Archive for the ‘hong kong’ Category
abc can stand for a number of things, one or two of which are racially incorrect for australians, but in the us it means american born chinese.
and here’s one of them in the pool of 3.6 million, miami born and raised jin.
winning seven weeks straight on the tv program freestyle friday, he was signed to the ruff ryders label, who released his first album with his biggest hit so far, learn chinese (”yeah i’m chinese, and what?“). fast forward four years, to five albums released independently, including the cantonese language abc.
jin is in hong kong right now, preparing and publicising the re-release of abc under universal records hk. they are spending enough money promoting him… on one hand he’s selling himself as the real american deal, none of those lameass guys putting on an american accent to rap on some jade girl’s pop song. but he does want to be a “hong kong superstar“, so how does jin make the fickle public think he’s worth noticing, and not just some other jook sing guy?
because they don’t necessarily think highly of you, just because you came from overseas. rightly so, but also unfairly too… my favourite activity is reading youtube comments for the basest sentiments:
香港人鍾意農夫係因為佢地唱出香港人既野. o個位阿Jin可能rap 得好過農夫, 但係我唔係ABC, 我聽完冇同感囉! … 你睇TVB大就係香港人?!
hong kong people like fama because they rap about hong kong people. that guy jin maybe can rap better than fama, but i’m not an ABC, and after i’ve listened to his song i don’t have the same feeling! …you think that you watched TVB (hong kong tv station) growing up makes you a hong kong person?
so compare the homegrown product, 農夫 loong fu (meaning “farmer”, hence the weird homonym ‘fama’) up first before skipping past the ladies trying rhymes on, to jin, excited like a little kid to be on the show he probably watched at home in the states…
same but different, i like fama for their silliness and witty wordplay, as much as i like jin for his hardheadedness and “spit in the wound while it still hurts” social commentary.
some of us still don’t understand the “other” (asia born vs western born) and that’s only within the ethnic chinese circle around the world! if you want people to get you, you speak their language, and that’s cantonese. because some idiots still think this way:
rap乜鬼呀？用全中文呀！扮鬼佬！
what are you rapping about? rap in chinese! trying to be a white guy!
ohhhh, it’s going to take me a long time to decipher some of these comments.
that’s exactly what the song abc is about. good luck to jin on his august 1st album release date…
a few months ago in hong kong, i found a copy of a book that seemed vaguely familiar - pretty and full of pictures for my chinese challenged brain, i walked out of the arts centre with it under my arm.
once i ripped it open in my hotel room, i came across a pullout that looked like this:
a couple of months later, i got myself a new mobile phone, one with a camera that actually works. so idea + camera = this. ever wondered what a librarian wears to work? you may make your own conclusions about what librarians are actually like…
l-r: top: from david jones, skirt: bought in hong kong; cardigan: limi feu, skirt: emily temple cute; jacket: lee, shirt: forgot, skirt: my first made in china; cardigan: mum’s, top: ozoc, skirt: atelier pierrot; cardigan: uniqlo, shirt: cue , skirt: astrid and cyril
l-r: top: the gabriel chelsea, skirt: izzue; shirt: y’s, skirt: from stina; top: alannah hill (thrifted), t-shirt: dunno; top: muji, cardigan: limi feu, skirt: jacqui e (thrifted); cardigan: from aunt, top: myer underwear department, skirt: thrifted
the book in question is my fashion moments 87-07 by winifred lai. she is a famous stylist/fashionista/writer in hong kong, who started working for city magazine in the 90s, and then became chief editor of amoeba, a very pop fashion and culture magazine. she now writes columns, looks after her son as a single mother, works freelance with magazines, collaborates with fashion labels, and has many women admiring her.
i still wish i had kept the couple of copies of amoeba i used to have:
the photoshoots were bright and wild and creative, and mirrored a little the attitude of cutie magazine in the late 90s. i remember seeing zeny kwok and steven cheung in there as models (1998?) as well.
June 8th, 2008 june
has various meanings. one is the yearly anniversary of the 4th of june, the other is the birth and the death of wong ka kui. they are all interrelated, after all - their song the wall, released in 1992, sounds like a close critique of the tiananmen incidents, aka the 4th of june incident (六四事件)…
sixteen years is a long time though, and capitalism with socialist characteristics has quelled the political mind.
and it’s been fifteen years since the death of the lead singer and songwriter of beyond, wong ka kui. born on the 10th of june 1962, this year marks the fifteenth anniversary of his death in japan on june 30th 1993. his death was untimely, and who could have predicted it would end this way?
if i weren’t going to japan in august, i would have booked my ticket to hong kong for the anniversary concert. everytime i see something related on youtube, i wonder why i don’t just go and blow the two thousand dollars and go. he really was that important in my life, as he was to many hong kong musicians and of course, ordinary people.
One day, I saw an interview with Wong Ka-kui, the lead singer of Beyond. He said, “Music is heard by the ear and understood by the heart.” I was about ten or eleven years old, but it made perfect sense to me. I began having a different kind of respect for him and his band. I began admiring their style and unique sound. I began listening to all their music and even begged my mother to translate the meanings of the lyrics. I began to hear the music with my ears and understand it with my heart.
and finally, i came across this odd comparison:
Their level in Hong Kong is similar to Nirvana in the U.S. back then.
i guess it’s true - in 1993, they were breaking out into japan, having already changed band music in hong kong forever.
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