THENEWYORKER,DECEMBER16, 2019 47
down a long red banner extolling the
day, and set it on fire. A man in a Guy
Fawkes mask was putting up a large
portrait of Xi Jinping, the Chinese
leader, with an “X” drawn over his face.
Passersby pelted it with eggs.
Once the confrontational phase of
the rally got under way, the police
sprayed tear gas at the protesters. Seek-
ing shelter under the eaves of a mall, I
watched as a police officer, on the steps
of a footbridge, fired round after round
of rubber bullets. At nightfall, behind
an apartment building, I came upon a
garden strewn with gas masks, clothes,
umbrellas, kneepads, and helmets, most
likely abandoned during an escape from
the police. By then, fifty-one people
had been hospitalized, and two were in
critical condition. One had been shot—
the first time that live rounds had been
used against protesters.
Crossing an alleyway where police
were pinning demonstrators to the
ground and cuffing them, I saw a young
first-aid worker whose helmet bore
handwritten instructions: “Do not re-
suscitate if seriously injured or unre-
sponsive. Handwritten will in pocket.”
Bonfires, shattered glass, and impro-
vised barricades were everywhere. Streets
and shop fronts were scarred with post-
ers—“Chinazi”; “Never China”—and
uprooted street signs crisscrossed the
sidewalks.
It was strange, in this charred land-
scape, to receive messages on my phone
from relatives on the mainland, ex-
tolling the motherland and urging me
to watch video clips they sent of the
military parade. “Happy birthday to
our great nation,” my aunt wrote.
“Today is a remarkable day!” I didn’t
doubt her sincerity, just as I didn’t doubt
the commitment of the young man I
passed who was spray-painting the
pavement with the slogan “Hong Kong
is not China: not yet!”
I hadn’t heard from No Name all
day, and I’d been worried, but around
midnight he got in touch and gave me
an address in Kowloon, where he said
he and his comrades were holed up.
When I arrived, a little after one, I
found him with a bespectacled, mid-
dle-aged man. “We shouldn’t talk here,”
No Name said, and the man nodded
and led us to his apartment.
The man was what’s known as a
“parent,” one of a loose coalition of
older professionals who help ferry pro-
testers around the city and provide sup-
plies and other assistance. He was an
academic, and his apartment was filled
with genteel clutter—calligraphy scrolls
on the wall, rosewood furniture, a grand
piano, and sheet music covering every
surface. He spoke very softly, as if he
were sighing. When I asked where he
was from, he embarked on a long an-
swer about his family’s origins on the
mainland and his studies in the United
States. In its complex indeterminacy, it
seemed a very Hong Kong response.
The professor hadn’t met No Name
before now, but all summer he’d been
giving people shelter, meals, and a place
to store equipment. Earlier in the eve-
ning, a former student had brought
some members of his group to the pro-
fessor’s home. One of them had an in-
jured arm, and the professor called up
a physician friend of his to come and
tend to the wound. No one dares go to
the E.R., the professor said. The pro-
testers don’t know the allegiances of the
hospital staff, and worry about inform-
ers. “I feel so helpless, so this is all I can
do,” he said.
No Name told me why he hadn’t
been in touch. While getting teargassed
in Central, he’d lost track of some
friends. Before he could look for them,police officers appeared, aiming to block
off the street. He tried to hide behind
a concrete block, but an officer yelled
“Freeze!” and charged at him with a
baton. He could hear a helicopter whir-
ring above him. He spotted a fence and
ran for it. As he hoisted himself up, the
baton smashed down on him. Still, he
managed to clamber over. A protester
behind him wasn’t so lucky. When No
Name looked back, he saw the young
man being pinned down by a few po-
licemen. Aching from the baton blow,
No Name limped off to a nearby church,
one of the few spaces in the city that
gave shelter to protesters and was by
convention off limits to officers with-
out warrants.
It was almost two in the morning.
The professor offered to drive No Name
home. As we got into the car, No Name
told me that, lately, he’d been thinking
more about his father. “He had no ed-
ucation, but he spent his life trying to
feed us,” he said. “The difference be-
tween us is that, while I can imagine
my way into his mind, or at least try to,
I’m totally incomprehensible to him.”“
I
have lived through four eras,” the
journalist Lee Yee told me, at his
apartment, in an upscale retirement
community in North Point. “Colo-
nialism, republican China, Japanese“I’ve got to figure out how to get paid for work dreams.”