The announcement begins innocuously with a pleasant ditty before getting down to the nitty gritty.
"Show your parents how much you care," the cheery voice says. "Take them to the dentist."
No, it is not a hospital radio spot, nor is it an announcement in an orthodontist's waiting room. And it certainly isn't a joke.
This odd snippet of neighborly advice is, in fact, a public announcement broadcast across Hong Kong's state-run RTHK radio, slipped between an hourly news bulletin and the latest pop hits.
Instead of encouraging a flood of elderlies to the dentist, it caused widespread hilarity.
"I guess the days of a good old bunch of flowers have gone," quipped radio DJ Phil Whelan, one of the station's presenters required by law to play such announcements of public interest each hour.
The dentist spot is among a multitude of announcements and notices stating what can seem blindingly obvious that have flourished in Hong Kong in recent years, baffling visitors and earning the city a reputation as a nannying state.
For a territory that claims to have the world's freest economy, Hong Kong's 6.9 million people live under a tyranny of petty rules and regulations, critics say.
"They are on the rise, undoubtedly," Chinese University sociologist Chan Kim-man says. "Residents tend to tune them out, but visitors certainly notice them."
From codes preventing schoolboys from having curly hair to TV ads telling them how to carry textbooks; from "no sitting" signs in malls to "no spitting" notices on ferries; and from warnings on entering manholes to laws against loud music at concerts, almost every aspect of life is covered by a regulation. Among RTHK's incongruous spots are those that offered advice on buying a license for your pet whale shark and donating blood to make you look younger.
"I once got a small reprimand for saying on air that I was embarrassed to be a broadcaster after playing a particularly moronic one of these," Whelan admits. "An apology did not pass my lips."
The proliferation of banal notices and warnings has left many feeling Hong Kong is giving its rival Singapore -- whose laws against chewing gum, oral sex and leaving toilets unflushed earned it the nickname Singa-bore -- a run for its money. The tendency to over-regulate appears to have grown out of the panic brought about by the SARS outbreak in 2003 -- which killed 299 people in Hong Kong -- produced a baffling array of contradictory warnings.
"During SARS, there were two announcements that ran constantly in Hong Kong on TV," says commentator Nury Vittachi, who has written several books of observations on Hong Kong's mangled public signage. "One said `Join hands to fight SARS,' and the other said [to avoid transmitting disease] `Don't shake people's hands -- wave hello and goodbye instead.'"
"In other words, it was: Hold hands. Don't hold hands," Vittachi says.
Another hygiene-promotional ads simultaneously said "Wash vegetables under running water," and "Don't let taps run: save water."
The need for stringent social guidelines is contrary to the Confucian philosophy prevalent in China. Confucius taught that civilizations maintained order through understanding and education, not through laws and regulations.
However, according to Chan, Hong Kong's obsession with rules has little to do with Chinese cultural beliefs and more to do with the territory's British colonial past.
"It is partly a hangover from the days of British rule and British bureaucracy," Chan says. "Our legal system and bureaucratic system was handed to us by the British."
"Those signs are there to inform the foreigners -- the immigrants," Chan adds. "This is a city of outsiders and the feeling has always been that they need to be educated in our ways of behavior."
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