Letter to the Void
Dear, xxxx
Thanks for your concern. I am okay. Tired. I feel my mental space for caring slipping. Not because I don’t believe in the cause. I do. I have since I was like 14. I still remember the moment when Thatcher fell down the stairs and being told something like Britain giving us back to China and I asked, “So why can’t we just be left alone? Why can’t we just decide for ourselves?” I think that the Hong Kong cause is one that is about the “innate feeling of Justice.” It’s not complicated. Most of us are born with it.
We just want it to be fair. It’s not fair we were born into a situation where our land are owned by others, our beautiful buildings, environment and culture destroyed by British companies and those close to the administration. That our everyday lives ruled by someone else. I know that is why being in the US was such a freeing experience. I arrived to watch the Clinton/Bush elections and I was so blown away by the level of participation people around me had, that everyday people talked about the choice they want for their country. And how that juxta-positions with the knowledge of “How this is going to be,” in Hong Kong as we had five more years before we approached 1997, and the shadow of June 4th following us just a few years back.
I was joking how we should rewrite the history books ala Gang war LA. A bit like modernizing Shakespeare. You see, the Brits big daddy was selling Opium in someone else’s territory and the leaders got pissed that all these people were doped out and destroying the community so they set fire in the den. So the dealers got really pissed off and called in the reinforcements back down in their main ghetto and the China Gang lost the drive by/full blown war and then they had a “truce,” where the China superceded a small portion of land for the Brit Mafia to sell their trade and it was all good until China got more powerful and was able to demand it back when the agreement was over. All the time no one in that space had a word to say. Which will point out exactly how ridiculous our situation really is. It’s as lame as the Ghetto Wars in the 80s in LA.
It seems so simple, so why is it so hard to convince people that they have the power, they deserve the power to rule ourselves? Did I tell you that once I was in a job interview and the person who was doing it had found Glutter and said, “So you do feel like a revolutionary?” and I laughed and said, “No. I am asking for the most basic rights. Democracy is not revolutionary. Maybe 200 years ago it was. The majority of countries are ruled by this system. There is nothing what-so-ever complicated and difficult to comprehend why I should be asking for this? Don’t you think so?’ and the interviewer paused, “Actually you are right.” I didn’t take the job although they offered it to me. So much for people saying that with this site I might not get work. I don’t want to work for anyone who don’t let me have this site. As it means I am working for someone in bed with the government and the PRC and I already did that once. And I know how it works.
As for what is going on, I want to say I know it very well or is fully informed. I am not. In so many ways, I have the big picture and ignore the nitty gritty of the policies and fights. Coz, maybe we should not be fighting on such a small platform of article 45 or 56 or any of that. We should be fighting on a bigger level of the democratic movement. I think that is what Cheug Mao, our protester turned legislator said when he refused to sign some protest declaration. I think he’s right. I think he was right about the Zhao Ziyang minute of silence too. Through time, I have garnered much more respect for him, even though I thought he was somewhat ridiculous at first. Maybe he’s the last revolutionary left in this part of the world characterized by revolutionaries and those who believed in the justice of the people.
How strange that the reason the Communist came to power was that they were able to capture the hearts of the people, but providing respect and by fighting the foreign conquers in World War Two by standing up to the foreign powers that had unofficially colonized our country. They were right. They won. And now they have become the oppressors. I wonder if there are any real communist left in the party. They probably feel just as dismayed as we do. Maybe the Art of War is right. “Your enemy’s enemies are you friend.” That they see how hypocritical the current administration is.
Oh, and I was saying to someone, you know that photo of Zhao at Tiananmen and Web was standing right behind him. Someone wrote me and email and said that his expression seemed sad, as if he knew it was all going to bed badly, and I wrote back saying how I see that expression as smug. That he was hoping it would all turn out badly because then Zhao will be deposed and he would gain power. And that I might make a t-shirt with that image with “Who Wants to Be China’s Premier?” under it. Coz that’s how I see it. Tiananmen was used as an excuse to subvert Zhao’s power and consolidate the other factions. It has less to do with actually the students. It’s all selfish. And anyone who says the current administration is solid probably would have said Zhao’s reign and the reformist’s admin was solid as well. Who is to know. Do we even have an idea who is in the politburo? What there stances are, and what sort of debate is currently going on. Not really, it’s not like CCTV beams every meeting out into the public.
And oh, this woman I met told me she went to a China and Internet Conference attended by a bunch of people. Some from CCTV, some for Cisco and other computer companies and many “China,” intellectuals. The big debate was the ownership of information, and if China was as “bad,” as people thought, and trying to gage the current situation. I asked her who was there and she said mainly white professors, some of which can’t even go to China as they are banned. And everyone was having it out.
