Five Stages In Hong Kong

Denial

June 1997 

Raymond Mok’s parents believed the world was ending when the Chinese flag was raised over Hong Kong in 1997. Friends had fled to Vancouver, but the possibility of leaving the city hadn’t even occurred to them. They owned a noodle shop in a public housing estate, and with 14-hour workdays, and the constant bustle of customers, there was little room left to contemplate such a drastic move.

In the following weeks and months after the handover, things turned out to be not as bad as they had expected. Tanks didn’t roll through the streets. Hong Kong’s language and money remain unchanged. The little details of life remained essentially unchanged. 

Over the next 20 years, their friends slowly trickled back from Canada (if you don’t enjoy gardening, life is boring there, they said). The couple completely forgot the handover and what a big event it was at the time.

Hong Kong was controlled by the country most of their ancestors had fled from, but if nothing in Hong Kong had changed, did it matter?

Anger

June 2017 

19-year-old Raymond, son of the owners of Mak Fine Noodles, had never paid attention to the historic mailbox which stood in front of the Ma On Shan post office. 

“What’s this shit?” his best friend Kelvin said as they walked past it on the way home from school. The British Royal Crown emblem on the mailbox was cemented over.

“Who cares? It’s just a mailbox.”

“They erased the word Royal from every sports club, charity building, and museum in Hong Kong. And now this. Hong Kong is dying from a thousand paper cuts.”

“Chill out. Nothing ever really changes.”

“What about the booksellers?”

A few bookshop owners who sold books that criticized Xi Jinping had been abducted by Chinese spies a few years ago.

Kelvin was always ranting about China. Raymond was tired of it. “I don’t plan to sell books,” he replied flatly.

He wanted to be a cartoonist, or maybe a graphic designer. Deep down, it was likely destiny to inherit his parents’ noodle shop (he worked there every weekend), but one needed to dream.

“Do you want to go down to New Town Plaza? There’s a Korean art installation there this week.”

“The mall is full of Chinese tourists. I hate hearing Mandarin.” Kelvin scrunched his face in displeasure.

June 2019

“We need to keep an eye on this,” Kelvin said as he flipped through a newspaper.

Raymond looked at his friend, expecting another bitter rant about China, one that he would need to snap him out of again. Instead, Kelvin handed him a copy of the Apple Daily, a free tabloid handed out in front of train stations.

Anyone in Hong Kong could be sent to China! (if new bill is passed).

Raymond read the details. The writer was in a panic about what might happen to Hong Kongers. The proposed extradition bill would all the authorities to send anyone in Hong Kong, even foreigners, to face trial in mainland China. He had never even been to China, because everyone had said its so dangerous. Raymond began to worry that he, too, could be picked up and take away. Who knew what reasons they might find?

“Some people have been thinking Hong Kong would be fine,” Kelvin said, “but now all bets are off. Hong Kong is dying.”

Raymond scanned the details of the article again. “It sure looks that way.”

“There’s a protest march against the extradition bill, Sunday. Let’s go!”

“I’ll think about it,” Raymond said.

That week, he found out that everyone he knew was going, Raymond felt he didn’t have anything to lose, and on June 16th, he marched down Hennessy Road with one million people, all chanting opposition to the proposed law.

The next day, he picked up a copy of the Apple Daily. 

Cheer for the Brave Hong Kongers. 

He felt a warm swelling of pride that he had participated. He should have listened to Kelvin a long time ago.

A few days later, Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s CEO, announced she was cancelling the Extradition Bill.

The next day Apple Daily printed: 

Evil Law To Be Suspended But Not To Be Withdrawn”

The fight was not over.

November 2020

In November, after months of protests, the government hadn’t changed its stance on the protesters’ many demands. Foreign countries were listening. Donald Trump, the leader of America, said he supported Hong Kongers’ right to be free.

The world couldn’t deny freedom for Hong Kongers.

“We are drafting our own constitution tonight, and declaring independence,” Kelvin informed him.

That night, 5000 protesters gathered at the Ma On Shan shopping center. They belted out the beautiful lyrics of the protest anthem a dozen times. And the leaders began to read the articles of Hong Kong’s new constitution.

Raymond kept his eye open for the riot police. None of them outside entered the shopping mall. Supposedly, they needed to ask permission to come inside, but the police never follow the rules.

As they chanted their words of protest, demanding the riot police be put in prison, asking for full democracy for Hong Kong, it grew warmer. Raymond had already emptied his water bottle, and the shops in the mall had mysteriously closed early.

