Alice Wu

Opinion | In the new year, Hong Kong’s spirit of giving can light the way to better times

In the depths of the pandemic, Hongkongers’ generosity gave this city hope. Here’s to a better year, which we can begin by being mindful of others’ needs and honing our habits of giving

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Street cleaners wait in line to receive free face masks in Hong Kong on February 14. Photo: EPA-EFE

Alice Wu

Published: 8:45am, 28 Dec 2020Updated: 8:47am, 28 Dec 2020

Remember all those articles last year about ringing in the new decade with exuberance? We were making resolutions not just for the new year, but the new decade. It wasn’t just the annual “new year, new you”; it was the new decade that demanded so much more pomp and circumstance.

Only, all that explosive enthusiasm was curbed by microscopic lumps of protein coated with fat that aren’t even considered alive. And that’s the reason Christmas and the new year and, before that, birthdays and all things celebratory, have been cancelled.

2020 has been a huge letdown and a killjoy kick-off to the new decade. But the world has seen and survived worse, so let’s not get hung up on the hyperbole of what Time magazine called “the worst year ever”.

This year forbade us to look beyond our mask-covered noses but also forced us to look beyond ourselves and the walls we have been staring at for too long.

2020 grounded more than planes; it grounded people, and made us face our humanity, fears, anxieties and helplessness. I have no interest in adding to the bromide out there. For me, honest gratitude was already hard to keep up four months into the pandemic. There are certainly many things to be grateful for, but they don’t take away from the stings in life. Living isn’t practising our fractions – the good and the old don’t simply cancel out each other.

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For the most part, I think we took it in our stride, especially in the beginning. We had our experience of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) in 2003, so Hongkongers knew what had to be done. Most donned surgical masks not because we didn’t care much about our civil liberties, but because we wanted to outlive the virus. More importantly, it taught us to look after the more vulnerable.