[culturestate]

I lived in HK for the better part of a decade (I still do, technically, despite COVID fencing me outside of HK and inside Singapore) and it's hard to articulate just how distressing it is to watch a place that you dearly love literally disappear before your eyes.

I have permanent residency and had planned to make HK my long-term home; those plans have evaporated. My friends who've been there even longer than me - many of them from the colonial days - are in the same boat, trying to work out how to sell property they thought they'd always hold and decide where to set up what are effectively completely new lives.

At the same time, I feel like this sense of melancholy is almost fraudulent, because I have an option, unlike a lot of the people I know.

I can just leave; that avenue isn't available to the lady who's sold flowers on the corner outside my flat for longer than I've been there, or to my local friends whose families didn't take part in the pre-1997 passport arbitrage or who were born too late to get a BNO.

Their entire way of life is fundamentally changing in a way they have no control over, and it's heartbreaking.