1297 HKSAR Name of the Day

Vyora Yau, principal assistant secretary for the environment (financial monitoring), Environment Bureau, Hong Kong Government, Hong Kong

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Name Category: Creation

1296 HKSAR Name of the Day

Archer Wong Tik-lung, student union's university affairs secretary, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

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Name Category: Rare

1295 HKSAR Name of the Day

Elmy Lung, reporter, TVB News, Hong Kong

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Name Category: Creation; Substitution

1294 HKSAR Name of the Day

Tank Lam Hip-hau, 19-year-old part-time coach for the Breakthrough rugby team [Breakthrough is a sports programme for troubled youngsters that has been run by former and current members of the Hong Kong police since 1966], Hong Kong 

see Sherman

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Name Category: Creation

1293 HKSAR Name of the Day

Angel Ng Kar-bo, Tsim Sha Shui, Hong Kong (SCMP letters 23 November 2011)
Note: IMHO it would have been better … if her name had been Greta.

Greta Kar-bo has a nice ring to it !!

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Name Category: Rare; Self-important

1292 HKSAR Name of the Day

Sundy Fong Lok-sun, 29, and Patrick Chan Chi-kit, 30, who married at the weekend (12-13 November 2011) and spent HK$250,000 (US$32,000) on their wedding

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Name Category: Creation; Phonetic-based; Substitution

1291 HKSAR Name of the Day

Cathie Chung, real estate researcher, Hong Kong

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Name Category: Rare

1290 HKSAR Name of the Day

Wyss Ng Yeuk-wan (Ms), toy company manager, Hong Kong (who in 2011 has a 14-year-old daughter, Elyse Ngan Cheuk-shan)
  see also 1097 HKSAR Name of the Day

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Name Category: Creation

1289 HKSAR Name of the Day

Jehan Chu, veteran designer, Hong Kong

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Name Category: Creation; Phonetic-based?

1288 HKSAR Name of the Day

Stephenie Ma Kit-ting married Pui Wai-loi in Hong Kong; both 27 years old.
They were among 1,017 pairs who got married on 11/11/2011 for its implication of "one life, one love". Considering some (or many?) marriages end up in divorce further down the years, the "implication" may prove to be only that … an implication.

People mistakenly put too much emphasis on "lucky" numbers such as 111111, 1288, etc (see Lucky Number posts) and:

Chinese Cherry Picking

Searching for a Silver Lining in the Manila Massacre

Double Dose of Death on Double Four

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Name Category: Creation; Substitution

1287 HKSAR Name of the Day

Garrick Kong Chi-leung, a 48-year- old marketing research manager, will take part in the 2012 Standard Chartered Hong Kong Marathon for the third time

see 0674 HKSAR Name of the Day

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Name Category: Rare

1286 HKSAR Name of the Day

Ilona Ho, Shouson Hill, Hong Kong (SCMP letters 9 November 2011)

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Name Category: Rare

1285 HKSAR Name of the Day

Karen Chan Kar-loen, associate professor of the University of Hong Kong's department of obstetrics and gynecology, Hong Kong

not particularly novel but phonetic-based (and propagates the stereotype that Orientals mispronounce their l's and r's). Nice going Professor Chan !

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Name Category: Common but Phonetic-based

Jung Chang Looking Like A Wild Swan

Over the decades, popular author and modern China historian Jung Chang, 61, has carved out her writing genre in striking fashion. Her recent photo is also striking and reminds me of an elegant, regal and extremely poised swan.

Jung Chang. Photo: AFP

Related Post

So That's What She Looks Like

Reference


Jung Chang’s revisionist account of ‘the concubine who launched modern China’ (SCMP; paywall)

Wild Swans author has written a new book on Empress Dowager Cixi
PUBLISHED : Sunday, 03 November, 2013, 5:02pm

Agence France-Presse in Hong Kong

Jung Chang says she does not enjoy arguments, but the latest book from the writer whose works are banned in China is proving to be typically contentious.

The Wild Swans author has offered a revisionist account of Empress Dowager Cixi, the concubine who ruled behind the scenes from 1861 until her death in 1908.

A powerful figure who unofficially controlled the Manchu Qing Dynasty for nearly 50 years, Cixi governed during a tumultuous period in which she faced internal rebellions, war and foreign invasions.

