Let’s Talk About Hong Kong

Last year on Oct 26th, Daniel Schwartz and Mitch Anzuoni, editors from Inpatient Press, came to the radio and brought me a copy of Tiffany Sia’s Salty Wet.

In that same week, a field recording from the Hong Kong street protests by Samson Young and Him Cheung (CMHK) went on air. The studio space was channeled to the temporality of street time. It was an early afternoon segment, I sat in stillness, encompassed by the pandemonic soundscape, penetrated by broken words and car honks, feeling both unsettled and reassured. I asked myself, why do I hold the Hong Kong city so emotionally close and politically and epistemologically afar?

Couldn’t get my head straight—one country, two systems—the grand historical doublespeak stunted me.

Six years ago, my ex-boyfriend took me to Sham Tseng in Hong Kong to meet a liaison person over a Dim Sum meeting. My ex, at the time working in Hong Kong, was in a hope to figure out some expedient way to get me, a mainlander, a permit of permanent residence. Sham Tseng is famous for roasted goose. In memory we drove really far, ate roasted goose, and drank pu’er tea. I dealt silently with the uncomfortable feelings of being arranged for a future good. Since the handover, Hong Kong has turned from unreachable to consumable and affordable, serving as an exit from the predominant reality.

In Salty Wet’s thin paper body, Sia writes "香港冇了" (there is no Hong Kong anymore). I felt sentimental as I nearly became part of it. Seeing China bite its tail aggressively in an orgasmic manner, I hesitate to say who is disappearing who.

We are in Chinatown, another simulacrum of the Hong Kong city. I wonder, what is a more satisfying way and a better gesture towards really residing here. Is it true that globalism is incomprehensible?

I look forward to having David Borgonjon and participants from “Let’s talk about Hong Kong”, the ongoing discussion at the Columbia University to the radio in the New Year (1/31, 3-4pm). Along with activists, historians, writers and students, I hope my crumbled thoughts could become part of this collective endeavor of finding a resilient encapsulation.