An Echo in the City by K. X. Song

Author:K. X. Song [, K. X. SONG]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Published: 2023-09-20T00:00:00+00:00

In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity.

—Sun Tzu, THE ART OF WAR

MARCO CALLS ME AT FIVE IN THE EVENING, jolting me out of a restless sleep. I stayed up late last night: mixing oils and recreating old Shanghai, Puxi, with its winding cobblestone streets and leaning sycamore branches. I must’ve fallen asleep sometime in the wee hours of the morning, lost to the world.

Only to wake to this: “Where the hell have you been?” Marco shouts over the din in the background.

“It’s Sunday,” I say, rubbing my eyes. “I’m not on call this weekend.”

“Check your phone, man. They need all the backup they can get right now.”

I groan. “What’s going on?”

“There’s over a million people on the streets protesting Carrie Lam’s response to the extradition bill. They think it means we’re going to start shipping people off to Beijing for no reason.” In the background, the chanting grows louder. “No China rendition!”

I sit up in bed. “One million people?”

Marco sighs into the phone. “Sergeant Leung told us to report to Admiralty; they need crowd control ASAP.”

Twenty minutes later, when I step out of my apartment, the streets are empty, hushed with the strange, preternatural quality of an impending natural disaster. There are people shut inside their stores, gossiping and whispering on the phone, but no one goes out in the open.

I hurry to the MTR, ignoring the prickling feeling at the back of my neck. When I get to the station, I realize certain train lines are shut down. This is an emergency, then. Marco told me: Hong Kong never shuts down public transit.

I take the train to the closest stop at Central. The station is swarming with people; even just getting through the turnstile involves waiting in line. It takes me over thirty minutes to ride one stop when it usually takes five minutes. We’re packed against each other in the car, bodies crammed together as if trying to force a jigsaw puzzle.

And when we pour out of the station onto the surface streets: It’s a different world out there. For a moment, I lose my breath, like I’m viewing the original masterpieces, Van Gogh or Durer. This feels like art, like motion and color that needs to be captured, remembered. This feels like witnessing something you’d see only in a museum.

But I’m here, right now, alive. Ma, I think, if only you could witness this.

Marco said one million, but this feels like one billion. People from all sides and directions flooding into the massive thoroughfare, old and young and tall and short and rich and poor. Nearly impossible to categorize. Chanting, holding signs, sweating, laughing, smiling, glaring, yelling, provoking. I never understood what a sea of people meant, but now I see it in front of me. Yes, this is a sea.

A giant red sign whooshes past me, nearly bonking me on the head. RETRACT EXTRADITION BILL. Beneath the block-letter words, there’s a graffitied picture of Hong Kong’s chief executive, Carrie Lam, her smile twisted into a devil’s grin.

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