A milestone, of sorts

The Chinese U course. Thoroughly recommended.

Well, I've finished my first Cantonese class, and am eager to do the next one, but will have to wait until the New Year, until a time when I can attend enough of the classes.

It was great to have been taught some of the most fundamental structures of Cantonese, because now when I go looking for information in my various resources, both online and dead-tree, I understand a lot better what I need to know, and how I might put it together in a sentence.

The milestone I talked about in the title, was actually a simple but profound moment for me - I went to the fruit stand nearby, and purchased some fruit, but did so entirely in Cantonese. The interaction wasn't long, and of course, it wasn't complicated, but what mattered was that I understood what was happening and had no moments of feeling lost or confused.

I am not trying to suggest that this is some great watershed in my language-life, or anything. I will still know far too little to get by for some long time yet. But it gave me hope, hope for a time when I could feel relatively normal in a Canto-world. A more normal moment for me is like my experience of sending a parcel at the Post Office the other day. I asked, in good Cantonese, courtesy of my great teachers, how much it would cost to send to Australia (I know I did this okay, because I am getting good at reading the wince or the frown on people's faces when they are either pained by my pronunciation, or merely mystified as to what I have said). This part of the conversation was fine. The postal worker then of course asked me questions I couldn't answer! Do you want to send it airmail? Do you want registered mail? Very legitimate questions, but with words I didn't know and that lost me completely. As always with learning a language, there will be a next time, and by then, I will have learnt the words for registered mail, and airmail, and perhaps may register another oh-so-small success!

Geek out? The Woman as Warrior

Shu Lien in combat with Jiao Long (Jen Yu)

It has to be said that this post about the woman as warrior (from here WaW) is straying a bit far from the stated aims of my blog, in not really having anything to do with either design, coffee, gardening, or cultural dislocation. So be it. This is what I want to write about right now!

When viewing television or movies in Hong Kong, I am always a bit biased towards trying to find movies either from Hong Kong, or that are in Cantonese, just as I might once have sought out Australian movies - it is about connecting with a sense of place. So the other day I was watching a movie from 2009 called 'Hua Mulan'. This is about the famous story of a young woman who joined the army in place of her sick father, and ended up saving China and becoming a famous General. I thought this version of the movie, co-directed by Jingle Ma and Wei Dong, was quite compelling, focusing on the horrors of war, the difficulties soldiers face, and the impossibilities of managing your emotions in such a debilitating environment. I always find it inspiring to see a woman acting as a warrior because it disrupts our conventional ideas about gender, and forces us to confront one of the last taboos, women fighting on the front line. I am probably just as interested in films where men confront one of their taboos - taking care of children and taking real responsibility for house work - but most of the latter films tend to be played for comic effect (think, Kindergarten Cop, Daddy Daycare), rather than heroic, such as 'Hua Mulan'. I haven't seen the Disney version, but if someone wants to give an opinion on it, please do.

The most compelling vision of the WaW is in the movie, 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon', directed by Taiwanese director Ang Lee and based, I believe, on a series of stories popular about fifty years ago in Hong Kong. This movie has three women warriors, Shu Lien, Jiao Long and Jade Fox, all with complex storylines, and individual styles. From the first scene, which opens on a cart moving through Beijing, in 1779, the sense of the history and richness of Chinese culture really hits me, and I am swept up in the story. Mostly, though, I just love the character of Shu Lien (played by Michelle Yeoh, apparently a genuinely competent martial artist herself), whose nobility of character, subtle appreciation of diplomacy and deep-seated wisdom shines through the whole movie. If you have never seen the movie, at least do me the favour of following this link to the fight scene between Shu Lien and Jiao that uses this not as an excuse for action (though it is that) but as a way of demonstrating the essential differences between the two warriors. Watch as Shu Lien demonstrates phenomenal competence with multiple weapons, and fights an uphill battle against the 'mystical' sword that Jen has wrongfully stolen. As if this wasn't enough, the character of Dark Cloud, a sweet and funny young man who falls in love with Jiao, simply makes the movie that much better. If you see only one martial arts movie in your life, make it this one.

