InterviewIn wake of 'failed' revolution, Wai Yee Chan stands with young Hongkongers who carried it

Hong Kong novelist and scriptwriter Wai Yee Chan / Courtesy of Minumsa Publishing Group

For Hongkongers, the year 2014 was an experience without precedent. For 79 days, hundreds of thousands poured into the streets demanding the right to choose their own leaders free from Beijing’s control, all the while shielding themselves from tear gas and pepper spray with umbrellas that would later give the rally its signature name: the Umbrella Movement.

“Hong Kong had never been a place of many mass movements. So when it was over and everyone went home, none of us could quite articulate what had exactly happened, or how we felt,” novelist Wai Yee Chan said in an interview with the Korean press Monday, recalling how she had walked those streets herself among the crowd. “The biggest emotion wasn’t PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder); it was helplessness.”

But the 2014 movement was far from fruitless. It lit a fuse in Hong Kong’s collective consciousness, something that continued to smolder long after the crowds dispersed.

What moved Chan most deeply was the sight of so many young faces, including her own students. “People my age avoided talk of independence because we feared provoking Beijing. But younger people were sharper, bolder; they found the language and the theories to articulate what we didn’t dare to say,” the 65-year-old said.

“And without 2014, [the protests of] 2019 would not have happened.”

Before her literary debut in 1998, Chan spent the 1980s and ’90s working as a screenwriter in the golden age of Hong Kong cinema, contributing to films like the comedy “Project A” (1983) and the romance “Comrades: Almost a Love Story” (1996).

Demonstrators in Hong Kong march down the street during a protest demanding the withdrawal of a proposed extradition bill with China on April 28, 2019. Reuters-Yonhap

It took several years — and a move to Taiwan in 2018 — for her to finally be able to recount her experience on the page. The story eventually grew into the tale of two young siblings moving through the turbulent currents of Hong Kong’s modern history, from the 1997 handover to the pro-democracy protests of 2019.

Published in Taiwan in 2022, “Little Brother” went on to win the prestigious Taiwan Literature Award for Books the following year. Its Korean translation was released this May.

Wai Yee Chan's "Little Brother," translated into Korean last May / Courtesy of Minumsa Publishing Group

What Chan was most careful to avoid, she said, was adopting a tone of authority, as though she were judging young activists from a distance. “What I wanted was to write a story that stood beside them — about someone of their generation, someone who could be with them, not above them.”

In that sense, the novel became an affectionate homage to all the “sai lou” — “little brothers” — not just in the literal sense, but a term she broadens to encompass the younger generation she met on the streets.

She also deliberately rejected the “literary” workaround that some Hong Kong writers turned to in order to describe the civil disobedience movements without triggering censorship. Many resorted to removing their stories from any recognizable time or place, writing about vague emotional landscapes with the actual events stripped away.

Chan refused that approach. Her words are direct, unwilling to hide behind metaphor.

The cost of speaking plainly has been high. Since 2020, the writer has given up the possibility of returning to Hong Kong.

The reach of “Little Brother” has been curtailed as well. Last year, during the annual June 4 commemoration of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, one of the organizers was arrested. He tried to bring Chan’s book into prison to read, but it was confiscated on the grounds that it violated the National Security Law.

Today, the novel is effectively banned in the territory, at least in prisons, major bookstores and public libraries, though it may still circulate through a handful of independent shops.

The writer, however, remains firm in her belief that the social movements have forever reshaped Hong Kong, regardless of repercussions.

“I realized I had changed too,” she said. “In 2014, I insisted that violence must never be used. But after watching police beat people with excessive force, my whole outlook began to shift. By 2019, some young candidates were openly talking about independence. And I found myself thinking, ‘Why not? Hong Kong and China are clearly different. Why can’t we consider independence?’”

While most movements focus on gaining something, for Hongkongers, she explained, it became “a matter of identity.”

As children, when Chan and her friends were asked where they came from, they would answer with the likes of Shanghai, Guangzhou and Fujian. But those places were merely their families’ origins, not places they had ever lived or truly known.

“We were born and raised in Hong Kong," she said. "When we say ‘We are Hongkongers,’ it’s not just about birthplace. It’s about a set of values, a way of living that we insist on preserving. The Hong Kong we’re talking about may look small on a map, but in our minds it’s vast. It’s an idea as much as a place.”

Wai Yee Chan shows the final page of "Little Brother," which features a map of Hong Kong. Courtesy of Minumsa Publishing Group

At the end of “Little Brother,” the titular younger sibling utters, “Each day is decisive.” It’s neither pessimistic nor optimistic — just a plainspoken truth that distills what many Hongkongers feel today.

“We really don’t know what tomorrow will look like. All we can do is get through today. Today we hold on to what we believed yesterday. That’s all,” she noted.

“It’s a bit like someone trying to quit drinking. Today, I didn’t drink, but tomorrow I might fall apart. That’s the state many survivors of social movements live in. The best you can do is support yourself through each day.”

This, she explained, is the emotional terrain she wants to preserve in fiction: the lived, daily uncertainty that has shaped Hongkongers in the years of upheaval since the handover.

“Sure, you can find all the facts online. What you can’t Google is the emotion," she said. "That’s what literature preserves — it freezes human feeling and human relationships in time. And that warmth is what I hope to portray.”