In our current political debate on Hong Kong democratic development, life within the Legislative Council has unfortunately become Hobbesian: indecorously poor, overtly nasty and intolerantly brutish.
The vulgarity of Hong Kong politics today deserves some ink.
Recently, the League of Social Democrats has been second to none in this department. Bananas aside, the LSD legislators regularly hurl, within the chamber, some colourful insults that have more than stumped the people of 'Hong Kong Hansard', the official verbatim report of the proceedings of the council meetings.
Lost in translation, the offensiveness of the words employed by these legislators cannot be fully appreciated by English readers.
Since their appearance in Hong Kong's political landscape, LSD legislators have reinvented the city's political lexicon. Among their favorites is 'slave/minion', which tops, at 35 times, the list of most uttered descriptions in one legislative proceeding in January. 'Dead wood or useless/incompetent person', should be more accurately translated as 'worthless piece of s***' and comes in second.
The adjectival use of 'dog', connoting meanings of disgust and meanness in Chinese, as in 'dog government official' and 'dog slave/minion', is customary in LSD vocabulary when referring to anyone who is not in its political favour.
Thanks to the LSD legislators' love for hate words, 'secretary' can now be omitted, and replaced with gung gung - not, however, used as a term of endearment, like 'grandpa'. Instead, it is used as a slur, by changing a certain official's name and office to that of a eunuch of imperial China when addressing him in the chamber.