New New Year's couplets
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From a friend in Hong Kong:
The following pictures are from Shatin mall last night. They show people lining up to get individually calligraphed Chinese New Year’s couplets that take up the key slogan of the protests: “Restore HK’s glory: revolution for our times.” On the way up to mass today, we saw new slogans spray-painted calling for HK independence as “the only way out”. “It ain’t over yet.”
The verses read:
gwong1 fuk6 hoeng1 gong2
si4 doi6 gaak3 ming6
光復香港
時代革命
"Liberate Hong Kong, the revolution of our times / Free Hong Kong, revolution now" (but there is much discussion over how best to translate this slogan, for which see the readings below)
Selected readings
- "Hong Kong protests: 'recover' or 'liberate'" (11/3/19)
- "Vocabulary of Hong Kong protest slogans and new characters" (9/1/19)
- "Hong Kong protesters' argot" (9/7/19) — includes a long list of relevant posts
- "Loose Romanization for Cantonese" (9/31/19)
- "Women's Romanization for Hong Kong" (8/17/19)