Lament of a Baby-boomer

Estial: Hong Kong Skyscrapers in 2014 (from Wikimedia Commons)

I was pushing the cart towards the hotel.
After 20 some hours of flight from the USA and three hours of testing procedures in CLK, this 2 minute walk was the best moment.
I wasn’t thinking of the 14 day quarantine.
Not yet.
———————————————

I was fortunate to be able to travel freely.
My passport let me do that.
My family all have USA residency.
My wife and I received college education in the United States, half a century ago.
Our kids likewise more recently and on much more elite campuses.

I am a typical HK baby-boomer, riding the coat tail of prosperity.
Like lots of other baby-boomers.
I have security.
I have access to a free society.
Kids have professional jobs.
I have no complaint.

Though I don’t have accumulated wealth like many of my friends, who have multiple houses, fat pensions, and frequent travels,
I am content.
I could survive.
I have no complaint.

Armed with two US degrees, I embarked on my career in the early 80s. Soon the booming prosperity of HK buoyed everyone including me.
I have no complaint.

Indeed, I got dealt a good hand.
All HK baby-boomers have.

———————————————

What can you do in a hotel room for 14 days?
Thank God the internet was working.
But things have changed in the few weeks since I left.
No more familiar faces on YouTube.
Pretentious charlatans occupied the public airwave.
Natives got run out of their land.
The exchange rate has jumped to 11 HK$ to a UK£.

It was so dejavu.

Years ago, by the time I was just into my higher gear to race ahead in my career, Margaret Thatcher stumbled on the steps of the People’s Hall.
Went with her was the HK currency, once dived to 10 per 1 US$ until the peg steadied things.
Went also the confidence in HK.

A few years later on June 4 1989, the vestige of confidence salvaged since 1984, was completely shattered.
The entire populace headed to the Exit. So did my siblings, including myself, sought residency overseas. Gradually, three of my sisters moved to USA and Canada.
I too landed in Australia with my young family and returned to HK, waiting till the last moment to leave.
Though in the end my family didn’t have to leave because of the UK passport scheme, but my original family already had been torn apart.

The feeling that our baby-boomers generation was but one of refugees, was forever etched.
That feeling was like being evicted out of your place of birth and growing up.
Terrible feeling.

Never did we HK baby-boomers think we had to experience that. We used to believe we were immune. We were baby-boomers.

We skipped the Japanese occupation.
We were ringfenced from Red China and the Cultural Revolution. And the poverty, famine and loss of education.
We flew overseas to receive an education.
We built the Mass Transit.
We had the best trails, country parks and waters.
We became proud residents of the shopping, cuisine and financial centres of the world.
Ah yes, we had Kung Fu movies and Canto Pop, the envy of the world’s Chinese.
And for those of my contemporaries who opted to settle after college in USA, Canada, UK or Australia, life was a piece of cake.

But there is a bitter taste to the cake.

Dejavu.

Those of us who hunkered down in HK after 1989, even through 1997, and SARS in 2003, were rewarded yet again with the booming stock market and real estate. Those who bought houses even more so.

For a while, we HK baby-boomers felt we could be immune.

Until when a million marched on June 9 2019, got ignored, and rewarded with hundred rounds of teargas on June 12 2019.
Two millions came out on June 16.
Ignored again, and rewarded with escalating brutality.
The numbers of 721 831 symbolised, like 8964, inhumane injustice that previously thought couldn’t have happened did.

For HK baby-boomers, such was the stark truth that peeled off the romantic face covering that gave us the mystique of HK to where we strived.

Yes. We could still flee.
But it might be a final good bye.
We shouldn’t have to go.
It was so unjust.

More.
We saw our younger generations got cancelled. Their careers interrupted, education suspended, friendship shattered, sense of justice warped, compassion blindsided and overall the sense “it’s just not right” hung around like the nauseating smell of cheap cologne!

We thought we HK baby-boomers could be immune to that!
Yes physically and financially we could still survive in a free economy, still eat good Chinese foods, but there is no rally to protest against what had been done to our people and society. Nor can we utter words condemned by those two Chinese newspapers.
Sadly, with that, we still carry the emotional scars, the sadness, the feeling that our generation, as blessed as baby-boomers go, was saddled with memories and anger that gnaw at us, though we sleep on sleep number beds in safe neighbourhoods somewhere in USA.

Had I not had the 14 days of quarantine, it wouldn’t have been possible for me to grasp the two levels of existence HK baby-boomers are in.

——————————————
I was wheeling the cart out of airport hotel down to catch an A-bus back to town.
I had to hurry.
In 9 minutes the bus would arrive. I needed to look for the bus stop.
So much have changed.
Got to hurry.