Criticism of a cash award for Chinese art critics misses the point
Award was intended to give a shot in the arm for those writing in Chinese for obscenely low rates
No critic worth his salt would fail to appreciate how a little controversy, or just a heated argument, can spice things up and get people's attention.
When I saw the headline "Art critics prize under fire" on the front page of the on August 25, therefore, my heart was filled more with gratitude and relief than terror or dismay.
The story made no mention of it, but the prize, whose official name is ADC Critics Prize, is the brainchild of the Arts Development Council's Arts Criticism Group, which I happen to chair.
Details of the prize were announced in late July. But until it suddenly came "under fire", as reported by the , it had been given the cold shoulder by the press. Apparently, in the eyes of many arts-and-culture editors, what the prize has in news value isn't enough to make up for its lack of "sex appeal".
So the story is a bonanza. Still, I find it hard to sympathise with what the critics of the prize had to say in the story. It is, of course, the job of critics to be critical, but is it fair or necessary to make use of the launch of Hong Kong's first major prize for arts and cultural criticism as an opportunity to lament the divide that exists between the educated and the less educated in the city?
The prize admits only entries written in Chinese. Should we apologise for trying, with very limited resources, to make a difference to Hong Kong's arts-and-culture scene by giving a shot in the arm to its critics, the overwhelming majority of whom write in Chinese for obscenely low rates? I don't think so.
According to the story, established writers make just HK$1 per word writing for Chinese-language publications. The truth is, most art critics writing in Chinese make no more than 40 cents a word, while the going rate for their counterparts writing in English is HK$1 to HK$2.50 per word.
The HK$50,000 cash award to the top-prize winner, therefore, will certainly make an impact. In a city where social status is often measured in economic terms, the prize may even bestow a degree of respectability on writing art criticism in Chinese.
If English writing is increasingly marginalised in Hong Kong, the blame cannot be put on the prize's "language policy". I conceived and put together a forum series for this year's Hong Kong Book Fair, turning the spotlight on local and expatriate poets, storytellers, critics and journalists who write about Hong Kong in English.
Despite being the first of its kind in the fair's 23 years of history, the series, entitled An Introduction to Hong Kong English Authors, received scant attention in the local press. To my disappointment, most of the Chinese and English newspapers didn't show any interest in talking to the featured writers, and none grabbed this chance to examine how the use of English shapes the character of Hong Kong and its unique language environment.
This editorial judgment is a manifestation of Hong Kong's dwindling interest in all things English after its return to Chinese sovereignty in 1997. For a place that calls itself Asia's World City, and whose competitiveness hinges partly on its effective use of English, this is an issue as serious as it is puzzling.
