Commentary
Hong Kong has long been regarded as ‘blessed’ (fudi), partially because political forces coexisted largely peacefully, despite occasional conflicts and struggles. This coexistence of peace and struggle is fully reflected in the death of leaders—Chiang Kai-shek (1975), president of the Republic of China; Mao Zedong (1976), chairman of the Chinese Communist Party and a founder of the People’s Republic of China; and Queen Elizabeth II (2022), who had reigned Britain for 70 years and served as a symbol of colonial Hong Kong. Hongkongers express their condolences according to their political beliefs, and this is an indicator of freedom in Hong Kong.
At first glance, such memorial services went calmly and uneventfully. Pro-ROC citizens attended that to President Chiang at the Chinese Culture Association, whereas the Bank of China removed all the service counters on the ground floor, converting it into an ad-hoc memorial auditorium for Chairman Mao.
For the Queen, the British Consulate-General Hong Kong set up condolence books and the people lined up for hours to sign and place floral tributes in front of the Consulate.
When Mao died, the struggles grew more intense. Whereas Ta Kung Pao expectedly sang the praises of “The Great Leader and Teacher Chairman Mao Zedong Will Never Die!,” anti-communist papers used very sarcastic titles, such as “The Thief Who Stole the Country Deserves to Die” in Kung Sheung Daily News, “He Who Died in the Mid-Autumn Still Left People Suffering from Violence” in Kung Sheung Evening News, and “Hahaha! Devil of Our Time Went to Hell” in Kam Yeh Pao, which is most well-known even up to now.
The “politics of death” of course is not limited to fights among different papers. When Mao died, some young people in Hong Kong took to the street and posted slogans such as “Mao the bandit, died in an earthquake (it refers to the Tongshan Earthquake that took place a month beforehand), and the nation is overjoyed” and “Mao should be chopped into ten thousand pieces” (with the same pronunciation of “Long Live for Ten Thousand Years).”
What is still talked about nowadays is a news special on Mao by Lau Ka-kit, a famous English language teacher and then a reporter at TVB, when he commented “All the people of Hong Kong cried,” sparking widespread outrage among the pro-Taiwan groups that wrote to TVB accusing it of being pro-communist and Lau of “raping public opinion.” Protests subsided after Lau was transferred out of the news department.
When the Queen died, Hong Kong was no longer a British colony, but struggles continued unabated. The day after her death coincided with the 46th anniversary of Mao’s death, and quite some leftists merely commemorated Mao’s death on Facebook. Schools named after the Queen did not pay any tribute.
A veteran Cantonese opera actor was forced to apologize after praising the Queen publicly. After the Queen’s funeral and the end of condolence, the Hong Kong police put out candles placed outside the Consulate before the mourners left, and they even attempted to cordon off consulate territory to search for mourners on the pretext of Covid prevention.
Why is it that 25 years after the end of colonial rule, there can still be politics of death surrounding the death of the Queen, who, as pro-China media say, lived completely outside the realm of Hong Kong’s Generation X but attracted so many mourners from them?
The reason is simple. Quote, some opinion polls were conducted in the early 1980s concerning the future of Hong Kong; in one by the Reform Club, 75 percent supported maintaining the status quo as a British colony, and only 4 percent supported its handover to China. Such polls, however, could save Hong Kong from reunifying with China. After the reunification, the situation in Hong Kong was getting worse.
Those who hold a Hong Kong identity and do not want to be allegiant to either China or Taiwan are suppressed and are emotionally attached to pre-1997 Hong Kong, which became increasingly democratic in its last years as a colony, and in turn to its sovereign state Britain.
The act of paying tribute to the Queen meant a rediscovery of the lost freedom of expression after the implementation of the National Security Law, and soon there amassed a sea of flowers outside the Consulate, reminiscing about the John Lennon Walls back in the 2019 anti-extradition campaign. Although leftist papers have been criticizing the Hongkongers’ massive remembrance as “nostalgic to colonialism,” it has not stopped the public from flooding to pay tribute.
A friend of mine said that this is ‘resistance through remembrance,’ with which I agree.
Former Lingnan University professor Ip Iam-chung wrote in Ming Pao that “I hope that those who placed flowers outside the Consulate would say goodbye to the Queen and also say a real goodbye to the illusion of long live the Queen with courage.” To the Hongkongers, this “illusion” would not have happened to both Chiang and Mao, but only to the Queen. This “illusion” is essential in comforting the Hongkongers and will continue until Hong Kong has walked through the valley of the shadow of death.
