Shall We Talk

“I visited Hong Kong in September (2019), and went to a rally (of Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill Movement) at Tamar Square, Admiralty. I wanted to ask a girl for a cigarette, but could not say it to her, I was afraid that she would recognize my Mainland Chinese accent, I was never a shy person, I just could not ask for that cigarette.”

This is a double monologue of two very different but very similar souls who struggle to talk to each other. The monologue is excerpted from semi-structured interviews with 17 people who reside in different cities around the world, but all have a subtle connection with the ongoing social movement in Hong Kong. Interviews are conducted both online and in-person in cities including Linyi (Shandong Province, China); Tokyo (Japan); Taipei (Taiwan), and Hong Kong between August and December 2019. The two monologues share unshareable narratives and helpless desire for a dialogue with people who have different political views with them. So the double monologues were curated into a dialogue, reflecting symmetric resonance of many fragmented narratives. To highlight, this dialogue also reflects the relationship between two directors, one born in Mainland China and another from Taiwan, who have subtly diverse political views but share the same struggle of relating themselves personally to the movement.

This research began with an intention to capture the hidden narratives amidst a social movement, and ended up with deconstructing language related to nation, identity, and violence that are often expressed in public spheres but are rarely correlated with personal histories.