I got lucky I suppose. The COVID-19 situation esculated globally and the library is shut down as of now.
But last week, I went on a walk for books for my article writing (WITH A MASK ON, AND NOT TOUCHING MA FACE!), and on the way I wanted to document how many mascots I might run in to. The walk started from leaving my home in North Point to make it to the Central Library in Tin Hau, which took around 35 minutes.
Having stayed home for too long, the usual location/ shop archive in my head wasn’t functioning too well. So it was about 10 minutes in to my walk I remembered that I would passby one of the biggest 2nd hand book shop in my area named Sam Kee Book Co.(Kee basically mean shop, and is an old Cantanese saying. The shop is roughly translated as Sam’s).
There were a few titles that caught my attention, a 3 volume by acclaimed HK local professor and ex-government advisor Chan Wun which documented the cultural development of Hong Kong, got one of em’ for a $100 HKD which was well worth it. Another was written by a professor from Taiwan about civil service which I did not pick up at the time and has lost some sleep over it the past week. So once it’s better to be able to go out for leisure im going to make sure I pick that one up.
Yet, nothing about Hong Kong mascots.
YET, the streets are filled with them, in all corners and forms. It is amazing how I could walk pass them every regular day, but when I am on a specific mission they all seem to be fighting for my attention, not only on the streets but on my Facebook account, on TV, a box of cereal from my cupboard, bus ads, tram station, subway station you name it.
Then I came to a realisation that all of these silly faces stands for something, a shop, a company, corporation or even the government. To me, some of them are just lame. Its not hard to tell which mascots are foreign, and that which local mascots were born with a good budget.
In essay writing, I found out that I should be responsible for keeping a nutural tone and it is hard for me to be as direct as I want to be, but typing here is a pure joy and release of honest opionion (although this account is public). A whole bunch of poorly done mascots reflects a problem with the way people view design in Hong Kong, the reality is most likely that : Some guy on top got the idea that including a mascot for their brand or department is a swell idea, then they found out that they don’t have a budget to get a character design (nor do they see the value in good design at all), then the result ended up looking like a K2 child just learnt the basics of Adobe Illustrator and did their best. This happens way too much here, and is one of the many reasons I don’t enjoy the design scene here. That should be another story another time.
Another face in my palm moment is when ever I walk near this building. The old Central Library used to be situated in the Central district, was a nice black and white 90s modern architectural building, big panels of glass in letting the day light in and was nicely situated by the Victoria Harbour, then this piece of work came in. Consistantly being voted to be one of the worst looking buildings in Hong Kong, it now serves as Central Library.
Any how, I got to the door and that they were taking precautions of only letting 200 people in for an hour, 4 times a day, also the big archive section is closed, only leaving Children’s reading and 2 levels of Mature reading available out of the 10 usual floors. After flipping around, looking in to indexes with the little time I got, only one book about HK’s cultural development seemed to be useful for me, and I regreted not spending a longer time at Sam’s instead -_-” But as I always say, to find out that nothing is available is finding out about something, at least I got to know how wdiely applied mascots are around the city.
(the end)
So on week 7 I have tried arranging a couple phone interviews, and was waiting on replies. Hopefully I can get those interviews or else I won’t have enough insight. Hope it turns out ok!
ANDY WAS HERE
ANDY was here 🤓 