hong kong. and politics. have a scroll.
So tonight i watched the BBC documentary Hong Kong's Fight For Freedom. And it brought everything back up again.
Fuck Carrie Lam.
Fuck Xi Jinping.
Fuck all of these fascist motherfuckers who completely fucked in the ass 8 million people in the allegedly autonomous Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong.
Like the documentary says, everybody knew that the Chinese Communist Party was going to fuck every Hongkonger in the ass in 2047, but that wasn't soon enough for the power-hungry dictator in charge of China right now. Xi Jinping wanted to drive his boot into the necks of every free-thinking person in China during his second term, so as to clear the way for his previously-illegal third term and God knows how many more after that.
My grandfather lived in Hong Kong for most of the 80s and half of the 90s. I visited him when i was but a bairn, and i credit that visit to my present-day attraction to the East Asian lifestyle. Hong Kong was a fucking revelation for me when as a child. Skyscrapers! Street markets! Chicken feet! Digital watches! Kites! I loved it so much, and i think as i got older i always longed to get back to something like that experience.
My sister and i, since our earliest memories, we loved cuddly toys. Soft toys. Teddy bears. Whatever you want to call them. She had dozens, and so did i, and we had names and backstories for all of them. I've forgotten many of our teddy bears over the years, but two i remember very clearly - King and Ken. They were both cuddly toys that we bought in Hong Kong, and they were both named for two of my grandpa's servants/domestic workers/Filipino buddies/whatever the fuck. Yes, Hong Kong was a fucking British colony filled with all the trappings of colonialism, let's not pretend it wasn't. But still. Now it's an appendage of a corrupt regime that still practices the same classist and racist shit, so let's not get all tankie and bitch about the former problematicness of the UK when China are the real assholes in this story.
We had these teddy bears, and we loved them, because our brief time in Hong Kong was massively impactful to who we ended up being.
Or, to be fair, i can only speak for myself. My sister went through a whole bunch of her own self-discovery over the past 30 years, and because we haven't really communicated much in that time, i can't speak for how she thinks about her visit to Hong Kong or how it impacted her. But for me, i felt like Hong Kong was a very significant part of my childhood, even i never lived there, even my experience was as fleeting as could be. It was my grandpa's home. So, in a way, it was also a home for me.
And then when i visited it again as an adult, it wasn't.
I mean, yes, the vistas of Hong Kong still gave me those nostalgic feelings. It felt like the place i always remembered. But the street level experience felt clinical and depressing. Just like a giant, boring shopping mall. Nothing like what i remembered from my childhood.
And yet... Living in Shenzhen, just across the river in mainland China... Crossing over to Hong Kong meant becoming free. Yeah, the food was blander and less interesting. Yeah, the overwhelming experience was to exist in this shitty fucking middle class shopping mall lifestyle that is identical in every country of the world. But here and there i caught glimpses of the Hong Kong i remembered. The mountains, the kites (now drones), the fishermen, the vendors at the 大排檔 street stalls... I caught flashes of the place that was so impactful to me as a child.
And it all got fucked up when the protests started in 2019. I was living literally just across the river. My colleagues had friends and family in the "SAR". All of us could cheerfully take a subway ride across the border to go buy a pork bun or (more realistically) buy foreign medications and other imported products that weren't available in mainland. But after a few months of these protests happening and my colleagues expressing sympathy with the people of Hong Kong... This story that the official media in mainland China had previously covered up, censored and ignored... Eventually the party realized they couldn't censor it any more, so they decided to reveal to the mainstream (i.e. non Guangdong) public that these protests were actually happening... and they chose to frame them as riots and terrorism.
Overnight my open-minded, free-thinking, Hong Kong-visiting colleagues all changed their tune. They understood what the party expected of them, and they instantly changed their views to toe the line. Which is to say that the "real" Hongkongers were being terrorized by separatists, criminals dedicated to undermining the foundation of China itself, and it was all instigated by foreign "black hands". CIA. NSA. Sinister evildoers from the US.
This, obviously, was complete and utter horseshit. But i saw all of my educated colleagues not only swallow the propaganda but also regurgitate it! It caused an epic shitstorm in my company, which was owned by a Chinese conglomerate and had a Shenzhen office (where i worked) but still had a majority of the team based in the UK. But - just like the Chinese government steamrolled over the freedom of Hongkongers - our head office in Shanghai steamrolled over the freedom of both our Shenzhen office and our so-called bosses in the UK. And... hey, it's your job, and the big boss is always right, so you eat the shit and you move on. But... fucking fuck the shit. For our bosses to side with the Chinese fascists over the Hong Kong kids just wanting to maintain the autonomy they were legally fucking due? Fuck that fucking shit.
It makes me so mad.
All of these motherfuckers who are still - still today! - caping for China make me mad.
