Still packs a punch

HONG KONG appears to be in a midlife crisis. The 25th anniversary of its return to China, on July 1 this year, marked the halfway point in Deng Xiaoping’s guarantee, enshrined in the Basic Law that governs Hong Kong, that its capitalist system and way of life would be preserved for 50 years under the “one country, two systems” model.

While signs of celebration can be seen around the city, a COVID-19 outbreak in the government headquarters at Tamar dampened the enthusiasm and with it hopes of the Carrie Lam government ending on a positive note.

In truth, Hong Kong has not had much to celebrate. Its economy is reeling from two years of “ZERO-COVID” isolation and a devastating wave in February-march that left many wondering about the point of being cut off from the world for two years. Indeed, travelling to Hong Kong is like going back in time to the height of the pandemic. On arrival at a deserted Chep Lap Kok airport some weeks ago, I was administered a PCR test and made to wait four hours before being whisked away to a government hotel for 21 days of isolation. My only interaction was with health workers once every three days.

The ZERO-COVID model had ensured normalcy in Hong Kong for two years, limiting COVID deaths to a little over 200 and keeping schools and restaurants open. Then came Omicron, which brutally exposed the model’s weaknesses. The success of ZERO-COVID disincentivised older residents from getting vaccinated as did the government’s failure to think of an exit strategy or an opening-up timetable. The test-and-trace strategy could not cope with the more transmissible variants. In February-march, the city fell apart. ICUS were overrun, and people died outside hospitals in makeshift gurneys. Deaths soared to 10,000.

Today, Hong Kong continues to drag its feet on opening up and ending quarantines. The result is a strange purgatory where COVID restrictions are in place, but cases are still high.

International isolation has decimated tourism-related businesses. One long-term Indian business executive summed up the situation thus: “The whole point of Hong Kong was that it has the best of both worlds, access to the China market but democracy and rule of law. Now it feels like the worst of both worlds.” That is without the brute efficiency of the mainland or the openness Hong Kong once prided itself on.

WATCHDOGS NO MORE

Hong Kong’s media, meanwhile, has borne the brunt of the changing political landscape after the passing of the National Security Law in 2020. Its sweeping definition of sedition has made journalism risky. After raids on some media outlets, many simply closed down. Seasoned reporters now drive taxis or run corner shop cafes for a living.

Even the Foreign Correspondents’ Club (FCC), a venerable institution that dates back to 1949, is feeling the heat. This year, for the first time it scrapped its Human Rights Press Awards, fearing repercussions on prizewinners. The word on the street is that the club may lose its long-term lease to the grand Lower Albert Road premises, which is part living museum and part watering hole where reporters, diplomats, and occasional spies have traded stories for half a century. In its heyday, the FCC played host to famous journalists and even made an appearance in John Le Carre’s The Honourable Schoolboy.

HIDDEN GEMS

The opening in November of what is perhaps Asia’s most impressive new museum, M+, in Kowloon’s new Cultural District right off Victoria Harbour, has provided some relief for a government battling news about Hong Kong losing its lustre. Said to rival London’s Tate Modern and New York’s Museum of Modern Art, M+ is proof that stories of Hong Kong’s demise are premature. The collection of 7,000 artworks includes pieces that one won’t find on the mainland. The “From Revolution to Globalisation” exhibit has a stunning sweep of works from China since the 1970s. There are also works from the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.

If you want to go beyond contemporary art, Hong Kong’s smaller galleries can house treasures. At one such gallery in the busy Sheung Wan district, its affable owner, Oi Ling, ushered me upstairs to a tiny space that had horse figures from the seventh century Tang Dynasty and exquisite furniture from 14th century Ming China. No doubt about it, Hong Kong still hides some surprises.

1. A major figure in the development of archaeology into a rigorous science was the English army officer and ethnologist Augustus Pitt Rivers, who began excavations on his own land in the 1880s. His approach was highly methodical by the standards of the time. His most significant contributions were (a) his “method of arrangement” (that used two main parameters) and (b) his insistence on a certain holistic approach to collecting and cataloging artefacts. Name both contributions.

2. A study published in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters makes the case that a rock collected in 1971 might be the world’s oldest rock, dating back more than 4.011 billion years. Where was the rock found?

3. In the world of DNA, adenine and guanine are called purine bases, while cytosine, thymine, and uracil are called pyramidine bases. Scientists detected purine bases in X multiple times over several decades. Uracil was detected in 1979. In the latest findings, Japanese archaeologists detected other pyramidine bases for the first time, giving more weight to the theory that X might have directly led to Y. What are X and Y?

4. In 2013, archaeologists excavated the cremated remains of 50,000 bones at this site, which were later found to belong to 63 men, women, and children. The bones date back to 3000 BCE-2500 BCE. The discovery led experts to think the site may have been an ancient burial ground although other structures there make it seem like it was used for other activities too. Name the site.

5. In the US, examples such as the case of the Kennewick Man have illustrated the tensions between X and archaeologists, which can be summarised as a conflict between a need to remain respectful and the benefit to be gained from academic study. This contradictory situation was sought to be addressed by a compromise solution that limited the authority of research institutions. To counter this, some archaeologists have begun to actively enlist the assistance of X. Name X.

6. Ishi was the last known member of the Native American Yahi people from present-day California. The rest of the Yahi were killed in the California genocide of the 19th century. Ishi, known as the “last wild Indian” in the US, is revered as one of the last two native “knappers” of North America. His techniques are widely imitated and ethnographic accounts of his process are considered to be the Rosetta Stone of its field. What did knappers do?

7. In their search to prove the superiority of the Aryan race, the Nazi party began searching the world for archaeological evidence that would prove that the German people were not only a superior race but that they transcended traditional human standards. One archaeological exploit made popular by the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark was the search for the Ark of the Covenant. Another, perhaps lesser known, exploit was their attempt to discover _________.

8. Various terms have been used to refer to the practice of using artefacts or sites to construct scientifically unsubstantiated theories outside analytical archaeology, such as creation science or attributing extraterrestrial origins to prehistoric human societies. These terms include “cult archaeology”, “fantastic archaeology” (used even as the name of an undergraduate course at Harvard University) and “alternative archaeology”. But in 2006, Garrett F. Fagan and Kenneth Feder called out the practice and said that these terms simply imparted a “warmer, fuzzier feel” to what was essentially _______. Fill in the blank.

9. In a 1989 paper published in the academic journal Antiquity, the archeologist Christopher Tilley openly criticised the aims of rescue excavation, arguing that it was simply designed to collect “more and more information about the past”, most of which would remain unpublished and of no use to either archaeologists or the public. He said: “The number of pieces of information we collect about the past may increase incrementally—x does not.” What was X?

10. This post-harappan archaeological site is one of the most intensively excavated and well-reconstructed Chalcolithic sites of the Deccan plateau. It housed a settlement that seems to have thrived between 1600 BCE and 700 BCE. The unique discovery here was the skeleton of a man buried sitting upright inside a human-shaped urn. Which site am I referring to?