A tale of two cities in uniforms: the story behind green school ties, tartan skirts and blue cheongsams
From Chinese cheongsams to English pleated skirts, we look at how uniforms transcend time in Hong Kong
School uniforms are often caches of bittersweet memories for most former pupils in Hong Kong, where strict dress codes are still largely adopted. That said, uniforms can often reveal a school’s heritage.
Malvern College Hong Kong, set to open this September in Providence Bay, next to the Science Park, has a uniform that dates back to its British roots in 1865, when the mother school was founded in Malvern, an English town in Worcestershire. The school has now established outlets in Qingdao, Chengdu, Egypt and this year, Hong Kong.
Let Hong Kong be itself, a city where life always finds a way
- Like a flower growing from the pavement, Hong Kong’s unique charm comes from those who take up space in the cracks of modernity
Every Sunday, when I walk through the covered walkways of Central, I feel as though I’ve stepped into a parallel universe. Past Exchange Square, in the same spots occupied by cigarette-smoking financiers on weekdays, I see middle-aged men lying face down for a cut-price massage.
As someone who’s had to explain what goes on in our streets every Sunday to friends and family, it’s a shame that all we can give these women is the gift of a blind eye. But what I also have is an immense amount of respect for the ways in which they find room for joy and community. Whether it’s through roadside karaoke sessions or birthday parties hosted beneath the shade of a highway flyover, on Sundays, they will find a way.
He observes that it’s those constraints that historically gave rise to the ingenious and resourceful ways people have managed to blur the lines between shop and pavement, official and unofficial, public and private.
The way our helpers spill out onto the streets on their days off is hardly a shining symbol of success for Hong Kong’s street life. Nevertheless, to me, it’s also one of the city’s last remaining acknowledgements of the inevitability of informal urban spaces.
After all, cities are habitats for life. Much like the strength of a single flower that grows out of the smallest and most barren of cracks, life always finds a way. In fact, it’s in these informal spaces and from these resourceful spirits that Hong Kong draws its unique character.
It’s the energy of having an open-air wet market where you can buy some of the freshest herbs in the city just blocks away from JP Morgan’s local office, the absurdity of knowing where to find the birdcage seller who is often covered head to toe in pigeons and the familiar sight of chef’s jackets drying on the bamboo scaffolding outside a siu mei (Cantonese roast meats) shop.
Without suggesting we turn back the clock to a time when businesses were allowed to operate under ambiguous health and safety codes, we mustn’t allow our informal spaces and intangible culture to fade away even more.
To quote DeWolf one last time: “Almost everything remarkable about this city is rooted in its long history of grass roots self-organisation … Hong Kong has a hustler’s spirit, always searching for an advantage, a way over, under or around the obstacle ahead”. And so it is.
Annika Park is a senior strategist at TBWA Hong Kong. The views expressed here are her own
How Singapore and Malaysia’s coffee names reveal the region’s history of multiculturalism
- The Economist recently extolled the virtues of Australia’s flat white, but linguists will find coffee terms in Singapore and Malaysia more interesting
- In any kopitiam – a Malay-Hokkien fusion meaning ‘coffee shop’ – names reveal the history of immigration in the region, making for some very multicultural cups
The flat white – two shots of espresso with gently steamed milk and little or no foam, described as a more velvety cappuccino – was recently described by The Economist as “Australia’s greatest culinary export”.
Australia’s coffee culture is rooted in post-World War II Italian immigrants’ coffee techniques – and language.
Since the 1980s, coffee staples down under have borne typically pithy Australian monikers: “short black” (a regular espresso), “long black” (one made larger with additional hot water), “short/long mac” and “cap” (clipped from macchiato and cappuccino, respectively).
One explanation for “flat white” suggests that patrons, finding airy foam adding nothing to the drink, would ask for just “flat” milk.
For language lovers, it is the coffee typologies in other contexts that get us high.
The word kopitiam itself – included in the Oxford English Dictionary – comes from the Malay kopi “coffee”, adapted from the Dutch koffie, plus the Hokkien tiàm “shop”. Kopi samplings include:
Kopi: coffee with sugar and condensed milk.
Kopi o: coffee with sugar. O is Hokkien 烏 o͘ (pronounced “aw”), meaning “black, dark”, semantic extensions from “crow (bird)”.
Kopi o kosong: coffee without sugar and milk. Kosong is Malay for “empty”, also used for “zero”.
Kopi C: coffee with sugar and evaporated milk. C has long been believed to represent the initial letter of Carnation, a widely used brand of evaporated milk, though another explanation refers to the pronunciation in Hainanese of the word 鮮 “fresh”, for evaporated milk.
Kopi kau: extra-concentrated coffee, with sugar and condensed milk. Kau is the Hokkien 厚 kāu, for liquids that are “thick, rich, strong”.
Kopi siew dai: coffee with less sugar and condensed milk. Siew dai is the Cantonese 少 síu, “less”, and 底 dái, “bottom, base” – condensed milk or sugar comprise the usual base added first to the cup.
In contrast with the “flat white diplomacy” being touted, something like kopi C kau siew dai offers a fresher, richer embracing of multiculturalism and inclusion.
