Grandpa Chan Pleads Not Guilty in Displaying Calligraphy

Chan with Lu Xun's couplet on the summit of Lion Rock

Even after the national security law was implemented in Hong Kong on July 1, 2022, some people dared to continue to resist and are paying the price.

One of them is Chan Ki-kau, who is best known as "Grandpa Chan", who during the 2019 protests banded with other people, mostly seniors in a group called Protect Our Kids to act as a buffer between the protesters and the police.

Chan in a scene in Revolution of Our Times

He usually wore a homemade red headgear, swimming goggles and a yellow florescent vest as he walked the streets during skirmishes. Many of the front-line protesters were concerned about Grandpa Chan's wellbeing and tried to make sure he and his colleagues were safe, as shown in documentaries like Revolution of Our Times.

Although the street protests ended, Chan continued practicing his own brand of resistance. 

On September 28, 2023, he stood on the summit of Lion Rock in Kowloon and held a pair of Chinese couplets originally penned by writer Lu Xun. They read: "Fierce-browed, I coolly defy a thousand pointing fingers. Head bowed like a willing ox, I serve the children."

Chan was arrested in early October that year, and then in February 2024 was charged with breaching country park regulations because he had displayed the banners without permission. Offenders face a maximum penalty of a HK$2,000 fine and three months in jail.

Many seniors wanted to protect protesters

On Friday Chan appeared at Kowloon City Magistrates' Court for a pre-trial hearing, and pleaded not guilty. The trial will begin at the end of September.

First we're impressed he climbed up Lion Rock, and second, what is wrong with displaying calligraphy?

New Street Signs Stir Controversy

The calligraphic style of Wen Yue Type in Central

Some Hong Kong residents have taken pictures of recently installed street signs in a new font that has them riled up, and understandably so.

There are around 60 new street signs in three select locations that are, according to the Highways Department, a bid to beautify the city's streetscape.

The three districts are: the Outlying Islands Ferry Pier in Central, Tai Wai MTR station, and Lo Tak Court in Tsuen Wan.

Experts say the font hard to read for long periods

Called Wen Yue Type, the font inspired by the Ming dynasty, was designed by a mainland Chinese company that is meant to convey a sense of rhythm with its calligraphic features as it has thick and thin lines.

"The font aims to infuse a rich cultural ambience into the landscape and atmosphere of the community. It is well-proportioned, and its overall design is consistent with existing nameplates, effectively providing street information to the public," said a statement from the Highways Department to a media query.

Hong Kong currently uses the Avector Chinese TrueType Font (Hong Kong), which a design academic says may seem boring, but it's clear and straightforward.

Brian Kwok Sze-hang, associate professor at the School of Design at Hong Kong Polytechnic University says the new font is more decorative and that it "can be tiring to read for an extended period".

In addition he questioned how the font would infuse cultural ambience.

"When we talk about culture, it should be linked to the history of the city or neighbourhood. Changing the font on a street nameplate does not necessarily instil cultural awareness. While they may have selected a font to represent the culture, they have applied it to the wrong subject," Kwok said.

The current font is straightforward 

Meanwhile Gary Yau, founder of the Road Research Society, wondered if the new font had adequate traditional Chinese characters for some street names with advanced characters.

"I question whether this classic font, mainly applied in simplified Chinese, can truly represent Hong Kong's distinctive features," he said, noting there are fonts designed for Hong Kong that use traditional characters.

The Highways Department added there were no immediately plans to have the new street nameplate designs throughout the entire city. 

Then why do it? And why these three locations?

It's a mystery that has more nays than yeas.

Lighting up Chinatown

There will be 16 of these neon signs installed

Vancouver's Chinatown looks brighter in the run-up to the Lunar New Year on February 10. Mayor Ken Sim unveiled a neon sign featuring a dragon that are being installed on the street lamp posts on East Pender Street between Main and Carrall streets.

In total there will be 16 of these neon signs just in time for the Year of the Dragon.

Mayor Sim unveiled the design for CNY

The initiative was from the Vancouver Chinatown Business Improvement Association, which began planning this idea two years ago. 

"Chinatown used to be famous for its neon signs and its unique designs. And it really is an homage to the past. Even though it took all that time to get here, it's appropriate that it comes out at the start of the new Year of the Dragon," said Jordan Eng, president of the Vancouver Chinatown BIA.

