P has been actively engaged in combating poverty in Hong Kong for over a decade. He emigrated to Hong Kong when he was 11, but still keeps a strong connection with mainland China. Recently, he told me he might step back from the public affairs on account of the National Security Law. P said, under the current circumstances, he can only be good to the people he treasures and loses himself in gourmet and wine.

People’s attitude to life has always swung like a pendulum between engaged and escape during hard times in Chinese History. Being socially engaged is more similar to Confucian; on the contrary, Taoists may adopt the policy of escape in a crisis. It’s said that Lao Tzu rode on a green cow to escape from War and therefore left a 5000-word Tao Te Ching. When I first met P 20 years ago, he was enthusiastic in fostering change in society. Now, he tends to be a Taoist.

P’s change is not surprising as the public sphere keeps shrinking. A person can only adjust his frontline gradually under the totalitarian regime. When the line of defense recedes, in any extreme cases we can imagine, the only freedom left is in our mind. No one is able to read our minds yet. Nevertheless, the Government knows it well too. That’s why it is keen on developing high-end technology like genetic reengineering and A.I., etc. According to Yuval Noah Harari, the writer of the bestseller Sapiens and 21 lessons for the 21st Century, this kind of technology is aiming at hacking our minds.

The last 12 months have been my year of losing happiness. Since hearing about the cases of torture at San Uk Ling Holding Centre in August last year, I often think of the suffering of our ‘Hand and Foot’. We call other protesters as ‘Hand and Foot’ (directly translated from Cantonese). ‘Hand and Foot’ is Sibling in English. It means we treat other protesters as our hand and foot. Since then, there are more and more sufferings accumulated. When something good happens to me, I am pleased but simultaneously think of the deceased, as well as the ‘hand and foot’ who are still suffering. I have a guilty feeling while I am eating something delicious. It seems to me I don’t deserve any feeling of happiness.

It’s commonly found that the Holocaust survivors couldn’t help but feel guilty. They believed they survived at the cost of the sacrifice of the deceased. I, too, have a weird feeling that I owe my life to the deceased in the June 4th Massacre, and after 2019, I even owe more on account of the victims of the Anti-Extradition Movement.

Psychologists would say it’s a kind of vicarious trauma. By definition, when someone directly or indirectly witnesses a trauma, s/he has the same feeling of being traumatized. I believe many Hong Kongers share this feeling. We have not turned a blind eye to the suffering and pain of our ‘Hand and Foot’. As much as we know that it would distance ourselves from happiness, we still don’t want to distance ourselves from sufferings.

(Pat To Yan, Active in Hong Kong and German Theatre. Playwright, Director, Lecturer. Elected Council Member and the Chairman of the committee of Literary Art of Hong Kong Arts Development Council.)

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