It’s been a couple months. I just finished internship and started working with a full license, so that’s incredibly scary and I’ve been taking a break from translating to give myself some time to adjust. I also have an exam coming up in September, but I hope to get back to this afterwards. Periodic hiatuses (hiati?) are nothing new around here, but thank you as always for your patience and incredible support. 💙💙💙

I also wanted to say:

I haven’t explicitly, publicly mentioned where I live yet, I think, possibly because working in medicine kind of makes you paranoid online, but well, it’s not like I’m posting anything medical-related anyway.

I live in Hong Kong. You might have seen the name on your local news network lately (or not – the world is a big place, and local news is often not nearly so important on a global scale as it believes itself to be). I don’t really know how to explain what’s been going on in my city, except to say that it’s a really long story and involves a complicated relationship with mainland China, the idealism and anger of the younger generation, and misuse of police authority (to put it mildly).

I could tell you about Hong Kong’s history as a territory ‘loaned’ to Britain by China for 99 years after the First Opium War, and how it was returned to China in 1997 with the agreement that its British-instituted government and economical systems would remain untouched for at least 50 years (‘One Country Two Systems’).

I could tell you about how China has been slowly eroding away at HK’s autonomy over the years, including trying to pass a law in 2003 that would prohibit any “acts of treason” against the Chinese government, and which drew a protest of 500,000 people (the law was then shelved indefinitely).

I could tell you about the Occupy Central ‘Umbrella Revolution’ of 2014, a civil disobedience movement in response to the central government failing to deliver on its promise of universal suffrage for the election of our chief executive and legislative council.

I could tell you about the past few months:

– the extradition bill proposed by the HK government which would allow local authorities to arrest people in Hong Kong wanted in countries with whom we do not currently have extradition agreements (including mainland China), which supposedly closes a loophole in our legal system, but essentially allows China to arrest anyone in HK for essentially anything they deem a crime (including political dissent) and subjecting them to China’s infamously sketchy justice system

– the 1 million people that came out to protest this bill on June 9th (double the number that protested Article 23 in 2003), and then the 2 million that came out the following week in protests so peaceful that the crowd repeatedly parted like the red sea before Moses to allow trapped buses – and, in one memorable instance, an ambulance – to pass through its midst before closing in to block the roads again

– the government that did much too little far too late, only agreeing to temporarily suspend the bill after the 2 million-strong protest

– the escalation into activity labelled as riots, including protesters breaking into the legislative council and tearing down the national flag and defacing the walls (while taping signs that read ‘DO NOT DESTROY’ onto shelves containing precious national artefacts, reminding each other to protect historical treasures amidst their destruction)

– the turning point of local sentiment against the police force: one night at a train station as black-clad protestors were returning home after the now-weekly protests downtown, a white-clad mob of suspected local mafia showed up with literal metal rods and started beating everyone in sight (including unrelated commuters). When the police showed up 2/3 of an hour later, the mob was nowhere to be found, and although the police tracked them to their village and confiscated metal rods from their persons, they made no arrests because “you cannot arrest people based on the colour of their shirts”. (And the police chief, on being questioned why the police were 2/3 of an hour late, said, “You cannot say we were 2/3 of an hour late because we were only 39 minutes late.”)

– the 160 rubber bullets and 1000 rounds of tear gas fired by police so far, a number that nearly doubled in a single day last Monday during a city-wide strike

– the arrested protestors ranging in age from 13 to 76, including a university student arrested by police for possession of offensive weapons – laser pointers. This was our response:

– and finally, a Chief Executive that remains not only apathetic, but willfully blind and catastrophically stubborn. If she granted two of our simplest demands – 1) a complete withdrawal of the extradition bill instead of this temporary suspension and 2) an independent inquiry into the protests and the use of police force therein, for which even pro-government legislators have expressed support – then 90% of those taking part would be appeased. Instead, she only admonishes us to “stop this violence” because it is causing “an economic slump worse than SARS in 2003.” To paraphrase one of her own colleagues: “Does she think she can use the dollar sign to cover up our young peoples’ demands?”

Tl;dr – my city is in crisis, and while there will always be extremes in every spectrum, most of us are not violent rioters wreaking meaningless havoc. We’re just heartbroken and afraid for our city. As the Guardian said in an article on Weds: mant protestors are moved now more by despair than by hope.

I know there are people reading this from all over the world, and I know Hong Kong is far from the only (or the worst) place in crisis with public protests – Russia, and India, and even the United States come to mind.

Understanding fosters empathy, and empathy leads to a hope for peace. I’ve told you about my home. Tell me, teach me about yours?