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An author laughs through her tears in an interview ahead of her appearance at the Auckland Writers Festival – Louisa Lim talks to Steve Braunias

This just in from Hong Kong. Its Chief Executive has corrected the language of a journalist for asking a question at a press conference about the pro-democracy protests of 2019: “First of all, it is not [called] the 2019 protests. It is the black violence.” And: a 23-year-old has been charged under the Beijing-imposed national security laws for allegedly “intimidating the public in order to pursue political agenda”. He was attempting to stage a protest, otherwise known as a black violence. Also: a satirical cartoonist has been sacked after a government official complained about a drawing that mocked local elections, and his books were removed from libraries. When approached by the last signs of independent journalistic life in Hong Kong, the Hong Kong Free Press, the Leisure and Cultural Services Department commented, “Books that are suspected to potentially violate national security law will be immediately removed for review.”

Scary, pathetic, not sane – it’s just the way things are now on the island. Hong Kong is still beautiful, still exciting to visit, still an amazement of good food and bright lights, but no longer free in any sense. I went there in March to attend the Hong Kong International Literary Festival. Of course I covered the literary festival but of course I covered the central event of life in Hong Kong: China, and China’s control. The stories were notes and observations from eight days and eight nights. Louisa Lim, about to appear at the Auckland Writers Festival, is the author of the deeply felt, innately knowledgeable book Indelible City: Dispossession and Defiance in Hong Kong. She grew up there. She was a journalist there during the 1997 handover. She left and may never return there.

Its dedication page reads, “To all those who really fucking love Hong Kong.” Lim really fucking loves Hong Kong. Her book is a cry of despair at what has been lost, and includes a rousing passage about hope, about Hong Kong regaining a sense of its own destiny – but she finished writing the book in 2021. I interviewed Lim ahead of her festival appearance this Friday, chaired by Newsroom supremo Sam Sachdeva. The first thing I asked was what has changed in Hong Kong since she finished the book, and the first thing she said was: “I would say things have got a lot worse.”

She meant the apparently unlimited power and reach of the national security laws, with 47 activists and journalists in jail or on bail awaiting trial. She meant changes to education, where children are required to salute the Chinese flag. She meant changes to local elections, which have effectively gutted the city’s last remaining democratic institutions, as mocked by the cartoonist whose work has been made to disappear. She meant all manner of things, including changes to that first line of defence always attacked by new masters – language.

Read the full interview at Newsroom.com.nz here

images and text: Steve Braunias