HK English again

A research team engaged in HK English interviewed fifteen English-major female teacher trainees (no male?) at the Hong Kong Institute of Education.

Acknowledging voiceless TH (words such as think and that) is widely pronounced as [f] in Hong Kong and people in London may also use [f] and [v], they argue that "It seems that Hong Kong English may be exhibiting greater continuing influence from the pronunciation nowadays found in London and much of the south of England".

Schneider posits a five-stage dynamic model for the emergence of postcolonial Englishes. HK English is still in the third "nativization" stage where HK English is only now emerging as an independent variety. (p. 171)

David Deterding, Jennie Wong and Andy Kirkpatrick's "The pronunciation of Hong Kong English,"English World-Wide, Vol. 29, No. 2 (2008), pp. 148-175.

Recent readings XVI

Diana L. Ahmad, "Opium Smoking, Anti-Chinese Attitudes, and the American Medical Community, 1850-1890," American Nineteenth Century History, Vol. 1, No. 2, Summer 2000, pp. 53-68. The American medical community sought to exclude the Chinese from immigrating to the United States because it believed that the Chinese opium smoking habit threatened the moral system of the country and the supposed effects of opium smoking on sexual behaviour that it heightened male and female desire and endangered the reproductive capacity of the country. Combined with socio-economic and racial concerns, in particular reverse Darwinism as a result of bi-racial intercourse between Chinese prostitutes and Anglo-American men, the anti-Chinese campaign resulted in the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882.

John Haddad, "The Non-Identical Chinese Twins: Traditional China and Chinese Yankees at the Centennial Exposition of 1876," American Nineteenth Century History, Vol. 1, No. 3, Autumn 2000, pp. 51-100. The Americans were divided into two groups; Orientalists who praised the exotic beauty of the objects exhibited at the Centennial Exposition of 1876 and the sophistication of the Chinese attendants, but they were enamored only with Chinese high culture and they showed little interest in the peasant farmers and laborers who constituted the vast majority of the Chinese population; and Progressives who saw the exhibit as proof of China's stubborn refusal to enter the modern world.

To read after the summer:

Michael C. Lazich, "American Missionaries and the Opium Trade in Nineteenth-Century China," Journal of World History, Vol. 17, No. 2 (2006), pp. 197-223.

Brian G. Martin, "'In My Heart I Opposed Opium': Opium and the Politics of the Wang Jingwei Government, 1940-45," EJEAS, Vol. 2, No. 2, 2003, pp. 365-410.

Koen de Ceuster, "Wholesome Education and Sound Leisure: The YMCA Sports Programme in Colonial Korea," EJEAS, Vol. 2, No. 1, 2003, pp. 53-88. inspiring. treaty ports in China and HK then?

Alain Delissen, "Of Flows, Bodies and Shows: Incipient Mass Cultures in Early Twentieth Century East Asia: An Introduction," EJEAS, Vol. 2, No. 1, 2003, pp. 1-12.

Magnus Fiskesjö, "Rescuing the Empire: Chinese Nation-Building in the Twentieth Century," EJEAS, Vol. 5, No. 1, 2006, pp. 15-44.

Paul W. Harris, "Cultural Imperialism and American Protestant Missionaries: Collaboration and Dependency in Mid-Nineteenth-Century China," The Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 60, No. 3 (Aug., 1991), pp. 309-338.

Mitziko Sawada, "Culprits and Gentlemen: Meiji Japan's Restrictions of Emigrants to the United States, 1891-1909," The Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 60, No. 3 (Aug., 1991), pp. 339-359.

Jayanta Sengupta, "Nation on a Platter: the Culture and Politics of Food and Cuisine in Colonial Bengal," Modern Asian Studies advance access, 2009.

Margaret Damant, "A Biographical Profile of Queen's Nurses in Britain 1910-1968," Social History of Medicine advance access, 2010.

Rudolf G. Wagner, "The Role of the Foreign Community in the Chinese Public Sphere," The China Quarterly, No. 142 (Jun., 1995), pp. 423-443.

"Forum: History of Emotions," German History, Vol. 28, No. 1, 2010, pp. 67-80.

University libraries killing the publishing industry

Conventional wisdom says university libraries are paradise of books and cradle of knowledge. After a series of library renovation projects in Hong Kong, conventional wisdom has proven wrong.

It sets the publishing industry, both bookstores and publishers, on fire.

HK university libraries nowadays are keen to revitalize itself by installing new features and facilities to transform from huge book storages to learning and knowledge hubs attracting readers to relax in cosy armchairs and sofas to enjoy the pleasure of reading.

