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Opinion | Hong Kong risks being condemned to its own circle of hell

  • After 20 years of grappling with questions set by the frozen world of Lucifer in Dante’s Inferno, hatred in Hong Kong today has provided Chow Chung-yan with some answers

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Hong Kong has descended into division and violence with both sides of the debate refusing to reflect on their opponents’ thinking. Photo: Sam Tsang

The most unforgettable scene in Dante Alighieri’s Inferno, which is also its biggest mystery, revolves around the frozen Lucifer.

In the deepest circle of hell, the prince of darkness is perpetually stuck in a lake of ice. The most powerful agent of evil desperately flaps his wings trying to break free, creating a colossal polar vortex around him.

The ironic thing is that the more he struggles, the colder hell becomes, entrapping the three-faced devil in a pillar of ice for eternity.

Dante’s Lucifer was confined to a frozen hell that became harsher the more he struggled, in echoes of the tortured fate casting over Hong Kong today. Photo: Alamy
Dante’s Lucifer was confined to a frozen hell that became harsher the more he struggled, in echoes of the tortured fate casting over Hong Kong today. Photo: Alamy

When I first studied the Italian poet’s Divine Comedy at the University of Hong Kong some 20 years ago, I was an undernourished bookworm who knew next to nothing about real life outside.

The scene involving the frozen Lucifer is both fascinating and intriguing. Why did Dante, the most learned man of his age, depict the ninth circle of hell as a frozen world, when all his contemporaries painted it as a place of fire and smoke? Why was punishment for Lucifer permanent entombment in a pillar of ice? These were the questions I tried to answer back then.

Chow Chung-yan began his journalistic career at the South China Morning Post and rose to become Executive Editor in 2015. As the SCMP’s second-in-command, he is in charge of the China and US bureaus as well as the political economy, culture, print and digital teams. He has been running the SCMP’s day-to-day news operations since 2011. He led the newsroom’s organisational restructuring, streamlined its production workflows and set up dedicated teams for both the print and digital products to facilitate the newspaper’s digital transformation. He also assembled an award-winning infographics desk and spearheaded the redesign of the newspaper. To strengthen the paper’s international coverage, he established the SCMP’s US operations in 2017 with bureaus in New York and Washington, and subsequently set up offices in Brussels and Nairobi. He has been directing the SCMP’s China coverage since 2007 to build the news outlet into one of the most important sources of information on China for global readers. He initiated the hugely successful Open Questions series for the world’s thought leaders to share their insights on critical global issues. In 2024, he designed and supervised the creation of SCMP Plus, a premium content product that has won a top prize at WAN-IFRA’s Digital Media Awards Worldwide.
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