Family Travel During Civil Unrest

{I wrote this post in December, 2019, within a couple weeks of returning from Hong Kong. Maybe I still had jetlag, because I found it in my Drafts folder a year after the pandemic erased American awareness of Beijing’s destruction of democracy in Hong Kong 25 years ahead of schedule. Anyway, troubled times don’t seem to be going away, so the topic may continue to be relevant. You know, once leaving the house at all stops being controversial.}

On November 24, 2019, Hong Kong held its local elections as scheduled. Normally, that would not be news. Hong Kong has held peaceful local elections for decades, and the results don’t decide very much. But this year, the elections came in the midst of six months of nonstop protests involving tens of thousands of residents. In the month leading up to the elections, two people had been killed and one had been shot. Clouds of tear gas as thick as the smog that blankets other Asian cities filled the streets.

On November 24, 2019, my family flew into Hong Kong on holiday.

Restive Travel

On 9/11, one of the first things I thought when coherent thought became possible after seeing the news was, “Will the school cancel my trip to India?” There was some back and forth about it, but the school went ahead with the program. On Dec. 26 that year I boarded a plan bound for Asia. I visited four countries before returning home on Easter weekend. Security everywhere was heightened, so it was probably the safest time I could have traveled. And it was probably the last time that being an American abroad elicited good will from strangers.

On that same trip, I had a week free from classes for individual travel. Against all advice, I went to Sri Lanka. This was almost exactly six months after the Tamil Tigers had attacked the international airport in Colombo. I spent my week in Colombo and Kandy, where the only signs of the war were the beggars’ missing limbs. The only threat to my safety was the advances of a Tamil-Sinhalese boy with mistaken ideas about Western women. There’s probably something literary about that.

Hong Kong

It’s one thing to travel to elevated risk areas and it’s another to drag your kids into them. We bought our tickets to Hong Kong on June 6, hours before the silent lawyers’ protest appeared in the news. But even if I had known about it, it would not have affected my decision. Hong Kong has a long and robust history of peaceful protest, and their police were once considered some of the most competent and humane crowd control agents in the world. There had been two or three protests against the extradition bill before this one, and there was no reason to suspect that the issue would not be resolved long before our Nov. 23 departure.

Of course that’s not how it worked out. Six days later, a huge protest ended in chaos, hospitalizations, and arrests. Over time, the extradition bill was cancelled, but protester demands grew to five, not one less. Police got real free with the tear gas, rubber bullets, and batons. To Americans, inured to police shootings, the police in Hong Kong didn’t look so bad. But to Hong Kongers, this level of police violence was appalling. To everyone, the specter of Tiananmen Square loomed over the whole situation. At any time, Beijing could choose to send in the Chinese Army, and there would be nothing anyone could do about it.

Discovery Bay

Although the rising violence of the protests made me nervous, I knew that ultimately my family would be safe. The purpose of our trip was martial arts. My daughters’ teacher studied kung fu in Hong Kong years ago when she lived there. Every few years, she brings her students back with her to meet her teacher, learn directly from him, and show him what she’s taught them.  

Discovery Bay is essentially a gated community of mostly expatriates on Lantau Island. It’s almost a different world from Hong Kong proper. There have been no protests there. The international airport is located on Lantau; our AirBnB and the training were in Discovery Bay. We could spend our whole trip on Lantau. Perfectly safe.

Holiday in Cambodia

Even as a kid, I knew the song “Holiday in Cambodia,” was provocative. In the 80s, Cambodia was synonymous with genocide. Holidays don’t go with genocide, or even with civil unrest. Right?

I read through the lyrics for the first time while writing this post, and … I guess the song is about me? The Dead Kennedys are challenging faux-woke privileged folks to get a taste of the real world. Or something. The lyrics, for being so blunt, are surprisingly opaque.

via GIPHY

Anyway, I’m pretty sure I’m the target. After all, I have had more than one occasion to examine the ethical implications of taking vacation in places that are experiencing existential violence. For this particular trip, I was terrified of finding myself with ringside seats to a civilian slaughter like some kind of Roman patrician at the Coliseum.

On the other hand, tourism and travel to Hong Kong dropped 40% this year, and in November, Hong Kong officially entered a recession. Normal people, whether they believe in the protests or not, are suffering hardships in the name of self-determination. Visiting Hong Kong at this time could be supporting its people. It’s a tempting line of reasoning. But I’m always suspicious when spending money is presented as the solution to a moral question. I tried to find evidence of how the people of Hong Kong would feel about it. Do they feel exploited or supported by foreigners who choose to visit during this crisis? I found nothing to either ease or confirm my ethical queasiness.

But ultimately, despite ethical doubts and shifting circumstances, the purpose of the trip was for my kids to study kung fu. They had been training for a couple years and were advanced enough to benefit from the exposure to a more senior teacher. Their sifu in Hong Kong is getting older, and had hinted at the possibility that he would not be teaching much longer. Their sifu in Seattle had hinted that if Hong Kong was turning into a different city than the one she loved living in years ago, she might not return again. This could be their only chance to train with a master in their style.

Plus, the tickets were nonrefundable.

Hong Kong 2019

As it turned out, pro-democracy candidates swept the elections, and the week we spent in Hong Kong was relatively peaceful. Although there were signs of the struggle, we were able to move about the city in safety, and we were able to see most of the things we wanted to experience as tourists.

The girls made tremendous progress in their training. The weather was perfect all week.

When I visited Hong Kong in 1995, it was still a British colony. At the time, my plan was to return in a few years to see how it changed under Chinese rule. To tell the truth, I didn’t like Hong Kong very much on that first trip, and nearly 25 years passed before I had a reason to return.

Nobody, even the protesters themselves, has very much hope that their five demands will be met, or even that they will come out of this conflict safely. Honestly, I don’t think there are very many people who can see the way out of the impasse Hong Kong and Beijing are in right now.

But I’m so grateful to have been able to see Hong Kong as it is in this, the actual critical moment of transition between before and after. I have so much respect for the people of Hong Kong who are putting their lives on the line to protect limited democratic representation and civil rights far short of the ones that we take for granted in the United States. I fervently hope their after is a good one.