Boiling Point

Oct 2, 2019

HKers’ ‘Be Water’ mantra is more than about being fluid and calm - it’s about a ppl coming together as a force of nature, harnessing their blistering, righteous anger to carve new paths for the mvmt.

‘Be Water’ has been around from the start; the mantra is so popular that some have tried to name the mvmt ‘water revolution’. The phrase appears in our art as inspiration & instruction, one of the many ways that enable a leaderless mvmt to still be united in its methods.

The idea that HKers shld flow like water, gather as dew, disperse as mist, & be strong as ice appeals to a leaderless ppl, bound together simply by common purpose. As as Bruce Lee wisely said, water can drip and it can crash…

And it’s really been the water’s ‘crashes’ of righteous anger which have created the defining pts of the mvmt, more so than the ‘drip’. We are water, but we’re the torrent that tears out century-old trees, the hail that bursts thru shelters, the river that breaks its banks.

On Jul 21, HKPF looked the other way & ignored emergency calls as CCP-backed thugs stormed a metro stn and indiscriminately assaulted ordinary HKers. That same evening, HKPF fired 36 rounds of rubber bullets into protesters on HK Island.

The waters roared. ‘光復香港 時代革命’ ‘Liberate HK, Revolution of Our Times’, once a nativist party’s slogan, became ours. Note the pics here all are of the Jul 21 skirmish, as if to say, this hellscape HKPF created is the reason we’ve been pushed to ‘revolution’.

The roar echoed thru HK. Within wks, ‘Revolution..’ a loaded a term associated with a loaded idea, spilled into everyday life. It’s in our street art & our malls… Our students & bankers shout it… even Lam uttered it on tv. The roaring waters had carved a new path.

On Aug 11, HKPF shot straight into a volunteer first aider’s eye. The waters swelled. An eye for an eye became a rallying cry, drawing new HKers to the mvmt & informed how we’ve dealt with HKPF since - unyielding, unforgiving. The swelling waters had swept onto the dry land.

On Aug 31, HKPF descended on HKers in an MTR stn, pepper-spraying and assaulting everyone. The waters seethed. MTR - seen as colluding with HKPF - became a target, and paranoia abt HKPF killing citizens spread. The seething waters burnt new channels for our ire to flow.

On Sep 29, HKPF shot a reporter in the eye. Two days later, they shot a schoolboy, point-blank in the chest, live in front of rolling cameras.

If you have to ask what will happen next, you’ve not been paying attention.

The waters are boiling.