Liz Mok has been getting some hate from Chinese government fans after taking a stance in support of the protests in Hong Kong.

But the owner of Moo Shu Ice Cream says that instead of trying to stoke the argument, she wants to foster a mutual understanding between Ottawa’s Hong Kong and mainland Chinese communities.

Distroscale

On the last day of July, and after the protests in Hong Kong had already been underway for weeks, Mok set up a “Lennon Wall” for visitors to leave small notes and drawings in support of the pro-democracy protesters in that city. (So-called Lennon Walls are named after the John Lennon Wall in Prague, Czech Republic, a once normal wall that since the 1980s has been filled with graffiti inspired by the late Beatle, lyrics from Beatles songs and other posts relating to local and global causes.)

But some people from Ottawa’s Chinese community who support the Chinese government and view the Hong Kong protests negatively have used the ice cream shop as an opportunity to voice their criticism.

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Some of this criticism has reached the level of harassment, Mok says, but she’s determined to use the disagreement as an opportunity for discussion rather than animosity.

“Instead of telling them to get out, I try to have that conversation with them, because it is a lot of misunderstanding, and I don’t want to create more hate between the two groups,” she said.

“I have had many conversations before and it’s very back-and-forth. One group says, ‘The police are violent,’ and then someone says, ‘Well the protesters were violent first.’ It ends up being like a tit-for-tat argument about who was more violent.”

While Mok says she maintains her position of support for the protesters, she considers it important for the two sides to spend time trying to listen to each other.

“This story is not just about Hong Kong. It’s about so many different conflicts around the world where people kind of hate each other, and there’s a divide and we dehumanize each other, and it gives us a sense of justice to put them down, whereas we should really be listening to each other and finding where that misunderstanding is.

“Obviously I have my own perspective, but if we’re both watching different sources of media, then we’ll have different perspectives on who was more violent versus who. So I find it really unproductive to argue about that.”

The protesters in Hong Kong have been described broadly as pro-democracy and have made a list of demands, including the withdrawal of proposed extradition legislation, release of arrested demonstrators, and implementation of universal suffrage. In Mok’s words, the cause boils down to a preservation of “one China, two systems,” keeping Hong Kong within Chinese borders but maintaining its governmental autonomy.

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But she says that pro-government Chinese media here in Canada paints the protesters as separatists calling for an independent Hong Kong, a characterization she calls misinformed.

“It’s really hard. Everyone’s really emotional. I found the best tactic is to address the issue that the movement is not about independence,” she says.

Indeed, some of the pro-Chinese government rhetoric in Ottawa toes the “Hong Kong demonstrators = pro-independence” line.

“Hong Kong’s riots have been a hot topic recently,” says an op-ed by Ottawazine, a popular Chinese-language magazine that publishes stories on Ottawa’s Chinese community. “An ice cream store in downtown Ottawa seems to want to join into this battle as well.” It criticizes may of the posts on Moo Shu’s wall, later declaring that “we won’t tolerate the people who are trying to split the country.”

But Charles Burton, a former adviser to the federal government on Canada-China policy, says that there are in fact no serious calls among protesters for an independent Hong Kong city-state. “I think there’s just, in general, consensus that this request is just not a feasible request,” he explains, “that there are really virtually no circumstances under which Hong Kong could expect to become an independent city-state.”

“I have not heard a single (prominent figure within the protests) speak up in favour of independence for Hong Kong,” Burton added.

Mok said she finds the notion of an independent Hong Kong unrealistic.

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Ottawa International Education Consulting, an organization that provides assistance to Chinese international students, also posted a Chinese-language blog by one of the students from their community, harshly criticizing the wall at Moo Shu and including a number of passages praising the Chinese government. It’s titled “Saying too much won’t help anything,” — a phrase similar in meaning to “what else is there to say?” — I won’t go back to this store again.”

Mok spoke to CBC about her Lennon Wall initiative in the first week of August, appearing on the Radio 1 program All in a Day, as well as in an article online a few days later. Mok says the backlash started immediately after the CBC coverage was published.

“We had to disconnect our shop’s phone the first weekend due to the overwhelming amounts of prank calls,” Mok later wrote in an email.

She said she’s received death threats and that pro-Chinese government visitors have come into her shop and intimidated her staff and tried to block off the area around her store entry.

She said she and her staff have also had to deal with fraudulent and uncollected delivery orders.

One note alleges Mok is “trying to divide my country” and is punctuated with a “FK U,” and another offers money to people who remove “pro-independence” posts from the wall.

“But remember that all pro-HK Post-its are pro-independence when seen through a biased lens,” she explained.

“I really want to help; there’s just so much animosity right now between pro-Hong Kong and pro-China (people), and I really want to have that voice of reason … to talk about how we shouldn’t hate each other. It’s like this hate that is dividing these two groups is founded by a government that’s trying to distract us from the real issues,” she says.

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She also says that she has seen good results from her strategy of aiming for constructive conversation with her critics. “One of the most groundbreaking things that happened when I was talking to somebody who’s pro-China is that I said, ‘Well, why do you think that the media is portraying us as pro-independence and as violent protesters?’ ” Mok said that person responded with the conclusion that if the Chinese government increases its hold on Hong Kong, “then it will feel justified.”

The wall is a shifting, adapting entity as more visitors add to it. Besides English and Chinese, there are messages posted in French, Vietnamese, Spanish and Korean, to name a few. Some notes point direction to other conflicts going on in places like Palestine, Myanmar, and Xinjiang.

For some of the Chinese-language posts, Mok and some of her acquaintances have posted explanatory notes and translations.

Some of these explanatory notes even translate posts that are critical of the demonstrators. Mok says that “not everything on the wall is a representation of how I feel.”

She said the Lennon Wall is meant “to give people on both sides a voice to express how they feel,” but that displaying the discussion is moot “if most people don’t understand what’s being said.”

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