📁 RETURN TO JUST ANOTHER DAY

Morning, 4 June 2023

Two and a half years after leaving Hongkong, we’re now in a Causeway Bay hotel that overlooks Victoria Park. Well, the rooms on the other side of the hotel overlook the park, anyway, but it wouldn’t matter: I doubt there will be much to see. The vigil that used to represent the world’s largest protest on behalf of the victims of the government massacre on and around Tiananmen Square on 4 June 1989—and the only legal protests on land ruled by the People’s Republic of China—seem to have been squashed out. Police barriers obstruct the entrance to Victoria Park, though it’s unclear if the barriers are there to block protesters, because of nearby construction and maintenance, or because “maintenance” offers a convenient excuse for keeping the candlelight vigil (which at its peak boasted 200,000 people, according to reports) out of Victoria Park. Of course the police have detained a handful of suspected protesters on suspicion for “disrupting social harmony,” and there will be a reported 5,000 police officers dispatched to keep people out of the park, so such an excuse is unnecessary. But sometimes the authorities will try for plausible deniability even at its most implausible.

According to some, the protests are only “on hold,” to come back in future years. Will they? I don’t know, of course, but I do know that Hongkong protest culture is strong, and it has come back from presumed death before. After the dispersal of the Occupy Central protests of 2014, the pro-democracy social movement fractured, and I didn’t expect to see large-scale protests for a long time. But they came back with a fervour in 2019, in response to the proposed (and then passed) National Security Law. And the crackdown against that, in response to the opportunity provided the government by Covid-19, led to where we are today. So will Hongkong protests ever return? It’s not impossible.

Night, 4 June 2023

Coming out of the MTR after dinner, I noticed, in addition to the large police presence, a high percentage of pedestrians wearing black. After dropping my kids off in our hotel room, I came down to street level to look around. At the corner, across the street from the barricades blocking entrance to Victoria Park, I saw a few dozen protesters trying to force their way onto the park. They were outnumbered by police officers (as well as by journalists, it seemed), but some, at least, were fighting. One officer, taking me for a tourist, approached me and said that there would be a “dispute” (he spoke in English), so I should return to the hotel. Walking away, I thought to myself, these people trying to get into the park represent not only a protest against the realities of China, they also represent a continued belief in the possibility of what China could be, and the relationship Hongkong could have with the rest of the country. And of course, they also indicate the strength of Hongkong protest culture, and the possibility, at least, that the vigils will return, until one day when they won’t be needed anymore. It’s not impossible.

How to cite: Klein, Lucas. “Just Another Day: Lucas Klein.” Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, 4 Jun. 2023, chajournal.blog/2023/06/04/lucas-another-day.

Lucas Klein (PhD Yale) is a father, writer, translator, and associate professor of Chinese at Arizona State University. He is executive editor of the Hsu-Tang Library of Classical Chinese Literature (Oxford), author of 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑂𝑟𝑔𝑎𝑛𝑖𝑧𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑜𝑓 𝐷𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒 (Brill, 2018), co-editor of 𝐶ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑒𝑠𝑒 𝑃𝑜𝑒𝑡𝑟𝑦 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑇𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑠𝑙𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 (Amsterdam, 2019) and the forthcoming 𝐵𝑙𝑜𝑜𝑚𝑠𝑏𝑢𝑟𝑦 𝐻𝑎𝑛𝑑𝑏𝑜𝑜𝑘 𝑜𝑓 𝑀𝑜𝑑𝑒𝑟𝑛 𝐶ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑒𝑠𝑒 𝐿𝑖𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑒 𝑖𝑛 𝑇𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑠𝑙𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛, and translator of Mang Ke (Zephyr Press, 2018), Li Shangyin (NYRB, 2018), Duo Duo (Yale, 2021), and Xi Chuan (New Directions, 2012, 2022). Lucas is the co-editor of the “Tiananmen Thirty Years On” issue (June/July 2019) of Cha. PHOTO of Lucas Klein © Zhai Yongming. [Lucas Klein and chajournal.blog.] [Cha Staff]

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