At 10:30pm, word spread that the mall had shutoff the air conditioning. They shuffled out for fresh air, and with nothing bound to happen at this hour, they found a bus and went home.

Bargaining 

December 2020

Being grabbed by the police thugs was bound to happen eventually. Last month, an undercover jumped on him at a protest in Kowloon, handcuffed him to a metal railing for 3 hours. Shit! He even peed his pants, as they wouldn’t let him go to the toilet. They bused him with 20 others to Lai King prison. They pushed him into a cell. When they closed the door, all he could remember was darkness. It was so pitch black, he couldn’t see his hand in front of his face. It went on for an eternity. When he screamed, the guards would threaten him worse was coming if he didn’t shut up. He didn’t want to be murdered. That wouldn’t help the cause. So he kept quiet. After an eternity, he was pushed out into blindingly bright sunshine. In a daze, he waited for a yellow city bus, and returned home, where he slept for 3 days without saying a word to his parents.

When he finally talked to his mom, she said the police had called and told her he was held in detention for 48 hours.

In the coming weeks, he wanted to do something, but with only a few hundred people showing up at protests, the odds of being grabbed and tortured in prison (his name was on a list now), were too high. 

He’d wait until there was another million person protest.

He spent his days checking the update on the LIHKG website (TV news was government propaganda) and being angry with the government for whatever stupid thing they did that day.

On New Year’s Day, word came of a new type of SARS spreading in China.

Despair

June 2022

“Put your mask on,” his mom said as he walked out the front door. He was still in his final year of university, graduation pushed back a year because of Covid.

“Sure thing,” Raymond said, knowing he would take the mask off a few blocks away.

While she served him breakfast earlier, mom had asked him about a high school classmate. “I heard Angus moved to Manchester?”

“He said applying for the BNO visa was simple. But now, Angus has insomnia. The sun doesn’t come out for 6 months a year in Manchester.”

“But His children will learn English.” He was only 22, but mom was already giving him hints about having children.

“I don’t want to speak English. That’s for people who went to some sort of elite university.”

Manchester was out of the question, but on the way to class, Kelvin thought about how dull life was in Hong Kong. He had parted ways with his best friend Kelvin shortly after he stopped attending protests. In fact, he had stopped doing almost anything outside of class, and mostly sat at home. 

His classmates at school were trying to introduce girls to him. He wanted to stay independent and not get tied down, but one Saturday his friends brought Kitty along to a lunch outing at TST. Kitty was easy to talk to, so he asked her out on a date the next day.

“The government had just raised the bus fares,” he said as they sipped bubble tea on the harbor promenade.

“I hate the government,” she mumbled.

“I hate the government too,” he said.

“Idiots.”

“Yeah, they’re idiots.”

They went to a cinema. During the film (something featuring the Minions), they giggled at the dumb jokes, squeezing their hands together a few times, and then, unexpectedly, they kissed.

Acceptance

June 2024

One Sunday morning, Raymond and Kitty crossed the border to go to Sam’s Club. It was only a 30-minute subway trip, and everything in China was half the price of that in Hong Kong.

After receiving a paid internship at an advertising company, Raymond rented a small apartment in Tai Wo. Kitty stayed there when she needed a break from her grandparents. Shenzhen was a good place to stock up on supplies, the train ticket was only five dollars, and it was their third trip there.

In Sam’s Club Raymond thought he recognized an old friend.

“Kelvin?” he asked in Cantonese.

The man turned around, thankfully it was Kelvin. “You too?!”

“Funny seeing you here.”

“It’s half the price of shopping in Hong Kong,” Kelvin said. “And hot pot is only ten dollars.”

Despite having had ten years of mandatory Mandarin language class at school, they both only spoke Cantonese on their trips to China. There's nothing they could do to change politics, but they found a way to have a bit of both worlds and not surrender all of their dignity. 

If the advertising job didn’t work out, he told Kitty he dreamt of opening an authentic Hong Kong noodle shop to preserve the old traditions. He already had a good idea for the logo.

**

Background Information:

Despite sharing a common grammar and 80% of their vocabulary, the Cantonese and Mandarin languages have different phonetics and are mutually unintelligible. In China’s province of Guangdong (which borders Hong Kong) Cantonese is gradually being replaced by Mandarin, but is still widely understood. The pressure to learn and use the Mandarin language in Hong Kong was one of the core grievances leading up to the 2019 protests.

The characters in this story are a composite of people I have known over the years I have lived in Hong Kong. The dates and background circumstances of the story are based on actual events.