Hong Kong's "Lion Rock Spirit": Background information when reading The Impossible City

Hong Kong's "Lion Rock Spirit"

This article relates to The Impossible City

In The Impossible City, Karen Cheung references a cultural code of conduct in Hong Kong called Lion Rock Spirit. Lion Rock is a 495 meter (1,600 ft) granite mountain in Kowloon Park in the urban area of Kowloon, in southern Hong Kong. but the idea of Lion Rock Spirit as a set of values has a more unlikely origin story. In the 1970s, a TV show titled Below the Lion Rock premiered in Hong Kong. The series ran from 1972-2016 and featured stories of working-class Hong Kongers. Its theme song is slow and earnest, unlike the catchy jingles of many TV shows. Yet, the song, "Lion Rock Spirit," felt apt then, and has persisted into the present day. That's right — a significant part of the Hong Kong national ethos comes from a 1970s TV program.

"When we are together at the ends of the skies and seas / we can all conquer our difficulties hand in hand / We as one can overcome hardships and strive to write down / the timeless story of our home" goes one verse. The song's overall message is about persistence and cooperation, making it adaptable to a number of purposes. Older citizens associate the term with the hope of a developing country, similar to the way Americans refer to the "American dream." For them, the concept is that all opportunities are open to those who work hard.

While the term endures, the connotation has changed with the times. In 2014, in response to legislation that would have given the Chinese Communist Party further control over the appointment of leaders in Hong Kong, protestors hung a large banner on Lion Rock reading "I Want Real Universal Suffrage." In media interviews, the demonstrators said that the real Lion Rock Spirit was the way citizens were mobilizing for democracy.

Older and younger citizens both reference the term, but they're deeply divided about its meaning. While researching this article, I saw a lot of contentious comment threads about whether youths truly embody the Lion Rock Spirit. Elsewhere, commentators point out that the financial opportunities of the 1970s have become available only to the already-privileged, resulting in a difficult to bridge generation gap. When Britain handed over colonial rule to China in 1997, China promised certain reforms. Yet, Hong Kong still lacks universal suffrage, with China maintaining authority over virtually every facet of the region's government. In the years since British rule, most Hong Kongers have fallen into the "sandwich class," squeezed between those who qualify for public assistance and those who are wealthy. As Hong Kong has evolved, so has the meaning of Lion Rock Spirit.

The term has even been invoked by the police officers who clash with protestors. "The spirit of Hong Kong people is never giving up," one officer says, "We can definitely weather the difficulties. This is the spirit of Hong Kong Lion Rock." It was also famously referenced in 2002 by former financial secretary Anthony Leung, who, according to the South China Morning Post, was hoping to rally "people...to put aside their differences to work together to recreate the success of Hong Kong" during an economic downturn. Some of Hong Kong's most famous cultural exports use the term, like artist-designer Stanley Wong, who spoke in 2015 about the lack of community he senses in the region. "It doesn't exist today," he says of Lion Rock Spirit, "very honestly speaking, after all the fight, resistance, enmity, it's no longer with us."

Writing for Global Hobo, Hong Kong native Gloria Lau discusses Lion Rock Spirit as it relates to her own fractured cultural identity. She doesn't like the associations with China that come when she tells people where she's from, and she's been living in Australia for years. For Lau, though, what ties her to her homeland is the solidarity in the fight for better lives. "We've always had the Lion Rock Spirit in our blood, no matter how hard it is to stay above the water, we are in this together, and that is what makes me a Hong Konger," she writes.

And, for one final perspective on this, the website devoted to the late chef and travel aficionado Anthony Bourdain's Parts Unknown series cheerfully defines Lion Rock Spirit as a "scrappy resourcefulness, resilience, and solidarity...that made Hong Kong what it is today."

Lion Rock with pro-democracy banner, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Filed under Places, Cultures & Identities

This article relates to The Impossible City. It first ran in the March 16, 2022 issue of BookBrowse Recommends.

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