Indelible City by Louisa Lim

Author:Louisa Lim [Lim, Louisa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2022-04-19T00:00:00+00:00

Part 3

defiance

Chapter 7

THE FIRST GENERATION

I was standing on the hump of a flyover, looking down at the rainbow beads of tent encampments threading down the road far off into the distance, bathed in yellow streetlights. Two years had passed since mass protests had forced the government to withdraw the proposals for patriotic education. Now Hong Kongers’ pent-up demands had burst out into the Umbrella Movement, which was an explosion of discontent, desire, and, above all, hope. An A4-sized poster tacked up on a wall said it all: “This is NOT a revolution.” Hong Kongers wanted to hold their rulers to the promise that Hong Kongers would rule Hong Kong. It was, at heart, an expression of pure political idealism. The nonrevolution was as polite and reasonable as an occupation could be, with the occupiers building a study hall for students, organizing trash recycling, and even planting small vegetable patches in the ornamental flower beds.

At the heart of the occupation were the fears that S. Y. Chung had expressed over the vagueness of Hong Kong’s electoral arrangement and the lack of a timeline for democracy in the Basic Law. Hong Kongers wanted to choose their own leader, and they laid all their trust in the talismanic date of 2017 that had been raised by the NPC Standing Committee. But on August 31, 2014, their hopes were dashed when the same body issued a decision that, although Hong Kongers could vote for a leader, their choices would be limited to two or three candidates nominated by a 1,200-person Selection Committee. It added that all candidates must love China and love Hong Kong. The aim was still universal suffrage, it said, but a steady and prudent path should be charted. When I tried to explain the import to my kids, I ended up using food metaphors: It’s like the difference between an all-you-can-eat buffet offering endless quantities of lobster, sashimi, and chocolate cake, and an all-you-can-eat buffet offering only white bread and rice. Hong Kongers had been promised their all-you-can-eat buffet for so long that they couldn’t countenance a spread of bread and rice. That night, at a rally near the main government complex, an assistant law professor named Benny Tai Yiu-ting announced that Hong Kong was entering a new era of resistance.

The first expression of that new era was the occupation of three important roads. The movement that ensued was named after the umbrellas that the young activists used to protect themselves from the clouds of tear gas fired by police in Admiralty, near the government headquarters and Legco. This was the first time that police had deployed tear gas against Hong Kongers since the 1997 return to Chinese sovereignty, and it was seen as a betrayal so great that thousands more rushed out to occupy the three sites, including streets in Causeway Bay and Mongkok. By the end of the occupation, seventy-nine days later, it was estimated that 1.2 million people—a sixth of the population—had taken part.

From the flyover, I was watching the last night of the occupation.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.