Hokkien: Difference between revisions

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The reason that Hokkien was chosen was because writer [[Don Houghton]] had written the scenes entirely in [[English language|English]], and expected that the production crew would find translations by the day of recording. This effectively left translation up to his wife, [[Pik-Sen Lim]], who only spoke Hokkien. Leaving things so late disadvantaged [[Jon Pertwee]], for whom the Hokkien had to be very much simplified. Even so, Pik-Sen said she can't completely understand what Pertwee was saying in his Hokkien-speaking scenes. ([[DOC]]: ''[[The Military Mind]]'')
The reason that Hokkien was chosen was because writer [[Don Houghton]] had written the scenes entirely in [[English language|English]], and expected that the production crew would find translations by the day of recording. This effectively left translation up to his wife, [[Pik-Sen Lim]], who only spoke Hokkien. Leaving things so late disadvantaged [[Jon Pertwee]], for whom the Hokkien had to be very much simplified. Even so, Pik-Sen said she can't completely understand what Pertwee was saying in his Hokkien-speaking scenes. ([[DOC]]: ''[[The Military Mind]]'')


However, the "Hokkien mystery" went even further. The original actor chosen for [[Fu Peng]] was fired by [[director]] [[Timothy Combe]] after [[location filming]] but before these studio scenes. For the original actor, the Hokkien made some sense, but not for his replacement, who, according to Pik-Sen, spoke [[Cantonese]]. So neither [[Kristopher Kum]] nor Jon Pertwee spoke a language they actually knew. ([[DCOM]]: ''[[The Mind of Evil (TV story)|The Mind of Evil]]'') The even deeper irony was that the firing meant that the two ethnically Chinese actors ended up having to learn lines in ''each other{{'}}s'' native dialect — presumably because switching between Hokkien and Cantonese would have confused Pertwee a bit too much at that late stage.
However, the "Hokkien mystery" went even further. The original actor chosen for [[Fu Peng]] was fired by [[Director (crew)|director]] [[Timothy Combe]] after [[location filming]] but before these studio scenes. For the original actor, the Hokkien made some sense, but not for his replacement, who, according to Pik-Sen, spoke [[Cantonese]]. So neither [[Kristopher Kum]] nor Jon Pertwee spoke a language they actually knew. ([[DCOM]]: ''[[The Mind of Evil (TV story)|The Mind of Evil]]'') The even deeper irony was that the firing meant that the two ethnically Chinese actors ended up having to learn lines in ''each other{{'}}s'' native dialect — presumably because switching between Hokkien and Cantonese would have confused Pertwee a bit too much at that late stage.


Oddly, the Doctor seems to imply that he spoke Hokkien with [[Mao Tse-Tung]], which may suggest a difference between the [[DWU|''Doctor Who'' universe]] and the real world. In the real world, Chairman Mao was in no way a Hokkien speaker, but instead had a pronounced and quite obvious {{w|Xiang Chinese|Xiang}} accent, since he came from rural {{w|Hunan Province}}.
Oddly, the Doctor seems to imply that he spoke Hokkien with [[Mao Tse-Tung]], which may suggest a difference between the [[DWU|''Doctor Who'' universe]] and the real world. In the real world, Chairman Mao was in no way a Hokkien speaker, but instead had a pronounced and quite obvious {{w|Xiang Chinese|Xiang}} accent, since he came from rural {{w|Hunan Province}}.
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