Written in 2021? I think. Before the National Security Law, at least.
When I was seven years old, I moved across the Victoria Harbour of Hong Kong. It marked a significant change in my life, as my memories metamorphosed from blurry make-believe to lucid scenes. Though it takes only half an hour to go from Tsim Sha Tsui to North Point, it felt like oceans apart. Ten years later, I went back to the very neighborhood I once grew up in, and everything looks surprisingly foreign to me. I recall going to the local “wet market” with my mom, being petrified of the fish laying half-dead on ice, observing my mother’s bargain with the hawker; the market was bulldozed and reconstructed into a Best Western. Old local bookstores I once adored are now designer flagship stores, Beijing dumplings revamped into Korean barbecue restaurants... I felt utterly betrayed by this place, it is not the neighborhood I grew up in. The old building attendant at my old place didn’t even recognize me.
Hong Kong’s conflict of identity mirrors my own, it shaped me as an intrinsic paradox: the contradictory clash between the East and the West, the old and the new. Some of our streets are named “Prince Edward Road West”, the others “Tsat Tsz Mui Road” (the Road of the Seven Sisters). The Chinese value tradition, and our societal values are conservative, oftentimes limiting. However, Hong Kong is never the place to conform. We take pride in our freedom and democracy, characterized by British governance. As a post-handover child, I never experienced what happened before, but I grew up with the repercussions of the incident. I witnessed the change around me, not just the buildings, but the language, and the people... Hong Kong is at a crossroads with its character, and it has yet to decide what it wants to become.
I took time to reflect silently on my way back home. Hong Kong has faced a lot of challenges these years: The protests awakened the city, the pandemic shaken our faith, and God only knows what’s more to come. I have been the silent watcher, the judgmental scorner, and the idealistic revolutionary. Who am I to celebrate your triumphant odes? Who am I to weep for your downfall? I am powerless against the sands of time, I cannot do anything to stop these changes from happening. It takes courage to embrace change, change that sometimes we did not ask for. My hypocrisy was tomfoolery: it never occurred to me that as I departed Tsim Sha Tsui, Tsim Sha Tsui left me too. It slipped away before I even noticed, before I could put my feelings into words. How could I expect the attendant to recognize the seventeen-year-old before him, when I left at seven? I have always been changing, time will tell when wrinkles start to appear. For I am forever restless, I must mature from my one-sided perception of Hong Kong. I realized how similar we are at our cores, and I feel a sense of guilt with how long it took me to understand that.
Now that I am moving across the Pacific Ocean, I regard my coming-of-age sentiment toward Hong Kong as my parting gift to her. I can truly embrace my inner irony now, just like Hong Kong's journey toward self-actualization. The future is uncertain, but I know if you find your voice and stay authentic, I will appreciate you for who you are. Not the cyberpunk Pearl of the Orient Hollywood movies made you out to be, not the chaotic city of protests you were portrayed on news, but the Hong Kong I once knew, the Hong Kong I once adored. And you will do the same for me. Give my regards to Hong Kong, please don’t ever change, don’t stay the same either. I promise to stay passionate and genuine; I’ll leave Hong Kong far behind me, the city I once claimed as my own.