Ever since HKU's pioneering initiative a few years ago, leisure corners feature tens of bestsellers, mainly non-fictions and on New York Times bestseller list

Not only current issues of newspapers and recent issues of selected magazines are made available to readers, but bestselling fictions and non-fictions stand on shelf.

How many books/magazines/newspaper you might have bought less because of this? For me, perhaps hundreds.

From countryside to country parks

David Matless, Charles Watkins and Paul Merchant's "Nature Trails: The Production of Instructive Landscapes in Britain, 1960-72," Rural History, Vol. 21, No. 1 (2010), pp. 97-131.

"The nature trail idea, first developed in the 1920s as an experiment in outdoor education in North America, was introduced to Britain by the Council for Nature...The nature trail was presented as an educational and leisure device for urban as well as rural environments, and promoted through publications, press coverage and radio and television broadcasts." (p. 97)

Following the British model and the Countryside Act 1968, British Hong Kong introduced similar policy and enforced the Country Parks Ordinance in 1976 as an educational and leisure means to civilise the colonised and modernize the colonial city.

Recent readings XV

Esteban A. Nicolini and Fernando Ramos, "A new method for estimating the money demand in pre-industrial economies: probate inventories and Spain in the eighteenth century," European Review of Economic History, Vol. 14, pp. 145-177.

Timothy P. Barnard, "Film Melayu: Nationalism, modernity and film in a pre-World War Two Malay magazine," Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Vol. 41, No. 1, Feb. 2010, pp. 47-70. using five extant issues of the magazine published between May and September 1941 held in the British Library.

Mark Emmanuel, "Viewspapers: The Malay press of the 1930s," Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Vol. 41, No. 1, Feb. 2010, pp. 1-20.

Jan van der Putten, "Negotiating the Great Depression: The rise of popular culture and consumerism in early-1930s Malaya," Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Vol. 41, No. 1, Feb. 2010, pp. 21-45.

Henk Maier, "The writing of Abdul Rahim Kajai: Malay nostalgia in a crystal," Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Vol. 41, No. 1, Feb. 2010, pp. 71-100.

Goh Geok Yian, "The question of 'China' in Burmese chronicles," Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Vol. 41, No. 1, Feb. 2010, pp. 125-152.

Mulaika Hijjas, "Not just fryers of bananas and sweet potatoes: Literate and literary women in the nineteenth-century Malay world," Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Vol. 41, No. 1, Feb. 2010, pp. 153-172.

Sandra Khor Manickam, "Common ground: Race and the colonial universe in British Malaya," Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Vol. 40, No. 3, Oct. 2009, pp. 593-612.

Andrew Goss, "Decent colonialism? Pure science and colonial ideology in the Netherlands East Indies, 1910-1929," Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Vol. 41, No. 1, pp. 187-214.

Anna Jackson, "Imaging Japan: The Victorian Perception and Acquisition of Japanese Culture," Journal of Design History, Vol. 5, No. 4, pp. 245-256.

Alison R. Marshall, "Chinese Immigration to Western Manitoba since 1884: Wah Hep, Geroge Chong, the KMT, and the United Church," Journal of Canadian Studies, Vol. 42, No. 3 (Fall 2008), pp. 28-54. "We only want to fit in and be normal" from a respondent. "a nominal Christian identity enable men to be accepted by and from connections not only to the southern Chinese community but also to the non-Chinese Canadian community" Indeed, "[b]eing a nominal Christian in public and continuing to practise traditional customs in private is the way in which Chinese people have adapted to life in frontier regions of Canada." Religious ambivalence, R. Stephen Warner argues, occurs in situations where people are in dependent relationships and typifies the immigrant experience of religion, and people can self-identify as Christian in public and in private can pray at home. (p. 31)

Michael Toolan, "Nation languages, local literatures, and international readers: a new indigenization in native English writers?" MAVEN 2: Second International Conference on Major Varieties of English, University of Lincoln, Lincoln UK, September 1999. He coins "Global" as the international Enlgish used by globetrotting professionals.

In defense of food

Pointed by Tzui, the author of 《廚房裡的人類學家》, I get Michael Pollan's In defense of food : the myth of nutrition and the pleasures of eating (London: Allan Lane, 2008). Unfortunately, I am heading to Shanghai and later Edinburgh very soon and clearing up my "borrowed library". I just very quickly flipped the book (still managed to do so!) and was deeply attracted by the content. Read the following excerpts:

The American nutritionist Marion Nestle points out that "The problem with nutrient-by-nutrient nutrition science" "is that it takes the nutrient out of the context of the food, the food out of the context of the diet, and the diet out of the context of the lifestyle." (p. 62)

The book will return to where it belongs now and come to me again after the summer hopefully if I could resist the temptation to buy it in Edinburgh. Fingers crossed.

