Lowaicue
英語在香港
In the furtherence of improvement to American education it falls to me to introduce another of our ‘wondrous’ festivals.
Today is ‘Ching Ming’. Despite having been here since almost the dawn of time, I still find Ching Ming something of a mystery. I mean I know what people do to celebrate the festival and I know how all consuming is the day in Hong Kong, but it’s the ‘why’ bit that rides roughly. Let me explain.
Today, thousands of people will head for the mountains armed with incense sticks and polybags filled with food particularly oranges. They will visit the graves of their ancestors and spend the day venerating their memory and cleaning the graves. They will display the food in little bowls and stick their incence sticks into their oranges and, when it's nearly time to leave, they will check to see if the gods have eaten the offerings and if not they will scoff the goodies for them. Although not as common nowadays it used to be a family has a plot on which to build their family tomb, usually on a hillside overlooking the sea or at least some water. All good Fung Shui (or to Americanise it, Fong Shway) which, as we all know, simply means ‘wind’ and ‘water’…. Now who does that remind me of?
So from where we live we will keep a smug eye on the dozen or so mountains we can see from our computer room window in the sure knowledge that this evenings night sky will be necklaced by dozens of fires as families burn the detritus that has collected around the family tomb during the past year and then casually stroll down the mountain to the nearest restaurant oblivious of the destruction they leave behind.
A few years ago I arranged to take some visiting friends on a tour of Hong Kong by car. I drove half the party in my car and one of our truck drivers the other half in a pool car.
What are those? asked our friend, pointing to the hillside tombs with large urns standing outside.
Our driver, who had little English, tried to answer. 'This' he said, 'where dead people live. In bottles ... man, have no meat on.'
Our friend understood that each urn contained a skeleton!
Chinese friends ask when English people clean their ancestors graves, and were we still in Merrie England I doubt that the question would ever be even considered. The graveyard staff do it, don’t they? And, while caring relatives have the ability, they will place flowers on certain anniversaries.
We have lots of strange little festivals in Hong Kong, the government supports most and the population loves them for it. What they fail to realise is that statutory holidays are something of a business decision in as much as private companies need only award one or two weeks paid annual holiday as the government does the rest.
So how did what my family refers to as ‘Granny burning day’ start? As with most traditions, my American friends will have to trust me on this, the origins are like morning mists over the South China Sea. There one minute and gone the next. It seems there was once an Emperor (in the Tang Dynasty) who got a bit peed off with his subjects throwing sickies and concocting all sorts of improbable tales to skip work and go into the countryside. He decreed that, henceforth, just one day per year would be set aside for the cleaning of ancestors graves and picnicking and that’s how it all started.
And now for something completely different….
Now, as Monty Python might have said, it’s time for something different. Georgy Porgy, the obscenely rich, silver spoon fed playboy Chancellor of Britain’s exchequer is clearly chortling into his kedgeree this morning to read that hospitals in Cumbria (it’s ‘up North’, George. – Don’t worry, you have never been and you wouldn’t want to waste time there when you could be basking on the super yachts of the corrupt and famous) have scrapped porridge from their menus to save 170,000 quid! They say that bowls of the stuff are returned untouched every day. Did it not occur to anyone (I am sure that Cumbrians are at least as intelligent as anyone else) that the reason for the returns could – just could – be the fact that the stuff is probably prepared and cooked by feral teenagers and tastes like crap.
Anyway, the good news for the people of Cumbria is that they can still get their porridge …. On prescription!!!
Heard:
Hiyah Bill, how’s it hangin’? (Trans: How are you, Bill)
Aww, not sa good, man. Aches and pains and feelin’ really bad.
Have you seen a doctor?
Oh Ay, I saw one this mornin’. He’s prescribed a course of porridge. I’m just on me way to Boots (National Chemist chain) to get me prescription.
What if it doesn’t work?
Well he said I have to go back on Thursday and if I’m no better he’s gonna put me on a course of bread puddin’.
It’s nice to see stories like that. Very English and a welcome relief from the constant drip, drip of sensationalist claptrap of William and Kate’s forthcoming nuptials. Who the bejasus is this girl? What has she ever done? At least Di had a job, even if it was only looking after spoiled toddlers. Now I see that pretentious American women want to look like her and are flocking to pretentious hair salons to get the pretentious Kate cut.
The hairstyle should look good on them…. When they have shed that 24 stone that is.
Amidst the rest of the doom and gloom, the toxic seas and the exploding planet, a group of British soldiers have raised 6000 quid to rescue a kitten that Afghan children had been using as a football!
6000 quid?? How many kittens could you buy for 6000 quid? You’d get a lot more kittens than footballs!! (tic)
Driving in Moscow has its lighter side, I see. Igor Binnikov has been gaoled for six years for loading porn onto giant roadside traffic screens! Surprised our resident porn king hadn’t thought of that one.
