Monday, January 23, 2012

It's also a 'drag on' year? And how to hurl an insult, and how to ignore it, or not ignore it...

Usher in the Chinese Year of the Dragon, throw in what's currently happening in American politics, and you'll get...


Meanwhile, throw in an insult aimed by a mainland Chinese at Hongkongers but laced with a barb at Singaporeans, and you get the ingredients for a gripping (griping?) story:

ST's version (23 Jan, lead story on page A10):

Headline: HK furore over China prof's remarks... Academic's name-calling rant infuriates HK people in the wake of subway train quarrel

A row in a Hong Kong subway train between mainland Chinese and local passengers has snowballed into an exchange involving a Peking University Professor [Kong Qingdong] after he labelled Hong Kongers as "dogs".

It all began on Jan 15, when a Hong Kong man riding the subway chided a mainland family for letting their child snack in the carriage -- which is not allowed...

Speaking on a talk show on [an] Internet television site last week, [Prof Kong] repeatedly used the terms "dogs trained by colonialists", "worshippers of the West" and "bastards" as he criticised Hong Kongers...

[Then, somewhere in the middle of this 19-paragraph story, he lashed out further...]

In his comments, Prof Kong had tried to argue that Hong Kongers were not law-abiding by nature, but had been drilled to be [so] by their colonial masters.

"So why should they feel superior to mainlanders since they have been trained to be the 'running dogs' of the British government?" he asked.

He insisted that mainland Chinese were "truer" to their own nature. "If a society had to maintain its order through strict laws such as hefty fines for littering, as happened in Singapore, it's 'law-abiding' look does not reflect the true nature of its people," he said. "Instead, it shows they are a servile bunch who can be whipped into line."

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Reference to "Singapore" was made only once in the ST report. Here's how insing.com angled its story (a link to a video clip of the talk show session was included too):

http://news.insing.com/tabloid/prc-lecturer-insults-s-poreans-on-talk-show/id-222a3f00

PRC lecturer insults S'poreans on talk show

A Chinese lecturer has made headlines in China and Hong Kong for fiercely criticising Hong Kongers and even Singaporeans in a recent internet talk show.

Lecturer Kong Qing Dong from the renown Peking University in China, launched his tirade while discussing a recent incident that took place in a Hong Kong MTR train. In the incident, a male passenger had stepped forward to stop a Chinese national boy from eating instant noodles in the train.

The boy's mother tried to explain that they did not know they were not supposed to eat in the train, but the confrontation quickly escalated into a shouting match.

Kong had gone on to compare Singapore to Hong Kong, as a country that relied on laws to maintain order. He said, "In Singapore, you can get fined $5,000 for smoking. Places that rely on these laws show that the people lack civic consciousness. They cannot get anything done unless you impose punishments. This shows that the people have no quality and are asking to be whipped."

Throughout the show, Kong repeatedly criticised Hong Kongers and called them dogs. He said, "The Hong Kongers were treated like dogs by the British in the past and they are used to it, so they are still dogs now." He went on to criticise Hong Kongers for looking down on Mainlanders, and for speaking Cantonese instead of Chinese.

Kong and his comments have been roundly slammed by Chinese and Hong Kong netizens alike after the show's broadcast [on 19 Jan].

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