Disasters strike and shock Hong Kong two evenings in a row

View from a sampan of a floating restaurant 

that's now under the sea!

 

For the second evening in a row, something's happened that shocked Hong Kongers.  This evening saw a fire break out on a power cable bridge in Yuen Long and this causing not only to the spectacular collapse of the bridge itself but also a massive power outage in the northwestern section of the New Territories (including Yuen Long and Tin Shui Wai new towns) that lasted for hours.  

 

As a result, people got stuck in lifts of high rise buildings; traffic lights stopped working; and MTR services between Tsuen Wan West and Tuen Mun stations were briefly disrupted, and Tin Shui Wai station was temporarily closed.  In addition, services at a number of area hospitals were affected, as the power supply was unstable, and there was talk of a need to transfer patients to other hospitals. 

 

Something that didn't escape the attention of the number of people was that this Yuen Long incident occured two years and eleven months to the day of the horror that's known in shorthand among Hong Kongers as 721 (or, more lengthily, the 721 Yuen Long Attack).  Or, if you prefer to look ahead, consider that this disaster occurred just 10 days of the 25th anniversary of Hong Kong's handover by the British to China. 

 

And this comes one day after the occurrence of a way more high profile disaster -- one which many people have looked to as a metaphor for Hong Kong's future: namely, the sinking at sea of the Jumbo floating restaurant which was a fixture in Aberdeen's harbour/typhoon shelter for 46 tears until it was towed away just last week.  I mean, when even Funassyi Tweeted about it...! 

 

If truth be told, I've been shocked by the outpouring of grief at the news of Jumbo's sinking.  One particularly hysterical series of Tweets, to my minds, came courtesy of a Singaporean journalist usually based in Hong Kong and are so histrionic that I think they are worth quoting at length.  

 

I.e., "in between getting covid and having to rebook my flight back to HK and scrambling to find another quarantine hotel i can't believe the fucking Jumbo sinking is my last straw"; "like no kidding i emotionally cannot process this..... I know it's stupid to be shocked by anything absurd happening in Hong Kong any more but this takes the cake for me... for real thought I need to speak to someone i cant process this lol"; "haven't felt this way since Cardinal Zen was arrested but this feels somewhat worse because I just cannot find a way to rationalize this happening lol"; "i wanna scream !!!"

 

In turn, I want to scream back: "Get a grip, woman!  I mean, how can you compare the sinking of a tourist trap with "blue" owners (that I don't think any local regularly ate at) to the arrest of 90-year-old Cardinal Zen?!"  Also why are people mourning the demise of a mere restaurant -- floating or not -- when Hong Kong has lost so much else in recent months and years?! 

 

But another member of the Hong Kong Twitterverse stated something that gave me pause.  Specifically, "I often say that Hongkongers’ relatively strong reactions, from the mourning for Jumbo to the crazy affection to Mirror are a type of projection or sublimation of their suppressed emotion as well as longing for the old, happy days."  

 

Put another way: it seems that the mourning for Jumbo can be put in the same category as the mourning for culled hamsters and wild boar.  Mourning as resistance as well as mourning for what once was but is no more and mourning of what's allowed in lieu of so much other mourning being disallowed in today's Hong Kong.