Vanishing Hong Kong now includes Bleak House Books :(

More than just heritage buildings are vanishing in Hong Kong... :(

 

I went and caught a photo exhibition entitled Vanishing Hong Kong at the Asia Society yesterday.  Today, I got word that one more Hong Kong institution will soon be no more.  Bleak House Books may just have been around for four and a half years or so but it's made quite the impact on many people's lives and the announcement of its impending closing got me feeling pretty down.  

In his blog post (which he also shared on Facebook), Bleak House Books proprietor Albert Wan shared that his store was "a happy, thriving and successful bookshop" as well as "viable, self-sustaining, community-oriented" as was his intended goal.  So it's not for financial problems that has prompted him to make the decision to have this October 15th be the last day that the bookstore will be opened to the public.  

 

Instead, "The decision to close the bookshop follows another equally painful and sad decision, which is that my family and I will be leaving Hong Kong in the near future... [and t]he backdrop to these developments is, of course, politics. To be sure, what my wife Jenny, my kids, and I do in our daily lives is not overtly political. Jenny is a university professor, I sell books, and the kids are primary school students. But as George Orwell once remarked, ‘[i]n our age there is no such thing as “keeping out of politics”. All issues are political issues.’ This observation is as true today as it was in 1940 when Orwell first made it. And given the state of politics in Hong Kong, Jenny and I can no longer see a life for ourselves and our children in this city, at least in the near future" (my emphasis).  

 

Speaking of the state of politics in Hong Kong and how "all issues are political issues": On Friday night, Yau Tsim Mong district councillor Derek Chu invited friends to a screening of local Hong Kong romantic drama Beyond the Dream at his office.  As it turned out some friends invited their friends and it seems that a couple of them were undercover law enforcement officers (or, at the very least, those who tipped off the authorities).  For actual officials soon arrived at the office and handed out fines to the 40 or so people present for having violated the officially anti-pandemic public gathering ban that doesn't allow more than four people to be in a public space for a common purpose.   

 

Among the people present at that film screening -- and fined for his sins -- was the movie's director, Kiwi Chow.  Should his name not immediately ring a bell: this is the Hong Kong filmmaker whose Revolution of Our Times had its world premiere at Cannes last month and was one of prophetic political anthology Ten Year's co-directors.  And yes, one can't help but wonder whether there would have been a raid on the district councillor's film event if the screened film hadn't been directed by Chow. 

 

For those who mused why the district councillor hadn't just screened the film at his home (since the gathering ban does not extend to private gatherings): you've not been to regular Hong Kong abodes, have you?  For the record: the median area of a home in Hong Kong is 430 square feet and the general expectation is that a home that size would house a family rather than a single occupant.  Also, there are tens (even hundreds?) of thousands of homes that are smaller in size; with "nano-flats" (some of them sized at just around 128 or 135 square feet) having proliferated in recent years.  

There are stories circulating of many Hong Kongers who have moved abroad being ecstatic at being able to afford abodes in Britain and elsewhere far bigger than they had ever lived in in Hong Kong.  Of course bigger homes are not the reason why they've been moving abroad in droves in recent months (and expected to continue to do so for a time).  Speaking of which: a friend told me that, soon, she will be the only individual in her work team who will be remaining in Hong Kong; with the rest having decided to join the migration.  And earlier this week, yet another friend of mine announced her impending departure in a Facebook post; with her -- and Bleak House Books' Albert Wan's -- leaving going to make the number of people I personally know who have left Hong Kong since the coming into being of China's security law for Hong Kong go into double figures.