If you are asked to choose a decade that you remember most vividly, and consider that as the most influential ten years of who you are, which ten years will that be?
There is a Chinese saying, 死,有輕於鴻毛,有重於泰山。 A rough translation would be, “death, light as a feather, or as weighty as the Mountain Tai”. This metaphor seems to also fit perfectly well into how we see our lives. There are times you remember better, and there are things you cannot wait to forget – It is a funny and scary feeling, isn’t it? To start sensing that as you get older, time passes faster, while you still remember how it felt to be a little child at school waiting millisecond to pass by so that you can get off school.
If you are asked to think of the most memorable 10 years, which 10 will that be?
For a lot of Hong Kongers, would it be the past 10 years?
At work yesterday and had the chance to flip through a few main English Newspapers, and saw a special supplement of the Financial Times on Hong Kong, a ten years review since the handover. When seeing people that I adore in London, even though they were not from Hong Kong, I could not help but nudge them, gently reminding the, ‘this Sunday is the ten year’s anniversary of Hong Kong handover.’ I am sure to some of them, this must seem like a random move. It is however, now in retrospect, a delicate way of sharing something that has severely touched me, a Hongkie. The something deeply buried in my heart that has recently emerged and started bouncing again. Perhaps this is the whole reason I come to live in a foreign city here in London? Because it vaguely reminded me of Hong Kong in the eighties?
I will never know. What I know is that in the past ten years, Hong Kong has changed as with all of her past years. The difference is despite all the changes in her financial outlook and physical skylines, there is also cultural transformation in her identity. In the past decade, I have had grown from a teenage to a young woman, and all these changes seem to have a significant weigh on us. It has become increasingly clear that Hong Kong has just wakened up like a lost child in search for its own cultural identity, and for our administrative reign, it is particularly challenging for the officials’ background and how easily it is for them to miss this growing sentiments. Currently our administration comprises of mostly former Administrative Officers of Hong Kong. They are a generation growing up in Hong Kong; either went into the University and be trained as super-efficient civil servants.
Two generations older than us, I see them as not have beliefs in our own cultures. The recent West Kowloon Cultural District says it all. Although the land remains the last prime land in the waterfront; although the government has promised a huge under-taking in transforming it into a cultural zone, Hong Kong citizens were not asked about what they wanted to see in area, nor the question of what culture was to them. Of course, as with every important development project, our government must have had issued white paper for consultation. What particularly saddens me is that publishing lengthy consultation paper is not civic engagement, and it is neither an effective way to fully invite the participation of the locals in determining their cultural development trajectory. I am sad because I have faith in Hong Kong as a cultural city given our colonial legacy and various years of cultural resilience, and how Hong Kong people stood up things they believe in.
It was 2004 when I accompanied my journalist friend and interviewed local people why they protested during the July first (6th Handover Anniversary). I remembered it was the hottest day in Hong Kong, but for the protesters it was also the warmest day, one told me, because they were fighting for universal suffrage. That is it. Hong Kong people are humble and mild. There was a freaking half million people demonstrating on the street but yet there was no riot, no distress in a 33-degree sunny day. There were grandmothers bringing their grandchildren telling me they wanted their generation to behold their own future. How humble is that! We were not even talking about ‘democracy’ here. Not that I do not ‘believe’ in democracy, but I am keenly aware of its as a slippery, fluid concept that can be subjected to the dichotomization between right or wrong, west or east, which does not help a particular situation like what we are in. (Need more elaboration? Look at Russia and Iraq, how many people have suffered from exacerbated, inhumane condition in the name of democracy?) I believe in fairness, justice, but also timeliness… Probably sometimes too much of a Taoist, I guess.
What is appearing in Hong Kong in the past ten years, that I am extremely proud of, is the slowing awakening of local identities and the emergence of citizenry. People demonstrating on the street, but at the same time there were holding hands and picking up after their own trash. There are films made recording our tough time and our best time, in particular Gold Chicken is one of my all time favourites.
This is a story about a prostitute surviving the 1997 financial crisis, falling in and out of love, SARS, witnessing the introduction of Beijing’s policies that benefited Hong Kong economy (such as CEPA – Mainland and Hong Kong Closer Economic Partnership). From a sweet and funny, female-based, angle, it was a yet a strong film. I remembered playing an extract in my class for students 5 years younger than me, who vaguely remembered what happened and why there were people demonstrating on the street, they were stunned to relive what happened by just going through the film, and one even broke down into tears.
To understand societies, we need a marriage between psychology and sociology. Attachment theory seems to fit well in the developing Hong Kong. John Bowlby started theorizing the impacts of adult-children bondings on their future personality styles, and established how important it is for a child to develop strong bonding and hence grow emotionally sound and secure.
Hong Kong, if she was an infant, had been taken away as a young child. The foster parent, probably saw the financial potential of this baby, had groomed it well and fairly happy. Except she was inevitably emotionally ambivalent. She could not convince herself this was her parent hence she could not bond emotionally with it. But at the same time, a city is like a baby, it needs to develop its own identity as well. Hong Kong has since then been encourage to grow economically but not culturally, as with many of the colonies of the world.
This ‘baby’, eventually grew into a child and her parent’s rising power had made it clear that the foster parent should return her back to their own hands. This child who had no understanding or bond with the ‘parents’, reverted back to their arms, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. There were clear moments of ambivalence and self-doubt, and eternal cycles of self-loathing – cynicism was not rare. As a product of this reign, I did not understand its full impact until last week.
It was the 10th anniversary of Hong Kong Handover reception held by the British government at the British Museum. It was all nice and quiet when I walked into the empty museum hall, amazing consider how crowded it usually was. There were very few Hong Kong people out of the almost hundreds of attendees, of which most were British Seniors and Mainland Chinese representative. It saddens me how few Hong Kong people were present, but I also understand there was another (international) reception at Wembley station which might have taken the HKies away from this event.
What caught my eye, after a few speeches from the then Duputy Priminister John Prescott was Lord David Wilson, the last second government of Hong Kong. I still remember him as vaguely as I saw his face in the news when I was very little. I found myself gravitated toward him, the current Master of Peterhouse at Cambridge and discussed with him on Hong Kong’s cultural future. Given that he was 72 years old, he was extremely witty and charming. I was blown away having spoken to him, but the ambivalence kicked in when I started feeling guilty of being ecstatic. After all, wasn’t we supposed to be angry at being colonized? All I wished, at that point, was someone from Hong Kong to share this emotional ambivalence with me, for once, I dangerously missed Hong Kong.