"THREE MEN WALK INTO the room. Their names are Tsui Wah, Tsan Yuk and Wing Lung..."

What's strange about the names of these characters?
To the ears of anyone not originally from Hong Kong they may all sound perfectly reasonable.
In fact, Tsui Wah is a fast food restaurant chain, Tsan Yuk is a hospital on Hong Kong island and Wing Lung is the name of a bank!

In my many years at the Hong Kong Writers Circle I've come across all sorts of Cantonese character names that somehow don't ring true, and some that have caused locals to laugh out loud. Some have sounded like they were lifted directly from shop signs. Is that so bad? Well, ask yourself if you have ever considered the name Ronald McDonald for a character. No? Well, it's similar to that.

When writing about a character from our own culture we naturally put a lot of thought into their name and what it says about them. Coming from England, I can read a character name like Bertram Wilberforce Wooster and be quite sure about his gender, where he comes from and even what his social standing might be. There is as much that can be deduced from Chinese names, even by non-Chinese-speaking people. When writing about Hong Kong, and indeed when writing for an international readership, we need to put in as much, if not more, care into our choice of character names.

With this in mind, here's a list of some common errors and how to avoid them:

1. Girls and Boys

          "Ka Po was a man's man - straight out of Hemingway..."

Chinese Characters (capital C) can be romanised in various ways and some names (eg: Wong) represent multiple Characters. Nevertheless, a local can usually tell whether a romanised name is male (Ka Ho) or female (Ka Po), and can spot an unusual or unlikely name a mile off.
It is a minefield but to save you some trouble, below is a handy Cantonese Name Generator with dozens of given names drawn from genuine contemporary name lists (just don't ask me my source!) Simply pick a surname and a female or male given name and Chan Man Hei's your uncle!

* Download the Cantonese Name Generator

2. Toby, or not Toby?

          "David and Chak Yuen sat down to bowls of steaming noodles..."

Generally speaking, people in the same social situation have similar characteristics. In other words, a group of friends in Hong Kong are likely to all go by their English names or all by their Chinese names. This is something I have observed in Hong Kong and there are other examples (eg: whether people send text messages in English or Chinese). The example above is inauthentic for this reason.
Now, before you assault me with real-life exceptions, consider also that in fiction anything that is mentioned is assumed to have a purpose - the rifle  hanging on the wall in Chapter 1 should go off in Chapter 2 or 3. If a character with one arm is introduced in a story, the reader will expect their disability to play a part in the plot, and in this case it is perhaps an unfortunate prejudice. With the above example, I would assume that Chak Yuen has a slightly different background to David - perhaps different schooling, or perhaps David grew up on Hong Kong island whilst Chak Yuen spent his early years in Guangdong. If these expectations are not then answered in the story it is irritating for the reader and feels like bad writing. Aim for consistency with English or Cantonese names in a single story.

3. The natural order

          "Leung Wing Yan, Doris, the cleaner, it transpired, had, formerly, been a secret agent..."

In former times, Hong Kong people would render their names thus:
          "Doris Leung Wing Yan"
I tend to think this is quite nice as it preserves the natural order of names for both languages: "Doris Leung" and "Leung Wing Yan". Recently, however (perhaps with a vague post-colonial intent), names are rendered thus:
          "Leung Wing Yan, Doris"
This is a little unfortunate as one now hears sentences like this:
          "My name is Leung Wing Yan, Doris, and I'm seven years old."
Which makes me think, "Don't call me Doris!"
And it also necessitates an extra comma, which is, clearly, the last thing that some writers, such as myself, need. I would suggest sticking with a nice, simple "Doris Leung" or "Leung Wing Yan" unless...

4. My family and other exceptions

          "Vincent, come and eat your
dinner!..."

...unless you're bringing family into the equation.
A Hong Kong person who goes by their English name with friends and colleagues is unlikely to use it with their parents. Parents will refer to their offspring with the familiar prefix "Ah-" followed by the second part of their given name. So, our friend Doris Leung Wing Yan will be called "Ah Yan" by her mother, and Vincent Cheung Man Hei will be "Ah Hei". Very small children may be called Yan Yan or Hei Hei (this is a diminutive form, like the Spanish "-ita" or "-ito").
It is also common for families to use the same first character for siblings' given names, so Vincent Cheung Man Hei's brothers will be Man Kit and Man Lap, for example.
Between siblings, the rather affected-sounding "First Older Brother" and "Second Younger Sister" is sometimes used, but for writing this is probably best avoided unless you want your dialogue scenes to tie you (and your reader) up in knots!

5. ...not!

          "Johnny Ng Ho Fai was the fastest runner in his class and he knew it..."

