When I was studying in primary and secondary schools, my English teachers always asked us to find 10 vocabularies in each of the news reports or feature articles in the South China Morning Post and look out their meanings from Oxford English Dictionary as a weekly assignment. We were also encouraged to read the Young Post every day to develop our interest in reading English writings. As a Hongkonger, my native language is Cantonese. Learning English was so difficult for people like me as we didn’t have any chance to speak English at home and we could live comfortably with Cantonese only. Being able to speak and write fluent English was considered, which I think still true nowadays, superior and to have better chance to climb the social ladder. However, I would say that many of my classmates and myself were not so interested in what was actually reported in the newspaper.
After finishing my bachelor’s degree in comparative literature and English literature at the University of Hong Kong, I was thinking how I could find a job to further develop my interest in English writings other than teaching English, which many of my classmates did. So, I was immature and impetuous enough to spend my mother’s saving to do my postgraduate studies in journalism at the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom. I chose to study journalism as I was pretty fed up with studying the complicated cultural theories – with all kinds of jargons like postmodernism, structuralism, post-structuralism, deconstruction, semiotics, post-colonialism, psychoanalysis, feminism, etc. I found myself more interested in reading and writing materials with simpler English sentence structures. Also, I found myself more interested in facts and current affairs than literary and imaginative writings.
During the year of studying journalism in Britain, I spent most of my time reading the Guardian, The Independent, The Times, News Statesman, and sometimes The Financial Times and The Daily Telegraph. The investigative reports in The Observer and The Sunday Times were amazing. I was so much excited of dreaming to be even just an assistant in an investigative reporting team in a newspaper or magazine. Despite all the years of learning English, my English is still very much “Hong Kong English”. However, the experience of learning journalism in Britain was really eye-opening. It’s not the experience of living in Britain, which was tainted with lots of discrimination, but the experience of learning journalism and the experiences of doing internship at FT.com and the visit at BBC World Service had profound influence on me. After finishing my studies and before leaving Britain, I couldn’t wait and sent my application to the South China Morning Post for the position of cadet reporter.
After I returned to Hong Kong, I was lucky to be given a chance to do a job interview and was even luckier to be offered the job. The cadetship was an interesting experience. Rotating to various desks – business, China, local news, political news, court, “Focus” section of the editorial page, and feature – it was such a great experience to learn from other senior reporters and editors about how to do basic reporting and writing features. Then, I spent about another 1.5 years at the SCMP as a court reporter before most reporters of the court reporting team were laid off at that time due to restructuring of the editorial office in early 2003. I’m not sure if any of the editors or reporters at the SCMP still remember me, who was just a very junior reporter at that time. But I felt much honoured to be able to work with some of the best reporters at that time, most of whom either resigned or were laid off later. Then, I changed to work in human rights organizations and left journalism. Over the years, I have been hearing more and more news about some former colleagues leaving the SCMP and great reporters like Jasper Becker, Mark O’Neill, Paul Mooney leaving the newspaper. Until a few days ago, four famous columnists Philip Bowring, Steve Vines, Frank Ching and Kevin Rafferty, were reportedly axed by the SCMP. I really feel that Hong Kong really needs more alternative English media outlets (while Hong Kong Standard has long been unable to compete with SCMP’s monopoly).
Some people might argue that there are more Mandarin-speakers than English-speakers in Hong Kong. Why do we need another English press now? English, as an international language, is still very important in Hong Kong as we still need to communicate with people in other countries. We can’t simply learn Mandarin and think that’s enough for doing business as China and Mainland Chinese are becoming so self-sufficient that they might think they are the centre of the universe. Also, it’s important to have an independent and professional English media to tell the international community what is actually happening in Hong Kong and what are the views of the Hong Kong people instead of only relying on the SCMP.
I’m just so happy and excited to learn that there will be a new and independent English media platform in Hong Kong – Hong Kong Free Press – and that it’s getting more and more support not just from the expatriate community but also many local people in Hong Kong (including people like me who just speak and write “Hong Kong English”). The emergence of the Internet has significantly changed our habits to read news and our participation in writing about news and current affairs. I hope that there will be even more English and Cantonese media platforms so that we will be able to maintain our freedom of press and freedom of expression in Hong Kong.
博德的疑惑 Patrick's Doubts 