Since 2019, Hong Kong has slowly transformed into a brutal, unrecognizable place. Then came Omicron and a new kind of dystopia. karenklcheung writes
Photo: Hemis/Alamy/Alamy Stock Photo Throughout February and March, as Omicron cases in Hong Kong climbed to tens of thousands a day, I’d leave my apartment every evening for a stroll along the waterfront in Sheung Wan. The sky was a wallpaper of twilight blue; being shut indoors felt like a waste of spring.
These days, Hong Kong is a different city altogether. In the wake of the 2014 mass protests, a series of events foreshadowed the encroachment from China that was to come: legislators disqualified from parliament for altering their oaths to express discontent toward Beijing, booksellers kidnapped and detained in China.
In late February, local news outlets published photographs of horrifying scenes in public hospitals: corpses sitting in gray bags next to living patients in an overcrowded emergency ward, senior citizens lying underneath outdoor tents on a freezing night in February. Afterward, I spoke to Jasper, a young nurse in Kowloon who asked to go by this name to speak without repercussions.
In the early days of the pandemic, I watched as people around the world debated what a return to normalcy meant. When the Omicron variant finally reached Hong Kong, the devastation was doubly felt, because the residents of the city had not known what a normal day was since June 2019, when the protests began.
For those who remain in Hong Kong, the question of whether to go constantly hangs over them. “The pandemic has made me more determined to leave,” Jasper, the nurse, told me. “But it’s not the right time; until then, I’ll continue to work in the isolation wards, perhaps in preparation for the next wave.” At the same time, she told me, she’ll begin to prepare for her overseas nursing qualification.
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