Cantonese on demise?

[smithsgj]

I quite agree Snow, but it goes deeper than that. If they are running competitions in Hong Kong in which foreigners may take part, but only if they are of a certain skin colour... well such a racist practice would be illegal in any western country.

At least if they could speak the language there'd be some justification.

I notice you say "partially Chinese" ppl qualify. If you have one white and one "Chinese" parent, are you allowed to enter automatically? Or only if you qualify on grounds of yellowness, by some pre-determined standard?

[Guest snow]

I don't know exactly what the terms are but these last few years there are women who are half Chinese participating in miss HK. I think as long as one of your parent is Chinese you can participate. But those who can't speak Cantonese properly will certainly not be number one. There are many who parcipated in miss hk who later became actresses but only few became really successful. Most just vanish after a short time. They usually start in tvb series. But they need to speak Cantonese otherwise they can't forget about a showbizcarrier in HK. There's one miss HK she became third I think, who has started in a few tvb series but most of the times she plays a girl who lived abroad and came back to HK or a student from oversea coming back to HK.

[Quest]

Most of the Miss HK look better outside the contests. Their contest costumes, makeups and styles are seriously out of date. People keep saying Miss HKs' "quality" is getting worse and worse. I would say the way they 打扮 on the stage needs some "revolution".

[Amdir_Flassion]

I agree with the costume and make up thing u say Quest. But I think the problem is that they're trying to use Western costumes, makeup and style, even when it doesn't fit entirely well with the beauty of the Miss HK contestants. It doesn't bring out the best of their looks. Obviously, Westerners and Chinese look different. So I think the 'revolution' that's needed is Oriental style, makeup and clothing, not planting Western stuff onto contestants who can't cut the look.

The more I think about it, I think it's true. In Australia, there have been many half-Chinese half-Western contestants who have won the Miss Melbourne and Miss Sydney Chinese pageants, and I think it's probably because they fit in with the Western style and flair used to judge them due to their inherent looks.

[smithsgj]

WTF they have them in Australia as well? How do they get away with it? Doesn't anyone agree with me that this is a racist practice? What if it was a whites only beauty contest -- would that be allowed?

[trooper]

I bet that men aren’t allowed to enter either! Is that sexist or what?!

[smithsgj]

Yeah better keep the disabled out while we're at it.

I have a problem with beauty contests per se because they're a load of sexist bollocks. A lot of western countries don't really bother with them any more, like the uk, probably much for that reason.

BUT rightly or wrongly different roles for men and women in society ARE accepted by many. It's argued that men and women think differently blah blah blah. Sexism *is* perceived as more OK than racism.

[confucius]

After Teresa Teng's unfortunate death, there was a contest in Taiwan to see who could sing her songs the best. The Taiwan TV station invited participants from Hong Kong as well as overseas Chinese to compete as representatives of each territory or country. Controvesy arose when yours truly won the Hong Kong competition and was selected to represent the British Colony on the show. The Taiwan TV station did not want a foreigner to win the contest so they made a deal to have me perform a duet with a pop star from Japan as a "special guest" outside of the contest. I remember meeting the representatives from Canada and the US backstage and hearing them both sing Cantonese renditions of "Wang Ji Ta" (Forget Him) They were forced to switch to Mandarin songs at the last minute even though Deng Lijun actually recorded several Cantonese hits. The winner was a local girl from Taipei (surprise!) but everybody from outside Taiwan had a good time and enjoyed the free trip.