Hungry Ghosts in Hong Kong
It was the Hungry Ghost Festival last week in Hong Kong, a time when the spirits of the dead return to roam the earth, and people leave out food to feed the “hungry ghosts” and burn paper offerings for their ancestors on Hong Kong’s roadsides.
But during this year’s Hungry Ghost Festival in Kowloon’s Sham Shui Po district, the smoke from burning offerings mixed with clouds of tear gas, as anti-government protesters engaged in clashes with police.
The protesters had gathered to mark the festival by burning “Hell Money” — replica bank notes for ancestors to “spend” in the afterlife — but on this occasion, instead of featuring the traditional image of the Jade Emperor, the Taoist King of Heaven, the Hell Money featured images of Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam and her unpopular ministers.
The police moved in and fired tear gas to clear the protesters — although that did not seem to deter the nearby fish ball stalls, which continued to do a brisk trade amidst the clouds of gas.
It has become a familiar sight in Hong Kong as anti-government protests move into their eleventh consecutive weekend: black t-shirted, yellow hard-hat wearing young protesters engaged in often violent clashes with police, while ordinary life carries on around them.
This “Hard Hat Revolution” began with peaceful protest marches against a proposed law that would enable criminal suspects to be extradited from Hong Kong to face trial in Mainland Chinese courts. But a lack of government response to protester demands, together with heavy-handed policing tactics, stoked popular outrage and turned the movement into a broader, pro-democracy, anti-government movement. Protesters are demanding, among other things, an independent inquiry into police actions and increased levels of democracy in the city.
And after protesters engaged in actions that openly challenged Beijing’s authority — storming the Legislative Council building, vandalising Beijing’s representative office; defacing the Chinese emblem and throwing a national flag into Victoria Harbour — Beijing stepped in with bellicose rhetoric, warning that “those who play with fire will get burned”.
Last week saw a further escalation, both in protester action and Beijing’s response. As protesters swarmed Hong Kong’s international airport, forcing the airport’s closure on two consecutive days and stranding thousands of travellers, Beijing announced that the protests were showing signs of “terrorism”, and conspicuously massed troops in Hong Kong’s neighbouring city of Shenzhen for large-scale military exercises and anti-riot drills.
But the protesters do not seem to be deterred; they continue to come out on to the city’s streets — and the city holds its breath to see what Beijing’s response will be.
As dawn breaks in Hong Kong, the streets are still littered with the aftermath of Hungry Ghost Festival celebrations — remnants of spent incense sticks and piles of grey ash from the burnt paper offerings — and I am reminded of a slogan I saw emblazoned across a protester’s banner: “If we burn, you burn with us.”
We are all hoping Hong Kong can be saved before it reaches that point.
(This piece was broadcast on BBC World Service “Weekend”, 17 August 2019.)
