UNESCO's International Mother Language Day
The Nepalese Community in Hong Kong
Neighborhood
It is observed that hawkers are able to use simple Nepalese (eg. prices and greetings) to communicate with their Nepalese customers. This can be interpreted as "marketing strategies" adopted by the local hawkers. Speaking Nepalese to Nepalese customers can give them a sense of belonging, so it is much easier to develop a kind of harmonious relationship with their customers to boost their sales.
Having a quick chat with one of the hawkers, he revealed that the acquisition of the simple Nepalese is by daily contacts with the Nepalese community in that area instead of acquisition by learning the language deliberately.
Hawkers in wet market
Nepalese grocery stores
In Jordan area, there are quite a number of Nepalese grocery stores in the Jordan area that are owned by Nepalese. The shops offer a wide variety of Nepalese daily necessities ranging from cooking ingredients and newspapers to Henna powders (herbal powders for hair dying and traditional body painting).
The grocery stores provide us with important findings on how the Nepalese maintain their strong bonding within their own community. On the wall outside the stores, there are always posters of activities among the community. By regular activities (eg. singing contest) held as depicted in the posters, the Nepalese community can maintain constant contact with other members in the community.
The Po Ling Shopping Center is a small-sized shopping center located in Jordan area. The individual shops there sell textile, traditional costumes as well as accessories worn by different ethnic minorities (e.g. Nepalese, Pakistanis and Indian) in their traditional celebrations. The shops are mainly run by the ethnic minority and by looking at the products they sell, their targeted customers seem not to be local Hong Kongers but the people from their own countries.
There were not many people at the shopping center on the day of our field visit. By our observation, it serves as a perform for the ethnic minority to gather as people siting on the chairs outside or inside the shops were chatting with each other.
Shopping mall
Playground
Playground here refers to the recreational playground which provides facilities for children to play and gather. We have visited two playgrounds located in the Jordan area, namely Salgon Street Playground and Battery Street Sitting-out Area. What have we observed was that the playgrounds were dominated by children of ethnic minority, identified by the language they spoke. What's more, they mainly used their own language to communicate with each other. Among the Nepalese children, it was observed that they use Nepali to communicate with each other, showing that Nepali is well-preserved.
We randomly picked a few children from ethnic minority and asked them simple questions in Cantonese. Most of them indicated that they did not understand Cantonese,so we used English instead for effective communication. The indication here is that within the new generation, their mother languages are still the languages of their homeland. The low proficiency in Cantonese also indicates that the good preservation of the own national language.
Salgon Street Playground
Battery Street Sitting-out Area