We’re shaking up our longstanding Pop Cantonese series by inviting author Eva Wong Yi to offer her take on distinctly Cantonese expressions. Wong is known for her Chinese-language short stories, including the collections Ways to Love in a Crowded City (擠迫之城的戀愛方法) and The Four Seasons of Lam Yip (林葉的四季).
I like to think of myself as a mild-tempered, overly forgiving person who avoids confrontation at all costs, but I must admit I often get road rage when I walk behind someone moving slower than I do. MTR stations bring out the worst in me. Tourists in Causeway Bay Station stopping in the middle of the corridor to figure out which exit translates to their destination, unaware that their physical existence as a group was slowing down foot traffic? “Zo2 zyu6 saa3” (阻住晒), I’d think to myself – what a roadblock. Crowds of slowpokes around every corner in the multi-level maze that is Admiralty Station, where a moment of obstruction can lead to you missing the train and a tedious wait for the next one? I’d escalate my mental complaint to the more personally victimising “zo2 tau4 zo2 sai3” (阻頭阻勢, “blocking my way”) as I stomp down the long escalator past everyone in my way, my hair and skirt flapping behind me dramatically like the cape of a mildly inconvenienced super villain.
But what really gets me are the people who decided that the right place to take their time pulling up their electronic payment apps from their phones would be right at the ticket gate, blocking off one of the few precious exits for everyone who just wanted to pass through and be done with this whole commute thing as quickly as possible, but instead had to be stuck waiting for the phone-wielding roadblocks to figure things out. My brain would bring out this ultimate accusation: “Zo2 zyu6 go3 dei6 kau4 zyun3” (阻住個地球轉). “Blocking the earth from spinning.” The imaginary angry mob consisting of the entire population of the planet would then cheer in agreement, and demand that routine offenders be charged with obstructing the peace and attempting to start a stampede. And then the line would move, and the reassuring beep of the ticket gate confirming payment from my Octopus card would bring me back to reality and put my rage right out.
I’m not proud of this side of me, but in my defence, Hongkongers have long been a breed to walk very, very fast, and to want other people to walk very, very fast too. In the 1960s, Malaysian Chinese singer Shang Kuan Liu Yun took the tune from The Beatles’ “Can’t Buy Me Love” and turned it into a Cantonese song “Hey, Walk Faster!” (行快啲啦喂), with the first and last lines calling for everyone to hurry up and walk faster. Hong Kong singer Samuel Hui later popularised the song in our city, and apparently gave a generation of Hongkongers a catchy tune to bust out when they wanted their peers to speed up. I don’t sing when I get road rage behind slow walkers. I’d breathe audibly, but not loudly enough to not be drowned out by the cacophonous sounds on a busy MTR platform: I’m always more of a chicken than a super villain when it comes to interacting with actual humans.
In 2018, the famous Hong Kong comedian Dayo Wong Tze-wah discussed “blocking the earth from spinning” in his sold-out farewell stand-up performance Washing My Mouth of Stand-up (金盆𠺘口). Surrounded by fans in the Hong Kong Coliseum, he reminisced about how the popular phrase reflected the collective sense of pride in the 1980s and 90s, thinking of everyone standing in their way of making a quick buck as blocking the Earth from spinning. The economic boom at the time placed Hong Kong firmly and proudly among the four Asian Tigers, alongside Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea.
In his characteristic air of cockiness, Wong channelled the shared value of Hongkongers at the time: the world was our oyster, and Hong Kong was everything. Efficiency was highly valued in the land full of opportunity, where one could really pull themselves up by their bootstraps by working hard and being smart about taking shortcuts. With enough people valuing maximum efficiency above all else, anything from holding up an overloaded elevator to environmental protection policies preventing certain kinds of development can be considered a crime against humanity as serious as blocking the earth from turning in accordance with the laws of physics and for the benefit of all life forms.
“Blocking the earth from spinning” points to the idea that the whole world is on your side, that everyone in your physical space or situation are as adversely affected and impatient as you are, and that you are expressing frustration on behalf of all of humanity towards this one entity that has made themselves your enemy. “Blocking the earth from spinning” implies you are the good guy and the obstruction is the bad guy, you are the centre of the narrative, and the other is an evil complication introduced to bring conflict to the plot. “They” are against “all of you.”
But in the case of my road rage, I have come to realise that this is not true. We have known since Galileo that the earth is not the centre of the universe, and the world doesn’t revolve around the most impatient person in the room. The slowpokes — I mean fellow passengers — have as much right to take up space in the MTR station as I do, and being easily enraged by minor inconveniences is definitely not a healthy way to live. Besides, plenty of other Hongkongers walk as fast as I do, if not faster: from their perspective, I’ve probably been the one to block their earth from spinning at one point or another.
So please be my witness, dear reader, as I continue working on my pedestrian road rage: if that fails, I’ll at least try my best to channel my rage towards the people who actually deserve it, like the manspreaders and nose pickers who flick their boogers into the shared confined space, and shamelessly stare at you while doing so.