There’s almost two months to go until the March Legislative Council by-election but already the knives are out, wielded by those butchers also known as people on the internet.
The pro-establishment camp’s candidate for the Hong Kong island seat, Judy Chan Ka-pui, has been on the receiving end of a somewhat merciless stream of ridicule after a video of the 37-year-old struggling to express herself in English went viral.
Chan — currently a district councillor for the Southern District Council for South Horizona West and one of the founding members of the New People’s Party — delivered the clunky performance during a publicity rally this week.
The exchange with reporters started well enough, with Chan answering confidently in Cantonese.
Then came a question in English — not exactly a curve ball in an international city — with a reporter asking: “How can you actually grab the votes from the middle class away from Demosistō?”
Her answer (written below without the ems, ers and stop starts) didn’t exactly make her sound like someone who had graduated from Australia’s Monash University and worked in Chicago for seven years.
“I think depends on my policy. I hope the middle class can, most middle class they have very high standard in their living quality. So I will try my best to provide the best solution to them,” she said, before being pressed to elaborate.
“I think Hong Kong we are losing competitive, Hong Kong used to be very competitive amongst all the Asia cities, and we are losing that. I am hoping that Hong Kong will gain the strength again.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YkTnOgQJrc
You may call it mean or unfair, but many Hongkongers leapt at the chance to call out Chan’s clunky performance, sharing the video thousands of time on Facebook.
For the English grammar and pronunciation pedants, many picked up that when Chan said “gain” in the sentence “gain the strength again”, she sounded like she was saying that Cantonese word for “scared” (“Hong Kong will fear the strength again”.)
Some were astonished that given Chan’s time spent in Australia and the US, she struggled to express herself in English, with comments such as “did she spend those seven years in Chinatown?”
Other comments were deliberately made in broken English, at least we think so.
“Can’t find anyone speaking English gooder than this?” remarked one.
It also led to the publication of this video comparing the English-speaking skills of Chan to that of Demosistō’s Agnes Chow who recently announced her candidacy for the upcoming by-election, SCMP reported.
The video interview Chan’s performance is being compared to a 2015 interview Chow did with English-language current affairs programme Straight Talk when she was 18-years-old, prompting further comments from netizens that “even a secondary school student can speak better English than Chan!”
https://www.facebook.com/Tsuiscritique/posts/1948224031872964
However, some were a bit more forgiving.
One person said: “I’m not a supporter of DAB [the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong], but lots of HK people’s English is MUCH WORSE than Judy Chan’s.”
Another pointed out that Chan’s apparent poor English was not a problem so much as her seemingly being caught unprepared by the question.
Some of the comments were also leveled at Chan’s mentor, Regina Ip — who also published a series of books called Learning English with Regina.
“Why not sending Ms Chan to Regina’s alma mater for intensive English language training,” one person enquired.
Ip, who is the chair of the NPP and a colorful figure in Hong Kong politics, previously served as the city’s Secretary for Security, where she tried to enact the controversial article 23 national security legislation.
Last year, she unsuccessfully ran in the chief executive elections.
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