A July 1st more notable for many Hong Kongers for it being a T8 day than anything else!

 

Mother nature's not been treated the China and Hong Kong flags, 

and general 25th anniversary of the Handover signs, all that kindly!

 

Two days ago, the skies over Hong Kong were bright and beautiful.  But on the day as Xi Jinping came to town, things took a turn for the worse weatherwise.  One more event (along with such as the Jumbo seafood restaurant sinking and Yuen Long bridge fire) that can be seen as not the best of portends with regards to Hong Kong's future under the new chief executive who Comrade Xi was in town to swear in. 

 

At least China's leader was spared the experience of being in Hong Kong during a typhoon as the T8 signal (for Tropical Cyclone Chaba) was only issued after he had left Hong Kong; what with his having been here for not even two full days -- and he didn't even deign to spend the night in the territory this time around too!  Also, the heavens deigned to not rain during the flag raising ceremony this morning which he attended (though the winds were already picking up then).  

 

However, today's flag lowering ceremony ended up being cancelled.  Ditto such as the "Grand Variety Show in Celebration of the 25th Anniversary of Hong Kong's Return to the Motherland" that was scheduled to take place at the Hong Kong Coliseum this evening.  What a pity!  Not really, for, truly, very few people in Hong Kong cared much at all for any of the 25th Anniversary activities as, frankly, most people didn't think the Handover, never mind its 25th anniversary, is worth celebrating.   

 

For that matter, I'm not the only person who doesn't think many Hong Kongers actually cared that much either way about Xi Jinping having come to Hong Kong for the first time in five years.  And after all the wishing -- and cries in 2019 -- for Carrie Lam to step down, there wasn't that much exhultation about her finally doing so either since people are thinking that John Lee's administration may end up being even worse than Hong Kong's most unpopular Chief Executive by far thus far!     

 

Given a chance to do so, I'd have happily gone out and marched today in protest against John Lee as well as Carrie Lam, Xi Jinping and the whole Hong Kong Handover.  But there's not been a July 1st protest given official approval since 2019, and the last time (to date) that Hong Kongers marched on the streets enmasse was July 1st, 2020 -- the day after what's been labelled as Hong Kong's Second Handover (i.e., the day that China imposed a draconian national security law on this territory).  And the authorities made sure that even the League of Social Democrats -- the Hong Kong political party most associated with street protests -- would not be out protesting this July 1st by harassing its members and effectively putting them under house arrest in recent days.

So, instead, I stayed at home and did such as read a whole bunch of articles about Hong Kong that have come out in recent days in various international media.  Something I thought was probably the best thing to do with the bad weather forecast and manifested, and also the threat of major traffic jams in various parts of the city as a result of a number of roads having been closed to ensure Xi's safety while in Hong Kong.    

One of the best of the bunch is this "Postcard from Hong Kong" in The Times written by someone who actually lives here (rather than was writing about Hong Kong from afar or was helicoptered in for a few days, as too often has been the case).  The following are a few choice quotes from the piece by Lee Cobaj: 

Textbooks are being rewritten denying that Hong Kong was a British colony. The Tiananmen Square massacre was a misunderstanding, apparently. Then, of course, there is the vanishing of political opposition, trade unions and free press, as well as our citizens (about 200,000 or so are said to have emigrated since the June 2020 introduction of the National Security Law, which brought the territory under much closer Chinese government control).

 

We’re being told life will improve after the July 1 handover anniversary ceremony, when the new chief executive John Lee, a former police chief who exudes the energy of an internment camp instruction manual, will be sworn in... [but i]t would be deluded to imagine that the new regime will reverse course politically.

 

[Still,] Hong Kong is not dead — contrary to what people who don’t know Hong Kong keep casually pronouncing, as if Hongkongers are just going to give up their beliefs and everything they love overnight. Yesterday, I hiked from the Peak to Repulse Bay and the city looked as beautiful as ever: mountains and coastline, harbour and high-rises were all wrapped in blue skies and brilliant sunshine. Somewhere above an Aberdeen Harbour devoid of its floating restaurant, I sat on a giant boulder. The words “Free Hong Kong” had been freshly etched onto the surface.