MCLC: HK tv drama

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: HK tv drama
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Source: NYT 
(2/10/13):http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/11/business/media/hong-kong-tv-dra
ma-plays-out-uneasy-ties-with-china.html

Hong Kong TV Drama Plays Out Uneasy Ties With China
By GERRY MULLANY

HONG KONG — The tensions between residents here and mainland Chinese
visitors dominate the headlines of the city’s papers, with mainlanders
blamed for a shortage of school slots, bad manners in stores and a
hypercharged property market.

So it should come as little surprise that a television show would come
along to tap into these anxieties and, perhaps in a gift to the show’s
producers, also draw the attention of mainland censors.

“Inbound Troubles” tells the story of two cousins — one from Hong Kong and
the other from the mainland — and the tensions in a city whose wealth
increasingly rests on a flood of mainland visitors who nevertheless draw
scorn for lavish spending and, some say, boorish ways.

In the show, the cousin from mainland China is shown littering, running
red lights and parking illegally, while the one from Hong Kong makes his
living with a travel agency that specializes in encouraging new arrivals
from the mainland to part with more of their cash.

The TVB network program, which has just ended its monthlong run, was shown
as the city’s leadership struggled to confront the latest supposed peril
attributed to mainlanders: a shortage of baby formula said to have been
caused by the hoarding of supplies by mainland Chinese who have crossed
the border into Hong Kong (apparently out of fear of tainted supplies in
China).

Some Hong Kong residents have become so agitated about the formula milk
problem that they have asked the United States to intervene, using a
petition on the White House Web site titled, “Baby Hunger Outbreak in Hong
Kong, International Aid Requested.”

The petition, created in late January, has already drawn 23,000 signatures.

The show’s candid depictions of mainland-Hong Kong relations — one scene
focuses on the formula shortage — have drawn hundreds of complaints to
Hong Kong regulators from viewers upset at things like its portrayals of
mainlanders and its depiction of the Hong Kong’s tourism industry as
predatory. And Chinese officials censored trailers for the program on the
mainland, where it could be viewed on TVB’s overseas channel or through
video streaming.

China also did some trimming of the version shown on the mainland, once
the program began there. It deleted a depiction of a protest outside a
Hong Kong clothing store, a scene apparently based on a demonstration
against a Dolce & Gabbana store that let free-spending mainlanders
photograph merchandise while barring Hong Kong residents from doing the
same.

Still, the show clearly struck a nerve, becoming the TVB channel’s
highest-rated drama this year.

To some, the tensions captured in the show are a natural outgrowth of
fears about Beijing’s increasing influence in Hong Kong, a former British
colony that retained considerable legal autonomy and civil rights after it
was handed back to China in 1997.

“Politically, more and more Hong Kongers resent the fact that Beijing is
tightening its control over Hong Kong’s political development,” Willy Lam,
a scholar on Chinese history and politics at the Chinese University of
Hong Kong, wrote in an e-mail.

He added that the current leader of Hong Kong, Leung Chun-ying, “is seen
as a yes-man chief executive bowing to every instruction from the mainland
authorities.”

“There is a common feeling that fat-cat mainlanders are driving up real
estate prices,” he said. “You have witnessed of course the drama over
formula milk powder.”

Although polls show that an increasing number of Hong Kong residents hold
pessimistic views about the city’s future and Hong Kong-mainland
relations, in “Inbound Troubles” the two cousins gradually acclimate to
each other, with the one from the mainland adapting to local ways.

Viewers say they appreciate the show’s realistic depictions of the
shifting social dynamics of Hong Kong and the growing impact of mainland
China and its visitors on the city.

“I have a few bad experiences with mainlanders — most of them have to do
with them jumping queues or being rude,” said Tai Wing-yi, a student at
Hong Kong Baptist University. “But not all are like that. Some of my
classmates are from the mainland, and they are nice to be around, and they
work hard. In fact, they are the ones who contribute more than the locals
in group projects.

“The show highlighted the tension between mainland Chinese and locals in a
funny way, and got the message across in a lighthearted manner,” she said.

Chen Min, a mainland journalist who has visited Hong Kong many times, said
his social circle in the city included many more-educated and better-off
local residents, who were usually polite, but that not all encounters were
so smooth.

“Occasionally you run into problems that you didn’t encounter before,” he
said. “Like a taxi driver who refuses to take you because you speak
Mandarin, although you’re holding a map and address in Chinese.”

On another occasion, Mr. Chen said, he was lugging a heavy suitcase to a
taxi. “The driver joked, ‘Carrying cash to buy an apartment?’”

The popularity of the show — there is already talk of a movie — suggests
that it could pave the way for treatments with similar themes, much as, in
the United States, “All in the Family” started a subgenre of politically
tinged situation comedies during the turbulence of the Vietnam War.

In an opinion piece in Global Times, a populist mainland newspaper, Wendy
Wang, a freelance writer from Shanghai, noted that mainlanders had long
been derided on Hong Kong television, with men often portrayed as mobsters
and women as flirty or worse.

But after the 1997 return of Hong Kong to Chinese rule, “mainlanders’
characters grew wealthier but not wiser,” she wrote.

Chris Buckley and Calvin Yang contributed reporting.