Foreword

 

I am a citizen of Hong Kong, a city of mixed identities, still hovering in the post-colonial space trying to find her place of landing. This is the story of how Hong Kong first became an orphan: During the two Opium Wars from the 1830s to 1860s, China bit by bit ceded Hong Kong Island and Kowloon Peninsula to Britain; and finally the remaining parts of Hong Kong was leased to the British Empire for 99 years in the Second Convention of Peking in 1898. Though returned to China, her motherland, 20 years ago, and transitioning from British colonial rule to the authority of the communist regime, Hong Kong now still finds herself rootless and anchorless, with one foot standing in China, the other struggling for something, for all that she finds lacking.  

 

My generation is raised confused. We are raised by our parents, the ones who have grown into adulthood in an orphaned city, without receiving much care from and growing any attachment to the mainland. We are raised by the rootless ones whose hearts still strayed from the motherland. And we learned to deal with the confusions we have with our identity and belonging by giving only half-hearted concerns to the problems and politics within the concrete jungle we inhabit. We accepted blindly the contradictions of the collective historical self we inherited from our fathers and mothers, but never really challenged it, read deep into it, asked what, why, or how come?

 

My awakening did not come upon me until in 2014, when I was in my 19th year and saw my city made a battlefield from the Umbrella Revolution, which on the surface began as a civil disobedience movement fighting for democracy and freedom, but was rather the explosion of the many underlying grievances that have weighted the city for years.

 

It was the first time I really saw Hong Kong and the spirit of its people, and I cried. I was helpless, miles away from home, unable to participate in the struggles at home; only able to scroll through news articles and Facebook videos on my phone. When I left home at 18, I washed my hands of my home city that I felt was insensitive, overly individualistic, that cared only about money and success. But I cried while looking at images of my fellow citizens shielding off the terrors of tear gas and batons with humble umbrellas. I cried when I saw people of my age bleeding and injured on the streets of Hong Kong Island, and yet still ran back into the clouds of smoke with arms up in the air signalling peace. The tears I shed for these people, my people, reclaimed for me my love for the city.

 

My roots, from across continents and seas, reached deeper and grasped firmer into the earth which I am born.

 

Unlike my city, I am not rootless. Having spent most of my life in Hong Kong, I am conscious that I am a body grounded firmly in her soil. But like my city, I am struggling with to where Hong Kong’s roots extend. What responsibilities do I have as a citizen? What freedoms do I have, am I owed? What relationship do I have with my undeniable motherland, when Hong Kong finds hard to accept intimacy with China? I wonder, what does it mean to be rooted in a rootless place?

 

I wish to find out what makes up the roots of the city, where and where else do they lead. In pursuit of this quest, I invited twelve writers and artists from Hong Kong, ages spanning from 21 to 69, to participate in this conversation, to each create a piece of work that explores and interprets the notion of ‘roots’ in relation to their personal narrative and/or to their city.

 

I wonder, if Hong Kong were a tree, where would her roots begin? Where has her trunk grown, and where have her leaves flourished? I wonder, if rootlessness is in our veins? I wonder, if Hong Kong’s orphaned years have forever changed her landscape and her people? These twelve voices collected from the current, living and breathing citizens of Hong Kong in this project tell of their perceptions of the place that anchors their bodies firmly to soil, the origin of the city’s being. This project is by no means comprehensive in its representation of the roots of the city, but it is a beginning.

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