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Karen Cheung: When I was growing up, I was too busy studying to know anything else. Of course, this was also in part because people’s reading habits changed as they gravitated away from physical papers and books and toward the internet. So I think Hong Kong culture was more diverse before 1997. The editors knew how to balance their cultural offerings. When I was in elementary school, there were so many newspapers in Hong Kong.Įvery paper, just like the Oriental Daily nowadays, would have a supplement, and that of course would have more popular fiction, but also literary work, like Xi Xi. Hon Lai Chu: I think Hong Kong culture has really changed since 2014, or even earlier, before the handover in 1997. Hon Lai Chu, a 2010 resident of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, is best known for her award-winning, hyperreal fiction, including the short story collection “ The Kite Family,” translated into English by Andrea Lingenfelter she also writes essays and newspaper columns about everyday life in the city.Īnne Henochowicz: What do you want someone who knows nothing about Hong Kong to know about it? Karen Cheung is a journalist formerly with Hong Kong Free Press, and the author of “ The Impossible City,” a new memoir that grapples with her identity as a Hong Konger and what that means as Beijing subsumes the city under its authoritarian rule. On the eve of the 25th anniversary of the handover to China, two longtime members of Hong Kong’s cultural scene spoke to me about how life in the city has changed. Miniature replicas of the Goddess of Democracy popped up at Chinese University, in remembrance of the Tiananmen Square massacre and the larger version of the statue that was removed from campus last year. Indie musicians keep playing shows, shaking off unwelcome visits from city officials. Raids and arrests have shut down the independent media outlets Apple Daily and Stand News, but writers are still publishing their work any way they can, in Hong Kong or overseas. Still, the creative life of the city goes on, even as it is diminished by the political climate. Now for many, simply deciding whether to stay in the city they call home has become a day-by-day proposition. Then, amid the lockdowns, the PRC passed the National Security Law on June 30, 2020, with immediate repercussions for political organizations, the media, activists and protesters. Protesters occupied the Legislative Council floor for several hours on July 1, 2019, in demonstrations against an extradition bill that were cut short by COVID-19. In 2012, protesters succeeded in staving off proposed “ national education” in Hong Kong schools. In 2003, half a million people came out to protest proposed anti-subversion legislation. July 1 has traditionally been a day of protest in Hong Kong - in past years, the anniversary of the former British colony’s handover to China has drawn hundreds of thousands onto the streets. She is the former Translations Editor at China Digital Times. Her work has appeared in Dissent, Mānoa, and The Washington Post.
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Anne Henochowicz is a writer and translator living in the Washington, D.C.