Hong Kong’s “Bus Uncle”

I heard about this for the first time this morning in the Wall Street Journal but it’s been the talk of the town in Hong Kong for quite some time. A 23 year old man riding on the Hong Kong public bus spent six minutes listening to a fellow passenger cursing and berating him when he politely asked the fellow passenger to stop speaking on the phone.

 

"I've got pressure, you've got pressure!" the older man exploded. "Why did you have to provoke me?" A nearby passenger who found the encounter interesting captured most of it on video with his own cellphone, and it was posted on the Web.

 

"Bus Uncle," as the older man is now known, has since become a Hong Kong sensation. The video, including subtitled versions, has been downloaded nearly five million times from YouTube.com, a popular Web site for video clips.

 

Teenagers and adults here sprinkle their conversations with phrases borrowed from Bus Uncle's rant, such as "I've got pressure!" and "It's not over!" (shouted when the young man tried to end the conversation several times by saying, "It's over"). Also, there are several insults involving mothers. Web sites peddle T-shirts with a cartoon of Bus Uncle and the famous phrases. They are also available as mobile-phone ringtones.

 

The six minute video clip is on YouTube and can be accessed here. There is also an article by Hong Kong’s Next Magazine on the identity of the “Bus Uncle” and the eccentricities of his personal life.

 

Listening to the audio portion of the clip kept me smiling throughout the day at the office today.