Musings on the White Man's Benefaction of the Cantonese
I think it's pretty crazy how crucial the British colonization of Hong Kong was to the Cantonese people.
This a gross and controversial generalization I'm making, but the vanguard of Chinese culture and science clustered
around the banks of the Yangtze in the Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces. I often wonder how China would look today
had the British pursued Shanghai instead. I am not a Brit lover, and they really fucked things up all over the world (Balfour declaration anyone?), but their legal traditions and commercial civility layed a strong foundation for HK.
As a result, the Cantonese enjoy a special place in the world view of the Chinese. I mean, within the Han Chinese ethnic universe, thereare many different flavors. People in Beijing look and act a helluva lot different than Shanghainese who differ from Hong Kongers who differ from Taiwanese, and the list goes on. But the most recognizable Chinese people in the Western world are Cantonese film stars,
and by extension, the Cantonese earn the perhaps begrudging respect of mainlanders who don't have access to Western money, Western style, the English language, internet freedoms, political freedoms, etc.
And in a particularly interesting twist, because the HK film industry essentially dictates standards of beauty, the Cantonese "look" is now viewed favorably in China. Southern Chinese women were not exactly renowned for their beauty back in the day. They were shorter, had smaller features, and spoke a guttural language, and were not particularly educated. With Hong Kong's emergence in the twentieth century though, diets became better, Cantonese girls outgrew their cohorts on the mainland, knew how to speak English, got superior education, learned how to put themselves together. In short, to use an American colloquialism, they got it going on! | |
