THE MARGINS (ASIAN AMERICANS WRITERS WORKSHOP) -- May-lee Chai is the author of 10 books of fiction, nonfiction, and translation, including the short story collection, “Useful Phrases for Immigrants,” which won a 2019 American Book Award. She teaches in the Master of Fine Arts program in creative writing at San Francisco State University.
She wrote this essay for The Margins, a journal published by the Asian American Writers Workshop.
“Watching the events unfold in Hong Kong this past summer, from protests to crackdown to passage of the new draconian National Security Law, I was reminded of another summer, 30 years ago, when a similar feeling of fear permeated the city.
“I was 23 years old the summer of 1990 when I was stranded in Hong Kong and witnessed the panic, the 97恐怖 or “terror” of the coming 1997 handover of the British colony back to Chinese control.
“I’d been teaching in Nanjing, China, on a fellowship from my college in United States, when I decided to fly home to the U.S. early rather than travel around the country as I’d first intended. I was tired and sick from the heat and the air pollution and a seemingly endless number of upper respiratory tract infections, so I made my way to Hong Kong at the end of my semester in early June. Because I’d been living under martial law for the year I’d been in China, and news about the outside world was heavily redacted, I had no idea what was going on in Hong Kong.”