Cultural literacy at The Guardian

« previous post | next post »

There has been an enormous turbulence over the simultaneous explosion of Hezbollah pagers (some call them walkie-talkies) at 3:30 PM on September 17, 2024, involving as it does actors in regions as far flung as the Middle East, Europe, and East Asia.  No one could be closer to the center of the turmoil than the gentleman in the middle of the doorway in this photograph:

He is Hsu Ching-kuang (Xǔ Qīngguāng 許清光), founder and chief executive of Taiwan tech company Gold Apollo, which is alleged to have made the offending pagers, although Hsu denies it.

The photograph comes from this article:

"‘This is very embarrassing’: Middle East crisis takes a detour to an office park in Taiwan:  Media spotlight shifted to Taiwan tech company Gold Apollo which has denied supplying the pagers that exploded across the Hezbollah network in Lebanon", by Helen Davidson and Chi-hui Lin, The Guardian (9/18/24)

I do not wish to get embroiled in all of the accusations and counter-accusations of this highly sensitive, high stakes international incident, but I do want to call attention to an uncanny, seemingly offhand remark from the The Guardian article, namely, that Gold Apollo's glass entrance "was still festooned with leftover Lunar New Year decorations wishing for prosperity." 

Since the event occurred around the time of the Mid-Autumn Festival (9/17/24), one might have thought that The Guardian slipped up and confused Mid-Autumn Festival decorations with Lunar New Year decorations.  Examining the photograph for evidence one way or the other, I spotted the red poster on the wall behind CEO Hsu.  Although the print is very small and I am on the road without a powerful magnifying glass, I think that the parallel verses of the matching couplet say:

niánnián hǎoyùn cáishén dào  rìrì cáiyuán shùnyì lái

年年好運財神到 日日財源順意來

"May good luck and the God of Wealth arrive every year; may the source of wealth smoothly come every day"

This is a typical New Year's poster showing a messenger from the Heavenly Kingdom and wishing for good fortune during the coming year.  We may refer to the figure as a ménshén 門神 ("door god").  They are customarily put on the door as spiritual guards on New Year’s Eve and they’d remain there for the rest of the year.  The banner across his chest reads “gōngxǐ fācái / Cant. gung1 hei2 faat3 coi4 恭喜發財“ ("May you be happy and prosperous!") — a Chinese New Year greeting.  Although it may seem gratuitous to mention this detail, I thought it was sharp for The Guardian not to mix up up the Chinese festivals while at the same time evoking the atmosphere at Gold Apollo which is still producing this (somewhat) outmoded technology and continues to make money from it.

Selected readings

[h.t. AntC; thanks to Jing Hu, Zhaofei Chen, Xinyi Ye, and Judit Bagi]



5 Comments »

  1. Dick Margulis said,

    September 19, 2024 @ 11:05 am

    A couple of clarifications (just based on news reports). First, the walkie-talkies that exploded on the second day were not pagers. I didn't see any mention of who manufactured the walkie-talkies. Second, the choice by Hezbollah of "this (somewhat) outmoded technology" was deliberate, as it was felt pagers would be more secure from a surveillance/intelligence-gathering perspective than cellphones would be.

  2. Potadieu said,

    September 19, 2024 @ 1:01 pm

    I wonder if this figure can be regarded as a door God.

    Door god almost always come in pairs, as far as I can remember.

    This figure is a God of wealth, Quite straightforward.

  3. Sodiessli said,

    September 19, 2024 @ 7:35 pm

    "was still festooned with leftover Lunar New Year decorations"

    Leftover? Are the reporters suggesting that the poster of the god of wealth should be removed after the Chinese New Year?

    It is quite common for the general public to keep this kind of poster posted for the rest of the year. They may replace it by a new one at the end of the year.

    As suggested by the couplet, "may the source of wealth smoothly come every day", why can't it be posted every day and have to be removed after the Chinese New Year?

  4. AntC said,

    September 20, 2024 @ 5:33 am

    "was still festooned with leftover …"

    Thanks @Sodiessli, yes it was The Guardian's veiled suggestion of carelessness that caught my notice: like this was just the sort of incompetence Mossad would take advantage of.

    Poor, flustered Mr Hsu's vehement denials have been playing continually on Taiwan's news channels. The government has stepped in to audit the company's trading, and has issued a formal rejection of the foul calumny. (Taiwan in the news for all the wrong reasons,)

    Most Taiwanese' reactions have been Wha?! Pagers are still a thing?

  5. Mark Roy said,

    September 21, 2024 @ 6:06 pm

    I believe those pagers were manufactured in Hungary under a Taiwanese badge.

RSS feed for comments on this post

Leave a Comment