On April 21, the Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education examination (Hong Kong’s university admission examination) began, starting with English Language. As Hong Kong has gone “from chaos to governance, and from governance to prosperity,” as claimed by the government, the exam was not expected to have any abnormalities that would cause public attention. However, it turned out otherwise. After the exam, many candidates flocked to the archived Instagram of Michelle Obama, whose memoir extract was used in the exam paper, and they accused it as too difficult to understand. The language they used was savage and even racist.
In an international city—though waning—like Hong Kong, this deliberate massive online assault on a foreign politician by teenagers is too severe to be taken lightly.
According to experienced English teachers, the extract is presented logically and not difficult to follow. The problem lies with this year’s exam questions, which were drastically different from last year’s and required candidates to use their own words to make inferences or summaries rather than words from the text like the previous year, causing distress and uproar among the candidates.
Commentators say that the candidates should have complained to the Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority, which runs the exam, but it is impossible. First, the image of HKEAA has worsened these years drastically, as in 2020, it decided not to mark the answer to a question in the History exam upon the request of the Education Bureau, and HKEAA turned a deaf ear to candidates’ protests. It has also turned off comments on its official YouTube channel and censored comments on its HKEAA blog. Therefore, there is no way that candidates may get their criticisms across.
The above partly explains why candidates flocked to Michelle Obama’s Instagram instead. However, it does not justify their excessive comments. I spent hours reading such statements, many of which are unacceptable and disproportionate to the mere difficulty of an exam paper. They used many four-letter words and even explicit racist comments, accusing her of using complex expressions in her memoirs. “How much did the HKEAA pay you to torture the innocent youngsters of Hong Kong?” “Don’t blame us. Blame the HKEAA; it is the one who arbitrarily used your writing to make us fail our exam.”
Remarks like “Can you give me back my Level 3 (the passing grade of the exam)?” are civilized and welcoming.
People compare their excesses with the “Little Pink or Pinkies” (cyber-nationalists in China) in mainland China. However, on closer inspection, the two are not quite the same. The Chinese little pinks always escalate everyday issues to the national level, such as in a recent concert by Cantopop singer Ekin Cheng, Cheng’s wife, Yoyo Mung, chatted with fans in Japanese, causing severe criticisms from Chinese netizens who accused her of “forgetting her ancestors” by “talking in a devil’s language.” In contrast, the candidates’ attack on Michelle Obama had nothing to do with “national justice” but only personal interest, which is allegedly on a much lower level.
Discussions in LIHKG, commonly thought of as the Hong Kong version of Reddit, provide us with a different approach to analysis. As excessive language prevails in LIHKG posts and comments, some LIHKG members think that such English Language candidates “may have been on LIHKG more than they should have been.” They deem it “inadvisable to join LIHKG before a mature age, as it affects the mental development of kids.” In other words, the subculture of a curse among teenagers has turned them into “bulls in a china shop,” leaving behind decency and failing to tell right from wrong.
Notably, the massive promotion of xenophobia by leftist leaders such as former chief executive Leung Chun-ying, acting as China’s cultural comprador in Hong Kong, served as a background for the above blunder. Coupled with the intensifying national security education, this cultural shift makes one worry that a new generation in the making is being hostile to foreigners, finally merging with the little pinks in the mainland.