It's a literal fucking fascist government. Any hard left or hard right winger who is all tankie "ohnoez but America invaded Iraq and we should just look after our own peoplez" can suck my fucking dick, please unfriend immediately. There is degrees of shitty political leaders, and even at the shittiest that America's leaders have ever been in my lifetime (Trump), they've never been as shitty as the shitty leaders of China. Don't even start with some "oh but America puts black people in prison like China puts Uyghurs". Don't even.
And i hate to say it because i fucking love China. I love the landscape. I love the food. I love the people. And Taiwan is not the same. Taiwan is a totally different culture. It has Chinese elements, for sure, but it's not Chinese. It's different. It has Japanese elements too. It has Pacific island elements. And it has American and European elements. It has those elements in ways that even Hong Kong didn't. It's nice to live here. It's probably more convenient to live in any city in this corner of the world than North America. But Taipei is never going to hit all of those same happy vibes for me that living in Shenzhen did, or that perhaps Hong Kong might've, if it hadn't become the target of the party's latest crackdowns.
I wish i had something optimistic to say, but i don't. Hong Kong got fucked in the ass. Everybody who stood up for their freedom either had to leave the country altogether or they got thrown in prison. So many people have gotten thrown in prison. And Taiwan is next on the agenda. You could make an argument that Hong Kong was China's from the outset because of the 1997 handover (nevermind the broken agreement to maintain their liberty for 50 years), but Taiwan has never been a part of China. There is no legal backing for the Chinese Communist Party to exert their rule over this country. But politically, the vast majority of the rest of the world (including the US and the EU) has agreed to not recognize Taiwan as a legitimate country, because that's a prerequisite for being able to trade with China. So we're fucked, just like Hong Kong was.
Yeah. Maybe the US or Japan will make a token effort to defend my new home if the Chinese decide to blockade the ports. But i'm not convinced they'll bother to actually get the lead out and have China fuck around and find out. China already pretty much invaded the entire South China Sea over the past couple decades, and the democratic world did fucking nothing. China's guns are bigger than Vietnam's, Malaysia's and the Philippines'. And all of those regional powers are still cucking to China because China is the big dog. All of the leftists who rightfully complained that America rolled over Central and South America should wake the fuck up and point their ire at the new imperialists who are doing the exact same shit over here. But of course they won't because China's government continue to call themselves "communist" despite their leaders being filthy rich and their policies being blatantly nationalist/conservative.
I am disappoint at the hard left, and the hard right.
I can't even remember what my point was, except that i miss Hong Kong and i want a pork bun.
Fuck Carrie Lam.
Fuck Xi Jinping.
Fuck all of these fascist motherfuckers who completely fucked in the ass 8 million people in the allegedly autonomous Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong.
Like the documentary says, everybody knew that the Chinese Communist Party was going to fuck every Hongkonger in the ass in 2047, but that wasn't soon enough for the power-hungry dictator in charge of China right now. Xi Jinping wanted to drive his boot into the necks of every free-thinking person in China during his second term, so as to clear the way for his previously-illegal third term and God knows how many more after that.
My grandfather lived in Hong Kong for most of the 80s and half of the 90s. I visited him when i was but a bairn, and i credit that visit to my present-day attraction to the East Asian lifestyle. Hong Kong was a fucking revelation for me when as a child. Skyscrapers! Street markets! Chicken feet! Digital watches! Kites! I loved it so much, and i think as i got older i always longed to get back to something like that experience.
My sister and i, since our earliest memories, we loved cuddly toys. Soft toys. Teddy bears. Whatever you want to call them. She had dozens, and so did i, and we had names and backstories for all of them. I've forgotten many of our teddy bears over the years, but two i remember very clearly - King and Ken. They were both cuddly toys that we bought in Hong Kong, and they were both named for two of my grandpa's servants/domestic workers/Filipino buddies/whatever the fuck. Yes, Hong Kong was a fucking British colony filled with all the trappings of colonialism, let's not pretend it wasn't. But still. Now it's an appendage of a corrupt regime that still practices the same classist and racist shit, so let's not get all tankie and bitch about the former problematicness of the UK when China are the real assholes in this story.
We had these teddy bears, and we loved them, because our brief time in Hong Kong was massively impactful to who we ended up being.
Or, to be fair, i can only speak for myself. My sister went through a whole bunch of her own self-discovery over the past 30 years, and because we haven't really communicated much in that time, i can't speak for how she thinks about her visit to Hong Kong or how it impacted her. But for me, i felt like Hong Kong was a very significant part of my childhood, even i never lived there, even my experience was as fleeting as could be. It was my grandpa's home. So, in a way, it was also a home for me.
And then when i visited it again as an adult, it wasn't.
I mean, yes, the vistas of Hong Kong still gave me those nostalgic feelings. It felt like the place i always remembered. But the street level experience felt clinical and depressing. Just like a giant, boring shopping mall. Nothing like what i remembered from my childhood.
