We went to the museum, we all did
(This is a personal obituary dedicated to “The Hong Kong Story” permanent exhibition which is about to go under renovation.)
Yes, son. Everyone is going to the museum. We are going, too. Well, because it’s closing. Remember the time we rushed to the Science Museum in the last hour so you and Daddy can lie on the bed of nails? That’s what people do. Going to the museum when it is about to close. No, the bed of nails is not going away anytime soon. Science changes, too, of course, but usually not as quickly.
We’re not just here for the farewell, yes, but also because history is very, very important. As important as Babette’s hair. But you are Heinrich the skeptic, aren’t you? Why the rush, you ask, because history is only important when it’s about to be lost, like your eyesight. Though more accurately, unlike your eyesight, history is not to even to be had in the first place. It is only to be held on to. But isn’t that all dying things, you question. That cannot be more correct. Another way to ask that would be, isn’t that all living things?
It’s called “Hong Kong Story”. Now you know, stories are not just found in books, they can be two floors steep. Of course, or two floors steep in a book, which is a bend in time only accessible to someone like you, through your turquoise rimmed spectacles.
No, I have never lived on a boat before, those are Tanka people. Maybe. Maybe that’s like a lifetime long ferry ride. We will never know, yeah? We’ll always come from a 300-square feet flat, and see waters as less sturdy. One reality at a time; now, that’s the same for both of us. The gai see teng (Chinese Fevervine) you have grown to love? Those are from the Hakka people. What do we have? We have free food samples in the annual Brands and Product Expo, in which people used to showcase toothbrushes the size of a leg, back in the time when we were known for plastics. You will see when we get to that section. I don’t know what it’s like either, to live in a time where people think about toothbrushes so much that they put them on display. It’s probably quite funny.
“You can tell whether a pottery is made by hand or machines by looking at its bottom.” We’d have to look for concentric circles. Their presence indicates machinery. Their absence indicates more shaping by hands. But no, more human care doesn’t always mean primitiveness. Have they taught you the first sign of civilization at school yet? No, not an arrow. Not a diary entry in the form of knots either. Gods? Not really.
It’s actually a healed femur. The big bone in your thigh which you hardly realize is there until it’s broken, like every other bone. And if you live in an animal kingdom, the moment you become aware of its sharp, painful existence is also the beginning of your transition into the painless world. Because you will not survive long enough for the bone to heal. You die, unless someone takes care of you until you’ve recovered.
That’s the healed femur, evidence that a human being chooses to stay with a hurt human being to prevent their death. That is the first sign of civilization: someone fearing that another would not make it.
I think that’s unfair, honey, to say that some of us today are still uncivilized in this sense…it’s just the first sign! I’m sure those you spoke of excel in the second, the third, or the forth, for those are perfectly ingrained in our education.
What does the museum have more than relics? Children. Children like you. Children with worksheets, who will later learn that Hong Kong wasn’t really “barren” when the British arrived. It was probably only them throwing a tantrum. Afterall, the British were so dissatisfied they got Hong Kong that they replaced their Superintendent of Trade! What’s wrong with Hong Kong? Many things, sweetheart. But none of them rendered the conquest a just one.
Did the British mistreat us? We can’t say we had it the worst. They kept us out of governance until Communism was at the border. They carved out nice, clean pieces of land to live on and left us to live and die on our own vicissitudes until the horrible plague broke out. They had no intention to communicate with us until people took to the streets and that they had killed some of us. It was a time defined by “until” because they weren’t building a place for the people, but a place where people don’t become an obstacle. But at least we had “until”, then we lost even that. That’s what the clock in front of us is simulating a countdown to. The actual countdown happened twenty three years ago. Some of us watched it here, some of us watched it elsewhere, but the fireworks were loud for all of us.
I see you have noticed how people talk most vividly of crises. The water rationing, the Shek Kip Mei fire. But that’s pride you detected, not pain. Crises are those you look back on and smile bitterly about, traumas are those you look forward and still see right ahead of you, all the way to the end. It cannot become the past even when it’s put in the museum, since part of it always lives with you. I guess you could say that, like how you still miss Grandma and pick flowers for her. That’s morning. And it’s a powerful thing. So powerful that when a country wants you to be its people, it makes you mourn for its wars.
So don’t let anyone make you mourn or tell you who to mourn. Always take part in it, suffer, and know who to mourn for yourself. Remember those with broken legs that you feared for, and remember those whose femurs were broken for you. Truly, it’s hard to remember all the time. So we take turns, unknowingly. Being a people is to take turns mourning unknowingly. That’s why it’s okay that not all of us are here today. If we went to the museum, we all did.
Did you say an exhibition of your own? What would you like to display? Your toys? Or your drawings? Or your letters? But we can’t showcase all of them. There are too many.
Indeed, you will do the picking. People will only see what you allow them to see.
