Hong Kong English/Cantonese (XXX)

The Honourable Councillors, This Is Just Too Tiny and Please Shut Up

When lawmakers become memes

We have seen a lot of celebrities become memes, such as Keanu Reeves, but mostly it is related to a photo of theirs.

However, this time, the meme pictures aren’t really the persons themselves.

The memes bear the voice of a former President of Legislative Council, Jasper Tsang.

As a former principal of school, he loved to maintain the order of the council like a school. (Well, maintaining order was one of his jobs as the president of the council.) Therefore, the first of the memes “came from” Tsang trying to maintain order by calling a councillor’s name.

“The Honourable Leung Kwok Hung” (梁國雄議員) is a meme to tell people the picture they give/post is too small, which implies that the netizens would rather the picture not be posted, or they would rather be given a bigger picture.

Why? This is the story.

At first, netizens just scolded the people who give small pictures. They might say, “Fuck you. Give us a smaller picture, won’t you?” (屌你唔好再細啲, Jyutping: diu2 nei5 m4 hou2 zoi3 sai3 di1)

But it was around the time when Tsang was the president of the council. He would ask coucillors to calm down if they disrupted the meetings and the ones who disrupted the meetings to leave the assembly if this persisted. One of the most heard names by Tsang on TV news was councillor Leung Kwok Hung (representing New Territories East) as he brought a lot of protests into the assembly, also his coarse language during the meetings.

“The Honourable Leung Kwok Hung, would you please calm down.” (梁國雄議員，請你冷靜啲！)

It was late 2000s when it was still a taboo swearing in public. People recalled this phrase when they saw people swearing in a post of a small picture.

Later, with the “chemistry ” of the netizens, the swear phrase was skipped and Tsang’s phrase was shortened to just a call of the councillor’s name. And so now “the Honourable Leung Kwok Hung” conveys this meaning.

Sadly, Leung was disqualified from being a councillor and is imprisoned by the communist regime.

Another councillor who became a meme was “the Honourable Ann Chiang” (蔣麗芸議員).

In June 2014, it was the time when pro-democratic councillors used everything in their pockets to try to stop any laws that are in favour of Peking from passing in Hong Kong. One of the methods they used was to always make a roll call, as the meeting had to be cancelled when there weren’t enough people in the meeting after that 15 minutes.

In one meeting, Chiang (representing Kowloon West) made a complaint to the president Tsang for wasting time during the 15-minute roll call period. However, what she said during the 15 minutes couldn’t be recorded as this was not the time for meeting.

She even suggested him stopping the “mental dude” to make fewer roll calls. Then Tsang made his legendary reply.

“The Honourable Ann Chiang, I suggest you considering making less useless speech. Your microphone is especially sharp, so everybody, how about just keep quiet and wait for the meeting to resume?”

(蔣麗芸議員，我建議呢，你考慮……少啲，講啲冇乜用嘅說話。尤其是你個咪好……好刺耳，所以大家不如都係安靜啲，等個會議恢復。)

This reply, especially the first part asking Chiang to speak less useless, went viral. As time goes by, this comment became a meme to suggest people to talk less shit or just ask them to shut up.

People now also write just “the Honourable Ann Chiang” and let the other to finish the phrase.

Well, these Hong Kong memes are just not any photos of the councillors, instead they came from the comments by the president of the council. These memes are not always related to what the councillors do/did.

Funny?

References: