{"componentChunkName":"component---src-templates-article-tsx","path":"/hongkongprotests","result":{"data":{"primeArticle":{"slug":"hongkongprotests","excerpt":"An orientation, a protest, a global movement. One student’s account of the Hong Kong protests.","headline":"Beyond the Tear Gas","author":"Daily Bruin staff reporter","authorbio":"","authoremail":"","authortwitter":"","coverimg":"https://assets3.dailybruin.com/images/hongkongprotests/web.prime.picA.LManpain-5b8c6d59fed7f834f657fe6ef6e65d63.jpg","covercred":"Daily Bruin staff reporter","coveralt":"Protestors in Hong Kong with umbrellas.","articleType":"article","updated":null,"content":[{"type":"text","value":"Editor’s note: This story has been updated to remove the name of the author and photographer from the story. While the Daily Bruin employs a rigorous no-retractions policy, 2020-21 Editor in Chief Melissa Morris has granted an exception to policy in this single case because the views expressed by the student reporter in the story put them at consequential risk of political retribution."},{"type":"line","value":""},{"type":"text","value":"I stepped into the carpeted room full of light, Mandarin Chinese chatter. To my left was a girl covered in immaculate masklike makeup, dressed as if she had just come from high tea. To my right was a girl draped in trendy clothing, docked in expensive streetwear from head to toe."},{"type":"text","value":"“I forgot how much mainlanders care about appearance,” my dad loudly said in Cantonese."},{"type":"text","value":"Bare-faced and in a simple T-shirt, jeans and scuffed Vans sneakers, I was painfully aware of the fact that I didn’t fit in."},{"type":"text","value":"I crossed the border from my hometown, Hong Kong, to mainland China to attend the UCLA information session held in Shenzhen, the neighboring mainland city, the summer before my freshman year. The event was held by the UCLA Chinese Students and Scholars Association rather than UCLA, meaning the entire session would be held in Mandarin instead of English."},{"type":"text","value":"I lowered myself into a chair, feeling conspicuous in my casual attire, and listened for any conservation I could join. Familiar phrases of Mandarin flew by, yet I could not comprehend the words in between. My Mandarin class exercises enunciated everything with perfect textbook pronunciation, speed and volume. The dialogue from the mainland students around me was quick and interspersed with slang. My attention drained as I tried to make sense of their words."},{"type":"text","value":"The room felt increasingly suffocating – the overbearing mass of white-gold decor loomed over me. I stared at the PowerPoint on the screen, written in simplified Chinese instead of the traditional script used in Hong Kong."},{"type":"text","value":"I was 34 miles from my home, yet everything was so alien to me. Shenzhen, geographically separated from Hong Kong only by a river, pressed its gleaming skyscrapers and residential tower blocks up our hilly, rural border, which is inhabited only by a few indigenous villagers. My dad has always joked that the city wanted to get closer to us, whereas we wanted to get as far away from it as possible."},{"type":"image","value":"{\"alt\":\"Protestors taking the streets, with skyscrapers in the background. Protestors occupied the streets of Admiralty on 21st June 2019 to protest police brutality.\",\"url\":\"https://assets3.dailybruin.com/images/hongkongprotests/web.prime.picF.LManpain-637229f08ff5f73182509e2e3592b05f.jpg\",\"credit\":\"Daily Bruin staff reporter\",\"caption\":\"\"}"},{"type":"text","value":"The hordes of mainland tourists and our forced, gradual economic integration with the surrounding Chinese cities in recent years made us wary of the mainland.  Regardless of what both parties wanted, it seemed undeniable that Shenzhen, and by extension the entirety of mainland China, was intrinsically different from Hong Kong."},{"type":"text","value":"This distinction isn’t clear to everybody. Many UCLA students assume Hong Kong is like any other Chinese city, or part of other countries such as Taiwan or Japan."},{"type":"text","value":"Let me get the facts straight."},{"type":"text","value":"Hong Kong Island was a tiny fishing village ruled by China when it was ceded to Britain in 1842 after China’s defeat in the Opium War. Over the next 56 years, China lost all three main regions of Hong Kong to Britain, including the haphazard spatter of islands near the city’s coastlines. It remained a British colony until 1997 – except for a brief period of Japanese occupation during World War II – when it was handed back over to China."},{"type":"text","value":"With more than 150 years of colonization under its belt, Hong Kong welcomed huge waves of immigrants from China whenever they faced crises, such as the Japanese occupation of China during WWII and the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976."},{"type":"text","value":"Otherwise, the city remained mostly free of Chinese influence in the colonial era. When China standardized the language across the provinces to Mandarin, Hong Kongers continued speaking Cantonese. When they simplified the Chinese script, we kept our traditional Chinese characters. When Hong Kong was handed over to China in 1997, we were classified as a “Special Administrative Region,” a status that grants a certain degree of autonomy until 2047."},{"type":"text","value":"We are technically a part of China, but constantly rocking between assimilation and rejection of its authority."},{"type":"line","value":"{}"},{"type":"text","value":"Stretching 22 miles across and 14 miles vertically, Hong Kong has always felt too small. I wanted to belong to a larger cultural or natural identity. As much as I loved Hong Kong, I felt like I was just a bead in those doctor’s waiting room toys, trapped whizzing around the same cramped streets over and over again."},{"type":"text","value":"Traveling around mainland China, I thought, could help me discover a sense of belonging. I had always thought of China as more of a neighboring tourist destination than somewhere I actually belonged to, as both my parents and I have lived in Hong Kong all our lives."},{"type":"text","value":"My paternal grandfather, however, hailed from a village in the neighboring Guangdong province, so my “heung ha” – place of origin – is technically in China. Perhaps going to China could help me get in touch with my roots?"},{"type":"text","value":"I quickly realized I didn’t have much to latch on to in China either. Even though my “heung ha”"},{"type":"text","value":"was in China, I had never visited it and had no personal connection to it whatsoever.  Even though the majority of Hong Kong’s population is ethnically Chinese, including myself, I could never completely adhere to the broader Chinese culture. Sure, Chinese food tastes great. I was amazed at the beauty of Huangyao Ancient Town in a nearby province. Most of the people we interacted with while on the road were kind and friendly."},{"type":"text","value":"But when I got down to the crux of China’s complex history and culture, I found myself uncomfortable with some of the more controlling aspects – the heavy online censorship and the concentration camps of the Uighurs in Xinjiang."},{"type":"text","value":"The Confucian texts I had to recite in Chinese class told me that to be a noble person was to “not violate” the rules of propriety. I was supposed to love my country and obey the head of state – so much as to die willingly if my monarch commanded me to."},{"type":"text","value":"But I didn't – so I started to distance myself from my Chinese identity."},{"type":"text","value":"Hong Kong and China are distinguished by the “one country, two systems” policy. While China only has the Chinese Communist Party controlling all three government powers, we have a multitude of parties across the political spectrum and a separation of powers."},{"type":"text","value":"“One country, two systems” seemed to mean that whatever happened on the mainland was none of my business. But the line was getting blurry, and China was creeping into our system."},{"type":"text","value":"In late 2015, a Hong Kong publisher who had been selling banned books disappeared. Although he appeared on Chinese state TV a couple of months later, insisting he wasn’t kidnapped, many suspected the Chinese government abducted him – a witness claims to have seen him forced into a car, and he wasn’t the first bookseller to disappear."},{"type":"text","value":"Then, four years later, politicians proposed a policy change that would allow China to detain and sentence any Hong Kongers suspected of committing a crime in the mainland."},{"type":"text","value":"To many, this bill seemed to corrode the line between the two systems even further. A 2019 New York Times Opinion article said the extradition bill “seemed to pave the way for China to target anyone in Hong Kong on almost any pretense and try them on the mainland.”"},{"type":"text","value":"Protesters took to the streets in increasingly large numbers to oppose the bill. Even though we were still 28 years away from the end of the “one country, two systems” agreement, and even though we were still a special administrative region, we already had to fight – literally fight – for our autonomy and freedom."},{"type":"text","value":"Tear-gas-filled, black-clad protesters, international news kind of fighting."},{"type":"line","value":"{}"},{"type":"text","value":"The first time I heard the sound of a tear gas canister being shot into the air, it sounded surprisingly comical, like Buzz Lightyear’s laser gun sound effects at Disneyland. I was a hundred meters away, sitting on the ledge of a pedestrian footbridge above the protester-occupied road, feeling surprisingly calm."},{"type":"text","value":"I had spent so many nights gripped with anxiety. I had read about the arrests of kids younger than me, numerous reports of sexual assault by the police and the neighborhoods infiltrated with tear gas. Yet, I felt much more at ease when the action was happening in front of me because I realized that tear gas, as terrible as it must be for those in its proximity, was only a miniscule portion of the protests. That day, my attention diverted to the protesters themselves."},{"type":"text","value":"“Those without gear – stay back. Let those with gear go,” a protester shouted, preparing to put on a full-face respirator gas mask."},{"type":"text","value":"“The frontlines need more salt water!”"},{"type":"text","value":"Someone ran up from the tear-gas-filled haze, carrying salt water to alleviate the burning."},{"type":"text","value":"“Give way!”"},{"type":"text","value":"The crowds parted like the Red Sea, as a group of gear-donned protesters charged toward the police, pushing an elaborate structure of metal railings bound together by zip ties to create a barricade."},{"type":"pull","value":"{\"caption\":\"Tear-gas-filled, black-clad protesters, international news kind of fighting.\"}"},{"type":"text","value":"These Call-of-Duty-esque features are usually the focus of news stories, but I was focused elsewhere – the silent cooperation and community of the Hong Kongers behind all the tear-gassed frontlines, a huge mass working toward a common goal."},{"type":"text","value":"It sounds cliché, but we were all in it together."},{"type":"text","value":"I first noticed this solidarity in 2012, when I accompanied my parents to a sit-in protest outside the Legislative Council of Hong Kong. The government wanted to pass a bill for the implementation of mandatory moral and national education in all local primary schools, aiming to instill a sense of patriotism in students. My dad bought me a huge piece of cardboard, on which I scrawled my opinion in teal capital letters, and I held it up proudly as I sat cross-legged with the other protesters."},{"type":"text","value":"Surrounded by a sea of adults, the only other young teenager around caught my eye. She smiled at me, pointed at my banner and gave me a thumbs-up. My heart stayed warm throughout all the protest songs, when all the Hong Kongers around me – often a cold and unexpressive demographic – poured their hearts out with the melody."},{"type":"text","value":"I felt the same way during the Umbrella Movement in 2014, when I went to Admiralty, an occupied site around the government headquarters. An impromptu little town had sprung up, with protest banners hanging from pedestrian bridges and tents where the occupiers resided. The centerpiece of the occupied zone was a woodblock statue of someone holding out a yellow umbrella."},{"type":"image","value":"{\"alt\":\"The Umbrella Statue in the middle of the Admiralty occupied zone during the 2014 Umbrella Movement.\",\"url\":\"https://assets3.dailybruin.com/images/hongkongprotests/web.prime.picH.Lmanpain-4476372fcfed3687cde33dedcbeca8ec.jpg\",\"credit\":\"Daily Bruin staff reporter\",\"caption\":\"\"}"},{"type":"text","value":"The figure represented the instruments protesters used to ward off police pepper spray and later became a symbol of the movement. It felt like a grand monument in a country’s capital city, even if it was just a statue designed by a 22-year old artist and created by a modest 10-person team. I felt like we had reclaimed this city, like it was actually ours – until the movement died and the city seemed to fall in a nadir of political apathy."},{"type":"image","value":"{\"alt\":\"Umbrellas are used not only to shield protesters from rain, but also to deflect tear gas and to cover their faces from the police and media.\",\"url\":\"https://assets3.dailybruin.com/images/hongkongprotests/web.prime.picG.LManpain-f61b375f0a28e9e9700b1e1d007780db.jpg\",\"credit\":\"Daily Bruin staff reporter\",\"caption\":\"\"}"},{"type":"text","value":"The protests are no longer solely composed of sweet solidarity and cool grassroots art. Some bemoan that protesters are tearing the city apart, that they are mindless rioters brainwashed by foreign powers, and they do nothing but immobilize transit, smash windows and attack police."},{"type":"text","value":"But the protests didn’t start out radical. During finals week of spring quarter my freshman year, I marvelled as 2 million of our 7 million population took to the streets in a peaceful mass protest against the extradition bill. I looked at aerial photos of protesters flooding every crevice of familiar city streets, as though they were liquid instead of human flesh."},{"type":"text","value":"Such a united display of our demands was only met with endless hails of tear gas and pepper spray from the police. I started to lose hope. How far would we have to go for our voices to be taken seriously?"},{"type":"text","value":"As the protests continued, the police committed more atrocities, firing expired tear gas near elderly homes and into closed railway stations where it couldn’t disperse. There were multiple reports of random arrests of nonprotesting citizens simply taking the subway, of sexual assault and gang collusion by our law enforcement."