Dear Vicky: The Mistake Stays

Hello, people!

As I am typing this, another winter storm is brewing. The last one on Monday/ Tuesday caused some flooding in a neighbourhood park. According a resident of 20 years, it was the heaviest he’d ever seen. The little creek in the park overflowed and turned the park into a pond. I hope this coming one won’t be as bad.

Hope your week has been going swimmingly.

Today’s post is gonna be a short one. It’s just a little story about Hong Kong which I like. I hope you like it, too. Don’t mind the photo, it’s just for illustration purposes.

As you may know, Hong Kong, when it comes to languages and cultures, sits right on the fault line between English and Chinese. The metaphorical geolocation has created many little earthquakes, in languages and culture misunderstandings. Here’s one.

Here’s the sign on Rednaxela Terrace.

The English name doesn’t make much sense, and the Chinese name is just as confusing. But if you read Rednaxela backwards, you get Alexander.

Chinese, as some of you might know, used to be written from right to left. Today, if you walk around the western part of Hong Kong Island, you might still see some old street plaques with the Chinese name written from right to left. When the terrace was being named, someone made the mistake of writing the English name the same way, hence we got Rednaxela Terrace. In my mind’s eye, I could see some exhausted street-naming people throw up their hands in the air and say": “Fuck it! We are going with Rednaxela.” And they even make up the Chinese name through transliteration. And that is the story behind one of hong kong’s most interesting street names, at least to me.

I’ve known this story for a long time, and I always wanted to take a photo of it, just for my own record. I’d never done it until this trip. During one of my morning photo walks in the area, I walked up to the terrace and took this photo.

There it is for today. Thanks for visiting my corner! Until next time!