The Chinese love puns and word play and some references can be very obscure and convoluted to explain. Some are familiar, such as the avoidance of the number 4 (which is a homophone of the word for "death"). A less well-known one is the surname Ng. Chinese people often give impressive and flattering names to their children, but the Ng family may not because Ng sounds like the word for "not". So, poor Johnny, who has the inspiring name "Ho Fai" (Very Fast) has in fact been labelled Not Very Fast. This is worth bearing in mind for female characters too whose names suggest that they are an incomparable beauty or an unsurpassed intellect.

6. Two or Three?

          "Li Ying was as Cantonese as a Pineapple Bun..."

Generally speaking, people of Cantonese (Guangdong) origin have three names: a surname and two given names. People from other parts of China are likely to have just two names (ie: just one given name). Not always, I hasten to add, but often. So, as with Point 2 - bear in mind what your character name may be saying about him or her. Li Ying doesn't sound very Cantonese at all!

7. Where is He from?

          "Mr Siu, Mr Xiao and Mr Hsiao were discussing schizophrenia..."

The romanisation of a name also tells the reader something about their character. The names above are all the same name, the first being the Hong Kong/Cantonese rendering, the second being the Mainland/Mandarin rendering, and the third being the Taiwan/Wade-Giles rendering.
There is a lot to say about romanisation of Chinese Characters in English language stories, but I'll save that for another time. If you're unsure, check the table on Wikipedia's Chinese Surnames page.

8. Better left unsaid?

          "Björn waved goodbye to Stockholm and flew back to Hong Kong, the place where he was born. The End."

Finally, a more general point. We live in a globalised world where (as many people argue) borders and nationality and race are more fluid and less relevant every day. Hong Kong, with its "English names", its multiple languages and its transient communities, epitomises this.
It does, however, lead to some unique problems in writing (and reading). We tend to make much broader assumptions about characters than we do about real people. For example, if I read a story about Björn, a disaffected art student living in Stockholm, I would assume he is Swedish. If he is revealed in fact to be Chinese it feels like an unintentional twist in the story and, more to the point, poor writing. This example is silly of course, but I have read stories that are just as jarring. It is reasonable that a Chinese person living in Sweden would take a Swedish-sounding "English" name, but not mentioning his nationality feels like withholding it. While I dislike writing that front-loads all the backstory (especially into the first sentence - more about that next time too), I think it is preferable to get these details out of the way quickly so that you don't include an unintentional twist later on in the story.
This problem extends in all sorts of directions, far beyond just writing about Hong Kong. There are debates at the moment about the marginalisation of women and men in the use of male or female pronouns in gender neutral situations, for example:
          "I was mugged in Central Park last night."
          "Really? Did she take anything?"

Overall, these are generalisations, but story writing demands consistency in a way that real life does not. If you did meet a Chinese person called Björn in real life, I'm sure you wouldn't be wondering whether his name was going to be an unresolved plot point later on, or whether it was indicative of some sort of subtextual theme. But a more multi-media literate readership, combined with the almost ubiquitous use of the 'third person limited' point-of-view demand clarity and consistency from writers.
I think, then, these points about Chinese names go back to a favourite quote of mine from GV Carey's "Mind The Stop", where he writes:
          "Don't mislead your reader, even for a second."
Carey was talking about punctuation, but it applies to other parts of writing too, including names.

- SCC Overton

by SCC Overton

April sees the publication of the Hong Kong Writers Circle's latest anthology, Of Gods And Mobsters - a collection of "Classic Tales Retold in Hong Kong".

Retelling the classics has a long and upstanding history in literature, so here are ten tales that have been retold, often time and time again.

1. Ulysees by James Joyce (1922)

Retelling of: Homer's The Odyssey

Often cited as the defining work of Modernism, Ulysees takes place on a single day in the lives of Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus in Dublin (the sixteenth of June, in fact, still celebrated in Ireland as 'Bloomsday'). Joyce tied characters and events in his novel to those in The Odyssey, and also peppered his work with literary references and allusions designed to "keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant." 

2. Robin Hood

Retold: since the 16th Century

One might imagine that a story like that of Robin Hood, being so much a part of the popular consciousness, must have a definitive version. But in fact, the story comes from a long and tangled web of ballads, folk tales, poems, plays and, eventually, novels. The most famous of these novels must be Ivanhoe, by Sir Walter Scott (1819) where our hero appears as Robin of Locksley. He appeared in his own novel in Howard Pyle's The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood (1883) and then pretty much consistently throughout the 20th Century, where his adventures were also televised, filmed, and made into comics, video games and even operas.

3. Grimms' Fairy Tales (1812)

Retelling of: German folk tales

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm collected and published around 200 'Children's and Household Tales' in the early 19th Century. Their research grew out of an interest in the origins of the German language and the mythology of the German people. They would visit the houses of peasants and listen carefully to the stories, noting down details of the story and the manner of its telling before arriving at a final version, to which, they maintained, "We have added nothing of our own, embellished no incident or feature. Each is given substantially as we received it, though skill was needed to distinguish one version from another." These tales have themselves been retold in innumerable versions and formats, which reflects the oral tradition out of which they first appeared.

