MCLC: Kong Qingdong insults Hong Kongers (1)

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: Kong Qingdong insults Hong Kongers (1)
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Here's Victor Mair's linguistic take on Kong Qingdong's latest rant.

Kirk

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Source: Language Log (2/7/12): http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3752

 
"Hong Kong people are dogs!"
Filed by Victor Mair

That was the headline on the front page of the Saturday, January 21
Dōngfāng rìbào 東方日報 (Oriental Daily): "Xiānggǎng rén shì gǒu" 香港人是狗
(Hong 
Kong people are dogs). See here
<http://orientaldaily.on.cc/cnt/main/20120121/index.html> and here
<http://orientaldaily.on.cc/cnt/news/20120121/00174_001.html> (with video).

So, who is this person that is calling Hong Kongers "dogs"? It is none
other than Kŏng Qìngdōng 孔庆东, associate professor in the Chinese
Department at Peking University, who also just happens to be the 73rd
generation descendant of Confucius (Kǒng Fūzǐ 孔夫子 ; Kǒng Qiū 孔丘), or at
least he claims to be a descendant of Confucius. We might, then, interpret
his name, Kŏng Qìngdōng 孔庆东, as "Scion of Confucius who Celebrates the
East". He also goes by the moniker Kǒng héshàng 孔和尚 ("Monk Kong"), which
is laughably ironic.

Kŏng Qìngdōng was also in the news recently
<http://shanghaiist.com/2011/12/10/two_russian_babes_accept_confucius.php>
as one of the judges for the Confucius Peace Prize that was awarded to
Vladimir Putin and for representing the First Sage at the ceremony.
Kŏng Qìngdōng is notorious for using foul language and for inciting
violence, so much so that last November Peking University students
circulated a petition <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=le7Z3pg6g8s>
requesting that school officials dismiss him for being a danger to the
public and an embarrassment to the University.

This is certainly not the first time that Kŏng Qìngdōng has uttered
profanities and made threats.

Aside from being a bully and party hack, Kong Qingdong has a checkered
past, having participated in the Tiananmen Square demonstrations on behalf
of democracy, but then switching over to become an ultra-nationalist and
anti-Western polemicist.
The problem with Kŏng Qìngdōng's outrageous antics in the present instance
is that they come at a time when relations between Hong Kong and China are
strained to the breaking point, and Kong's vitriolic abuse was directed
solely and squarely at the people of Hong Kong.

First I shall analyze exactly what he said about the people of Hong Kong
that is so insulting, then I shall explain that there is a vital
linguistic issue at the basis of his hatred for the people of Hong Kong. I
should note that Kong's rant is so inflammatory that many of the websites
that carried video recordings of it later took them down because what he
said is considered hate speech. The Shanghaiist website has a
<http://shanghaiist.com/2012/01/20/kong-qingdong-hk-bastards-dogs.php>good
video (with English supertitles
<http://shanghaiist.com/2012/01/20/kong-qingdong-hk-bastards-dogs.php>) of
the web news interview in which Kong excoriates Hong Kongers, although
sometimes I have not been able to access it.

A few newspapers in the West
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/24/chinese-professor-hong-kong-do
gs> have reported Kong's incredible stream of abuse against the people of
Hong Kong, but the growing friction between the PRC and Hong Kong has gone
largely unnoticed by the public at large.

The part of Kong's diatribe that so infuriated practically every citizen
of Hong Kong is where he called them "dogs". After Hong Kong erupted with
outraged demonstrations against him and China (there are also many other
festering issues, some of which I shall touch upon later in this post),
Kong backtracked and complained that the media were distorting what he
really said, that he never really said "Hong Kong people are dogs" (more
on that below). I should mention that Kong's tirade against Hong Kong was
prompted by viral videos <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEComrx76uY> of a
conflict between local passengers on a Hong Kong Metro train and
mainlanders who contravened regulations by eating noodles on the subway.

So, let us see what Kong actually said.

At 0:42-43 of the video that appears above, Kong states that Hong Kong
people who do not recognize themselves as Chinese are used to serving as
the "running dogs" of the British imperialists: "dāng zǒugǒu dāng guànle 当走
狗当惯了".

This is immediately followed at 0:45 by the accusation that still to this
day "they're all dogs" and "you're not human": "dào xiànzài dōu shì gǒu 到现
在都是狗" (N.B. the subtitles on this video are not entirely accurate, hence
my transcription may vary slightly from what is in the subtitles) "nǐmen
bùshì rén 你们不是人".

Immediately on the heels of that last accusation comes another rephrasing
of the assertion that Hong Kong people are dogs: "Wǒ zhīdào Xiānggǎng yǒu
hěnduō rén shì hǎorén, dànshì yǒu hěnduō Xiānggǎng rén zhìjīn háishì gǒu 我知
道香港有很多人是好人，但是有 很多香港人至今还是狗。" ("I know that there are
many good people in
Hong Kong, but there are many Hong Kong people who still today are dogs").

Kong then at 1:12 reiterates with extraordinary vehemence that many Hong
Kong people are dogs: "Wǒ zàicì shuō, Xiānggǎng rén hěnduō shì gǒu 我再次说，
香港人很多是狗!" ("I repeat, as for Hong Kong people, many of them are
dogs"). 
The form of this topic-comment denunciation is irregular and is calculated
to put maximum emphasis on the word gǒu 狗 ("dog") at the end of the
exclamation. Even someone who does not know Chinese can hear the angry
stress that Kong applies to the word gǒu 狗 ("dog") at the end of the
sentence. He achieves this not only through the unusual syntax of the
sentence, but also by altering the third tone so that it rises higher than
it normally would, and by his finger-pointing gesture and bobbing head.

