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Opinion | Nearly 20 years after moving from China to the UK, I’m still not sure what freedom means
- Those arriving in the UK in search of freedom will find it comes in conflicting forms, from uniting against an invasion to refusing to wear a medical mask
- For a Chinese expat taught that national interest comes before personal want, such expressions are eye-opening, if sometimes confusing
Freedom is something that I couldn’t understand before I came to the UK. It was just a word. The specific acts it seemed to refer to were speaking and demonstrating. Freedom of speech always sounded desirable, but freedom to demonstrate felt like something that would damage the social order.
Could any British person give a straightforward definition if asked to? My British family and friends had such a benign assessment of the world that they thought democracy and freedom were common sense, so naturally they didn’t know that I needed help understanding.
Freedom of speech is something I have gradually begun to practise; freedom to demonstrate I still feel resistance to, because I can’t yet feel as justified as those around me in asking the government to serve me and to protect my quality of life.
In China, I learnt that we had to share with society, to not be selfish and that national interests came first. To this day I still think society would be more harmonious if the British had a little more of this collective consciousness and less self-consciousness.
