Hong Kong star Eason Chan has a new album out.  Normally I don’t give a shit about Canto-pop but in this case the album has a song  “非禮” (Not Polite) which the Dictionary of Politically Incorrect Hong Kong Cantonese blog informs us uses the word “locust” and is filled with anti-Mainlander sentiments.

After listening to this song for more than 20 times, I came up with this interpretation. “螻蟻” (mole crickets and ants) and “頹垣玉砌” (crumbling wall made of jade,  I wrongly translated it as “ruins of jade” in the video) represent Hongkongers. “相稱禮貌” (both call themselves polite) describes that both Hongkongers and Mainlanders think they are polite enough and “相通禮貌”(both communicate with each other with “politeness”) portraits the scene which Hongkongers and Mainlanders insult each other. “隨時盛世，隨時亂世，隨時未世，街口街角只剩禮” (a prosperous period at any time, chaos at any time, the end of the world at any time, only “politeness” remains on the street) probably reflects that the lyric writer is not happy that people only argue with each other despite being ruled by a dictatorship.

Here’s the video for the song – what do you think?

(sorry the formatting is slightly off. wordpress is embedding this stuff in a different way now and I don’t know all the ins and outs of the configuration.)