},{"type":"text","value":"What started as a simple demonstration against the extradition bill blossomed into Hong Kong’s five demands, which included the creation of an independent commission of inquiry into the police force and the implementation of true universal suffrage. Throughout the chaos, there was a brief moment of respite when the government formally withdrew the extradition bill. But too much had happened for that alone to satisfy us."},{"type":"text","value":"Our world had flipped. I looked at the protesters around me, many of them high school students. I, too, was stressed when I was their age, but over trivial matters like examination scores, not the collapse of all our freedoms."},{"type":"text","value":"We are all so young – why was this thrust upon us? Why had the police, previously kind officers who gave me concerned warnings against jaywalking, turned into these unrecognizable trigger-happy soldiers, running around in camouflage riot gear? I watched recordings of our chief executive’s speeches at press releases. Why did she seem so robotic and uncaring with her empty condemnations of protest violence, as though she was reading from a script given to her?"},{"type":"text","value":"Among all of the doom and gloom, Hong Kongers always found ways to counter oppressive measures and boost morale. My mother, homebound because of her foot injury, continued her display of support. One night, we opened the windows of our apartment and yelled protest slogans, a daily routine practiced by other nonprotesting citizens to engage with the movement."},{"type":"text","value":"“Liberate Hong Kong! Revolution of our times! Five demands, not one fewer!”"},{"type":"text","value":"More than 20 stories high, we could hear others shout back from the ground and neighboring apartment buildings. It felt like we were connecting with different Hong Kongers through our catharsis."},{"type":"text","value":"One evening in August, I was working a night shift at my summer job when my coworker ushered me to peek out of the office window. We had a view of one of Hong Kong’s most iconic mountains, Lion Rock, and we could see a glimmering line tracing along its rugged peek. Hong Kongers had formed human chains across districts, inspired by the anti-Soviet ‘Baltic Way’ in 1989. Not only were the chains stretching along the pedestrian walkways in our commercial areas, they were also making their way into our countryside."},{"type":"text","value":"To some, this might eerily represent Jordan Peele’s “Us,” but I felt so touched that I could have cried. Hong Kongers, who I have always thought of as dismissive and standoffish group were holding hands with complete strangers? I was so proud."},{"type":"text","value":"When I returned to UCLA in mid-September, I went to an anti-totalitarianism rally in Monterey Park in support of Hong Kong. I felt like I was home when I heard the protest chants and Cantonese songs. Without the threat of arrest, protesters displayed infographics and satirical art criticizing the Chinese regime."},{"type":"image","value":"{\"alt\":\"A participant in the Monterey Park rally raises a sign with the face of Xi Jinping, the president of China, and the words ‘Enemy of Freedom’.\",\"url\":\"https://assets3.dailybruin.com/images/hongkongprotests/web.prime.picC.LMpain-b66772680ded17a61dd2aa32adcd1d2e.jpg\",\"credit\":\"Daily Bruin staff reporter\",\"caption\":\"\"}"},{"type":"image","value":"{\"alt\":\"In the Monterey Park Global Anti-Totalitarianism Stand With Hong Kong Rally on September 29th, 2019, a participant dresses up as a Grim Reaper with the Communist Symbol etched on the forehead.\",\"url\":\"https://assets3.dailybruin.com/images/hongkongprotests/web.prime.picD.LManpain-e5a92fd557eed3505ecb0dc8f49cef4d.jpg\",\"credit\":\"Daily Bruin staff reporter\",\"caption\":\"\"}"},{"type":"text","value":"While this was a pivotal moment for Hong Kongers, I realized it was also a crucial moment for many other cultures who have faced oppression. I saw Tibetan flag-bearers, men and women in traditional Uighur dress, protesting China’s Uighur concentration camps and the oppression of religious freedom."},{"type":"text","value":"In our midlife years as a special administrative region, we have forged a new facet of our identity through our struggle. Hong Kong remains 22 miles wide and 14 miles long, but our movement and the values we stand for are unlimited by our geography."},{"type":"text","value":"We started out fighting for our own future, but now we have also caused a ripple effect, empowering others who have suffered from Chinese totalitarianism. Hong Kong is one of the only Chinese places that still has freedom of speech, and we are going to shout on everyone’s behalf."},{"type":"text","value":"“Free Hong Kong!” we yell, but also, “Free Tibet! Free the Uighurs!”"}]}},"pageContext":{"term":"winter20","slug":"hongkongprotests"}},"staticQueryHashes":[]}