On a Junket to a Junk

On two memorable occasions, more than a dozen years apart, I traveled to Hong Kong on business. Pictured below, during the second, in 2005, cinematographer Laurie is working to get a shot of the iconic Star Ferry from the Kowloon, or mainland, side of Victoria Harbor.

Here’s the Star Ferry

I was there to shoot video interviews and supporting footage for my employer’s HK operations. The metropolis is a fascinating place to photograph, whether or not you have a professional camera crew. Late that same day, we were high on a peak on the island, across the harbor, to get a shot of the city as lights came on.

I can do my best to assure you this trip involved a great deal of hard work during long days, hauling people and gear all over Hong Kong, in and out of offices to set up, shoot interviews and depict the work done there. Still, the picturesque scenes above make it look like I was on a fairly cushy junket.

That’s an interesting word. Before I get to “junket,” I’ll go back down to Victoria Harbor.

There, another waterborne icon of Hong Kong, featured in uncountable travelogues and tourism brochures, is the last of its kind: a traditional sailboat known as a junk. I’ve seen it, but never with an opportunity to photograph it, so I’ll rely on a news image.

According to bbc.com at this link, Hong Kong’s junk, named Dukling, long a popular tourist attraction, is the victim of a severe downturn in travel, due to the double jeopardy of pandemic and certain political events, about which I will avoid comment. Dukling’s future is at risk.

Why Is a Boat a “Junk?”

According to BBC, the word comes from Dutch jonk and Spanish junco, terms for sailing vessels in the Colonial period.

That’s correct, but it’s only part of the story.

Before the Dutch, Portuguese (who also have junco) and Spanish began to establish trading operations in China, they were in Java and the Malay Peninsula. There, in the 16th century, they encountered the Javanese term djong and Malay adjong, both generic terms for larger boats.

The association of those words with large sailboats (Dukling is 18 meters/59 feet long), was already well established, at least as early as the 13th century, before Europeans adopted the words into their languages.

All that Other Junk

The more common use of “junk” in English, which denotes … well … “stuff” or “trash” or … any number of other things, including slang for heroin, is unrelated to the term for the sailboat, with a separate etymology.

Coincidentally, it also has a nautical origin.

In Middle English, jonk was the term for old or worn rope or cable aboard ships. That “junk” would be put to a number of uses, including “fenders” alongside a boat, to prevent rubbing against docks or other ships, caulking leaks, and other purposes.

Over time, the term was applied to any cast-off material. The editors of the American Heritage Dictionary hilariously note that there are myriad uses of the word junk, perhaps because the world is so full of it.

Junket?

I was on a junket on those trips to Hong Kong, in one sense of the word. It can mean a trip or tour for some purpose, whether business, politics, etc.

Before that definition of junket arose, there was a prior meaning, denoting a party or banquet. Even earlier in the language, the first definition provided in some dictionaries tells us that junket is a creamy cheese or dessert. From dessert to party to trip: interesting.

That gets us back to the near edge of Middle Ages and Middle English.

Before that, though, some cream cheese was made or molded in woven rush baskets. Those rushes and baskets made from them were both referred to in a variety of spellings too numerous to list in a short piece, all resembling “junk.” Among them are jonk or jonc and jonket, jonkette and others.

The source of those words in Middle English, around 1400, may have been Old French, Old Norman, Italian or … even the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary were uncertain.

Speakers of English are accustomed to the notion that words that look and sound alike may have completely different meanings, and even have distinctive etymologies. “Junk,” meaning rushes or old rope, and “junket,” meaning either a basket or the cheese made in it are examples. OED doesn’t think their first definition of “junk” — rush — and the second — old rope — are directly related: They’re two words that look and sound alike, with no indication they share a historical relationship.

If you’re reading from Hong Kong (should you still have Internet access), I hope you get an occasional look at Dukling, maybe while you ride the Star Ferry. I hope to return to your amazing city, whether or not I’m on a junket. I wish you well there.

© Brad Nixon 2020. Star Ferry photo by mailer_diablo – Self-taken (Unmodified), CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=440683. BBC article cited above retrieved on November 20, 2020. Junk photo is the property of BBC. Dictionaries cited are The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Houghton Mifflin; Boston, New York, 2000 and Compact Edition of the Oxford Dictionary of English, Oxford University, 1971