Weary from the Future, Hong Kong
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Weary from the Future, Hong Kong Liz Jackson 1 # Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
A Society in Turmoil My first time in Hong Kong (8 years ago), I felt like I was in the future. Like many visitors, I marvelled at the infrastructure, the use of technology to hasten simple transactions. Gleaming clean trains, flying through stations every 2 min, seem a world apart from travelling through Chicago, New York, or London. Now I still feel like I live in the future, but a less hopeful one—not of glittery Futurama, but of chronic weary, with political, social, economic, and geographic dimensions. Hong Kong has faced a public mental health crisis this last year. It emerged in relation to the anti-extradition protest movement,1 the most recent in a series of protests in Hong Kong. It started in July 2019, when the world was exposed to terrifying images of police and protestors trapped at the airport. Since then, the local economy has dramatically tumbled downward, due to decreases in tourism and travel. Hong Kong people are known to infrequently stay in their tiny apartments. My life in Hong Kong could be roughly described as working long hours on campus during the week, hiking all weekend, and eating out every night. Yet during the protests, we started to hunker down, avoiding unnecessary social gatherings. Why risk getting teargassed? We all knew friends who had accidentally stumbled into the noxious gas, which can impact physical health, despite its abundant use by police against protestors. We began studying social media anxiously before leaving the house. In the second half of the year, there was not an event planned—not a dinner party, or an academic lecture—without jokes or more serious discussion about a ‘Plan B’ in case of disruption. Our employers would also send us messages, warning us to stay home 1
This movement began as a response to an extradition bill put forward by the Hong Kong government, which would allow for the transfer of fugitives outside of Hong Kong to territories where Hong Kong does not have extradition agreements, including the Mainland China and Taiwan. Protests began due to concerns that the bill could allow people from Hong Kong to be subjected to the legal system of China. Due to police reactions, and public perceptions of excessive use of tear gas, the movement picked up speed and coalesced around core concerns of pro-democracy members of the society, demanding more openness and democratic processes in society among other things (Li 2015; Kuo 2019).
* Liz Jackson [email protected]
1
University of Hong Kong, Pok Fu Lam, Hong Kong, China
Postdigital Science and Education
and safe during scheduled protests. Chat groups became protest information logs. We started chatting more, socializing less. Every trip through the airport had to be planned meticulously. We began travelling to the airport 4 or 5 hours early, despite travel time and security checks never taking more than half an hour, in case of complications. Most of my classes had to be made optional or end early, as trains across
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