Hong Kong Students Boycott Classes in Democracy Fight (By Cheng Ka Lok, Joe)

Source: <<紐約時報>> The New York Times – Asia Pacific 

(Extract)

Hong Kong Students Boycott Classes in Democracy Fight

Students at the Chinese University of Hong Kong on Monday, protesting proposed rules that would strengthen the role of China in the city’s elections. (Lam Yik Fei/Getty Images)

HONG KONG — Thousands of Hong Kong university students abandoned classes on Monday to rally against Chinese government limits on voting rights, a bellwether demonstration of the city’s appetite for turning smoldering discontent into street-level opposition.

“University students must shoulder the responsibility of these times,” Nathan Law Kwun-chung, the acting president of the student union of Lingnan University, told the crowd crammed into the main quad at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Some held banners of their universities, and many others umbrellas to ward off the sun in this tropical former British colony.

“Boycotting classes is just the first wave of resistance,” Mr. Law said. “Today is not the last step for us all. It’s the first step, and countless resistance campaigns will bear fruit.”

The striking students, who have said they will boycott classes for the week, are at the vanguard of a planned succession of protests against rules proposed by China that would effectively give Beijing the right to screen candidates for the post of Hong Kong’s top official.

Students posting papers on a wall during Monday’s protest. “University students must shoulder the responsibility of these times,” one leader said. (Lam Yik Fei/Getty Images)

High school students plan to join the boycott for a day on Friday. While the strike’s first day indicated a modest start, the biggest showdown will come if the main pro-democracy group, Occupy Central With Love and Peace, succeeds in vows to flood Central, the city’s main business district, with demonstrators.

The confrontation with Beijing has moved the territory to the front lines of the battle for democratic rights in China since a government clampdown silenced much dissent on the mainland. Since Hong Kong was returned by Britain to Chinese rule in 1997, it has enjoyed considerable legal autonomy under the “one country, two systems” formula, in which Hong Kong residents retained rights not available elsewhere in China.

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Frustration with Chinese policy in Hong Kong is especially deep among the young, and contention over voting rights has given many otherwise apolitical students a jolt of civic engagement.

The student strike is the first large-scale gauge, since a modest protest the day the Chinese legislature announced the plan, of how much support pro-democracy groups can muster.

Hong Kong, with a population of about 7.2 million, has more than 78,000 undergraduates enrolled in its seven main universities and a teacher-training college, and there are about 10 smaller colleges. Organizers said about 13,000 students had attended the rally, but they did not immediately have an estimate of the number of students who boycotted classes on Monday.

VIDEO

http://www.nytimes.com/video/world/asia/100000003130385/hong-kong-students-rally-for-reform.html?smid=pl-share

Pro-democracy protesters explain why they gathered at the Chinese University of Hong Kong for the start of a week-long boycott of classes. Publish Date September 22, 2014. (Photo by Xaume Olleros/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images.)


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President Xi Jinping appears unlikely to give in to democracy demands.

On Monday, he met a delegation of some of Hong Kong’s wealthiest tycoons, many of whom have argued that street protests like those threatened by Occupy Central would imperil the city’s reputation for business-friendly stability. In published comments afterward, he told the business leaders that the Chinese government’s basic policies on Hong Kong “have not changed and will not change,” Xinhua, the state-run news agency, reported.

Students on the main campus of the University of Hong Kong noted a drop in attendance of local students on Monday. Benny Tai, an associate professor of law at the university, who is a founder of Occupy Central, said his morning class was half-empty.

“Last week we had an almost full class there, so I assume a lot of them decided to join the boycott,” he said.

Most students from the Chinese mainland avoided the strike, though some watched from the sidelines.

Jean Wang, a Communist Party member from Zhejiang Province on China’s east coast, attended the protest to make a video for her journalism class. It was interesting to see the Hong Kong students exercising their right to protest, she said.

“But in the end,” she added, “like with the Scotland referendum, they won’t get the result they want.”

After reading this piece of news, have you found any bilingual elements within the paragraphs? 

閱畢整篇報道，你能從中找出多少雙語元素呢?

