Random Thoughts by Pauline

February 2017     

On sexual equality

Sexual equality has never meant “sameness” between men and women when after all men and women are not born, groomed or socialized in the same ways. Stereotyping the two sexes is still unfortunately the norm. Boys are stronger, tougher and less articulate etc. while girls are meeker, weaker and more expressive. In Hong Kong, males in their forties and are still single are crowned as “diamond bachelors” while the female counterparts are teased as “residual girls”. Married women with no children are looked at as “incomplete” or even condemned as “not delivering their duties”.

As in all cases of generalization, sexual stereotyping is dangerously naïve. Careers such as the disciplinary force or professions like the architects, engineers, medical doctors, lawyers etc. have long taken women on board. These days, women can bring in money while men do the laundry. But social conceptions are not easy to change. It takes time. Quitting jobs to attend to children is expected of women but regarded as an act of sacrifice or stupidity when it comes to a man opting for it. .

Institutionalizing sexual equality is not to promote “sameness” but “fairness” of not discriminating between two people on the basis of sex. They are to be judged on the same criteria or standards irrespective of gender. They are to be given the same opportunities and granted the same rights. But even in this modern society of ours, such is sadly not the reality. Women are still earning less. There are more men than women in top positions. Why are housewives not classified in the employed category? They are doing a “no-thanks” job putting their body and soul into the big business of taking care of the family and bringing up children.There is Women’s Day but no Men’s Day! Why not let us have Human Day like the 7^th day of the first month of the Chinese calendar!

As the Chairperson of Hong Kong Women Teachers’ Organization, I have been criticized as sexist! I am not. Our activities or classes held at Hong Kong Teachers’ Centre are open to all teachers, men and women. And it is because of the limited space we have at our office that the classes held there are for women only.

So sisters, with heads held up, let’s celebrate our greatness - Happy Women’s Day! 

Random Thoughts by Pauline

January 2017

Street food

I spotted him walking quite briskly in his flip-flops right in front of me – an elderly man with all his tools of the trade on his shoulder. It was something like a made-shift wooden stand with a plastic bag labelled “Love the Earth. Recycle the bag” hung on one side and a container with bamboo sticks on the other. He might be one of those street-hawkers selling traditional Chinese tea-cakes, those steamed in bowls and extracted with bamboo sticks! He was quite light-footed, perhaps because he had sold off all his tea-cakes and was now on his way home.

This man took me down memory lane. These days, there are fewer and fewer hawker stalls not only because government policies do not encourage hawking but also because we are so worried about hygiene and in particular food-poisoning that we hesitate to patronize. In my childhood days, there were no big shopping malls but only small stores and street hawkers. The latter offered all kinds of delicacies – the aromatic bovine offal and braised squid, stinky tofu, sugar crepes, egg puffs and pickled carrots soaked in vinegar throughout the year. There were seasonal delights like roasted chestnuts, sweet potatoes and ginkgo in winter and popsicles and frozen fruit slices in summer.

Streets in many districts whether industrial or residential were lined with Dai pai dong or the street cooked food stalls preparing fish ball noodles, sweet soups, steamed rice rolls, stir-fried dishes and claypot rice right there before the customers. Dining there in open air could be steaming hot in summer though a big electric fan might be roaring behind and chilly in winter days though fire was raging in the charcoal burners.  

Though hawker stalls can still be found in some parts of the old districts, most of these street goodies have now been upgraded and “housed” in posh restaurants. To hope for the best, the taste is still there but what is missing is the coziness and the intimacy of interactions that we are now deprived of. Or perhaps, it’s all so beautiful in my memory as Barbra Streisand sings The Way We Were!

Mem'ries may be beautiful and yet

What's too painful to remember

We simply choose to forget

So it's the laughter we will remember

Whenever we remember the way we were

Random Thoughts by Pauline

November 2016

Respecting life

Every night at around ten, a neatly-dressed petite woman in her fifties would come to the small park at Eastbourne Road to perform an act of great charity – feeding a family of three yellow cats!

This gentle lady brings along with her a picnic basket complete with a big cardboard or sometimes a plastic sheet, plates, cans of cat food, bottles of water and tissue paper. The feline trio would sit there quietly on the bench waiting for her to open the cans, dish out the food and water before they jump down to enjoy their dinner. Then the lady would take a walk nearby before she returns to collect the plates and clean up the places.

