Forbidden remembrances
Hong Kong anniversaries, Taiwan, COVID-19, and more
For the third year in a row, Chinese authorities forbid public remembrance of the June 4 Tiananmen Square massacre in once-free Hong Kong, ostensibly due to COVID-19 restrictions (although crowds seem to be no problem when it comes to boybands).
For Americans, this month marks the beginning of summer, cookouts on the lawn, and Father’s Day celebrations. In Hong Kong, anniversaries set the scene—including June 4 , the day in 1989 when China’s army opened fire on civilians and student protesters around Tiananmen Square. And leading to July 1, the anniversary of Hong Kong’s handover from Britain to China in 1997.
Before the passage of the national security law in 2020, tens of thousands of people would crowd into Hong Kong’s Victoria Park each year for the world’s largest commemoration of the Tiananmen Square Massacre. This year, the government placed barricades around the park and surrounded it with a heavy police presence. Churches, once considered the last sanctuary to commemorate June 4 with prayer meetings and Mass, also closed their doors or kept their meetings vague.
Welcome to Globe Trot from your guest editor, Angela Lu Fulton. I’m typing this from a trendy vegan cafe in Taipei, Taiwan, drinking barley tea and enjoying their AC on this sweltering and sticky 105° summer afternoon. I’m in the midst of selling furniture and packing up my life to move back to the States after 7 1/2 years on this lovely island. I arrived in Taipei with two suitcases and a heart laden with anxiety about moving to the other side of the world to report on East Asia. I’m leaving with so much more: a husband and a wiggly toddler in tow, unbelievable experiences and memories, a stronger faith, and a new place to call home.
Take a peek this week at what’s happening in my neck of the woods.
Hong Kong’s other memorable June anniversaries:
June 9: the third anniversary of the massive 1-million-person march against an extradition law that would have seen Hong Kongers stand trial in mainland China. The march kicked off months of pro-democracy protests in 2019.
June 12: notable for the intense confrontations between protesters and police after 40,000 people blockaded Hong Kong’s Legislative Council to prevent lawmakers from passing the law. Images of police tear-gassing, beating, and shooting rubber bullets at young protesters enraged and emboldened Hong Kongers.
June 16: when 2 million people (more than a quarter of the city’s population) took to the streets calling for a withdrawal of the law.
These dates can no longer be commemorated in Hong Kong. But on June 12 in London, thousands of exiled Hong Kongers and allies marched to Parliament Square shouting the protest slogan “Liberate Hong Kong, Revolution of our times” (which is banned in Hong Kong). They sang protest anthems, and listened to speeches by exiled activists like Nathan Law. More than 123,000 Hong Kongers have applied to a visa program that provides British overseas passport holders a pathway to citizenship.
For more on drastic changes in Hong Kong, I recommend Louisa Lim’s Indelible City: Dispossession and Defiance in Hong Kong. Listening to the audiobook (narrated by Lim, a former China correspondent for NPR and BBC), I was blown away by how much new information I learned about Hong Kong’s history, especially the behind-the-scenes look at the negotiations between the British and the Chinese as Britain’s 99-year lease on Hong Kong expired.
Lim adds her perspective as a half-Chinese, half-British woman raised in Hong Kong, while also tying the past and the present together with the figure of Tsang Tsou-choi. Known as the King of Kowloon, he graffitied territorial claims in Chinese calligraphy on Hong Kong’s streets. Claiming he was the rightful heir to Kowloon peninsula before it was stolen by the British, the King of Kowloon represented both the dispossession and the defiance of the Hong Kong people.
Speaking of powerless people wedged between two major superpowers, Taiwan was a major topic as the defense secretaries of the United States and China met for the first time in Singapore last week. U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III warned against Beijing’s “steady increase in provocative and destabilizing military activity near Taiwan.” The next day, Chinese Defense Minister Wei Fenghe responded, “No one should ever underestimate the resolve and ability of the Chinese armed forces to safeguard its territorial integrity.” He said China would “fight to the very end.”
Listening to pundits and reporters talk about Taiwan makes it seem like the island exists in a perpetual doomsday scenario. But on the ground here, life goes on: Grandmas dance to upbeat music at the park, long lines form outside a highly-reviewed ramen shop, cicadas buzz as families hike the verdant mountains. The concern that pops up in conversations isn’t about a Chinese invasion, but about COVID-19 as Taiwan experiences a surge of Omicron cases after largely keeping the virus at bay for the past few years.
Masks are mandatory any time you leave your home and the government has created an app to alert people if they have been in contact with someone who tests positive. The Taiwanese government is working to shift from a zero-COVID policy to living with the virus, which has led to public confusion. Health officials constantly change government policies. The latest easing allows travelers to Taiwan to quarantine for three days (compared to 14-day quarantines of a few months ago). Tourists are still not allowed in.
This is in sharp contrast to mainland China, where zero COVID is taking a toll on its citizens, most notably in Shanghai, where residents were locked in their apartments for more than two months. On Chinese social media, people complained about not having enough food to eat, health officials knocking down people’s doors to drag them to quarantine centers, and authorities separating children from their parents.
For a peek inside the lockdown, Shanghai resident Cameron Wilson wrote a daily diary about slowly going mad during the first 50 days of his lockdown.
Shanghai officially ended the lockdown at the beginning of June, but two weeks later authorities placed millions under new lockdown order to conduct mass testing.
A COVID-19 outbreak connected to Beijing’s Heaven Supermarket Bar led authorities to place thousands under lockdown and required mandatory testing for millions of residents. Zoey Zhou, a journalist in Beijing, told The New York Times that if she missed a COVID test, she feared she wouldn’t be allowed back in her neighborhood. “I don’t think it is acceptable for the government to then put more burden on the public and increase surveillance in the name of epidemic prevention,” she said. “Why am I being deprived of the freedom I should have?”
Other notable stories:
A BBC documentary investigates the lucrative industry of customizable “blessing” videos that include impoverished Africans singing, dancing, and shouting messages in Mandarin. After seeing a viral video in 2020 that showed African children saying “I’m a black devil and my IQ is low,” reporter Runako Celina decided to track down the Chinese man who made the video in a small village in Malawi. When the documentary was released, Chinese and Malawian officials said they would crack down on these activities.
Surveillance footage from a restaurant in Tangshan in China’s Hebei province has gone viral. It shows a group of men savagely assaulting a woman and her friends, dragging her through the door by her hair, throwing bottles and chairs, and stomping on her head for rejecting their advances. The attack has rekindled online discussions about violence against women in China.
Remembering those in prison: Pastor Wang Yi turned 49 on June 1, his fourth birthday spent in prison. Chinese authorities sentenced the Chengdu pastor to nine years in prison as he pastored an influential church that was outspoken about the Chinese government’s persecution of Christians. Wang’s friends have collected all of his sermons, lectures, articles, and books and posted them (in Mandarin) on the Wang Yi Resource Library.
And lastly, one of my favorite Chinese dishes to eat on hot summer days is cold noodles with chicken and sesame paste. It’s very easy to make at home, here is a recipe from NYT Cooking that I usually modify based on what I have in the kitchen.
Thank you to Mindy Belz for letting me take over this week, and thank you to the readers who made it to the end! Keep in touch! My Twitter account is @angela818 and I’m currently organizing the Reforming Journalism Project, which equips Christians for local journalism! 再見！
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A great read. Thank you!
Good to hear from you, Angela. Blessings!