And yet... Living in Shenzhen, just across the river in mainland China... Crossing over to Hong Kong meant becoming free. Yeah, the food was blander and less interesting. Yeah, the overwhelming experience was to exist in this shitty fucking middle class shopping mall lifestyle that is identical in every country of the world. But here and there i caught glimpses of the Hong Kong i remembered. The mountains, the kites (now drones), the fishermen, the vendors at the 大排檔 street stalls... I caught flashes of the place that was so impactful to me as a child.
And it all got fucked up when the protests started in 2019. I was living literally just across the river. My colleagues had friends and family in the "SAR". All of us could cheerfully take a subway ride across the border to go buy a pork bun or (more realistically) buy foreign medications and other imported products that weren't available in mainland. But after a few months of these protests happening and my colleagues expressing sympathy with the people of Hong Kong... This story that the official media in mainland China had previously covered up, censored and ignored... Eventually the party realized they couldn't censor it any more, so they decided to reveal to the mainstream (i.e. non Guangdong) public that these protests were actually happening... and they chose to frame them as riots and terrorism.
Overnight my open-minded, free-thinking, Hong Kong-visiting colleagues all changed their tune. They understood what the party expected of them, and they instantly changed their views to toe the line. Which is to say that the "real" Hongkongers were being terrorized by separatists, criminals dedicated to undermining the foundation of China itself, and it was all instigated by foreign "black hands". CIA. NSA. Sinister evildoers from the US.
This, obviously, was complete and utter horseshit. But i saw all of my educated colleagues not only swallow the propaganda but also regurgitate it! It caused an epic shitstorm in my company, which was owned by a Chinese conglomerate and had a Shenzhen office (where i worked) but still had a majority of the team based in the UK. But - just like the Chinese government steamrolled over the freedom of Hongkongers - our head office in Shanghai steamrolled over the freedom of both our Shenzhen office and our so-called bosses in the UK. And... hey, it's your job, and the big boss is always right, so you eat the shit and you move on. But... fucking fuck the shit. For our bosses to side with the Chinese fascists over the Hong Kong kids just wanting to maintain the autonomy they were legally fucking due? Fuck that fucking shit.
It makes me so mad.
All of these motherfuckers who are still - still today! - caping for China make me mad.
It's a literal fucking fascist government. Any hard left or hard right winger who is all tankie "ohnoez but America invaded Iraq and we should just look after our own peoplez" can suck my fucking dick, please unfriend immediately. There is degrees of shitty political leaders, and even at the shittiest that America's leaders have ever been in my lifetime (Trump), they've never been as shitty as the shitty leaders of China. Don't even start with some "oh but America puts black people in prison like China puts Uyghurs". Don't even.
And i hate to say it because i fucking love China. I love the landscape. I love the food. I love the people. And Taiwan is not the same. Taiwan is a totally different culture. It has Chinese elements, for sure, but it's not Chinese. It's different. It has Japanese elements too. It has Pacific island elements. And it has American and European elements. It has those elements in ways that even Hong Kong didn't. It's nice to live here. It's probably more convenient to live in any city in this corner of the world than North America. But Taipei is never going to hit all of those same happy vibes for me that living in Shenzhen did, or that perhaps Hong Kong might've, if it hadn't become the target of the party's latest crackdowns.
I wish i had something optimistic to say, but i don't. Hong Kong got fucked in the ass. Everybody who stood up for their freedom either had to leave the country altogether or they got thrown in prison. So many people have gotten thrown in prison. And Taiwan is next on the agenda. You could make an argument that Hong Kong was China's from the outset because of the 1997 handover (nevermind the broken agreement to maintain their liberty for 50 years), but Taiwan has never been a part of China. There is no legal backing for the Chinese Communist Party to exert their rule over this country. But politically, the vast majority of the rest of the world (including the US and the EU) has agreed to not recognize Taiwan as a legitimate country, because that's a prerequisite for being able to trade with China. So we're fucked, just like Hong Kong was.
Yeah. Maybe the US or Japan will make a token effort to defend my new home if the Chinese decide to blockade the ports. But i'm not convinced they'll bother to actually get the lead out and have China fuck around and find out. China already pretty much invaded the entire South China Sea over the past couple decades, and the democratic world did fucking nothing. China's guns are bigger than Vietnam's, Malaysia's and the Philippines'. And all of those regional powers are still cucking to China because China is the big dog. All of the leftists who rightfully complained that America rolled over Central and South America should wake the fuck up and point their ire at the new imperialists who are doing the exact same shit over here. But of course they won't because China's government continue to call themselves "communist" despite their leaders being filthy rich and their policies being blatantly nationalist/conservative.
I am disappoint at the hard left, and the hard right.
I can't even remember what my point was, except that i miss Hong Kong and i want a pork bun.