After bumping into her and watching her daily routines several times, I started chatting with her. From our brief conversations, I come to know that she is a Korean housewife who has come to settle in Hong Kong because her banker husband was transferred here from the headquarters in Seoul about a decade ago. Her Cantonese is limited and I don’t speak Korean. She doesn’t speak English. But we are still able to understand each other. She pointed out to me which one of the three is the mother and that the other two of similar sizes are her kittens. She went on to say that last month when the kittens were six months old, she had taken all three to a vet for neutering. The operations cost her about five thousand dollars.

The above is an eye-witness account of kindness to animals taking them as living beings to be respected and loved in ways that we can. There are many such good people in our city caring, sheltering or campaigning for animals. But on the other hand, every now and then, we hear news reports of gruesome animal abuse cases.

Animals kill for food. We human beings are killing for fun! We have to end this! Our police has to start treating dogs and cats as living things and conduct criminal investigations into animal abuse cases.

The message is clear - zero tolerance for animal abuse!

Random Thoughts by Pauline

November 2016

Mingling  
 

Have you ever taken the route from MTR East Rail Station Mongkok East to Sai Yeung Choi Street via the footbridge on a Sunday? If you had, you would have, like me, thought that you had, by mistake, landed in Jakarta, Indonesia!

Indonesian or a language I don’t know but sounds familiar, is the only language heard, Indonesian songs are sung along with guitar played, Indonesian food of all kinds including fried fish, bowls of sticky rice, puddings and many more are displayed on the plastic sheets or cardboards laid out on the ground! The maids are on holiday and somehow for many years, this footbridge has been taken over by the Indonesians as the Central District by the Filipinas! Businesses of every type such as money exchange, hair-cut, reflexology, tailoring, tattooing, manicure and pedicure and many more not just the selling of Indonesian cuisines are conducted here. The air filled with spicy aroma, perfume and body odour smells exotically East Asian.

The maids spread themselves out along both sides of the whole length of the footbridge leaving the middle section for pedestrians. With broad smiles on their faces, most of them indulge themselves in various activities while a few others are just lying there on the cardboard resting. They are so at home!

Hong Kong is home to around 340,000 domestic workers – about half are from Indonesia. Some wear head-scarves but most don’t. Some refrain from eating pork but others don’t. Some speak fluent Cantonese but others are almost utterly incomprehensible speaking neither English nor Cantonese. In other words, they are not really a homogeneous group as no groups really are. But on Sundays, the one day in a week, they gather here enjoying one another’s company as though they had never left home.

This Indonesian occupation of two-thirds of the width of the footbridge if not more has definitely inconvenienced the locals as this passage is one of the direct routes going from the train station to central Mongkok unless one takes the street but that again is always jammed with shoppers. Though some pedestrians would complain about the noise and smell of the Indonesian gathering on the footbridge, they still opt for it. Sometimes, when it is really crowded, they might be rubbing shoulders with the Indonesians who get carried away partying. As yet, no rows have ever happened though eyes might be rolling with disgust or foreheads frowned with annoyance.

That is the spirit of Hong Kong – a city of tolerance of differences!  

Random Thoughts by Pauline

November 2016

Mothers

It was a bit chilly this morning. I was in a queue waiting for the green bus going down to the MTR station. Right behind me were a mother and her daughter who looked like a primary 4 student. The girl was in her summer school uniform of a white shirt and shorts.

As we were waiting, draughts kept blowing bringing shivers to us all. The mother immediately took off her thin blouse exposing her shoulders to cover the daughter. I was so touched though this might be the response of most if not all mothers.

In the morning, the school neighbourhood abounds with love. There is a primary school just opposite to the MTR station where I get off. Every morning after the children have walked inside and the gates are closed, parents would still linger peeping through the small holes of the intertwined chain-linked fences until their children disappear beyond eyes can reach.

Mothers and these days fathers as well are so tender and prompt in rendering themselves to their children in dire contrast to parents of our times. This does not mean they love us less. The difference is in the lack of those small deeds and minute acts of demonstration. They are much more subtle.

As much as parents love their children selflessly, they have to “educate” themselves into not just giving but also considering if that love is really felt or detested. Too much nagging is hated. Hovering round all day is loathed. And as children grow, parents have to practise detachment. The one ultimate principle they have to internalize is not to expect their children to reciprocate.

Parenthood is a blessing already! So don’t expect dividend!