The April Fool

Chip Tsao (陶傑) has been making the headlines lately. His controversial article in the March 27 edition of HK Magazine - entitled "The War At Home" - has been received with widespread accusations of rascism, culminating in the Philippine government declaring him as an "undesirable alien" and barring him entry into the country (can't help but wonder if this is some twisted form of April Fool's Day prank...)

I've never been a fan of Tsao. He's pompous and so very much the "Old Oil Stick" in the way he speaks SOOOOOOO slowly and never gets straight to the point. He's always thrived on controversy but in recent years he's been relying on this trick more heavily, possibly because he has nothing interesting left to say. A few weeks back, he argued against the government's Drunk Driving policies because he claimed that they would affect the business of bars & clubs. He compared the government's new random breath test law to chemotherapy; it kills both good and bad cells. OK Mr. Tsao, if that's the metaphor that you're going for, let me counter by saying that while taking chemo may kill good cells, not taking ANY medicine at all will result in death from cancer. So unless you can invent a new wonder drug that only kills cancer cells, I suggest you keep quiet. And not to be harsh, but I sincerely doubt that you'd have the same opinion if someone you knew was affected by an intoxicated driver.

But...in all fairness, his article reads as a Satire rather than a commentary (judge for yourself, I've included the article in its entirety below). Should he have shown better judgement in writing it? Probably. But are people overreacting to the sarcasm? Definitely. And it's funny how quickly HK Magazine has distanced itself from the article. If this essay is so offensive, why did the editors approve it for publication in the first place?

Chip Tsao...he wanted to be a smart-ass but came off as just being an ass.

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The War At Home, by Chip Tsao

The Russians sank a Hong Kong freighter last month, killing the seven Chinese seamen onboard. We can live with that-—Lenin and Stalin were once the ideological mentors of all Chinese people. The Japanese planted a flag on Diàoyú Island. That's no big problem-—we Hong Kong Chinese love Japanese cartoons, Hello Kitty, and shopping in Shinjuku, let alone our round-the-clock obsession with karaoke.

But hold on-—even the Filipinos? Manila has just claimed sovereignty over the scattered rocks in the South China Sea called the Spratly Islands, complete with a blatant threat from its congress to send gunboats to the South China Sea to defend the islands from China if necessary. This is beyond reproach. The reason: There are more than 130,000 Filipina maids working as HK$3,580-a-month cheap labor in Hong Kong. As a nation of servants, you don't flex your muscles at your master, from whom you earn most of your bread and butter.

As a patriotic Chinese man, the news has made my blood boil. I summoned Louisa, my domestic assistant who holds a degree in international politics from the University of Manila, hung a map on the wall, and gave her a harsh lecture. I sternly warned her that if she wants her wages increased next year, she had better tell everyone of her compatriots in Statue Square on Sunday that the entirety of the Spratly Islands belongs to China.

Grimly, I told her that if war breaks out between the Philippines and China, I would have to end her employment and send her straight home, because I would not risk the crime of treason for sponsoring an enemy of the state by paying her to wash my toilet and clean my windows 16 hours a day. With that money, she would pay taxes to her Government, and they would fund a navy to invade our motherland and deeply hurt my feelings.

Oh yes. The Government of the Philippines would certainly be wrong if they think we Chinese are prepared to swallow their insult and sit back and lose a Falkland Islands War in the Far East. They may have Barack Obama and the hawkish American military behind them, but we have a hostage in each of our homes in the Mid-Levels or higher. Some of my friends told me they have already declared a state of emergency at home. Their maids have been made to shout 'China, Madam/Sir' loudly whenever they hear the word "Spratly". They say the indoctrination is working as wonderfully as when we used to shout, "Long live Chairman Mao!" at the sight of a portrait of our Great Leader during the Cultural Revolution. I’m not sure if that's going a bit too far, at least for the time being.