During
these over-heated times, we should stop to look at what genuine democracy
protests look like. Starting in late September 2014, HK students spontaneously
came together to occupy key locations in Hong Kong’s business district. They
were not motivated by sour grapes or misplaced loyalty to an office-seeker.
Instead, the students were demanding Hong Kong’s right to choose their own candidates
without the threat of Beijing’s veto and for the right of universal suffrage.
They
were disorganized and naïve, because they were so very young. Most of the
protestors were college students, but there were high schoolers there too. We
will meet many of the idealistic young Hong Kongers and consequently start
worrying for their safety during Chan Tze-woon’s remarkably immersive
documentary, Yellowing (trailer here), which has not so
mysteriously been frozen out of HK theaters, but screens this Saturday at San
Francisco’s Roxie Theater, presented by the Northern California Hong Kong Club.
At
twenty-seven, Chan was one of the older cats seen at Umbrella protests sites,
in his case primarily the Admiralty and Mong Kok. He quickly earned the trust
of the yellow-ribbon wearing protestors, most notably including “Rachel Senior,”
an extraordinarily camera-friendly first year law student. No doubt, his
tendency to grab his camera and run into tear gas helped establish his
credibility. Things are already looking pretty ominous by the time
sixteen-year-old “Rachel Junior,” arrives at Mong Kok, which Chan clearly
implies was the more dangerous occupation site. Frankly, seeing her there is as
distressing as it is inspiring.
Through
his lens we see the disorganized chaos of the Umbrella Movement. Although there
were rival organizing committees, the real decision-making process was
decentralized in the extreme. Yet, we watch as supply stations, tent cities,
and even makeshift study halls are spontaneously organized. We also witness the
HK police’s violent crackdown, on which Chan several times found himself on the
receiving end.
Thanks
to Chan, the Umbrella Movement is no longer faceless. They are just kids, but
they are also Hong Kong’s future. Unfortunately, the older generations really
hung them out to dry. Had the protestors more closely followed the
revolutionary blueprint of Dr. Gene Sharp, they would have had more senior
citizens in their front lines and more protest signs written in English. Of
course, they were contending with erroneous accusations of foreign funding
right from the start. Several times we hear volunteers cheekily distributing
water and supplies “provided by a foreign power.”
