【Wan Chin：Opportunists, Here Comes Payback Time】
A February 27, 2018 op-ed published by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC; see note) made a bold claim that Australians must revise what they already knew regarding the cultural practices behind Lunar New Year. Having lived in Beijing for ten years before emigrating to Australia, the Mainland Chinese author argued that the Lunar New Year activities Australians are familiar with, such as the lion dance, are nothing like what she had seen back in China before her move to Australia. This is obviously the author’s way to reject the Cantonese culture and the culture of Hong Kong in the name of “China”. I’m afraid that in the near future, overseas Hong Kongers can only watch northern-style lion dances, stuff themselves with Beijing dumplings, and drown themselves out with China Central Television’s “New Year’s Gala” as part of their Lunar New Year celebrations.
Let’s talk a little bit about the bygone days of Hong Kong. During the 1960s and the 1970s, Cantonese kung fu, as well as other elements of Cantonese culture in Hong Kong, had come to represent and define what Chinese kung fu and Chinese culture were. Yet sometimes what was clearly local Cantonese kung fu styles were foolishly misbranded as “Shaolin Kung Fu” for the purpose of self- and other-deception. In the ’80s, the Communist Chinese government released the movie Shaolin Temple in an attempt to revive China’s traditional martial arts, thereby usurping Hong Kongers’ past efforts to promote China. In the ’90s, Hong Kong directors committed the despicable crime of hiring northern Chinese martial artists to play the great Cantonese kung-fu master Wong Fei-Hung. This is an act akin to self-sabotage, as they managed to erode the Hong Kong Cantonese film and television industry painstakingly built by earlier actors such as Kwan Tak-Hing and Cho Tat-Wah, leaving nothing to posterity. The Wong Fei-Hung portrayed by Kwan Tak-Hing entrenched in my memory was not too removed from modern times. He wore costumes that were actual clothing worn during the early Chinese Republican period. He got rid of the queue hairstyle, and spoke Cantonese. On the other hand, the Wong Fei-Hung portrayed by northern Chinese martial artists such as Jet Li or Vincent Zhao wore clothing hailing from the Qing dynasty, kept the queue that symbolized the Qing dynasty, and had their dialogues dubbed in Cantonese.
During the early years of the Republic of China, Wong Fei-Hung’s student Lam Sai-Wing (nicknamed “Porky Wing”) published illustrated treatises on Hung Ga Kuen for the very first time. On the covers of “Taming the Tiger Fist” and the “Tiger-Crane Paired Form Fist”, Lam called a spade a spade and wrote the words Cantonese Martial Arts – not “Chinese kung fu”, nor “Chinese fist styles”.
Full Version: http://www.passiontimes.hk/article/05-07-2018/45649
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