Cixi has since been portrayed as a cruel, hapless despot with an extravagant lifestyle, a conservative who suppressed reform in China for decades, who ordered the killing of reformists and put the emperor under house arrest for years until his death.

Having scoured Chinese language archives in Beijing, Chang instead argues that Cixi was instead a reformer who laid the foundations for China to become the economic superpower of today.

“I’m not one of those who relish a fight. I don’t enjoy it,” the 61-year-old author said in an interview.

“But I don’t want to write what everyone else is writing. I will only embark on a project if there is something new I can say. So I can’t reconcile these two things. If you open new ground you’re going to be attacked.”
I will only embark on a project if there is something new I can say. If you open new ground you’re going to be attacked
Jung Chang

Empress Dowager Cixi - The Concubine Who Launched Modern China presents a figure whose leadership enabled the country to begin to “acquire virtually all the attributes of a modern state: railways, electricity, telegraph, telephones, Western medicine, a modern-style army and navy, and modern ways of conducting foreign trade and diplomacy.

“The past hundred years have been most unfair to Cixi,” writes Chang.

The Sichuan-born, London-based author says Cixi - and not reformist leader Deng Xiaoping who took power after the death of Mao Zedong - should be credited with launching the China of today.

“He didn’t create a new model,” Chang said of Deng. “He was returning to the model that had been created by the Empress Dowager.”

The book has received positive reviews, but critics have also cautioned against the level of Chang’s praise for a woman largely demonised by history.

“Historical facts seem to have been used only when they were useful and tossed away when they contradict the main theme of her work; that the heretofore-vilified Cixi had been a brave and forward-thinking reformer,” read a comment piece published in the South China Morning Post recently.

“It may be fashionable today to create a feminist heroine out of thin air, even if in fact there was none. Cixi was not a reformer”.

Chang says she sought to provide the context for Cixi’s ruthlessness, which went as far as ordering the poisoning of her nephew and adopted son Emperor Guangxu, while on her own death bed.

“Japan tried to make him the puppet and dominate the whole of China. The inevitable conclusion for me is that she killed him in order to prevent this scenario.”

While Guangxu’s successor Pu Yi became Japan’s puppet-leader in Manchukuo, the state it established after invading Manchuria, Chang argues that the entire country would have eventually fallen to Japan had Cixi not ordered the death of Guangxu.

‘Unjust’ criticism

The author admits that she did “develop sympathy” for Cixi, and some critics have accused the book of bordering on hagiography.

“I documented her ruthlessness,” said Chang. “Every killing is documented in the book. Let’s not forget she was a 19th century figure, she grew up in medieval China.”

Chang said she was drawn to the story of Cixi when researching her multi-million selling debut Wild Swans more than 20 years ago.

“My grandmother had bound feet and I had been under the impression because of the propaganda that somehow foot binding was banned by the Communists,” said Chang.

“I realised it had been banned by Cixi at the beginning of the 20th century. So this discrepancy between the little bit I knew about her and her reputation got me very interested.”

The book is the follow up to the explosive 2005 biography Mao: The Unknown Story which she co-authored with her husband Jon Halliday.

It won praise for challenging perceptions of Mao, the founder of the People’s Republic of China who instigated the Cultural Revolution in 1966 and whose rule is estimated to have caused tens of millions of deaths through starvation, forced labour and executions.

But it also faced strong academic criticism over its balance and scholarship. The author, who lost her father and grandfather to the Cultural Revolution, says such criticism is “totally unjust”.

Along with 1991’s Wild Swans her study of Mao is banned in China. Chang says she is permitted to visit her elderly mother on the mainland on the condition that she does not speak to the press, at public gatherings or visit friends.

As for whether or not her latest book will be banned, Chang says she expects sensitivity given what she sees as parallels between Cixi and a modern leadership looking to calibrate the pace of change in order to maintain control.

“In both cases there have been decades of economic development,” said Chang.

“She faced the same problems. A door has been opened, people have rising aspirations. And so where do we go from here?”

1284 HKSAR Name of the Day

Esmond Lee Chung-sin, Principal Assistant Secretary for Planning, Environment and Lands, Hong Kong Government, Hong Kong (circa 1997)

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1283 HKSAR Name of the Day

Dawson Fong To-sang (Dr), neurosurgeon and president of the Hong Kong Stroke Fund

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Name Category: Rare; Son-suffix