The City as History

Cities as both organising forces and habitats characterise human development. According to the United Nations Human Settlements Programme’s State of the World’s Cities 2008/2009 - Harmonious Cities, half of humanity now lives in cities, and within two decades, it will soar to nearly 60 per cent. Cities also facilitate the emergence of religions, beliefs, culture, and global capitalism.

The Time magazine recently juxtaposed Hong Kong with two global metropolises, New YorkandLondon, which share various key features such as cultural and ethnic diversity, and furthermore coined the debatable term Nylonkong (New York-London-Hong Kong) to showcase the global financial network underpinned.

It amply reveals that city life and experience has been a global phenomenon and, therefore, a critical understanding of the cultural, social, religious, and environmental aspects of cities and between their inhabitants becomes of paramount importance.

廚房裡的...

哥倫比亞大學碩士，西雅圖華盛頓大學博士候選人，有著亮麗的履歷表。從台北到紐約，穿梭於美國東西岸，從西雅圖到坎布里奇（麻州劍橋），跟著在美國大使館工作的丈夫來到香港 ，莊祖宜結集遊走於網路上的文章成為《廚房裡的人類學家》（台北：大塊文化，2009）。令我想到The Nanny Diaries，兩者都是人類學為共通點／賣點。

台灣書籍往往有推薦序，少則一篇，多於莊書，竟是六篇之多。學者與廚房如何拉得上關係（不禁令我猜想廚房裡的歷史學家、文學家、音樂家哪一個會比人類學家吸引），已夠引人入勝。出版社引來六篇推薦序，確實可觀。推薦人有營養師徐仲、作家梁文道、飲食旅遊作家葉怡蘭、文化與政治評論人張鐵志、作家蔡珠兒，終以台中鹽之華法式料理廚房主廚黎俞君作結。

沒有看完六篇推薦序，由在超級市場排隊等候付款開始，就翻開人類學家的手記。最有趣和要在這裡留下記錄的是其中一篇：〈中菜速成班〉（頁102-107）。

大廚占妮思教授亞洲菜。第一課是中國菜，講台邊掛著「一串中國城買來的大吉大利紙鞭炮，後面駕著一張中國地圖。占妮思帶領學生進入迷濛的國度：「我要你們閉起眼睛，想像自己乘坐著魔毯來到古老的中國。」（魔毯與中國何干？）

占妮思講解過「北方以小麥為主，南方以米食為主」後，「一直以為中國人只吃米」的同學驚訝於中國人也吃麥，也有麵包。講義的包子食譜把包子和餃子的拼寫對調，包子拼成jiaozi，把餃子拼成baozi。

莊書接下的原文值得完文照錄：「幾位同學翻翻白眼笑說：『沒差嘛，還不都是dumpling。』唉，同樣是皮包餡的『Dumpling』，那為什麼義大利的Ravioli、Tortellini、Agnolotti要分得那麼清楚，還得考筆試呢？」

好戲在後頭。

第二堂是日本料理。占妮思下課後親自到莊氏面前道歉，深恐冒犯了她的「日本文化」。莊氏十分明白她是臨危受命教授亞洲菜，也告訴她她不是日本人，是台灣人。殊不知占妮思答道：「啊，那下一堂課的泰國菜要請你多多指教囉！」我讀得捧腹大笑。

從《志明與春嬌》到我們的國際化default

看到Blogger對《志明與春嬌》的感想，有點嘆息。

她說「由于题材十分本地化, 相信难以在其他国家地区大卖, 只有可能在本地做出一点成绩.」

紐約、倫敦、巴黎、東京、台北片都可以在香港賣錢，我們偏認為香港片沒有可能（包含著大抵不會，也不應該）在海外吸引觀眾。

就以這一點而言，就知道我們有多「國際化」，別人都不會對這七百萬人的彈丸奇蹟好奇。

不過，我們卻似乎比這些地方的人更「國際化」，更認識「世界」。

我們熟悉紐約時代廣場絕對多於美國人認識維多利亞港，去過東京新宿坐JR的香港人好可能比坐過地下鐵的日本人多，一年四季都去台北誠品朝聖的香港人也會比來香港山頂看夜景的台灣人多。

假如說，香港電影除了合拍片（不如說是配音片）、動作片（體現香港打得捱得，生命「無價」的香港拼命精神）、警匪片（懷疑是公共關係科的最重要工作）之外還有其他出路，就是這類都市片。