That’s all for now.
Comment if you like.
Today is ‘Ching Ming’. Despite having been here since almost the dawn of time, I still find Ching Ming something of a mystery. I mean I know what people do to celebrate the festival and I know how all consuming is the day in Hong Kong, but it’s the ‘why’ bit that rides roughly. Let me explain.
Today, thousands of people will head for the mountains armed with incense sticks and polybags filled with food particularly oranges. They will visit the graves of their ancestors and spend the day venerating their memory and cleaning the graves. They will display the food in little bowls and stick their incence sticks into their oranges and, when it's nearly time to leave, they will check to see if the gods have eaten the offerings and if not they will scoff the goodies for them. Although not as common nowadays it used to be a family has a plot on which to build their family tomb, usually on a hillside overlooking the sea or at least some water. All good Fung Shui (or to Americanise it, Fong Shway) which, as we all know, simply means ‘wind’ and ‘water’…. Now who does that remind me of?
So from where we live we will keep a smug eye on the dozen or so mountains we can see from our computer room window in the sure knowledge that this evenings night sky will be necklaced by dozens of fires as families burn the detritus that has collected around the family tomb during the past year and then casually stroll down the mountain to the nearest restaurant oblivious of the destruction they leave behind.
A few years ago I arranged to take some visiting friends on a tour of Hong Kong by car. I drove half the party in my car and one of our truck drivers the other half in a pool car.
What are those? asked our friend, pointing to the hillside tombs with large urns standing outside.
Our driver, who had little English, tried to answer. 'This' he said, 'where dead people live. In bottles ... man, have no meat on.'
Our friend understood that each urn contained a skeleton!
Chinese friends ask when English people clean their ancestors graves, and were we still in Merrie England I doubt that the question would ever be even considered. The graveyard staff do it, don’t they? And, while caring relatives have the ability, they will place flowers on certain anniversaries.
We have lots of strange little festivals in Hong Kong, the government supports most and the population loves them for it. What they fail to realise is that statutory holidays are something of a business decision in as much as private companies need only award one or two weeks paid annual holiday as the government does the rest.
So how did what my family refers to as ‘Granny burning day’ start? As with most traditions, my American friends will have to trust me on this, the origins are like morning mists over the South China Sea. There one minute and gone the next. It seems there was once an Emperor (in the Tang Dynasty) who got a bit peed off with his subjects throwing sickies and concocting all sorts of improbable tales to skip work and go into the countryside. He decreed that, henceforth, just one day per year would be set aside for the cleaning of ancestors graves and picnicking and that’s how it all started.
And now for something completely different….
Now, as Monty Python might have said, it’s time for something different. Georgy Porgy, the obscenely rich, silver spoon fed playboy Chancellor of Britain’s exchequer is clearly chortling into his kedgeree this morning to read that hospitals in Cumbria (it’s ‘up North’, George. – Don’t worry, you have never been and you wouldn’t want to waste time there when you could be basking on the super yachts of the corrupt and famous) have scrapped porridge from their menus to save 170,000 quid! They say that bowls of the stuff are returned untouched every day. Did it not occur to anyone (I am sure that Cumbrians are at least as intelligent as anyone else) that the reason for the returns could – just could – be the fact that the stuff is probably prepared and cooked by feral teenagers and tastes like crap.
Anyway, the good news for the people of Cumbria is that they can still get their porridge …. On prescription!!!
Heard:
Hiyah Bill, how’s it hangin’? (Trans: How are you, Bill)
Aww, not sa good, man. Aches and pains and feelin’ really bad.
Have you seen a doctor?
Oh Ay, I saw one this mornin’. He’s prescribed a course of porridge. I’m just on me way to Boots (National Chemist chain) to get me prescription.
What if it doesn’t work?
Well he said I have to go back on Thursday and if I’m no better he’s gonna put me on a course of bread puddin’.
It’s nice to see stories like that. Very English and a welcome relief from the constant drip, drip of sensationalist claptrap of William and Kate’s forthcoming nuptials. Who the bejasus is this girl? What has she ever done? At least Di had a job, even if it was only looking after spoiled toddlers. Now I see that pretentious American women want to look like her and are flocking to pretentious hair salons to get the pretentious Kate cut.
The hairstyle should look good on them…. When they have shed that 24 stone that is.
Amidst the rest of the doom and gloom, the toxic seas and the exploding planet, a group of British soldiers have raised 6000 quid to rescue a kitten that Afghan children had been using as a football!
6000 quid?? How many kittens could you buy for 6000 quid? You’d get a lot more kittens than footballs!! (tic)
Driving in Moscow has its lighter side, I see. Igor Binnikov has been gaoled for six years for loading porn onto giant roadside traffic screens! Surprised our resident porn king hadn’t thought of that one.
That’s all for now.
Comment if you like.
