The SARS

It was drizzling and dark when I approached the Golden Lotus. A surreal flower suspended in bloom, perched on a pole in the middle of a square close to downtown Macau. The petals were chunky, lifeless and sterile, especially in the glow of the artificial lighting.

The square was deserted, and I was alone. For a few moments, I stood silently under the yellow floodlight before the gift from the State Council of the People’s Republic of China to the people and government of Macau. Ironically, earlier in the day I had posed before the “Forever Blooming Bauhinia”, which is the Reunification Monument marking the return of neighbouring Hong Kong to the People’s Republic.

These golden flowers are gifts of great significance for and from the Motherland. They are memorials and a tribute to the glorious reunification of the Motherland with its long-lost territories of Hong Kong and Macau, which had been given away in humiliating treaties with European powers years ago. In 1997 and 1999 respectively, members of the armed forces of the People’s Liberation Army marched through the two former colonies, and the five yellow stars flew for the first time alongside the flags of the new Hong Kong and Macau, which become Special Administrative Regions (SARs—no relation to the severe acute respiratory syndrome) of the People’s Republic.

The return of these two territories were made under the principle of “One Country, Two Systems”. Thus, under Hong Kong’s constitutional document, the Basic Law, China solemnly promises that “the socialist system and policies shall not be practised in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, and the previous capitalist system and way of life shall remain unchanged for 50 years”. In other words, the existing political, legal and economic structures and democratic protections in both former colonies will remain untouched. Previous treaty commitments made by former colonial powers, such as those governing protections of fundamental human rights and civil liberties which are not applicable to China and its vast population, would continue to be the law of the land in the SARs. The “One Country, Two Systems” formula is the same one that China has been using (alongside the thousand plus targeted missiles) in attempts to entice the people of Taiwan to “return” to the Motherland.

True, Hong Kong and Macau remain the two isolated places in vast China to enjoy freedoms of expression, assembly and genuine rule of law. Nowhere else in China can Falun Gong practitioners openly spread flyers that denounce the Chinese Communist Party and show posters that reveal the atrocities committed by the regime’s machinery of oppression and propaganda. Nowhere else are the events of Tiananmen 1989 more deeply remembered and mourned annually on June 4 than in Hong Kong Park.

Yet, a decade or so from the momentous return to the 'Motherland', Hong Kong has become a tax-free shopping mall for the nouveau riche from the Mainland, while Macau is quickly becoming an adult playground to satisfy the insatiable Chinese urge for gambling. The Chief Executives of both territories are effectively handpicked by business and political elites with close ties to Beijing, and promises of universal suffrage remain to be realised. How can such a system, in which an overbearing authoritarian regime constantly looms and pulls the strings in the background, ever be acceptable, let alone applicable, to the people of Taiwan, who for the past few decades fought for and gained unprecedented freedoms in a budding democratic society?

The drizzle continued, and the palm trees swayed gently in the wind. I looked around, and saw that I had overstayed my welcome and was being watched. At the corners of the square surrounding the Golden Lotus were booths, white and compact with shuttered windows and pairs of eyes staring out from them. A random man walked past me in plain clothing, yet there was a coiled wire coming out of his ear. He said nothing, and I said nothing, but I quickly moved away, ever wary of the eyes that followed me into the distance.

No, I did not have paint or eggs in my bag which I intended to throw at the Golden Lotus to deface this glorious golden gift from the Motherland. And no, I did not wish to disrupt the upcoming celebrations of the tenth anniversary of the return to the Motherland. I was not even wearing my prized T-Shirt bearing a Tibetan monk standing face to face with a soldier of the People’s Liberation Army.

I am but a simple student with a white space monkey and a kitsch fridge magnet with the portrait of Chairman Mao in my bag.