TVB series Inbound Troubles becomes famous overseas! The New York
Times published an article "Hong Kong TV Drama Plays Out Uneasy Ties with
China" on February 10th, introducing the series and its topics. Once the news
came out, Louis Cheung and Bob Lam quickly reposted on Weibo. As one of the
leads, Wong Cho Lam expressed: "Wah! 'Inbounds' on the New York Times? So
actually, this series didn't just gain attention in HK and Mainland, but also
got international recognition! All the hard work and efforts by the crew and the
cast really was worth it!" Also, TVB expressed Inbounds is the current
titleholder of the top rated series of 2013, the series averaged 30 points and
peaked 34 points.
Original article from The New York Times
Spoiler:
Hong Kong TV Drama Plays Out Uneasy Ties With China
By GERRY
MULLANY
Published: February 10, 2013
HONG KONG — The tensions between
residents here and mainland Chinese visitors dominate the headlines of the
city’s papers, with mainlanders blamed for a shortage of school slots, bad
manners in stores and a hypercharged property market.
So it should come
as little surprise that a television show would come along to tap into these
anxieties and, perhaps in a gift to the show’s producers, also draw the
attention of mainland censors.
“Inbound Troubles” tells the story of two
cousins — one from Hong Kong and the other from the mainland — and the tensions
in a city whose wealth increasingly rests on a flood of mainland visitors who
nevertheless draw scorn for lavish spending and, some say, boorish
ways.
In the show, the cousin from mainland China is shown littering,
running red lights and parking illegally, while the one from Hong Kong makes his
living with a travel agency that specializes in encouraging new arrivals from
the mainland to part with more of their cash.
The TVB network program,
which has just ended its monthlong run, was shown as the city’s leadership
struggled to confront the latest supposed peril attributed to mainlanders: a
shortage of baby formula said to have been caused by the hoarding of supplies by
mainland Chinese who have crossed the border into Hong Kong (apparently out of
fear of tainted supplies in China).
Some Hong Kong residents have become
so agitated about the formula milk problem that they have asked the United
States to intervene, using a petition on the White House Web site titled, “Baby
Hunger Outbreak in Hong Kong, International Aid Requested.”
The petition,
created in late January, has already drawn 23,000 signatures.
The show’s
candid depictions of mainland-Hong Kong relations — one scene focuses on the
formula shortage — have drawn hundreds of complaints to Hong Kong regulators
from viewers upset at things like its portrayals of mainlanders and its
depiction of the Hong Kong’s tourism industry as predatory. And Chinese
officials censored trailers for the program on the mainland, where it could be
viewed on TVB’s overseas channel or through video streaming.
China also
did some trimming of the version shown on the mainland, once the program began
there. It deleted a depiction of a protest outside a Hong Kong clothing store, a
scene apparently based on a demonstration against a Dolce & Gabbana store
that let free-spending mainlanders photograph merchandise while barring Hong
Kong residents from doing the same.
Still, the show clearly struck a
nerve, becoming the TVB channel’s highest-rated drama this year.
To some,
the tensions captured in the show are a natural outgrowth of fears about
Beijing’s increasing influence in Hong Kong, a former British colony that
retained considerable legal autonomy and civil rights after it was handed back
to China in 1997.
“Politically, more and more Hong Kongers resent the
fact that Beijing is tightening its control over Hong Kong’s political
development,” Willy Lam, a scholar on Chinese history and politics at the
Chinese University of Hong Kong, wrote in an e-mail.
He added that the
current leader of Hong Kong, Leung Chun-ying, “is seen as a yes-man chief
executive bowing to every instruction from the mainland
authorities.”
“There is a common feeling that fat-cat mainlanders are
driving up real estate prices,” he said. “You have witnessed of course the drama
over formula milk powder.”
Although polls show that an increasing number
of Hong Kong residents hold pessimistic views about the city’s future and Hong
Kong-mainland relations, in “Inbound Troubles” the two cousins gradually
acclimate to each other, with the one from the mainland adapting to local
ways.
Viewers say they appreciate the show’s realistic depictions of the
shifting social dynamics of Hong Kong and the growing impact of mainland China
and its visitors on the city.
“I have a few bad experiences with
mainlanders — most of them have to do with them jumping queues or being rude,”
said Tai Wing-yi, a student at Hong Kong Baptist University. “But not all are
like that. Some of my classmates are from the mainland, and they are nice to be
around, and they work hard. In fact, they are the ones who contribute more than
the locals in group projects.
“The show highlighted the tension between
mainland Chinese and locals in a funny way, and got the message across in a
lighthearted manner,” she said.
Chen Min, a mainland journalist who has
visited Hong Kong many times, said his social circle in the city included many
more-educated and better-off local residents, who were usually polite, but that
not all encounters were so smooth.
“Occasionally you run into problems
that you didn’t encounter before,” he said. “Like a taxi driver who refuses to
take you because you speak Mandarin, although you’re holding a map and address
in Chinese.”
On another occasion, Mr. Chen said, he was lugging a heavy
suitcase to a taxi. “The driver joked, ‘Carrying cash to buy an apartment?’
”
The popularity of the show — there is already talk of a movie —
suggests that it could pave the way for treatments with similar themes, much as,
in the United States, “All in the Family” started a subgenre of politically
tinged situation comedies during the turbulence of the Vietnam War.
In an
opinion piece in Global Times, a populist mainland newspaper, Wendy Wang, a
freelance writer from Shanghai, noted that mainlanders had long been derided on
Hong Kong television, with men often portrayed as mobsters and women as flirty
or worse.
But after the 1997 return of Hong Kong to Chinese rule,
“mainlanders’ characters grew wealthier but not wiser,” she
wrote.
Chris Buckley and Calvin Yang contributed reporting.
A version of this article appeared in print on
February 11, 2013, on page B4 of the New York edition with the headline: Hong
Kong TV Show Plays on Uneasy Ties With China.
Source: Oriental Daily