I pointed out the farcity of the situation. Why the hell do they need to debate the current situation in China in the blind? Who are all these people? I mean, did one person ask or realize that the only reason they have to debate in the blind and analysis’s is because the people in China can’t speak for themselves? If China isn’t as “bad,” as they are saying, then how come people just can’t ask the Chinese Citizens themselves and expect an answer. She said they didn’t. And it just goes to show how weird the whole thing is. A bunch of intellectuals with no real experience of China debating with the government representatives. That itself, should answer any question raised.
I think I am ready to go. I mean for a while anyway. Probably this time next year. It’s now my priority to join the Diaspora and get the passport. For the last three months I was still thinking that my decision had everything to do with being an artist exile of sort. That I feel consistently disappointed by the art scene here. The lack of international participation, the lack of real passion and seriousness.
But now in with the new debates about the terms of chief executives, and the rumor that the Chinese government might dissolve the borders between Hong Kong and Shenzhen. To create a population who will be overwhelmingly in support of the CCP. I feel this move is becoming more and more political. A different sense of worry has displaced my original one of personal safety. I refuse to talk about Glutter with anyone who has asked me to stop. Someone’s parents got a phone call about their site, I wonder if mine will too eventually. I guess my parents would just hang up and hopefully give them a lecture on personal freedoms before doing so. They used to say the same thing to my teachers, I can’t see them not saying the same thing with anyone who “informs” my parents I write about “subversive,” content.
A new acceptance has elevated. That what everyone feared, the reason that only me and my aunt is left in Hong Kong is that China was not going to uphold the one country two systems, that we were going to lose our personal freedoms, that those of us left here will have to suffer the whims and turmoil of China. I don’t want to leave, but I have to.
I used to believe that China was good. I actually was happy in 1997. I thought maybe there was a different future for HK and China as well. I think innately, I cared more about China and wanting to be Chinese above and over all else. I think being the US made me think positive. Or maybe the changes were so slow that I didn’t really see it. Or I thought maybe it wasn’t going to be that way.
I was watching Martin Lee, all husky voice, and being interrupted by Alan Hook the other night. Mr. Hoo just spoke all over and through Mr. Lee, and said something like, “Lets not make an argument over everything. Martin.”
And I thought, “This man is amazing. He could have left. He could have shut up and moved to Canada like everyone else. But he stayed. And he fought. And he sat in a stupid news show where people talk over him, try to take us as much airtime as possible so not to let the other side speak. And he does it over and over again and not once reaching over and punching someone out or packing his bags. That’s passion, that’s belief in sacrificing for the right of the situation.
You have to respect Martin Lee’s ability to stay calm, in the face of such ridicule. I would have punched the guy out or at least I would like to think I had the kind of strength and lack of fear to punch men like Hoo. Men who sell out their profession, the law as well as their own people then lord over all of us with that misappropriated superior complex. He only cares for power. They all care for power. Those who didn’t took early retirement in 1997. Those who wanted to help build a new Hong Kong, must be feeling as numb and deflated as me. I hate them. I don’t want to be associated with them anymore. I thought about not writing about how I am feeling. Not to let on that I am planning to, as people have said to me that I made it feel like it was possible. That it was okay to speak out online, and no one was going to make fun of you. But I decided not to lie or at least not pretend it wasn’t going on in my head. If I leave, at least I want people to know why. That our government is so weak and deferent that it forces everyone else to leave if they could.
I know the days are numbered. Unless some drastic action happens that is over and beyond what is happening in terms of the democratic movement everything is going to consistently be push back. One article 23 protest was a good stop point, but although we are gaining momentum it simply not strong enough. Not to say we should give up. Coz each small piece of resistance slows the tide. I don’t know what I am fighting for sometimes. Like is it really democracy I am after or am I just making a point that we don’t have one and it’s important to think about it. It’s necessary to make it an issue.
Someone has to say it’s wrong, and I am just one more voice. I guess one that helps it look outwards, rather than inwards. I am not really writing for China am I? But maybe I am writing for the other activists in the west in case any of them decide to find out more, there is a place where they might be able to find what they need. 7 million people is nothing in a billion. But can we ever make Hong Kong as big an issue as Tibet? Can we make an appearance in the Oscars via Richard Gere? Can we have Rage against the Machine, Lincoln Part, U2 attend a “Hong Kong Freedom Concert?” a China one? We need to. Tibet will never be free because some famous people said it should. But it’s not forgotten. We’re not even forgotten, people don’t even know we exists.
Not to say International Pressure right now will ever have an impact. US Secretary of Defense Ms. Rice made a statement about how China should move towards democracy a few days ago before she heads of too talks in Beijing. Can we make every other visiting dignitaries do the same. Can we have a South Africa? They dropped out of Apartheid peacefully due to international pressure. Or is it the world used to be less obsessed with money and corporations didn’t have so much power. I can’t say. But we need to stop Europe for giving arms to China. They want to lift the arms sales embargo. The Europeans really are a bunch of appeasers. It just negates their stands on Iraq forever more.
The sun is shining though, and I have a lot to do.
Thanks for listening
Yan
Yan Sham-Shackleton Online 