“I run an English training school at my hometown. Could you pls give some advice about English writing to the students? I chose to teach English because the kids back in my hometown – a small village in Hubei don’t have enough resources to learn English. I really want to encourage them. How can you write so well in English? You will be a great inspiration to the kids. Thank you so much!”

大約五年前，一個跟我不熟的大陸女孩給我發了這個微信。

我當時已經在眾新聞寫作，所以我不敢回覆，怕給身在大陸的她惹麻煩，我以後也沒跟她有任何聯繫。但她的信息我一直留着，因它有鞭策作用。我深信在我有生之年，大陸會再一次改革開放，到時我能重臨那片土地，跟年青人分享英文寫作心得。為了到時能present my best self，我現在每天忙着磨練我的文筆和增長我的知識。

前幾天看到一堆大陸年輕人自發地聚在貴州地鐵站唱《沒有理想的人不傷心》，我又想到這段微信，不知經歷過三年疫情後和在青年就業難的困境下，那些湖北農村的孩子現況如何？估計《沒有理想的人不傷心，》的歌詞能給他們帶來共鳴：

沒有理想的人不傷心
我最愛去的唱片店
昨天是她的最後一天
曾經讓我陶醉的碎片
全都散落在街邊
我最愛去的書店
她也沒撐過這個夏天
回憶文字流淌着懷念
可是已沒什麼好懷念

可是你曾經的那些夢
都已變得模糊看不見
那些為了理想的戰鬥
也不過為了錢
可是我最恨的那個人
他始終沒死在我面前
還沒年輕就變得蒼老
這一生無解

沒有我的空間
沒有我的空間
沒有我的空間
沒有我的空間

報道無罪　知情有價　請即訂閱《追新聞》：
https://www.patreon.com/thechasernews

除了大陸女孩的微信，另一份有鞭策作用的通信來自一位《蘋果日報》讀者，他看到我一篇引用共產捷克異見分子Václav Havel（編按：即後來成為捷克總統的哈維爾）的專欄後，給我寫了這封email：

By coincidence I have read Havels “The Power of the Powerless” today.
I took a break to read news on RTHK and Apple Daily as I haven taken the habit to do so regularly throughout the day as HK feels as a place now which could fall apart and something terrible could and would happen every day.
I came across your article which made me happy as it resonates so well With what I just learned from Havel.
Thank you for your article and thank you for not copy writing communist government propaganda.
It is good to know people like you are out there and it is one of the reasons I like to read Apple Daily.
We all need to stand together to keep this city alive.
Because a life in dignity and grace is what it is ultimately about.

身在國外，想起過往的人和事，難免傷感。但如果這是有理想的代價，就欣然接受這些情緒吧！

下面是我那篇引用了Havel的舊專欄。

I have become a reluctant dissident

When the dance critic Edwin Denby observed a group of dancers working out in class, he was fascinated by the attention they paid to a wealth of details that had completely escaped him while he was watching them perform on stage: they practised descending from a jump by landing not on the big toe but on the third one; they cared whether they should maintain the wrist in the same position when moving the arm. In their capacity to take pleasure in the rigors of their profession, they are in communion with not only their peers but also with previous generations of dancers, who had likewise been seized by a compulsion to get the many fine points of their art right. It is this sense of belonging to something larger than themselves that Denby thinks gives dancers “a feeling of dignity and of proud modesty.”

Denby’s takeaway from that dance class can shed light on a question that has long baffled me: why do I have this revulsion against doing English copywriting work for CCP-related outfits? I know I have what it takes to.couch CCP propaganda in readable English, yet, instead of pouncing onto this ready means to earn a living, I’d rather exile myself to the world of independent news outlets, would rather – now that the national security law is in effect –  bear the risk of being sent to prison in China should the authorities suddenly take a violent dislike to my writings. Why am I so hellbent on working against my self-interest?

The only answer I can think of is, like the dancers Denby scrutinized, my British-style education developed in me an eye for the subtleties of English, and putting my feelings for the language at the service of the thuggish regime that is CCP would be an affront to the senses –  perhaps even more an aesthetic issue than a moral one.

By way of illustration, below is a paragraph from a press release the Hong Kong government recently issued. Further below is my rewrite of it. Now, imagine being me: between writing about Denby at a dance class – things my education prepared me for – and getting sloppily-written propaganda like the copy below ready for its close-up, which preference would you have picked?

(Hong Kong government’s version)

“Taking advantage of anti-government riots in Hong Kong since June last year, the US Congress and the White House have passed successive laws and pronounced executive order targeting the HKSAR under the pretext of human rights, democracy and autonomy.  It should be obvious to and resented by many people, locally and around the world, that the US acts are displaying double standards and hypocrisy, let alone blatantly breaching international laws and basic norms governing international relations.”

Dictatorships are used to a what-I-tell-you-three-times-is-true communication style, so it’s not unusual for their pronouncements to be as repetitive as the passage above. A job in polishing Newspeak would therefore involve making head or tail of such gibberish, and coming up with a concise and precise version of it:

(My rewrite)

“In the light of the US’s track record of disparaging other countries for committing deeds it itself has done, it is regrettable though hardly surprising that on the issue of Hong Kong, the US, which has its own security law, has the presumption to deem China’s enactment of such a law for Hong Kong as unjustifiable.”

Other than Denby, the Czech dissident Vaclav Havel is also helping me make sense of my options as a writer in Hong Kong under a belligerent CCP. “You do not become a ‘dissident’ just because you decide one day to take up this most unusual career,” Havel explains, “ you are thrown into it by your personal sense of responsibility, combined with a complex set of external circumstances.” Havel cites the example of his immediate boss at a brewery he once worked for in the 1970s. That fellow was a rarity in a socialist country: he put his soul into his job, and was obsessed with improving the beer the factory produced. His enthusiasm alarmed management, and he was duly driven out of the plant.

All I can say is, of the many vile things the CCP and the Hong Kong government have done to wreck Hong Kong this past year, one should perhaps add this to the tally: the fact that when someone like me reads Havel, she’d feel as if he had written his musings on the making of a dissident specifically with her in mind.