My Ordinary Experience
The year the event took place I was almost four years old. I only had vague and fragmented memories of some TV footage of things burning, people running, and my mom’s crying face in front of the TV. I did not know what it was then, but it seemed to be some very serious matter for the grown-ups. My parents were ordinary working class people with no particular concern for politics—they were not completely indifferent, but they did not take the trouble to explain to us either. My understanding of the event gradually came when I went to secondary school. I started to pay attention to the news of the annual gathering. YouTube became available when I was in university, and videos of the event could be easily found on it. I watched quite many of them; and as I think of it now, I am actually not sure if my childhood memory has blended with those from the YouTube clips. Even though such subjective consciousness is unreliable, the horror is real, as was the happening of the event. The previous public commemoration of the event I attended was a poetry reading session in Sense 99 in 2019. It was heart-warmingly peaceful, despite the dismal nature of what was being commemorated, and the brooding tension in the city. No one knew it would be the last legal commemoration of its kind—but perhaps it was not so entirely unpredictable. That year was a turbulent time that would come to be seared in Hong Kong people’s memory. The weather in June is all the more scorching now, the heavens may occasionally grace us with some cooling showers. The park is filled with people with different purposes. But if gathering is not possible, we can still remember. We know that sometimes silence speaks louder. A poker face is a face of defiance and contempt. Even though it cannot be seen, every time a candle is lit, there is light—the bright, hot unfettered soul of humanity unbounded by earthly powers.
How to cite: Ng, Charlie. “Just Another Day: Charlie Ng.” Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, 4 Jun. 2023, chajournal.blog/2023/06/04/charlie-ng.
Charlie Ng is currently teaching at the School of Arts and Social Sciences of Hong Kong Metropolitan University. She studied English at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and graduated with a PhD in English Literature from the University of Edinburgh. Her poetry can be found in Voice & Verse Poetry Magazine. [All contributions by Charlie Ng.]
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