Of course, the WaW phenomenon also has a strong presence in novels, with my personal favourite being 'The Deed of Paksenarrion' by Elizabeth Moon. Intriguingly, the author is a former US marine, which perhaps lends her narrative a little more realism and grit about the mundane details of military life. Mostly it is an inspiring story that never fails to bring tears to my eyes, no matter how many times I have read it before.

Most of these WaW texts, both novels and movies, exist for me in the shadow of Maxine Hong Kingston's iconic feminist novel, 'The Woman Warrior'. This part-autobiography, part-novel helped shaped the women's movement of the 1970s, by exploring issues of women's power given the constraints of gender and race. Which circles me neatly back to the beginning of the blog, because one of the stories told by the protagonist's mother, in the book, is that of Mulan, which is a very old Chinese folk tale, and the very story that inspired this blog post in the first place. I don't know whether it was reading this book that started me on my secret, or not-so-secret, love of the WaW meme. Perhaps it was having a feisty feminist twin sister, who always won all of our battles, no matter the place or the time. Whatever the reason, I love to feel wrenched out of the everyday reality of gender relations in the 21st century, and forced to imagine a life with more possibilities for everyone.

Awe and wonder at Kadoorie Farm

Caribbean flamingos, far from home

Some time ago now, M and myself made the trek out to Kadoorie Farm and Botanical garden, a place I'd been reading about since we first came to Hong Kong. What little I knew was that it was an organic farm, with some walking trails, and a small restaurant attached.  Well, it turned out to be so much more, and I hope my terrible iPhone photos do it some sort of justice.

First of all, the setting is stunning, as so many places in Hong Kong seem to be. We wended our way out along the West rail line to a station called Kam Sheung Road  (錦上路站), and then took a bus that would eventually stop at Kadoorie farm. So our classic Hong Kong double-decker took us up into the hills and dropped us in front of what turned out to be an almost vertical farm. I don't know why I should have been surprised by this - the only flat land in Hong Kong is that created by human beings, whether through levelling hills, or filling in the harbour. So from our point-of-view outside the front entrance, much of the farm complex was laid out in front of us, up a steep hillside, and it looked like there was much to explore.

Ox carries pig! What next?牛馱豬

One of our aims for the day was to do a bit of walking. Don't ask me why, because this was August, the height of summer in Hong Kong, which means mid-thirties temperatures and high humidity, and on this day, more sunshine than we could really deal with. Fortunately most of the walking tracks were through areas with plenty of tree cover, so it was possible, though the steep hillsides made it probably our sweatiest experience in Hong Kong so far.

Before heading on our walk we stopped in at the farm shop and museum, which is where I caught up on the history of Kadoorie farm. It turns out that it has a fascinating history. It was built in the 1950s, in the heyday of agricultural triumphalism, as an experimental farm to assist the poor farmers of the New Territories (新界, some of this week's vocabulary). So there were some great pictures and stories of these early days. I was most fascinated by the cattle and pigs being used as pack animals on the steep hills (Who knew pigs could or would carry loads? I thought they were too smart for that), with the best picture being the pig being carried by a cow. Love it! And was that a bamboo structure it was being carried in? Almost certainly.

These days it has morphed into a multipurpose environmental centre, with more strings to its bow than a whole orchestra. Amongst the things we saw were herb gardens, flower gardens, orchards, vegetable gardens, the museum and farm shop I just mentioned, a cafe, homes for all sorts of lost non-farm animals, a pig-breeding program, a huge collection of chook breeds, reptile enclosures, a tea plantation and many different sustainability educational centres (definitely my kind of place). It will certainly be worth a return visit on a cooler day. The 'lost' animals are a quirky aspect of the place. Apparently there is quite a lot of exotic animal smuggling transiting Hong Kong, and so when these are discovered (liberated?) they sometimes need a home to go to. Kadoorie farm seems to be one of those homes. So as well as actual Hong Kong wildlife, it also has such exotic delights as Caribbean flamingos, and South American caiman. The flamingos were a sort I'd never seen before - a gorgeous orangy-peach colour - much more exciting than the relatively drab pink ones in our local Kowloon park.

