Hong Kong People Can't Write

Right now, there's two jobs that I find the easiest. One is a bank teller/manager (easy hours, since those damn places seem closed most of the time), and the other is a Hong Kong writer.

Just listen to any Cantopop song. The tune sounds familiar? That's right, you heard it before in Japan. Almost half (and I'm being conservative!) of Cantopop music has been ripped off from J-pop. (Although the Taiwanese could be just as guilty - I lost my appetite in a restaurant when subjected to a Taiwanese boy group's rendition of Backstreet Boy's Get Down.) So that leaves only the lyrics, which aren't really "written" per se either, considering how they are often formulaic phrases bunched together.

And it's not just pop music either. My mom is now watching a drama, which involves this cop whose father was murdered. He makes a call in his cell phone, one of those old-school brick-sized Motorolas that his late father used. The cell phone fizzes out, but surprisingly connects to the other line to another man. The man is his long-dead father! It turns out the same old cell phone connected back in time years ago before the cop's father was killed.

The premise sounds familiar? Yup, you got it! It was the pretty much the story of a 2000 US movie called Frequency, starring Dennis Quaid and James "Jesus" Caviezel, except a few detail swaps here and there. How sad that Hong Kong media is so creatively challenged.

I guess I shouldn't be so hard on Hong Kong writers. After all, that's not the only show that's on Fairchild TV (the predominant Cantonese TV channel) right now, and that show may not be a good representation of all the fine programs Hong Kong has to offer. Take, for example, another prime time drama airing on Fairchild right now.

Oh wait, it's a dubbed-over Korean show.