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Letters | Real Hongkongers fight to save Cantonese and Hong Kong culture, even if they weren’t born here
- Young people in Hong Kong may go wild for K-pop but should not lose sight of the need to preserve their own culture and language
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I am writing in response to the letter from Jason Ng, “Don’t cry for Cantonese: love will make it go on” (April 27)”.
More and more people who are not native speakers of Cantonese have been calling for the conservation of the language and culture in recent years. For instance, long-time Hong Kong resident Gregory Charles Rivers is Australian, but the singer-actor has been dubbed the “real Hongkonger” by local web users for his love of Hong Kong culture and promotion of Cantonese. In 2016, he used fluent Cantonese to sing and rap the pop song Real Hong Kong, and talked about his love for the city, ridiculous home prices and all.
He has said that learning Cantonese was not an easy task, especially to deliver a performance for a native-speaking Hong Kong audience. However, he has been persistent in learning it because Cantonese has its own historical and cultural value.
Young Hongkongers today don’t seem very aware of the need to preserve the unique culture of Hong Kong. K-pop and J-pop nowadays have become wildly popular among them. A majority of Hongkongers find K-pop astonishing, and say the Hong Kong music industry is sinking and criticise local music as stuck in a rut.
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It is sad when Hongkongers do not love and preserve their own local language, local songs and local culture. It is preferable to act to preserve Cantonese culture, rather than rebuke youngsters for contributing to the death of the Hong Kong way of life. Real Hongkongers are those who love this piece of land – and are committed to conserving Cantonese.
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Matthew Lin, Tai Po
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