The walking tracks, which if you make it there, can take you right up to the summit of one of the hills, called Gun Yan Saan (觀音山) in Cantonese, which will be more familiar to English-speakers as Guanyin mountain, named after the Buddhist 'Goddess' of compassion. This has apparently been a sacred spot for many hundreds of years, but we didn't make it there on this visit, given the steepness of the slope and the heat of the day. We weren't the only ones crazy enough to be walking, but there would have been no more than a handful of others. It was beautiful, as I hope you can see by the photos of some plants that I took. The highlight for me, though, were the insects, of which we saw many, including some fantastic dragonflies. Mind you, you don't have to go to Kadoorie farm to see those (we saw stunning hot-pink dragonflies around the ponds in Hong Kong park just last weekend). Apart from the insects, I think most creatures were hiding from the heat. We saw a few lizards, but they were so hyped up by the temperatures, they were gone in a flash.
It is excursions like this that make me wonder how much there is out there to see in Hong Kong, if we just keep looking. Such a small place, but so so much to see.

Alternative masculinities in Hong Kong

I have always found it fascinating to crowd-watch in Hong Kong. There is always something to see that reminds me that this is not where I grew up, that it was and is a different culture with different motivations and different values.

Being interested in gender, and being male, means that I am always curious about how people 'do' their gender in the everyday, whether it is what they wear, how they walk, what they do, how they relate to others, or any of the myriad ways in which gender plays out in the modern world. It is a good place to start in thinking about the differences between Hong Kong and Australia, because having lived for thirty years in Australia (as a male), I can safely say that I know what expectations there are around gendered behaviour generally in Australia, as well as how it has played out in my life.

The picture on the left illustrates one of those moments where I can be sure that I am living 'elsewhere' (note the man on the right with the light blue umbrella). Although very occasionally you would see someone using an umbrella as a sunshade in Australia, I had never ever seen a man using one, but in Hong Kong it is, if not common, at least a fairly regular occurrence. I've even used one myself this year once or twice, but I feel very strange doing so, because I know that I am breaking some unwritten rule established for me in the process of being inculcated into Australian masculinities.

So it is forever fascinating for me to be in a place with new (gender) rules and norms. Clearly it is okay for men to shade themselves from the sun with umbrellas in Hong Kong, even if men are less worried about sun damage than women here.

There are also very different rules about touching between men here, though I can't say that I can pinpoint them absolutely. My neighbourhood, Tsim Sha Tsui, is quite an ethnically diverse neighbourhood (for example the street behind me is known for its Korean restaurants and stores) and so I don't want to make bold claims about Hong Kong masculinities when I might instead be observing Korean or Japanese masculinities. Nonetheless, there is a great sense of expansiveness for me in Hong Kong to walk down my street and see (in this case, I'm fairly sure) straight men holding hands with their male friends. This simply does not happen in Australia, and even same-sex attracted men are cautious about where and when they do.

I'd love to take photos of some of these difference performances of masculinity, but it feels pretty intrusive to do so, particularly around something as sensitive as gender. I knew I could get away with the photo at the top because this was during a dragon boat race, and plenty of people had cameras out.

This is not to try and imagine that gender relations are all sweetness and light here in Hong Kong. What you gain on the roundabouts, you lose on the swings, as they say. Although it is much more common for women of all ages and classes to work here, this is as much about making ends meet in Hong Kong, and supporting your family, as it is about being a citizen or finding fulfilment in work. I will probably post about feminities in Hong Kong at a later date, but it is probably enough to say now that being a tough, assertive woman is probably even less admired in HK than it was in Australia.

The statistics I've seen about this for the whole of China, suggest that sexist assumptions about women's and men's roles are more entrenched in China that in 'Western' countries. Sadly, in many of those 'Western' countries, while attitudes may be changing, actual practices are not changing as fast. Back in Australia men still take very little responsibility for housework and childcare, and women still have a hard time getting the recognition they deserve at the upper end of company hierarchies. As Arlie Hochschild has suggested, men's failure to take responsibility for domestic duties has been a 'stalled revolution'. 

So if you're male, and you're reading this, get off the computer already, and go do some real (house) work! And if you'd like to read more about these issues, I cannot recommend highly enough this book by Chou Wah-Shan (周華山).