While the Filipino people got a morale booster when action star Jackie Chan posted a message on his social media account condoling the nation, locals from his native Hong Kong were quick to accuse him of disrespect to victims of the hostage tragedy on August 23 that claimed eight lives.
Somehow it’s a case of lost in translation. Mr Chan’s Twitter account may be genuine, but it’s not him doing the tweets all the time. “The content in my Twitter account was posted by my American assistant on my behalf, but after interpretation the posts did not entirely capture what I truly meant to say,” said the actor.
Without mentioning the 140 character Twitter limit, it seems obvious that Mr Chan’s thoughts couldn’t be interpreted properly by many people, especially that it wasn’t him who made the update. The controversial tweet read,
“this kind of things always happen around the world. It happened to hk’s people, the whole hk is talking about it. Its really sad.”
It is indeed open to interpretation. At one end it seems that Mr Chan downplays the incident because “this kind of things always happen around the world”. Or maybe shrugging his shoulders asking no wonder it’s the talk of the town because the “it happened to hk’s people”. On the other end it seems like Mr Chan was genuinely sad for his fellow Hong Kong citizens.
May I have a word with that assistant-cum-Twitter-correspondent? If that assistant posted that controversial tweet on behalf of Jackie Chan, the latter apologized to Hong Kong people apparently on behalf of the assistant who made the blunder. Mr Chan has figured in a number of incidents that received frowns from the locals. Disrupting a concert (apparently attributed to his singing aspirations), and releasing a statement about the Chinese people enjoying too much freedom are among them.
“What happened to the Hong Kong tourists in the Philippines was a terrible and heartbreaking tragedy. I am 100 percent Chinese and I’m from Hong Kong. I feel grief and pain for the Hong Kong citizens who lost their lives during this unfortunate incident,” said Chan in a statement. To ease possible confusion, his statement was released in both English and Chinese.
Jackie Chan might be losing his appeal to fellow Hong Kong people, but he still commands a legion of supporters elsewhere. On the other side of South China Sea, Jackie Chan’s statements were welcomed warmly. In Manila, even a celebrity columnist (along with other Filipino celebrities) called him a hero: “Just like in his blockbuster movies, Jackie comes to the rescue when everything is falling apart. He’s definitely our kind of hero.”
