In Search of What Endures at a Time of Uncertainty: Review of City on Fire by Antony Dapiran

City on Fire by Antony Dapiran, experienced journalist, lawyer, and long-term Hong Kong resident, opens up an extensive narrative in English about the anti-extradition bill protest that shook the city last year. Informed by holistic documentations that are punctuated by intimate first-hand experience, this book does more than reconstructing the event in minute detail. As it looks for the meaning of this resistance campaign, it goes beyond the simplistic binaries of optimism/pessimism as it ponders on the future.

In his last book City of Protest (2017), Dapiran suggests that apart from serving a political function, protests in Hong Kong are also a manifestation of the local identity — the will to uphold freedom of speech. This argument is leveraged and acts as a backbone of City on Fire. This publication aptly deserves to be one of the crucial reads of the year, not just because of its timeliness, but also its analysis of the historical and cultural significance of the act of dissent, which offers ways of thinking about this event in relation to the ongoing development of political awareness in Hong Kong.

After a strikingly vivid portrayal of tear gas attacks, Dapiran juxtaposes descriptions of the detrimental effects of this mass dispersal weapon with an unfaltering crowd that confronted it. This engaging depiction of what had become a norm throughout the latter half of 2019 in Hong Kong captures the very essence of the series of rallies — the escalation of aggressiveness both in the police’s relentless violence and the use of force by protesters. Taking us through streets and alleys in different districts of Hong Kong, Dapiran recounts the skirmishes he personally encountered, tracing them back to Beijing’s perpetually tightening grip on Hong Kong and the longstanding mistrust between the people and the local government. As I read about the major turns and incidents, I kept feeling chills going up my spine as they reminded me of the all-too-familiar scenes from TV and online broadcasts that haunted our tearful nights. To readers who are less familiar with the context, this section of the book effectively informs them through cleverly untangling the intricate relationship between China and Hong Kong. 

As he contemplates on moving forward, Dapiran attempts to examine what the event might lead to in the face of impending China-Hong Kong integration. Instead of providing an answer, however, Dapiran is more interested in what to pay attention to in the decades to come. He sharply points out that most of the participants in the marches are members of the younger generations. By 2047, when the promised 50 years of ‘One Country, Two Systems’ will end, this group would have established themselves as leaders in society. How would this generation assume their role then? And how would that possibly affect the power dynamics in the political situation? Dapiran leaves this question open for observation.

‘Why,’ Readers may ask, ‘should I read this book, when I had already seen it reported and commented on the news?’ Personally, apart from the story of the event, I was more curious about Dapiran’s reflections on the cultural impacts of the demonstration. This book constantly reminds us that as a part of the local history of dissent, the 2019 resistance developed as a continuation, emulation, and at times even correction, of previous ones. Bringing in dialogues with renowned dissidents and fresh participants, Dapiran meticulously scrutinises the celebrated principle of ‘be water’, especially how it introduces a new form of mobility and fluidity to the campaign. As he deciphers the empowering effect of the movement, meanings and essence override immediate pragmatism. Instead of approaching it as a means of forging political outcome, this book sheds more light on how protesters reclaim their long-lost agency through a participation in the place-making of this city. The demonstration is thus argued as ‘protest as practice; protest as method’, an assertion of the ’soul’, of the city. Even to the international readers, it is worthwhile to study the evolving of the tactic in these marches in Hong Kong as this provides food for thought on how it interacts with acts of resistance around the world. Across various disciplines, this topic never fails to intrigue the local scholars. After the Umbrella Movement, scholars of journalism, Francis Lee and Joseph Chan, published Media and Protest Logics in the Digital Era: The Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong (2018), which assesses the role of social media in the mobilisation of the Movement at the backdrop of emerging global information technology. City on Fire takes a more journalistic than theoretical and statistical approach, but as it is written at a critical moment in local history, with its exhaustiveness, it can be brought in dialogue with critical works on this subject matter to stimulate more conversations on why this fight of defiance matters. 

While City on Fire claims to dwell on the relation between the protest tactic and the public mentality, there are instances when it falls short of getting to the heart of the local sentiments that are deep-rooted in the community. For instance, when addressing the abounding conspiracy theories that associated mysterious deaths of youngsters to the police, Dapiran, from the perspective of a journalist, places more focus on the mass hysteria and the danger of rumours. There are core problems which he identifies, but little is said about how it played a role in the resistance, especially how it spoke to the inner psyche of Hong Kongers, who had been frustrated and traumatised by the feeling of powerlessness. These allegations did not only caution the public against unreported cases of violence; the very act of circulating them was also a reminder of the emergent ‘no-splitting’ solidarity principle that set the empathetic tone of the whole campaign. One of the limitations of this book lies in some missed nuances in the collective mindset that are crucial for giving a voice to local protesters. Overall, however, it does not undermine the book’s thoroughness in its coverage and justification of most of the key concepts.

Ironically, just as the book was published, Hong Kong was thrown into another wave of turbulent changes — the outbreak of Covid-19 and the recent national security law that signalled another rupture of the people with the authority, and another hampering blow on Hong Kongers’ fight for freedom. At the height of the crisis and anxiety, City on Fire is even more relevant to our times. Capturing an important juncture of the city's ongoing quest for a postcolonial identity, it is an urgent record that would sharpen our sensitivity with the past and what to look forward to as we move on in the years to come.