Author: simon

http://bcmagazine.smugmug.com/Bcene-photos/2015/Street-Eats-Mong-Kok-20/47615540_5N7f9J#!i=3889376520&k=Xn2PSdn

The only thing bigger than street hawkers this Lunar New Year has been Regina Ip being knocked for a six by a Kirin. Given this, we all have high hopes for the year of the goat and its new, feisty attitude of butting things it doesn’t like out of the way.

In regards to the hawkers, it doesn’t matter whether you agree with HK Indigenous’ actions to help relieve the impact of hawkers or not. That is not why they spent four nights cleaning the streets, Their goal was to get you talking about local issues. Or, how do local people solve local problems? Or Hong Kong people making decisions about Hong Kong’s future, just like the Basic Law once promised us, so long ago. This is their ultimate purpose. Media and online forums have been alight with the pros and cons of hawkers in the districts. Hundreds of people have come out to defend them and the Government has wasted vast quantities of money mobilising the FEHD and police to generally do nothing other than look like wannabe Mainland Chengguan and Gong An. (An ominous sign for the future.)

Regardless, of what the solution to hawkers is, the HK Indigenous operation, just like its smuggler campaign, was a huge media success. A handful of motivated young people entirely dictated what the media should be talking about this Lunar New Year, no easy feat. They don’t presuppose for a minute that they have the solutions, their goal is to empower local people to take their communities back. In order to do this they need to tackle problems that are both contentious and difficult to solve. In their choice of operations, they’re not looking for consensus and praise, rather debate and ultimately local empowerment.

They are the beginning of a grassroots revolution within Hong Kong, concentrating on local identity and local empowerment of civil society. It’s a direct push back from the top-down style government so favoured on the Mainland and now being rammed down our throats by CY’s oppressive and clumsy administration. It’s a backlash against the idea that, Hong Kong is part of the Mainland, therefore we need to start acting like Mainlanders. Instead, HK Indigenous and groups like them are directly tackling difficult issues to highlight that geographically, it may be correct, that we are part of Mainland China, but culturally we are very different and the qualities that distinguish this are worth retaining, defending and even fighting for.

The hawker issue will rumble on. The smugglers issue hasn’t gone away, and will be back very soon. No doubt these groups will propel other issues to the forefront very soon. The cumulative effect is that daily Hong Kong’s identity becomes more pronounced as its people get more courage to stand up for what they believe to be right.