Protests in Hong Kong have lasted almost four months now.

Meanwhile, China's National Day on October 1 will this year mark 70 years since the formal establishment of the Central People's Government of the People's Republic of China.

There are sure to be massive celebrations across China, with parades and fireworks that have been months or years in the planning.

Increasing unrest in Hong Kong will be a sore spot for the Chinese government.

Hong Kong residents, here in 2014, often choose China's National Day on October 1 to protest China's influence but heightened tensions mean this year's protests could be much larger. ( Reuters: Carlos Barria )

Like a wayward adolescent, Hong Kong will be expected to endure and even actively participate in the "family" celebrations. Yet these celebrations commemorate the very institution against which many Hong Kong citizens are rebelling, in an effort to find out if the People's Government really does serve the people. Or is it a People's Government, a People's Republic, in name only?

Will the Hong Kong people (heterogeneous as they are) grudgingly go through the motions to celebrate with the mainland? Or will they trash the entire party?

If Hong Kong does trash the party, what will be the response?

Watch Duration: 37 seconds 37 s Watch Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. China's People's Liberation Army based in Hong Kong has released a video showing footage of "anti-riot" exercises

Belonging in two worlds

As someone born in Hong Kong these questions are important to me. Yet it feels strange being a Hong Kong Chinese-Australian in 2019.

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When I occasionally, inevitably, get asked "oh, where are you from?", my usual reply is "I was born in Hong Kong, but have lived in Sydney since I was four… (make of that what you will)".

My first language was Cantonese, and listening to Canto-pop is still comforting to me.

In 1989 my parents left one-year-old me in the care of my grandparents, while they marched the streets of Hong Kong in support of the pro-democracy movement in Beijing.

After the bloodbath in Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989, and in view of the impending return of Hong Kong to China in 1997, my parents decided to make the move to Australia.

I remember my mother being delighted by the open expanse of the relatively ordinary local oval, running around with arms spread like Maria in the alps in The Sound of Music — such was the contrast to the cramped apartments and crowded streets of her youth.

Ally Wong swapped Hong Kong's congested streets for the Australian outdoors. ( Supplied )

The air was cleaner, there was better healthcare and social security, and just more space.

I remember my parents being puzzled at how dark and empty the streets were at night, and how shops closed at five and sometimes weren't even open on Sundays.

Our house was the most brightly lit in the street — perhaps to emulate the neon signs and buzz of their (our) home city which is so alive at night.

Colonial values survived

I spoke no English when I started school, and was the only Chinese kid in the school amongst hundreds of beach-blond Aussies.

I remember going to ESL (English as a Second Language) classes — luckily children's brains are incredibly plastic and I quickly became bilingual, like so many other migrant kids.

Hong Kong streets are filled with neon and are busy most of the day and night. ( Flikr: Calvin Forbes )

At home, we still spoke Cantonese and had rice with meat or fish and greens for dinner every night. I used to be so envious of my friends who would have fancy dishes such as lasagne or a roast!

Asian food was not as widely available in Sydney back then, and each weekend my parents and I would trek to Paddy's Markets in the city for "Asian" vegetables such as bok choy and gailan, and barbecued meats like pork, roast duck and soya chicken.

It must have been strange for my parents that "the city" was a place you had to drive to.

After congested Hong Kong, Ally Wong had plenty of space to play outside after moving to Australia. ( Supplied )

Colonial values had been somehow ingrained into me as a kid. One year, I must have been eight or nine, a new boy from the UK started at my school.

He received some taunts from the other kids about his pommy accent, but I somehow thought I should defer to him because Hong Kong was a colony of Britain.

I don't think this belief ever manifest in any overt way (thank goodness), but it just goes to show the degree of idealisation a lot of Hong Kongers had for British rule.

Perhaps this explains the Union Jack waving that has been part of the recent protests, which sits uneasily with me.

Or maybe the source of my unease is just flag-waving in general and the tribalism that it promotes, and flags being planted in the earth (or tattooed on faces) which evokes impacts that British and other colonialism has had on various societies — not least in Australia.

I am similarly puzzled by the use of the American flag in the recent Hong Kong protests.

It is surely a sign of desperation and perhaps misguided nostalgia — although it is true that Americans and British (and those in Western countries generally) can openly criticise their leaders and politicians without sanction, while Winnie the Pooh cartoons are banned in China.

I would be pretty angry if I could not openly express disapproval of a prime minister — although of course the freedoms that the protesters are fighting for go far beyond that.

An unexpected generation gap

However, what puzzles me is the indifference my parents and their Hong Kong immigrant friends express about the issues Hong Kong demonstrators are protesting against.

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Their adopted views are that the protesters are organised criminal groups sponsored by overseas troublemakers. They say that "normal Hong Kong people couldn't possibly get so angry and violent", and believe demonstrators are wrecking the city of Hong Kong.

Meanwhile, they can live out remnants of the Hong Kong they knew, transported to a different place.

They can have yum cha, drink Hong Kong style milk tea and eat traditional Hong Kong dishes at a multitude of restaurants and cafes scattered around Sydney.

They can watch streamed Hong Kong TV and socialise with their Hong Kong friends.

They must have known it would come to this, otherwise they would not have been part of the mass exodus after 1989.

But do they have the right to criticise those who either chose to stay, or had no choice but to stay?

I recently watched the film The Farewell which shows members of a Chinese family returning to Beijing from their new homes in America and Japan, purportedly for a wedding. They are actually there to spend time with the family's matriarch who is dying of lung cancer, but who has not been told her diagnosis.

The film's protagonist is Billi, a young Chinese-American woman who struggles with the family's decision to keep her grandmother's diagnosis a secret.

Ally's parents can enjoy plenty of Cantonese cuisine and culture in Australia. ( ABC News: David Maguire )

One line that stood out to me was her uncle's admonishment: "You think one's life belongs to oneself. That's the difference between the East and West. In the East, one's life is part of a whole."

I struggle with this too.

There is a phrase used in Chinese to describe the process of a Chinese person being educated in a Western society — "to be immersed in saltwater".

I guess I am well and truly brined, but surely autonomy and self-determination are not purely Western constructs?

It's getting harder to de-escalate

People in Hong Kong are not the only Chinese people wanting more autonomy in their daily lives.

The more socioeconomic disparity there is within a society, the more people will question those in power.

Ally Wong lived in Hong Kong until she was four years old. ( Supplied )

The more polarised Hong Kong becomes, the harder it will be for either side to step down without losing face.

Democracy is by no means a blanket solution — look at all the problems that still exist in Western democratic societies.

But things in life are seldom black and white, and allowing a multiplicity of views, allowing questions to be asked and issues to be pondered and debated — this still seems to be the best option we have, given our human predisposition to corruption by power and self-interest.

Let us hope that 10/1 does not become another 6/4.