THE DEBUT OF a comic deriding Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa at the latest annual book fair has been cited as another piece of evidence that there has been a conspiracy against the SAR chief. But the man behind the publishing project has insisted he is 100 per cent sympathetic to Mr Tung.
Jimmy Pang Chi-ming noted the 112-page Old Idiot Tung, put out by his Sub-Culture publishing company, sold over 30,000 copies within the past two weeks. Priced at $25 each, the booklet has been billed as a local publishing miracle. Containing riddles, cartoons and jokes, all at the expense of Mr Tung, it is written by two movie scriptwriters and a press editor under a pseudonym which sounds like 'negative asset' in Cantonese. Radio hosts and critics have declared that they find the contents unamusing. But the booklet apparently appeals to a wide cross section of the community. 'We are putting the finishing touches to a sequel,' said Mr Pang, 'which hopefully can hit the market by next weekend.'
He said the phenomenal success of the book is accidental. The publisher had originally put his bets on two other books for the exhibition - a compilation of quotes from tycoon Li Ka-shing and a critique of the bestsellers by romance novelist Amy Cheung Siu-han. He expected the three books to register a sale of 600 copies each during the six-day function at the Exhibition and Convention Centre. The tally for the Tung title ended up at 4,300. A book reaching the 500-copy threshold at the book fair is normally considered successful.
'The Tung book sold about 200 copies in the first two days. Then one of the writers came to our stall and put up a poster, flashing the Chinese character 'banned' coupled with a question mark. Sales started to rocket from that point,' Mr Pang said.
Instead of being censored, the publisher has been asked by some local China-related bookstores for additional copies. 'We have not encountered any censorship from the pro-Beijing bookstores at all. Some of them have even urged us to bypass the normal distributors, so that they can do away with the commissions for the agents.'
Mr Pang said that Old Idiot Tung could hardly qualify as an organised effort, let alone a plot against the Chief Executive. 'The three writers approached me just 10 days before the book fair. I was busy preparing for the event and was initially reluctant to publish yet another comic book, because we have already produced two joke titles only recently.'