Revisiting the “Golden Culture” Cantonese-English Code-Switching in Lost on a Red Minibus to Taipo
Chris Y. H. Tsui

Abstract
The Hong Kong Golden Forum is considered by many to be Hong Kong’s equivalent to Reddit, a controversial online community where many alt-righters aggregate. Its CEO, Joe Lam, published a book in 2011 commenting on components of the ―golden culture‖—the forum’s participatory culture—including foul language, ―clown worship‖, and doxing, which intersect with the habits and tactics of the alt-right. However, since then, little scholarly attention has been paid to the development of Golden culture. In view of this, this article examines Golden culture through an investigation of the popular online novel Lost on a Red Minibus to Taipo. Through semiotic analysis, this article studies the 1,789 instances of Cantonese-English code-switching in the online novel, which is not a common phenomenon in other novels, to explicate elements of Golden culture and discuss similarities and differences between the Golden Forum and alt-right online communities.

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