Putting Xiānggǎng 香港 at the beginning of the sentence also follows the
rhythms of the previous clauses, several of which begin with Xiānggǎng 香港.

The normal word order of the blast at 1:12 would be "Wǒ zàicì shuō, hěnduō
Xiānggǎng rén shì gǒu 我再次说，很多香港人是狗!" ("I repeat, many Hong Kong
people are dogs").

In a follow-up program, Kong claims that he never said "Xiānggǎng rén shì
gǒu 香港人是狗" ("Hong Kong people are dogs"), which is true. He actually
said, "Xiānggǎng rén hěnduō shì gǒu 香港人很多是狗!" ("As for Hong Kong
people, 
many of them are dogs!"), and other variations on that theme.

In Western society, where dogs are man's best friend, it might not be a
terrible insult to call someone a "dog", but in China, where dogs are
eaten and kicked around (except by pet owners and lovers), calling someone
a "dog" and saying that they are not "human" is about as vicious an insult
as one can imagine. Many people who have watched this video of Kong's
fulminations — both Chinese and Westerners alike — feel that Kong is more
despicable than any dog, except perhaps for the meanest pit bulls, to
which he bears a remarkable resemblance.

Let us move on to the linguistic issue that lies at the heart of Kong's
denunciation of Hong Kongers. Before he gets to the part about Hong Kong
people being dogs, he decries their unwillingness to speak Mandarin and
insistence upon speaking Cantonese. Here I shall give only a rough English
translation-summary of the relevant portion, but — to save labor and space
— will forego transcription of the Mandarin.

"Two different kinds of language; this detail that you mention is very
important. One is Mandarin, the other is a topolect. Right, huh? Mandarin
speakers don't have any responsibility or necessity for mastering any of
the topolects. Right, huh? Chinese people have a responsibility to speak
Mandarin, but they don't have any responsibility to speak any of the
topolects, such as Northeastern topolect, Sichuanese, Pekingese,
Tianjinese. Right, huh? Maybe you can only master the topolect of the area
where you grew up, the mother tongue of your homeland. You have no
responsibility to speak the topolect of some other area. But every person,
huh, has a responsibility to speak Mandarin. Huh? But what do you do when
you meet someone who speaks a topolect that is different from yours? Both
sides should speak Mandarin. Huh! What sort of person stubbornly refuses
to speak Mandarin? Bastard! [wángbādàn 王八蛋] They certainly must have some
other purpose in mind. For example, Hong Kong people, do you accept that
they are Chinese? But according to what I know, many Hong Kong people
don't consider themselves to be Chinese. When they open their mouths, they
say, 'We Hong Kongers, you Chinese.' They are bastards!"

From here, Kong starts to lambast the Hong Kong people for being "running
dogs" of the British imperialists, and so forth, which I have already
covered above.

These sentiments, the anger and indignation over the alleged stubborn
resistance of topolect speakers to speak Mandarin, are directed not just
at Cantonese, but also against Shanghainese and anyone else who allegedly
refuses to speak Mandarin. Having visited Hong Kong scores of times and
having lived there for longer periods up to a year, I can verify that
there are many people in Hong Kong who don't speak any Mandarin or speak
it very poorly. Kong Qingdong must be extraordinarily obtuse if he thinks
that everybody in Hong Kong or elsewhere in China can speak Mandarin.

The conflicts over language and eating in subway cars are just two of a
multitude of frictional issues that exist between Mainlanders and Hong
Kongers. The causes of tension between the two groups are endless:
Mainlanders coming in droves to have their babies in Hong Kong hospitals
and buying up safe milk powder for their children, soaring real estate,
favoritism toward mainlanders at Dolce & Gabbana, the rule of law (which
Kong Qingdong scoffs at and says that only an uncivilized people like Hong
Kongers needed to have imposed upon them by the British imperialists), and
so on.

The atmosphere in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, as
expressed by one of my most thoughtful and sensitive friends there, does
not bode well for the future:

<<The suffocating feeling I get, both literally and figuratively, when
having to wait four trains at the Admiralty Station just to cross over to
Tsim Sha Tsui, or doing a breast-stroke walk through a sea of
sneaker-shopping teenagers in Mong Kok at eleven in the evening, is of 1.3
billion Chinese desperately trying to squeeze themselves onto Hong Kong
territory for the freedom, decency, opportunity and prosperity it still
has to offer, while, at the same time, this freedom, decency, opportunity
and prosperity is gradually being eroded and curtailed with each passing
day. I think the conflict and resentment between Mainlanders and Hong Kong
people can be traced back to this untenable situation.>>

Whatever happens in the coming years, we can be sure that language issues
will be at the center of the controversies between Mainlanders and Hong
Kongers.

[Thanks to Joel Martinsen, Bob Bauer, Arif Dirlik, Perry Link, Haitao
Tang, Mandy Chan, Genevieve Leung, Nelson Ching, Erling Hoh, Leander Seah,
Bonlap Chan, Bin Qing Zheng, Maiheng Dietrich, Zhou Ying, Gianni Wan, Jing
Wen, Rebecca Fu, Jiajia Wang, Zhao Lu, Sijie Ren, Denis Mair, and Brendan
O'Kane]