‘Indelible City’ Reflection
When I was eight years old, I had my first proper interaction with Hong Kong. I was reading a text in Chinese class where a writer commented on her collection of stamps, and when she landed on one adorned with the design of Hong Kong, she described how the stamp commemorated the joyous occasion of when Hong Kong was finally returned to Chinese rule after 156 years of being occupied by Britain. I remember asking my mother, who was born and raised in mainland China, to explain this event to me, and she described the situation as being celebratory, as Hong Kong had finally returned to her motherland, where she rightfully belongs. That settled the idea of Hong Kong for a young Year 3 student, and so when I was introduced to ‘Indelible City’ in Stella last term, I thought “wow, finally a work that will be familiar to me.”
And boy, was I wrong.
Instead of celebrating Hong Kong’s return to China through the official People’s Republic of China approved lens, Lim shone a light on the omitted perspectives of the people of Hong Kong, flagrantly telling the story through the experiences of the people, rather than from an official government lens. She accentuated the absolute obliteration of any right to or opportunity for free speech or assembly in Hong Kong, and how the city was actually freer as a British colony than as a Chinese one – notions that chastened my naïve acceptance of the Chinese narrative.
One of the beautiful things about Lim’s writing is how these impressions are not forced upon you, they naturally fall into place in such a way that after every session of devouring every last word, you feel as if you share her thoughts, you hear her voice, without consciously meaning to. For me, each page was a revelation about a city whose history I thought I knew so well, each line was an insight into the multiplicity of perspectives of the story as seen through such interviews with Chris Pratten and Kit Man. These idiosyncratic yet universal views about the drive to retain free speech and self-determination are typically sugar-coated or ignored, thus each of Lim’s words opened my eyes to the rich, powerful identity of Hong Kong which we should all recognise and appreciate.
I loved how Lim included parts of herself into this work, effortlessly weaving her own story into a piece that was focussed on a bigger picture. In ‘Dominion’, when documenting the life of the vagrant graffiti artist King of Kowloon, she talks about her own experience as a “hybrid” British Hong Konger, and how this connects with the parochial values of the King. Lim describes how her parents had “transgressed racial norms” to marry, to follow their hearts, just as how the King “[wrote] his own rules”, and how this “un-Chinese” behaviour reflected in her own sense of self, with Hong Kong’s British and Chinese status being “the embodiment of [her] identity”.
As someone who rarely delves into non-fiction, this approach was appealing to me, and refreshing too, as whilst it was something completely out of my comfort zone, I do feel as though a book has not resonated with me so much before.
On that note, I would like to end with one of my personal favourite quotes from the book:
“We were not exactly locals, and many of us didn’t even speak Cantonese, but we never questioned our right to think of ourselves as Hong Kongers.”
With love,
Cecilia
