Hmmm, interesting. So the HK chinese do not add the suffix devil to their slur against indians? Why the exception?

Whose God is it anyways?,

I think youÂ’re referring to this situation. The link doesnÂ’t confirm the cause of the negligence, though that doesnÂ’t mean of course that racism and apathy werenÂ’t factors. The husbandÂ’s tactful statement at the end of the article seems to sum up the outcomes of both his battle and the coronerÂ’s verdict. It suggests more of a bittersweet rather than a pyrrhic victory for him. His involvement lead to the result and made the story known. On a collective level, while he (and others in a similar position elsewhere) will never meet many who sympathized throughout and after his efforts, IÂ’m ready to bet that even empathy from strangers can go a long way in strengthening a person in his or her personal fight. Public empathy can be in the form of behind the scenes moral support or active help, a combo that reminds me of a news story I saw a few weeks ago.

I happened to tune into one of the Indian cable stations and came across the last 2 hours of a 49 hour ‘event.’ A 5 year old boy in India fell through a 60 ft. borewell that had been covered loosely with a jute bag. Unfortunately, people accidentally stepping into uncovered pits isn’t rare, but in this instance the initial negligence, apathy, and social disinterest was turned around. It appears that the local authorities didn’t act immediately till word got out, and the army was sent in to rescue the boy. The army eventually dug a connecting tunnel from a nearby dry well.

Before the boy was rescued, contact was kept by lowering a TV camera and milk and biscuits down to him. It was almost surreal watching the cameraÂ’s images of the child, who, cramped in a 2.5 ft. space had pulled off his clothes and was huddled foetal like. Not surprisingly he was a bit dazed. His rescuer had to coax him to come up with him.

The live coverage was big news in India. Most viewers had caught it from the start. The ticker on the channel coverage had comments ranging from “Pray for Prince,” to “Don’t depend on God. Use your brains to think of something,” to “Throw the Politicians in the well,” etc. There were questions too about why the rescue was taking so long and if there was a better solution. These opinions along with the huge crowd grouping around the well kept the expectation for a successful conclusion. In that way I guess your handle is apt. As long as one has a kind of kind faith, religious or not, then the right thing can get done. In the end, Prince left the well on the evening of his 6th birthday. He was bundled through the crowd and probably wondering why there were people and camera lights.
He seems fine now from the follow up stories.

agree, ‘ah cha’ sounds like a phonetic transliteration of ‘accha’ which is a common feature across many north indian languages

The “cha” refers to barbeque, same as “cha siu bao” (Cantonese for bbq pork bun). It’s a reference to Indian’s skin colour – brown/black as if it had been barbequed. White people are “gweilo” (white devils) and Africans are “ha gwei” (black devils).

Most HK-ers experiences with Indians (or Indian-appearing persons) is with the guys who hang around Tsimshatsui and hassle you with questions like “Tailor? Tailor?” or “Rolex?”.

Not necessarily. Amongst north Indian populations, especially those from the northwest, “fair” in relation to women generally means “vanilla” or “porcelain” coloured. There is of course a slight gradation to what would be regarded as light olive, but any darker than that is not regarded as “fair-skinned” in the traditional sense of the term.

I would agree, however, that olive-brown is regarded as “fair” when it comes to men.

if indians wanted as light as possible they’d import european origin B actresses instead of half-browns.

Already happening to a minor extent, re: Yana Gupta and one or two other Eastern European models who have appeared in “item-number” music videos.

han wudi, ‘the martial emperor,’ didn’t lead from the front. that tells you about how much the chinese value the experience of soldiery, as opposed to how much they utilized soldiers. but i know chinese history, you obviously don’t if you can make such a snide remark, or if you can imagine that the ideal of chinese culture was toward martial glory (e.g., the conquests post-1650 were by manchus, a non-han people). the opponents of the confucians mocked them for basically being wimps, but it was the confucian ideal of scholar-bureaucrats which became the archetype which dominates much of pre-modern chinese history. whereof one does not know, one should not speak

However, you sound like a schmuck when you say things like this. The Chinese did not value martial attributes? This will come as news to twenty-one centuries of emperors.