Travails of the Colony

A friend of mine went to Admiralty last night, and sent me some live photos of the situation. It looked more orderly than the aftermath of a rock concert, with thousands of people dressed in black milling about, clearing rubbish, and displaying banners of support for both protesters and police. This has got to be the most polite act of civil disobedience in recent history, with umbrellas taking on a significance that no one anticipated, thanks to the riot squad’s trigger-happy fingers on the tear gas launchers over the weekend.

(photo by YF)

What struck me was neither the ideals nor the politics behind it all but that I was there just two months ago, right in the heart of Causeway Bay. The Hong Kong people are so very polite, it is hard to imagine them ever rising up against authority. Even my docile friends and former students there have risen up against what they perceive is one in a long chain of broken promises.

The pre-amble to the Declaration of Independence (yes, THAT one that Nicholas Cage tried to steal in your Hollywood fantasies) sums my thoughts best, “…all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.”

Who was it who said that power never concedes without a push?