2021年11月16日
Brian Wong
EJ Insight
The things we carried
"A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done." – The Things They Carried.
In a somewhat esoteric yet oddly fitting manner, Tim O'Brien's seminal text – and the damning passage outlined above – has curious uses and applications beyond the strict context of war. One such context, I'd like to think, is Hong Kong – and the neoliberal logic that has undergirded our city's economy over the many past decades, which have inadvertently, though by no means unforeseeably, spewed the radical inequalities that have come to characterise this city that we inhabit.
A home – in name – to 7.4 million people; yet it sure doesn't feel that way, for the thousands living in literal cages, or the tens of thousands struggling to make ends meet in subdivided and subpar housing, or – indeed – the 1.65 million people who, prior to policy intervention, could be classified as living in poverty in 2020. That's more than one in five Hong Kongers. ...
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