40 THENEWYORKER,DECEMBER16, 2019
in theatre, we keep an eye on society,”
and the sense of reality and art blur-
ring was enhanced when I wandered
outside during intermission and came
across a protest in full swing. A stage
had been set up. College and high-
school students were taking turns at
an open mike, speaking to an audi-
ence in much the same terms that the
actors inside were.
“It is only through acting that we
come to discover our identities,” an-
other cast member told me. In the
same sense, the protesters were find-
ing their voices on the streets of the
city. Yet, as blazingly alive as these ar-
tistic and political voices were,
they were shadowed by futility.
The territory has its own par-
liament, the Legislative Coun-
cil of Hong Kong, but only half
its seats are elected by a direct
democratic vote. (The other half
are reserved for the representa-
tives of various industry groups.) When
pro-democracy candidates won a land-
slide victory in the District Council
elections, two weeks ago, the jubila-
tion made it easy to forget that the
councils have no legislative role.
When I asked protesters what they
thought should happen, they often
had trouble articulating an endgame.
By now, the extradition bill that had
sparked the protests had been with-
drawn, but the movement had come
up with a list of demands, which in-
cluded amnesty for arrested protest-
ers, an independent inquiry into po-
lice brutality, and universal suffrage.
Some people I spoke to were even
talking about fighting for indepen-
dence from Beijing, though few be-
lieved it was a possibility. The absence
of any sense of what a viable compro-
mise might look like encouraged peo-
ple to be unyielding, and they voiced
the principles at stake—democracy
and freedom of expression—with
fierce purity.
Meanwhile, creativity expressed it-
self everywhere: performances, graffiti
art, songs, slogans, memes. And in this
artistic impulse one could see Hong
Kongers striving to establish an inde-
pendent sense of identity, and to in-
sulate it against mainland influence.
Wu, the director, described the Hong
Kong of his youth as “a cultural des-
ert.” In a territory geared toward mak-
ing money, most art that flourished
was wholly commercial, like Canto-
pop and popcorn cinema, and was tai-
lored for consumption across Asia
rather than for a domestic audience.
Wu’s approach was proudly local. “How
we narrate this city’s past has mean-
ing, and the meaning is political, be-
cause art is political,” he said. “Not
least because, in Hong Kong, the past
is literally a different country.”
The cast of “2047” thought con-
stantly about the relationship between
self-expression and political action.
“When and how does news become
art?” an actor in his late twen-
ties asked. “We artists are always
rehearsing in the privacy of our
studios, but we need to move
our performance to the public.
Society should be our stage.”
On October 1st, the seventieth
anniversary of Communist rule
in China, as the city was roiled by some
of the bloodiest clashes since the pro-
tests began, the actor was arrested and
his arm was broken by the police. Be-
cause Hong Kong has started using a
colonial-era statute to charge arrestees
with “rioting,” he faces a maximum
prison sentence of ten years.I
t was a little more than a year since
I’d last been to Hong Kong, and I
was struck by its transformation. Graffiti
mottled the pavement. Protest songs
blasted in the public parks. The spirit
of open defiance, while jarring, felt cu-
riously festive. Previously, the city, end-
lessly obliging to its rotating clientele
of businessmen and tourists, had seemed
aloof and polite, like a hotel concierge.
Now it had the vibe of a sweat-soaked
busker, determined to play his music
to all passersby.
On my first Sunday in town, I went
to a rally and march with Antony Da-
piran, a lawyer who has written a his-
tory of protest in Hong Kong. The
march, which began at noon, set off
from Victoria Park and Causeway Bay,
in the heart of the commercial dis-
trict. We proceeded west, tracing the
curve of Victoria Harbor, past Wan
Chai to Admiralty, an area that in-
cludes many government offices and
the Hong Kong headquarters of the
Chinese military. Riot police lined thestreets. The police had not issued a
permit for the march, making it tech-
nically illegal, but none of the young
parents, secondary-school students,
and retirees I spoke to seemed fazed
by the danger. A Vietnamese grand-
mother who had moved to Hong Kong
half a century earlier told me that the
youngest of her five children was a po-
lice officer. The night before, the fam-
ily had gathered for a Mid-Autumn
Festival dinner. Today, he was on the
streets, working.
Dapiran had been attending pro-
tests for months, and said that they
tended to happen in phases, the first
of which was a peaceful march like
this one; later, the crowd would thin
and the violent confrontations would
begin. Nonviolence was a hallmark of
the previous large-scale protest move-
ment, in 2014, which included sit-ins
that paralyzed parts of central Hong
Kong for months. The Umbrella
Movement, named for the umbrellas
that protesters deployed to protect
themselves against tear gas, aroused
worldwide admiration. But it did not
achieve its stated aim, electoral re-
form, and, since then, its student lead-
ers have been repeatedly jailed on a
variety of charges. The violence of the
current protests comes out of this sense
of frustration, as does the movement’s
notable lack of identifiable leaders.
The protesters make their decisions
in a decentralized way, communicat-
ing anonymously via social media,
mostly using the encrypted messag-
ing app Telegram; their watchword is
“Be like water.”
When the crowd grew smaller, in
the late afternoon, we ducked down a
quiet side street to get our protective
gear ready for the second phase. As I
tugged on my gas mask, I caught sight
of my reflection in the window of an
Audi dealership. Inside, a wealthy-
looking couple, engrossed in a discus-
sion with one of the salesmen, glanced
at me.
When we rejoined the rally, most
of the remaining protesters were clad
in black, their faces covered in masks
or wrapped in scarves, and carried open
umbrellas. Young men passed by push-
ing trolleys stacked with bricks that
they had dug out of the sidewalk. Oth-
ers pulled up iron gratings and barri-