Life: Hong Kong, the Suspiciously Suspicious-Smelling Seaport

I've been pretty quiet in regards to the "life" side of things on my blog recently since there hasn't been much to update on it, LOL. Despite the passing of these seemingly uneventful days however, there has been something that's been getting to me about the sleepless city of Hong Kong. That "thing" is its population's overcharged sensitivity to smell.

Hong Kong's English name is derived from the Cantonese pronunciation of its Chinese name, 香港 (pronounced "xiang gang" in Mandarin but "heung gong" in Cantonese), which literally means "fragrant harbour". Of course, anyone who has recently visited Hong Kong knows that the "fragrant" part of its name has a very unique meaning since neglect has led to the city's waters becoming so polluted and pungent that the film crew of The Dark Knight cancelled the whole "jump into the harbour" scene for health and safety reasons.

The Harbour that Failed to Make the Cut

But it's not of an actual smell that I've grown weary off, I have gotten so used to that that I could almost call it the smell of home; no, the smell that I've started to find nauseating is the smell of social suspicion -- that is, the smell of distrust and motive that is borne from an exaggerated self-interest. In some ways, it is difficult to fault the population for its air of cynicism since it is arguably imposed on almost every aspect of the city's social interactions.

Indeed, the imposition of cynicism and suspicion can be viewed in the light of a rather common colloquial Hong Kong reaction to victims of fraud: 抵俾人呃 (dai bei yan ngak), which roughly translates to "deservingly cheated by others".[1] The interesting thing about the expression is neither its complete negation of sympathy towards the victim nor its applicability to almost any scenario though, the interesting bit is that the expression helps to justify the actions of perpetrators and facilitates the nullification of any wrongdoing on their part.

Understanding this twisted form of justice in Hong Kong, one can begin to unravel the reasons behind the spite that is shown to victims for something that may not actually be their fault. There is no shortage of bizarre cases in which clear victims have had their names dragged through the mud as perpetrators in the public discourse.

Take the case of ruined pop stars Gillian Chung (鍾欣桐, affectionately referred to as 阿嬌) and Edison Chen (陳冠希), for example. In that scandal, data thieves managed to steal and distribute private pictures of the two young stars engaging in, well, rigorous bedroom activities. This sparked intense public criticism of the young celebrities and also rallied public support for the thieves when they were finally apprehended. Many were convinced that the perpetrators were only doing the public a service by "exposing the truth about these individuals".

A more recent topic of chatter relating to suspicion is the paralogical proposal that Chinese champion hurdler, Liu Xiang (刘翔), faked his own injury during the Olympics to avoid competing with the world's best. Yet, the argument seems paralogical because it's based on several faulty assumptions, among which are that Liu is on a performance decline, Liu is afraid of being exposed as a loser, and people generally don't "suddenly" injure themselves on the track like that. Serious as these allegations may be, the problem remains that Liu has consistently proven himself on the field through the years leading to the Olympics.

In an environment where a victim could be "justifiably wronged" then, it seems only normal that an atmosphere of trust becomes an unconvincing proposition since it is safer to suspect ulterior motives in others. In suspecting others, one can find comfort in knowing that their superior intelligence and analytical talents will ensure that they are never the puppet and always the puppeteer. Inevitably though, every puppeteer needs a puppet -- and so perpetuates the city-wide game of charades as everyone tries to make out the underlying meaning behind everything that everyone does, including themselves.

An Air Over the City

That is to say, as much as everyone is second-guessing those around them, they are also extremely conscious of how others are second-guessing them, which leads them to be very careful with the way they are seen to do things. It's basically "impression management" put on overdrive. Some samples of this reasoning that I've been lucky enough to encounter include one of my friends having a suspicion that their colleagues are trying to sabotage their beautiful figure by asking them out to lunch everyday. Yet another incident features two colleagues who've become friends through work. When one of them wanted to introduce their sweetheart to the other, the response amounted to a perplexed: "Sorry, but what is the purpose behind that?"

Usually, in the course of human interaction, events such as colleagues asking each other out to lunch or introducing the people we love to our friends are believed to be normal forms of behaviour. Sadly, Hong Kong's extremely sharp sense of smell has no place for such innocent motives because everything always smells funny here: from the harbour to the people.

I have not escaped unscathed either, I hate myself for it but I am a lot more cynical about everything now than I was before. I still try to keep my head about me to spot the more outlandish claims, but it certainly isn't easy as I struggle to maintain hope that not everyone is out to get everyone else... But I know that not everyone is like that, and so long as I know that, I will always have hope. So, although I struggle to maintain my sense of the world's innocence, I know that I do not struggle in vain.

In the background, I hear the words of okaeri, 「自分のことばかりを考える大人はズルイんだと思っていたんです、でも必死で変えることを叫んでる人もいるんだとやっと知ったんです。」 So ayaka sings, and so I know.

Right, enough sulking, invoking the words of ayaka gives me an awesome opportunity to return to my LaLaLand of J-pop, LOL. Next up on the translation schedule, in case you haven't figured it out from the last translation post, is Miho Fukuhara's himawari. \(^ o ^)/

Well, time to make my way over to welcome the new students to their new educational home. I would have loved the event more if I didn't have to dress up for it, but I have no complaints, the students are my lifeblood and I am always excited to talk with them (mind you, when they see me next time, they'd probably fail to recognise me since my normal dress code falls in the category of "embarrassingly sloppy", LOL -- so much for impression management (^___^")). Right, gotta go, ciao!