Stay or go? For Hongkongers, there is no easy answer to the enduring question
- When is enough, enough? Throughout Hong Kong’s history, political and social changes have triggered generations of its residents to ask themselves the same question
- Nevertheless, the city is not easily excised by reluctant exiles, and neither would they want it to be
Stay or go – several generations have faced this choice on finding themselves at critical junctures through war, revolution, economic downturn and other events beyond their control. No easy answers exist. For some, Hong Kong is the tomb of their ancestors and even the thought of departure is inconceivable. Others astutely recognise they couldn’t ever be truly happy as a minority in someone else’s society, however tolerant. Nevertheless, Hong Kong is not easily excised by reluctant exiles, and neither would they want it to be.
Tipping points vary and one person’s means little to another. Wholesale police impunity, and courts purloined for political ends might evoke a frantic bolt for the exit, or a dismissive shrug. Entitled village yobs mindlessly trashing a countryside beauty spot “because they can”, may make one person shake their head sadly, and say, “That’s it! No more pointless letters. I’m done …” For others, the ongoing pretence that everything is “back to normal” just becomes too much to bear, and they simply cannot live amid blatant lies for another day.
The Hong Kong families struggling to decide whether to leave for Britain
What else weights the scales? Dead-eyed, ferret-faced officials parroting lines so egregious that even the most charitable observers shake their heads and inwardly mutter that – surely – these pitiful stooges cannot themselves believe a word they are saying. Watching open-mouthed as other recent converts enthusiastically take a pickaxe to everything their own education and experience represents, and knowing no peaceful way exists to stop their vandalism.
Feeling public anger and resentment metastasise into cold hatred, with a queasy foreboding that those boxed into corners with no escape will soon lash out in revenge-frenzied frustration. The steadily dawning awareness that while those in ultimate power want the place, they don’t really want its people – and certainly not as they actually are.
In Defying Hitler, written in 1939 and posthumously published in 2001, journalist and lawyer Sebastian Haffner described the mounting litany of small things that made him leave Nazi Germany. No single event triggered his departure, just the steady drip-poisoning of daily life. Nothing threatened his own comfortable existence; he could easily have turned broader injustices to his benefit – plenty of others did. But one day, he finally couldn’t stomach “all that” any longer, and abruptly left.
What keeps people in Hong Kong, then, in the face of “all that”, with the woozy certainty of more to come?
For me, the sweeping views of Tai Mo Shan from my study, over maturing trees long-nurtured and – just now – various heady floral scents wafting in through the open doors, offer a tranquil anchor, along with the uncomplicated friendship of so many ordinary/extraordinary Hong Kong people, who daily enrich my life in ways large and small. And the absolute certitude that – eventually – even the slyest, most loathsome rats will meet their destined cat, some dark night, when they least anticipate it.