Lions versus Lychees. 

The point of origin is this question at Simon World:.

Singapore and Hong Kong are well known rivals. Usually Hong Kong has the upper hand. But when it comes to blogging Hong Kong is, let's be honest, woefully behind Singapore. Singapore blogs have bigger readerships, are more diverse and more interesting.  Why?

My comment was:

Would language make a difference?  Could there many more Chinese-language blogs than English-language blogs in hong kong? As compared to the Chinese-English ratio in Singapore.  I am not aware of any reliable accurate blog census count taken by anyone.

Here are some hong kong chinese-language blogs that no english-language ones can touch:
Hung One Bean: http://hungonebean.blogspot.com/ 
Cafe Horizon:  http://www.littlelittle.org/ 

These people can read and write in English, but they use Chinese instead, and I don't even imagine how these results are deliverable in English.

Another commentator Preetam Rai wrote:

I would agree that there aren't many (non-expat) English blogs in HK, while almost all Singapore blogs are in English. Maybe you guys could run a meta-blog that has "notable posts" translated from the Chinese blogs in HK.  I  was once looking at organising something like this Mainland China and Thai blogs.

For the sake of a concrete illustration, I will translate the March 31, 2005 post at Hung One Bean:

A few days ago, I uploaded Zhou Xuan(周璇)'s <<Eternal Smile (永遠的微笑)>>, but I did not add some comments.

Many years ago, I saw Liu Ruoying (劉若英) in the movie <<Marriage Notice (徵婚啟事)>>.  Her scene with Jin Shijie (金士傑) was supposed to be funny, but the moment that Jin launched into singing "The one in my heart, please do not be said.  May your smile be forever like this ..." the mood changed subtly.

The lyrics and the tune sounded so familiar, but I could not remember which song this was.  After I finished watching the movie, I asked my friends.  They all said that it sounded familiar, but they could not remember the song nor the singer.

Many years afterwards, I was reading Lung Yingtia(龍應台)'s <<A Century of Contemplation (百年思索)>>.  In the essay titled <<One day in Shanghai (上海的一日)>>, I found the song that I was looking for such a long time.  And led to another story.

When Lung Yingtai visited Shanghai, she met Chen Gang (陳鋼) at the Academy of Music.  Lung asked Chen about an old song titled <<Eternal Smile>>.  This was the song that Lung's mother loved to sing, and it formed the bond between mother and daughter.  The answer was surprising.  Chen Gang said: "Of course I know.  This was the song that my father wrote for my mother back then."  And then Chen proceeded to play the song on the piano.

Chen Gang was the son of Chen Gexin (陳歌辛).  <<Shanghai at Night (夜上海)>>, <<Rose, Rose I Love You (玫瑰、玫瑰我愛你)>>, <<In The Mood For Love (花樣年華)>> and other favorite songs were written by Chen Gexin.

Qi Yu (齊豫) has re-recorded <<Eternal Smile>> with an arrangement that has a touch of blues.  This just suits my mood for tonight.

These are quintessentially Hong Kong-Chinese sentiments and carries the entire Chinese heritage.  This is difficult for the non-Chinese speaker to understand, whereas a Chinese-language speaker such as I is humming <<Rose, Rose, I Love You>> while I type these words.  So why would she write in anything other than Chinese?

In the poem "The Ballad of East and West", Rudyard Kipling wrote: 

"East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet".

 This is NOT true for the Hong Kong blogosphere.  At my favorite Hong Kong website InMediaHK (in Chinese), this post links back to Simon World and asks their readers:

大家不妨到他們的blog中作回應.  [Translation: People should visit their blogs and respond]

The fact is that at this moment, we share the same earth at the same time.  We are not alone, and we need to engage with each other somehow.