Talk:Hong Kong Garden (song)

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History[edit]

I just want to post a note that we might be a somewhat skeptical of the anecdote repeated in the "History" section about the anti-racist origins of this song. The lyrics are quite difficult to read as anything but racist today, and this notion that they were in fact anti-skinhead doesn't seem to be readable in them to me:

Harmful elements in the air

Cymbals clashing everywhere

Reaps the fields of rice and reeds

While the population feeds

Junk floats on polluted water

An old custom to sell your daughter

Would you like number 23?

Leave your yens on the counter please

Hong kong garden

Tourists swarm to see your face

Confucius has a puzzling grace

Disoriented you enter in

Unleashing scent of wild jasmine

Slanted eyes meet a new sunrise

A race of buddhas small in size

Chicken chow mein and chop suey

Hong kong garden takeaway

Hong kong garden

Where the anti-skinhead sentiment can be found in these lyrics escapes me. And the two interviews cited as a source for this reading are both with Siouxie herself, from many years later (2001 and 2005). One might suspect she is being a bit revisionist about her own history, in light of changing attitudes about racism?

Are there any earlier citations for this supposed origin of the song? And couldn't the entry otherwise address the fact that the lyrics are, as they stand, without this backstory, apparently racist? And plus there are the stereotypical minor keys used in the music itself. If you google "hong kong garden"+"racism" there are many online forums where users have posted similar opinions.

I know I'm opening up a can of worms here, particularly if this entry has been primarily written by fans of the singer, but it is worth mentioning. Visualpleasure (talk) 06:46, 9 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The can of worms makes a lot of sense to me. I came here to write the same thing. This song doesn't have one verse to support the anti-racism theory. It's all about the city and it's problems with pollution and overcrowding. It even references the tourists as paying in yens, so I guess Japanese tourists - which are a majority - very specifically. Well unless the writer did not see a difference between China and Japan :D. There is absolutely noting to support the supposed origin. And actually when I read it here, I liked the song a bit less (for a minute) and then started liking the singer a bit less (this stayed). So while it is based on a quote, I guess it's OK that Wikipedia includes it, but please include the very wide skepticism of thousands of commentators everywhere... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.40.130.7 (talk) 22:22, 12 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

BetacommandBot (talk) 05:25, 24 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

June 2017, after one detractor decided to revert wp:reliable sources concerning the subject [1], people who can't understand those lyrics should read this detailed article about the song.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/story-of-the-song-hong-kong-garden-siouxsie-and-the-banshees-1978-1775005.html opinions of detractors don't matter, what matters is reliable sources and wp:No original research, no biaised edit are welcome on an encylopedia.Carliertwo (talk) 20:40, 22 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

This song is from 1977–1978. The interview is from 2001 (the source is listed only as "Punk Top Ten Interview"). I.e. not historical. Wikipedia is about NPOV. I didn't put in any bias or OR. I removed bias. Phrasing like "Siouxsie put all her anger and frustration into the words" is not encyclopedic tone. The neutral fact is that we do not know what McKay, Morris, Sioux and Severin was thinking when they wrote the song. Jikybebna (talk) 09:35, 23 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Jikybebna wrote:Phrasing like "Siouxsie put all her anger and frustration into the words" is not encyclopedic tone. whereas it is written in Robert Webb's article in The Independent: She turned her anger into song.. Another journalist Colin Larkin (writer) wrote here: "Honk Kong Garden" An attack on small town racism...Carliertwo (talk) 16:16, 23 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The paraphrase is not encyclopedic tone and the interviews are not from when the song was written. And frankly the narrative presented in them don't make sense with the songs' lyrics. Listen, I want to believe Siouxsie and the Banshees were genuinely anti-racist, too. That songs like Hong Kong Garden and Arabian Knights are ironic (somehow…?). Products of the "swastika armband" era of punk. I love their music and I listen to them all the time and I hate racism. So I can understand where you're coming from. But Wikipedia is about facts. Those sources as presented in the article right now are biased. Could they be correct about that anti-skinhead story? Maaaaaybe. (Hopefully!) But, if so, there are some major missing puzzle pieces. And I'm not about to go OR on finding those puzzle pieces. I didn't put in any "This song is definitely racist" (even though, from all appearances… it's the most obvious explanation). That would be OR. (If just reading the lyrics counts as "research".) But the section I want to remove just doesn't make any sense at all. They were angry at skinheads so they wrote a songful of stereotypes about Asians and getting Hong Kong, mainland China, and Japan all mixed up together, and not a word about prejudices against them? Again, maaaaybe that's the truth. Somehow. Siouxsie and the Banshees used humor, provocation, irony in a way that wasn't always clear. But again, there's some major puzzle pieces missing here and it just doesn't make sense. Her anger against skinheads came out in the words? Not successfully, if so. More like her anger against the "race of Buddhas small in size" with "slanted eyes". Arabian Knights (song) doesn't have any of this weird "it's not racist, really" explanation text. That would be a good start for this one, too. As it is, it looks like Wikipedia is in on it. Jikybebna (talk) 15:14, 24 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Really ashamed that I was so wishy-washy and didn't condemn this song further. If people wanna edit the page in a way that's less gullible of Siouxsie's transparent retcons, that'd be awesome. Jikybebna (talk) 00:00, 14 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

