For The Love of Hong Kong: A Memoir From My City Under Siege
Hana Meihan Davis
Global Dispatches: 2021
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A few days ago, I was texting a fellow Hong Kong friend I’ll call ‘Grace’, watching the sun fade from the window of my London apartment, when she told me she had made what we used to say was an impossible decision: never to return home to Hong Kong. ‘I want to come to terms with being in self-exile,’ Grace said, messaging me from the United States, where she has supported the city’s pro-democracy movement as an activist. ‘I’m done living under that cloud of not knowing whether I can or cannot go home.’

My chest tightened as I read Grace’s messages, which came in short bursts of rapid fire. She told me her last relative in Hong Kong was dying, and while in ‘normal’ times she would fly home, the uncertainty of whether she could do so safely has become a weight too heavy to carry. She was tired of living in fear of the Chinese government and wanted to do things that felt right to her in the moment, instead of constantly self-censoring in a desperate attempt to stay safe.

• Tags: Hana Meihan Davis, Hong Kong, Issue 24, Jessie Lau