來港上映的都市片多的是，也十分本地化，紐約、倫敦、巴黎、東京、台北的橫街小巷，難道不會比我們對天水園更陌生嗎？在香港，它們卻又不乏捧場客，至少比許多本地創作好賣得多。

值得嗎？何解？

都市片賣埠本來就需要海外觀眾代入場景和角色，至少它們不是要拍給外國人看的。叫座叫好又來港的都市片在本土往往挾打破票房紀錄殺入香港，並以此作賣點。

海外本土大賣，與香港口味何干？題材國際化，當然有市場；題材本地化，我引一句說話，引一個例子。

我一直不太欣賞的鄭丹瑞早陣子在香港電影金像獎頒獎典禮說了一句十分中肯的鼓勵說話，博得全場掌聲，也為人所津津樂道：沒有在本地不賣座而在外埠叫好的本地片（早期的王家衛應是例外）。

濃縮了香港近二十多年來警匪卧底片精髓的《無間道》在本地大賣。這套本地化到不得了的香港電影（到泰國拍攝部分也不過是香港人求神拜佛的信仰延伸，與泰國本身無關），在大陸、台灣和東南亞也叫好叫座。繼而被荷李活買去版權（記著，是賣版權和被改編，不算賣埠），在美國原裝上映不及後來改編（或說經本地化）來得轟動。這似乎間接地印證了Blogger旳看法，香港電影／導演／名星本身就沒有多少國際吸引力，尤其在華語世界以外。

大家都知道成龍和章子怡去荷李活要學英語。那末，周潤發的孔子？《十月圍城》的港星？

假如說英語就代表國際化，香港這個號稱國際都會和中英雙語並重的地方，何時會由香港人拍／演出英語片？

回到原點，在所謂世界是平的國際化社會中，究竟電影市場有多國際化？資金？導演？名星？推廣？觀眾？

作為觀眾，香港也好，美國也好，為何要對其他文化背景的電影感興趣？我們的default從何時開始是認識世界？認識世界真的是很重要嗎？

在香港，認識世界的背後是以遏力遠離本土為目標和代價，具體來說是母語（包括語言和文字）和文化知識。人人待價而沽。本土的價在那裡？大家都曉機會成本，都是增值要緊。認識本土越少，國際越多，個人價值就越大。本土有何價值？縱有特別又如何？大家都是土生土長，如何能夠與眾不同，傲視同儕，繼而轉化為文化／經濟資本？我的價在那裡？

身旁的生活點滴從來都沒有趣味或價值可言，比不上遙遠的「附近」來得引人入勝。香港，連我們都不否認這個大都會原來乏味如一杯白開水。

既不全心欣賞，也不善出口，推廣又只能是拼搏肯捱的獅子山精神。敢問全球哪個國家／城市以國／市民賣命為傲？

香港，依然是文化沙漠。不，恐怕香港連沙漠也不如。沙漠也會有綠洲和水源，也有海市辱樓。在沙漠之中，人類還抱有希望，因為人類敢想，也會渴望。

香港不是沒有文化，而是不願和不敢去面對和肯定自己的文化，哪怕是在別人眼中一文不值的文化。正如要問你，香港有沒有足球？你支持港隊還是車仔？

最好只配最好。香港製造的香港人是best of the best。香港人製造的卻與此沾不上邊。

你會不認自己的親生骨肉嗎？香港人就會，半點也不面紅。

少子化

松谷明彥著，李弘元譯：《人口減少經濟時代：少子化+高齡化+人口外移》（《人口減少経済の新しい公式 : 「縮む世界」の発想とシステム》）（台北：經濟新潮社，2006）。

法蘭克 ‧ 荀馬赫（Frank Schirrmacher）著，張志成譯：《少子化：我們社會的災難與危機》（Minimum）（台北：博雅書屋有限公司，2008）。Schirrmacher directed to read these interesting stuff:

Robert H. Frank, Thomas Gilovich, and Dennis T. Regan, "Does Studying Economics Inhibit Cooperation?" Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 7, No. 2 (1993), p. 159-171.

Susan Sprecher and Maura Toro-Morn, "A Study of Men and Women from Different Sides of Earth to Determine if Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus in their Beliefs about Love and Romantic Relationships," Sex Roles, Vol. 46, Iss. 5/6, Mar 2002, pp. 131-147.

Athanasios Chasiotis, Jan Hofer and Domingo Campos, "When does Liking Children Lead to Parenthood? Younger Siblings, Implicit Prosocial Power Motivation, and Explicit Love for Children Predict Parenthood across Cultures," Journal of Cultural and Evolutionary Psychology, Vol. 4, No. 2, June 2006, pp. 95-123. The only exception I could not find in HK universities library.