If paraphrasing is not encyclopedic tone, why do you not reformulate the sentence "Siouxsie put all her anger and frustration into the words" while respecting wp:STICKTOSOURCE and wp:No original research? That would be productive, instead of reverting content supported by a source?

I read between the lines your answer: you appear to consider the lyrics as racist and pratronising towards the Chinese community. You also consider "Arabian Knights" as ironic. Greg Fasolino, what do you think about this edit and the concern of Jikybebna?

We can't post our personal opinions on wikipedia as it is not a blog, every fact has to be supported by a source and presented in a neutral tone. I don't think it is not the case on the article at the moment. My opinion is these lyrics are sharp clever. The song deals with cliches and generalisations, but also mines a deeper seam of hypocrisy and oppression and culture clashes. I always perceived the song to work on many different levels. It may have been inspired by the treatment of the Chinese takeaway workers by ignorant fascists, but (as with so many great songs), it took that as a starting point and went somewhere else entirely with it. It looks at cliches and misconceptions , the commonplace, the mundane and the unpalatable. It looks at the good and bad on all both sides, in both communities, without ever actually being explicitly in favour of one or the other. For Banshees' stuff, if you look purely at face value, you miss the point by a very long way. In certain lines, the oppressor speaks, in other lines, it is the oppressed people. "Arabian Knights" and Swimming Horses" are about violence against women in the middle east: if they were suspected of cheating their spouses, they were beaten. This band never wrote one-dimensional and simple lyrics: there are several levels of reading but again my opinion doesn't count. Carliertwo (talk) 17:46, 24 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I concur with Carliertwo for the most part. It's not our job as Wiki editors to try and figure out ourselves what the song means, we merely must note what the writer and critics say about it. The quotes from Siouxsie should be reverted in. What could be more basic and encyclopedic in a song article than quoting the song's writer on her process/meaning? The date of the interview is irrelevant. If you want to add that the lyrics are controversial and quote a journalist in questioning their real meaning, that's fine, but regardless, the stated meaning of the songwriter is by definition encyclopedic and should be noted. Siouxsie is a reliable source on her own song! On the other hand, "Siouxsie put all her anger and frustration into the words" is not really appropriate because its not quoting Siouxsie herself saying that she did that, and it is hyperbole in any case. Greg Fasolino (talk) 19:17, 24 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, this change is more neutral then. Carliertwo (talk) 19:55, 24 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Wow, I forgot all about this page. But I like that change (to "She also stated"), thank you, Carliertwo. Overall I'm not sure I come to the same conclusions as you do about these songs. Hopefully we'll see more research about this in the future (outside of Wikipedia). Thanks again. Jikybebna (talk) 11:48, 24 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I definitely disagree with the claim that the date is irrelevant. There is a possibility that the band wrote a racist song and then 23 years later thought up a backstory for it that made them come across as anti-racist, brave, skinhead kicking Avengers. I'm definitely not sure about that and I can't do original research as per Wikipedia's rules but I'm not sure it's _not_ what happened, either. There are some missing puzzle pieces to this story. Jikybebna (talk) 12:59, 6 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I'm going to put the date back in. It's not historical to treat a twenty years later expansion with the same weight as contemporary accounts. Jikybebna (talk) 10:35, 6 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified[edit]

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August 2020[edit]

The "Cultural references" has been constantly reverted by user Synthwave.94, as if Marie Antoinette (a Sofia Copolla film) and Girls ( a HBO Tv serie) were not important in pop culture. Carliertwo (talk) 23:58, 1 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. 2A01:CB0C:8AB:C000:103C:BEA1:62ED:5B22 (talk) 03:12, 27 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]