In a scarred Hong Kong, ‘beautiful things are gone’
HONG KONG — As documentary filmmaker Kiwi Chow walked through a pedestrian tunnel in Hong Kong on a recent day, he spotted a team of cleaners scraping off glue left by illegal ads and scrubbing the walls clean with mops.
It reminded him of the day he became an activist during the pro-democracy protests that galvanized this Chinese-ruled city in 2019. Back then, he had gathered with his young son and some friends to cover another tunnel wall with Post-it notes scribbled with political messages and drawings.
Strangers joined in.
“I was very happy. It was the first time I was an organizer,” he said.
The next day, as he walked past, cleaners were removing the mosaic of notes, known in Hong Kong as “Lennon walls” after the original John Lennon Wall in communist-controlled Prague in the 1980s that was covered with graffiti, Beatles lyrics, and messages of political grievance.
Urged over the phone by his wife, he collected some of the notes from the ground. “Pick as much as you can,” she told him. “Bring back the drawing by your son!”
The cleaners on that day in Aug. 2019 told Mr. Chow that they needed to clear the tunnel wall and photograph it as proof of their work for their bosses. But then they told him that he could put the Post-its back on the other side of the tunnel.
To Mr. Chow, that was the cleaners’ act of resistance, an experience that inspired him to use his own profession for the cause. “This is the Hong Kong spirit,” he thought, and took his camera out to film the protests. He hopes to finish editing the documentary later this year.
Clearing the Lennon Walls was the beginning of “beautiful things” being destroyed, he said.
“Of course, we feel angry when beautiful things are gone; it’s important, and we need to remember. But the anger can also transfer into perseverance,” said Mr. Chow, now 42. After all, during the protests, the Lennon wall in his tunnel was dismantled many times, but people rebuilt it.
But today, Lennon walls have disappeared. They’ve been risky to assemble since China introduced a sweeping national security law a year ago to crack down on what it deems subversion, secessionism, terrorism, and collusion with foreign forces with up to life in prison.
People who want a democratic future for the city are regrouping behind an invisible front line that is harder to disrupt with tear gas and rubber bullets, but still, they say, under attack: the memory of what happened in 2019.
Democracy activists charge that those in power are trying to take control of the narrative, and they fear that future generations will hear only the government’s version of events: that the 2019 protests were illegal riots by a minority of people who were manipulated by foreign forces to undermine the rise of China under the successful leadership of the Communist Party. —
Authorities have declared certain slogans and songs illegal, have removed or reframed sensitive topics in school curricula and pulled democracy books off the shelves of public libraries. Cinemas, universities, and art galleries have canceled screenings or exhibitions of protest-related works.