Sticking it to China
Post- it notes and signs spell out emotions in Hong Kong.
HONG KONG — Hot pink and tangerine, chartreuse and bright blue, the Post- it notes flutter up the outdoor stairway like thousands of fragile Technicolor butterflies, clinging hopefully to the concrete wall of the government office. “We love Hong Kong.” “We are sad, we are angry.”
Individually, the miniature multilingual missives are mere whispers. Massed together, they’ve become a roar in rainbow colors: “Committed citizens can always change the world!” “Down with Communism!” “Iwant to vote for someone I want, not someone chosen by CHINA!”
For seven days, Hong Kongers have poured into the streets to press for democratic elections in 2017, singing and chanting at the top of their lungs. But quietly, they also have poured out their emotions and aspirations on paper and cardboard, Styrofoam and cloth, creating a striking sea of signage — poetic and poignant, ironic and irate, whimsical and witty.
A visual and linguistic labyrinth written mainly in Chinese and English ( both are official languages here), the banners, posters and stickers are layered with complex cultural references, historic aswell as hip.
To wander among them in the protest zone, to read and reflect, is to touch this city’s Cantonese heritage and its British colonial era, and to appreciate more deeply its current Catch- 22 asanaucourant, cosmopolitan hub of globalized capitalism chafing under Chinese Communist rule.
There are numerical riddles to decipher, and visual puns too. Signs using “928” refer to Sept. 28, the day police tear- gassed and peppersprayed protesters. Others reading “689 step down” urge the unpopular Beijingbacked chief executive, Leung Chun- ying, to quit; Leung won his job leading this territory of 7 million with just 689 votes from a 1,200- member selection committee, hence the derisive numeric nickname.
Posters depicting wolves also refer to Leung, whose name is a near homonym for the animal. In Chinese, “wolf ” has several negative connotations, from gluttony to lechery.
Wolves are hardly the only animals to be found here. With the movement having taken on the sobriquet of the Umbrella Revolution, the raincoat- clad Paddington Bear is showing up on protest- zone posters too, brolly in hand.
Also spotted: the Morton Salt “When It Rains It Pours” umbrella girl.
A number of expressive protesters have drawn on more classical traditions. A protest poem titled “National Mourning” went viral last week on Twitter and other social media. Penned in traditional Chinese characters on a wooden crate that made up part of a barricade near demonstrators in theTsim ShaTsui neighborhood, it was cleverly constructed so it could be read vertically as well as horizontally. The unsigned ode seemed to contain several hidden anti- Communist phrases.
“The level of participation in these protests is like nothing we’ve ever seen before, and so I think the level of creativity is also somethingwe’ve not seen before,” said Lian- HeeWee, an associate professor of English at Hong Kong Baptist University who on Saturday was outinAdmiralty, theheartof the protest zone. “I feel like everyone is digging out whatever latent talent they have and trying to apply it here.”
Along one 50- foot stretch of pavement in Admiralty are signs bearing quotes from John Lennon (“You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one”), Gandhi (“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win”) and Tupac Shakur (“Real eyes realize real lies”).
Rather surprisingly, there are also words from Communist China’s “Great Helmsman” himself. Quoting Mao Tse- tung at the start of the 1966-’ 76 Cultural Revolution, a sign taped to a concrete traffic barrier reads, “Any person who suppresses student movements will cometo no good end.”
Wee explained that whoever created the flier was attempting some irony, not trying to equate Hong Kong’s student- led protests with the rampaging youthful Red Guards who touched off a decade of disaster on the mainland.
“The point is to say to Hong Kong’s leaders: You are going against not only your own people, but also against your Communist forefathers,” said Wee.