaz look even better.
Anyway, back in Hong Kong, corruption is clearly a game for the ugly, middle-aged, receding chin-brigade. It looks like great fun. When the next geezer offers me 10 000 dollars to look the other way with a crooked grin, I think I’ll take him up on it.
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