Here is my analysis !!

1. The word "boycott" used in the headline

I believed that most of the people who speak in Cantonese must know the word "杯葛". Its pronunciation is similar to the English word "boycott". However, how many of you know the origin of this interesting word? Let me explain it to you!

"杯葛"是英文"BOYCOTT"的譯音，意思是"反抗和抵制"。其實，"BOYCOTT"本來是一個人名，全名叫做Charles Cunningham Boycott，生於1832年，死於1897年，是北愛爾蘭一名惡漢，專替貴族大地主等收租，手段兇殘，專逼害那些窮困的佃戶。於是，佃戶一呼百應，聯合起來對付逼害者。Boycott敵不過他們，惟有落荒而逃，自始面目無光，備受困擾痛苦而死。愛爾蘭佃戶打勝此仗，轟動一時，影響深遠。此後但凡抵制或斷絕關係，成為政治經濟鬥爭手段，就以此位愛爾蘭收租者的姓氏命名，叫做"杯葛"。

(後排右數第四個戴黑帽子的，就是Boycott本人了!!)

2. The photo used under the headline

Photo description: Students at the Chinese University of Hong Kong on Monday, protesting proposed rules that would strengthen the role of China in the city’s elections. 

在那幅照片中，大家應看到罷課學生擠滿中文大學「百萬大道」。若你細看擺放於路中的橫額，會發現上面寫著三句很有意義的句子：「傳人本之道，授民主基業，解未來之惑。」這十五字真言既盛載著「傳道、授業、解惑」的中國文化傳統，同時充分顯示「民主」在香港必不可少。

    然而，撰稿的記者沒有解釋橫額上文字的意思，亦無提及"democracy"，只是借圖片帶出香港大學生不滿中央政府干預香港普選行政長官，表達要求收回人大決議的訴求。

3. Occupy Central With Love and Peace

~~Its origin~~

Occupy Central (Chinese: 佔領中環 or 佔中 in media reports) is a civil disobedience campaign initiated by Benny Tai Yiu-ting, Associate Professor of Law at the University of Hong Kong, and advocated by Occupy Central with Love and Peace (organisation: OCLP -- Chinese: 讓愛與和平佔領中環 or 簡稱和平佔中). 

In the course of the 2014 Hong Kong electoral reform, OCLP pressurises the PRC Government into granting universal suffrage and civil nomination in Hong Kong Chief Execution election in 2017 as promised according to the Hong Kong Basic Law Article 45.

4. “One country, two systems” 一國兩制

I think all of you must have heard of the “one country, two systems” principle which is an idea originally proposed by Deng Xiaoping. Yet, nowadays, many Hong Kong citizens think that the name of the principle should be changed to “one country, two incompatible systems”. It is because Hong Kong people think that the Central Government in Beijing has been deepening the 'one country' part of this formula and eroding the two systems by restricting Hong Kong's freedoms and undercutting its liberal tenets in recent years. 

5. The One-minute Video 

Have you watched the video? In the video, three interviewees were featured. They are the general secretary of the Hong Kong Federation of Students, a student from the University of Hong Kong and the pro-democracy legislator Alan Leung. They expressed their views in English. It showed that the New York Times regard the people who can speak and listen to English as the target readers. It also implied that not only Hongkongers concern about this protest but also the citizens all around the world. 

6. The use of Chinese pinyin in the news

- Xi Jinping

Obviously, it is the Chinese name of the President of the People's Republic of China. 

- Xinhua 

It refers to the Xinhua News Agency which is the state press agency of the People's Republic of China.

- Zhejiang

Zhejiang, formerly romanized as Chekiang, is an eastern coastal province of the People's Republic of China.

7. Translation of Xi Jinping's speech

The Chinese government’s basic policies on Hong Kong “have not changed and will not change,”

此句乃翻譯自中國國家主席習近平會見香港商界富豪及專業界代表時所言。在會議中，他指出：「中央政府在香港的基本的方針政策沒有變，也不會變」，顯示中央政府態度強硬，堅決維護<<基本法>>的權威。