Les Miserables in the New Territories

As Donald Tsang’s government nervously undergoes its end-of-term countdown, even the New Territories aboriginals want to make hay while the sun shines by threatening to launch a “New Territories Revolution,” pledging to protect their homes with blood should the government dare to dismantle illegal roof additions there.

Some infuriated New Territories community leaders have accused the helpless Lau Wong-fat, chairman of Heung Yee Kuk, of being a straw man in the face of Donald Tsang’s rule of law. The New Territories aboriginals have a long, glorious history of William Wallace-type uprisings against British invasion—so claimed rural councilor Leung Fook-yuen—which can be dated back to battles in Tai Po and Kam Tin in 1898, not to mention their contribution during the May 1967 riots to fighting the White-skinned Pigs, a term used by the belligerent underground Hong Kong communists.

But the enactment of another “Braveheart” epic drama looks unlikely in the New Territories in the year of 2011. Firstly, Leung and other militants are right—Heung Yee Kuk, the quasi-self-autonomous governing body, has long been reduced to a Vichy government with its chairman being something like President Petain, loyal to Beijing and separate from the former colonial government in the old days. There is no De Gaulle around in Sheung Shui, Yuen Long or Sha Tin. And sadly, not even a BBC World Service Cantonese broadcast, which has just been closed down in London due to lack of British Foreign Office funding, to call for the natives to take up their hatchets and hoes.

To launch a revolution against Donald Tsang’s regime, under the protection of the PLA, you badly need arms. Assuming President Obama, delighted with hearing of a budding Jasmine Revolution off the Pearl River Delta, instructed the CIA to smuggle some bullets and hand grenades into Tin Shui Wai to make it another Bay of the Pigs, some well-trained local guerrillas would have to lurk around to stand by to make the yes-we-can mission possible.

Upon identifying the IFC as the Bastille of Hong Kong and Central as Tripoli, our New Territories fighters would have to take the Lion Rock Hill first. Like the famous Gibraltar Rock, the Lion Rock Hill would be an essential strategic high ground with its tunnel under full control, ensuring enough money resources as vehicles continue to be allowed to cross and pay their toll. Water and food supply is not a worry. With Shing Mun and Man Yee reservoirs and plenty of shopping malls and Park ‘N Shops, the revolutionary army could sustain as strongly as the Lybians, until Chairman Hu bangs on his desk and orders another crackdown. By that time, I hope those who have the right types of passport would have been evacuated and landed in Toronto or Sydney, or gotten onboard the USS Carl Vinson where they were offered a can of Budweiser and a blanket with a warm “welcome home.”