If you’ve ever set foot in a Hong Kong supermarket, you’ve no doubt seen that staple of the bread aisle: Garden Bakery’s Life Bread — you know, the one that comes in the blue and white gingham-patterned packaging with the red lettering.
The famed loaf, in addition to being a lunchtime sandwich stalwart, has also become a meme in recent days after a police officer mentioned it while taunting protesters trapped inside the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. A video taken by the website Hong Kong Citizen News on Nov. 21 — the fifth day of the police siege of the university after it was occupied by protesters — shows one officer shouting over a megaphone that those holed up inside campus were irresponsible, ignorant garbage.
He then adds: “I can see someone eating Life Bread, that cold white bread. It’s OK, I can be here for three days, even three weeks — it’s fine for me. Do you know why? I will be off work in an hour, someone will take my shift, you will eat your Life Bread, and I will go to Shenzhen and have Haidilao hotpot — and I get ice cold beer! And you get your Life Bread!”
He then goes on to remark that those who eat Life Bread are poor and old, and that he pities those who eat it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOE2eYtRvs8
Well, Hongkongers will put up with a lot, but not someone badmouthing their bread.
Netizens were swift to rally ’round the loaf, with users on the Reddit-like forum LIHKG urging others to turn up to the now-regular weekday “lunch with you protests” with loaves of Life.
Some heeded the call, including this elderly man, who turned up to a lunchtime protest in Kowloon Bay brandishing his loaf and scarfing a slice of Life in front of riot police, shouting, “Look at this! Watch me! It’s delicious!”
Others can be heard yelling, “They just want to eat Haidilao!”
There were similar scenes in Kwun Tong, where office workers gathered in a park and shared a picnic of lemon tea and Life Bread while singing “Fat Mama Has Something To Say,” a Cantonese parody version of Sia’s “Chandelier” mocking a pro-police rant given by the Macanese singer and TV personality Maria “Fat Mama” Cordero.
Online, some responded with Life Bread-inspired illustrations, like Felix Ip, the person behind Hong Kong Machines. Ip, who takes everyday Hong Kong objects like a teapot or a tram and draws them as Transformer-like robots, gave a Life delivery truck the same treatment, rendering it as a badass bot.
Another illustrator who goes by the handle vawongsir also did an illustration featuring cute little protester koalas clambering around on a loaf of Life, an apparent nod to the 21-year-old protester who was shot in Sai Wan Ho and said from the hospital that he was craving Lotte’s Koala March cookies.
Garden Bakery, for those who aren’t familiar, is a well-known Hong Kong baked goods company that was first founded in 1926 and — fun fact! — set a production record by manufacturing 200,000 pounds of crackers for the Chinese army in a seven-day streak during the Sino-Japanese War, the company’s website proclaims.
In addition to Life, the bakery is also known for it’s famous huge red tins of Garden Bakery cookies, family packs of which are common gifts around Lunar New Year.
The cookies had their own moment of viral fame back in February when two heroes completed the Herculean feat of eating all 176 cookies in a Garden Bakery family pack — all 1.3 kilos’ worth — in 30 minutes, and livestreamed the effort.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jYIZeby2Ec