4. Twilight by Stephenie Meyer (2005)

Retelling of: Bram Stoker's Dracula

It may be a controversial claim, that the wildly popular series of young adult novels is essentially a rewrite, but when one considers the wild popularity of Bram Stoker's 1897 novel perhaps it isn't. Vampires existed before Stoker put pen to paper, but the Irish novellist defined the modern vampire whose image persists today; one associated with gothic romanticism, sex and virginity. In fact, such is the pervasiveness of Stoker's Count Dracula that one might be excused for thinking that he did invent the vampire. Twilight takes these same themes and gives them a 21st Century twist. Now, the Victorian sexual conventions have become the subtext-that-everybody-knows-about (sexual abstinence), and the cordial count has become an angsty teenager. It is a best seller today just as Dracula was over a hundred years ago.

5. A Dream of Red Mansions by Cao Xueqin (18th Century)

Retold: Ummm, well, read on...

A Dream of Red Mansions is regarded as the pinnacle of classical Chinese literature. It concerns two branches of the Jia clan and their rise and fall, which mirrors the rise and fall of the Qing dynasty. The novel's author, who based his narrative upon his own life, was said to have completed around 110 chapters, but only 80 of these were originally published. The version most commonly read today consists of 120 chapters and is a complete novel, but it is unclear to what extent the editor, Gao E, was merely editing Cao's original manuscripts, or was writing new sections from scratch, or was perhaps working from notes provided by Cao or his family. It is an authorship debate that is unlikely to be resolved.

6. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith

Retelling of: Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice

From the great to the dreadful. There are an enormous amount of these 'mash-up' novels available today and the very concept is a Media Studies dissertation in the making. The mash-up novel is born of the Internet age, where public domain and copyright-cleared books are available for free through Project Gutenberg and other outlets, and cultural ouput has become (as Jean Baudrillard predicted) 'simulacrum' and "bears no relation to any reality whatsoever". And yet, is it any better or worse a retelling than any of the others in this list?

7. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard

Retelling of: Shakespeare's Hamlet

Stoppard's play takes place 'in the wings' of Shakespeare's Hamlet, as it were, concerning two minor characters from the famous play and their thoughts on life, the universe and the tradegy unfolding through the keyhole. The play is an exercise in metatheatre, and the levels of this become bewildering, as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern perform role plays and mimic each other, and even pantomime parts of Hamlet itself.

8. The Letters of Abélard and Héloïse (12th Century)

Retold by: Alexander Pope, among others

Abélard and Héloïse conducted an illicit affair during the 12th Century and their correspondance some fifteen years after their separation became legendary. Alexander Pope retold the tragic romance in a poem in 1717, and it was later quoted in the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind:
How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd ...

9. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

Retold: Endlessly

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland has (according to Wikipedia) 28 literary retellings and sequels, 26 works which reference or allude to it, not to mention 16 films and 18 television adaptations based upon it. The fact that it continues to be important (which is odd, as it is exemplary of literary 'nonsense') may be down to its universal themes - innocence, dreams, subversion, death, symbolism - or that it is a children's classic and is well remembered by adults.

10. Of Gods and Mobsters by the Hong Kong Writers Circle

Retellings of: everything from Homer to Holmes and Lady MacBeth to King Midas.

Classical gods and heroes. Men and women of myth, legend and folklore. Characters from the greatest nineteenth and twentieth century novels. All of them relocated, reimagined and retold in Hong Kong.
Why is that not a strange concept?
For a start, Hong Kong is one of the few places in the world where bumping into a person named Zeus or Aphrodite would occasion little surprise. The myriad ‘English’ names that are encountered here reflect Hong Kong’s own brand of cosmopolitanism: a kind of cheerful superficiality. The name you go by, just like the image you project here or the culture you embrace, can be worn as lightly or as sincerely as you choose. Hong Kong is a city where everything is available, and everything is permitted, and thus it is a city characterised by the incongruous and the anachronistic.
And so in this collection of short stories and poems, with little suspension of disbelief, classic tales are retold in Hong Kong and gods rub shoulders with mobsters.
Many would argue that all story-telling is re-telling, especially if you subscribe to the belief that there are only seven plots in literature: overcoming the monster, rags to riches, voyage and return, quest, comedy, tragedy, and rebirth. You can certainly find all of these within the pages of this book.
Hong Kong is a city where our writers have imagined a place for themselves, and its streets and topography provide a canvas on which to express their imaginations.
As Ovid wrote in his Metamorphoses, "Everything changes, nothing perishes." And re-telling is surely a form of literary metamorphosis. So, the HKWC invites you to find out what has changed and what has remained the same in the retelling of classic stories in this new anthology.