He hopes the signs will stay up for at least six months, and possibly remain a permanent fixture.

"It'd be nice to have something on a more permanent basis, just because of the amount of time it takes to produce and go through the process to get it certified, and all the engineering effort that goes into it to get it to where we finally installed it," Eng said.

The Lunar New Year will be celebrated in Chinatown on Sunday, February 11 with a multicultural parade through the area. Places like the Dr. Sun Yat-sen Classical Chinese Garden and the Chinese Canadian Museum will have various workshops and demonstrations, from lion dances and calligraphy lessons, wood block prints and street food.

East Pender Street with neon dragon signs

Here's to hoping these new light fixtures not only hark back to Chinatown's glory days, but also inspire people to come back to the neighbourhood more often.

Review: Hidden Letters

Hu (left) gives her mentor (He) a letter written in nushu

Nushu (女书) is a form of calligraphy that only women in Jiangyong county in Hunan province know about. It doesn't look like typical Chinese characters, but lots of curved strokes rather than straight ones and in general look thin and narrow. 

And unlike Chinese characters where each word represents a noun, verb or idea, nushu is phonetic, with each of the 600-700 characters representing a syllable.

It's not clear when nushu began, but it was a form of communication between women who wrote these letters to each other in a secret language. Most of these letters were depressing, recounting how they were physically or verbally mistreated by husbands, and replies were often words of comfort and reminding her she was not alone. The words were mostly learned through singing nushu songs.

Each of the characters represent syllables

Before 1949 when the horrific practice of foot binding was practiced, women were confined to the home. There are no records of old nushu texts or letters because when the woman died, her writings were buried or cremated with her. 

An Oscar-nominated documentary looks into nushu and the conundrum of keeping it relevant in today's world.

Called Hidden Letters, the film introduces three women who are nushu practitioners, two relatively young, and an older woman who is a mentor to one of them.

However, like most Chinese movies, nushu is obliquely explained and doesn't go into how the writing style was developed or the meanings of the words. Perhaps it is too difficult to explain or go into, but this is what I felt was the most frustrating part of the film!

One woman is Hu Xin in her thirties, who is lauded by the county and national governments for her contributions to nushu culture; her father is proud of her accomplishments but Hu doesn't care -- all she wants to do is continue learning as much as she can from her elderly mentor He Yanxin.

Hu wants to keep the nushu culture relevant today

Hu is a guide of the nushu museum in Jiangyong, and while she tries to educate visitors about nushu, they have no understanding of how the language works. Perhaps Hu just wants it to remain a secret language among women as per the tradition?

The government officials she encounters -- all men -- believe the best way to keep nushu alive is to commercialise it -- even having ribbons with "belt and road" written in nushu calligraphy and selling them. 

Most amusing is the opening ceremony of a nushu exchange centre and all the presiding government officials are men...

Wu Simu is a young woman in her twenties in Shanghai who is actively teaching young girls nushu songs and likes to write calligraphy. She is engaged to a man and in one scene he explains soon after they met she gave him a letter written in nushu and challenged him to translate it.

He did it in one day and recites the poem on camera, which sounds very romantic, about soulmates meeting and being together forever.

Wu loves practicing nushu calligraphy

But when she meets her future in-laws and he talks more seriously about how they need to focus on buying a home and paying the mortgage and not her nushu hobby, Wu wonders if this is the life she wants to live.

Hu reveals she was married before, but didn't fulfill her husband's expectations of what he thought a wife should do; but she hopes there is still someone out there who will satisfy her intellectually. 

In general Hidden Letters is a slow-moving movie, much like life in the rural areas, where people still live in old tiled homes and pump water to cook and clean. There are scenes in the city to show how fast-paced and cosmopolitan it is, but in the end women are still treated like second-class citizens, under pressure to not only have a career, but also look after their husband, children, parents and in-laws. It's an impossible task with high expectations.

There is a lot of calligraphy writing, but again no understanding of what the characters are, though the songs which are sung throughout the film are translated into English.

Despite not knowing more about the language, Hidden Letters is refreshing in seeing the world through these women's eyes, telling their stories and getting a sense of who they want to be and to live with purpose through nushu culture. As Wu says, it is nushu that guides her, and she feels this is the right path to follow.

Hidden Letters

89 minutes

Directed by Violet Feng Du and Zhao Qing

Written by Violet Feng Du and John Farbrother

hiddenlettersfilm.com