“Diaspora” is a continuation of “An Exile.” That was about departure from Hong Kong and arrival in a new place. This focuses on the period after arrival.
Both are intended as sequel to the book, Liberate Hong Kong: Stories from the freedom struggle, which is about the 2019–2020 protests. That in turn follows As long as there is resistance, there is hope about the period from 2014 to 2018, and Umbrella: A Political Tale from Hong Kong about the 2014 Umbrella Movement.
“Diaspora” will appear in installments. The previous installment was “Alaa, Hang-tung, Yasmine: Defeat and Resistance.”
4. Trauma Workshop
“How did it go?”
“What?”
“Whatever it is that you were doing earlier. You told me but I don’t recall exactly what it was.”
“Oh, the workshop, you mean?”
“Yeah, what did they call it?”
“Trauma workshop, I think.”
“Yeah, what was that all about?”
“I think its exact title was something like ‘State Violence and Overcoming Trauma’. It was lead by a couple of psychologists from the Center for Victims of Torture. I don’t know. It was a bit of a difficult fit. On the one hand, you had them presenting various ideas and findings from psychological research on, in general, how people, and in particular human rights defenders, psychologically experience oppression and violence, and recommended practices and techniques to help people cope and become more resilient.”
“Resilience.”
“Yeah, that’s the key word. That was all fine and well, but a bit too broad, I thought, to be very useful. Then, on the other hand, you had a couple dozen HK people who were concerned about protecting their identities. So their screens were off and they were muted, and most said little to nothing via chat either. The workshop was in English, which they probably understood well enough, but it’s about a topic that’s difficult for a lot of people to talk about in whatever language, let alone one that is not their first and different from the one in which the experience (the protests, fleeing HK) occurred. So, all in all, something seemed a bit off about the whole thing.
“I’m most interested in the idea of collective trauma, though I don’t even know if ‘trauma’ is the right word for it. A friend told me he thinks all of HK suffers from PTSD. I think that’s pretty close to the truth. It’s a collective experience. Though, again, I don’t know if PTSD is the right word for it; it’s just a kind of short hand. A lot of people feel powerless and hopeless. To many, this can feel like a chronic state, especially as it doesn’t look like the political environment is going to change any time soon, except for the worse. But I’m interested in that phenomenon. I want to know more about it, as a collective, not just an individual, experience, and also more about what can or should or might be done about it.”
“I don’t know. As soon as I heard that it was going to be outside facilitators and the kinds of terminology and concepts they were using, I almost laughed. HongKongers don’t talk with anybody. They don’t talk among themselves. They don’t talk with outsiders. They don’t talk. So the outcome of that workshop—they didn’t talk—is entirely predictable. Why would they? That psychological terminology doesn’t speak to them, and they don’t speak to each other anyway, even under the best of circumstances. Why would they just suddenly open up in front of strangers, about trauma no less? They’re not Americans! Hong Kong is such a homogeneous society and people live on top of each other, all crowded together, so there’s no reason to talk. In fact, just the opposite: not talking gives you at least the sense of a bit of privacy. Head space is the only space you have. Everything is shared, without being spoken. I remember so well the atmosphere right after the police sieges of CUHK and PolyU [two universities in November 2019]. The city felt brutalized, numb. Just walking around, you could tell everyone was thinking the same, but no one was talking. What should they say? They had nothing to say. Everyone understood. Everyone understood exactly what had happened, everyone felt it deep inside.”
“But do you think that’s good, not to talk? I mean I can understand it at first, but once the crisis passes, looking back, isn’t it important to talk? Not only for psychological reasons, but also to achieve a common understanding, a common history.”
“What for? What’s the point? I think maybe that’s mostly a Western idea, that you have to talk it out, that only through articulating it do you begin to understand it.”
“Maybe.”
“The thing is, if you went through the protests, if you were in HK at that time, it’s something that’s very difficult to communicate or convey to anyone else, even if you want to. How could anyone else understand? Even HK people who weren’t there, I don’t know if they can fully understand. You meet someone who was there and you know right away you can connect on some level, even if in other ways you might be very different people. It’s such a particular experience, there are no words for it. But at least a part of it is this feeling that your home that you’ve fought so hard for is being taken from you by an alien, malevolent force. People use the word ‘evil’ too readily, but that’s how it felt: you were up against evil. It’s not just a thought you have or a feeling, but something that creeps inside and lodges itself there, like a poison; it’s almost like it becomes a part of your system. Whether it’s better or worse or whatever, it’s a very definite experience that anyone who’s been through it recognizes, and people who haven’t—well, if they’re empathetic and intelligent, they can understand it on one level, but perhaps not on a deeper level.”
“Don’t you think that leaves people feeling isolated? Couldn’t it be harmful psychologically to keep that all bottled up inside?”
“I don’t know. But that’s the way it is.”
“Yeah, I guess you could say it separates inside from outside. There’s something powerful about the experience, something that in a strange way is also what binds us together, gives us unity, identity, a sense of togetherness. So I guess it works both ways. The workshop leaders talked about ‘keys for resilience and recovery.’ I wrote them down. The ones that struck me most were attaining safety, self and collective effectiveness, connectedness, hope. We’re not in HK, so we’re safe now. I definitely think hope and a sense of community are important to feeling strong and like you can go forward and face the challenges. I think that’s definitely the case with me. I myself don’t have that much to complain about. I mean, I was beaten, roughed up both by police and thugs, harassed, threatened, intimidated, smeared, doxxed. But I don’t know: it just kind of rolls off of me. My thinking is, I’m among the fortunate. There are so many others who have experienced much worse, both in HK and, of course, elsewhere. If I had been seriously injured or imprisoned long-term, as so many have, I think I would find it very difficult to cope emotionally, psychologically. But that didn’t happen to me.”
“Maybe it rolls off you because you have a relatively stable situation. You feel like, ultimately, nothing can touch you. A lot of people who fled have close to nothing, and their future is very uncertain. The ones applying for asylum don’t even know whether they’ll be allowed to stay.”
“True. It’s like you say: there’s nothing to say about that. It is what it is. You just have to get on with things. Without forgetting. Without forgetting what happened. Without forgetting ‘your original intention.’ You carry it into the future, all of it, together, and you do it together. It’s like they said at the protests: we advance and retreat together.”