it is 1989. i am twelve, at home watching the dutch news. surprisingly, with my mum. she rarely watches the dutch news, but on this day in which nothing happened, thirty-four years ago, she watched it with me, because china was in the dutch news. sitting next to each other, in silence, not knowing what to say to each other.
it is 2012. it is crowded. my colleague, impatient, decides to leave the line and jumps over the fence to get into the park. he turns around, looks at me and smiles, waiting for me. i hesitate, but then tell myself “fuck it””, and also jump the fence. a tiny act of civil disobedience, on this day, in which nothing happened.
over the years, i remember discussions with my students. about whether it made sense to keep going. that singing songs, shouting slogans, and lighting candles seemed so plastic, so pointless. that we have been doing this for years, and that beijing doesn’t seem to give a fuck. that we can’t even save hong kong, let alone china.
it is 2019. will anything happen today? will anyone show up? to my surprise, a massive turnout. a precursor to everything that would happen later that year. that fateful year, 2019. the last time the authorities approved the vigil.
it is 2020, a day in which the hong kong authorities want nothing to happen. the vigil is banned. the official reason is “public health”, but we all know it is an excuse. we risk arrest, but we still show up, in large numbers, in solidarity. i remember feeling strong and hopeful.
it is 2021, a day in which the hong kong authorities want nothing to happen. the vigil is banned, again. the police has sealed off victoria park. they are guarding an empty park. we decide to walk around, we turn on the flashlights on our phones. when the police sees us, they ask us to turn off the flashlight. i ask them why. i ask them if it is illegal to have my light on. they tell me, “just turn off your light”.
a few months later, the chinese university of hong kong will remove the goddess of democracy statue from its campus, and the university of hong kong will remove the pillar of shame. they sell their souls, they turn off their lights. some fates might be worse than death.
it is 2023. victoria park this year is not empty. the authorities approved a “patriotic carnival” to be held in the park, to “celebrate” the anniversary of hong kong’s handover to china. the authorities refuse to say whether commemorating tiananmen is illegal.
joyce carol oates once wrote that memory is a moral action, a choice. that you can choose to remember, or you can choose not. on this day in which nothing happened, i choose to remember these memories.
How to cite: Tsui, Lokman. “Just Another Day: Lokman Tsui.” Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, 4 Jun. 2023, chajournal.blog/2023/06/04/lokman-tsui.
Lokman Tsui (PhD) is a researcher, writer and activist on issues of freedom of expression, digital rights and Hong Kong. He is a Research Fellow with the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto. He is working on a book, a personal history of authoritarianism.
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