As the United Kingdom prepares to go the polls today, a veritable furore of disinterest towards the election pervades here in Hong Kong. As was to be expected, people are hardly drawing their eyes away from joyous afternoons monitoring their shares to see who out of Clegg, Brown and Cameron looks like flying past the post.
So, in the interest of drumming up something of a political atmosphere in my college, I decided to have a week of politically charged conversational activities with the students. It has cost me a fucking fortune in muffins and panettoné! However, it was worth it given some of the opinions that were expressed during our exchanges…
I started off with the gentle introductory questions inquiring what the students like, dislike and would want to change about Hong Kong. I groaned in resignation as the students respectively responded with shopping, mainland Chinese people and a desire to have more money and success.
Anticipating a long hour, I bit into the bleeding sore of a finger lickin’ good cherry panettoné and asked… Do you think Hong Kong should be a liberal democracy? I built a reservoir of mashed cake in my cheek ready to chew the predicted silence into sugary trans-fat oblivion.
‘NO!...’
All hell broke lose! Partly digested panettoné danced clumsily across the table as I failed blindly to ruminate on the unexpected chorus of negatives I had just heard…
‘No…’ I said, accentuating my disbelief.
‘If we have liberal democracy, people who are irresponsible and poorly informed will vote. Furthermore, people will vote for people because of them and not because of what they are saying they will do’…
This response was even more remarkable than the song of disapproval towards liberal democracy. For one thing, I usually cannot coax a sentence from most of my students without the words descending into a chorus of giggling and embarrassment. Also, most students recoil in horror at the thought of saying something in English to a native speaker; especially in from of their friends.
The enthusiasm and reasoned opinion of this student struck me as remarkable when considered against the image of the politically mobile young person in Hong Kong. Here, the media have conveniently labelled anyone with a degree of political energy under the age of thirty the “post-80’s” generation. And as you’d expect with the news media, the rationed, objective, passionate and intelligent connotations of this label have been overlooked in favour of the negatives.
The “post-80’s” are seen as a nuisance and a threat by older generations and also by many who fall into the category on an age basis. For them, a politically mobile youth in Hong Kong presents a challenge to a social order that keeps most “post-80’s” objectors nailed to their desk for twelve or more hours a day. Apparently, people want democracy but seem less than willing to push for better terms than those plied and moulded in Beijing.
In my opinion, Hong Kong should be proud of its young people. Before they’ve fully learned to stop pishing themselves, the poor children of Hong Kong are thrust into piano lessons, intimidating school interviews and six day weeks in the most needlessly disciplinarian education system. Who doesn’t let five year olds drink water when it’s 30° and 95% relative humidity?
From there, it’s high pressure exams, long (after) school days and supplementary weekend activities during which you spend your days militarizing your memory retention skills under the leaden burden of familial expectation. I swear I saw a fourteen year old kid going bald the other day and even then it was probably from daily beatings lest his parents end up on the streets in old age…
For this is the major problem with Hong Kong. Parents are motivated as much by a desire for their child to do well as by a desire to secure a cushy nest egg for their future. If the kid is a dumbass and they don’t raise enough money to support themselves then it’s an old age spent pushing cardboard around a city that doesn’t give a shit!
‘Cheers we needed the old cardboard, have a pension of less than £80 a month!’
If I had this kind of pressure hanging over me, my parents would be floating in a canal somewhere next to my guilty corpse and the rotted remains of the entire teaching staff of Arbroath Academy; the latter being drug addled but through no fault of my own.
Hong Kong needs to learn to be proud of these “post-80’s” kids and to recognise their remarkable resilience to a life and expectation cycle that would make strong men lose their minds. They should be lauded for showing an interest in their politics that is not echoed in their counterparts in more democratised nations. Instead, I fear the negative connotations attached to these fine young foot soldiers will drive them closer to the dire line of social stagnation. My young respondent will see the pointlessness of fighting the bigger birds and perch on the perch of middle of the road comfort…
Oh well… Perhaps they have Liberal Democrats in Hong Kong too…
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