Then & Now | A personal tribute to the magnificently inspiring Elsie Tu - a woman no label can do justice to
Ordinary Hong Kong people have long admired this courageous, indefatigable, fundamentally decent woman who was so much more than a politician, writes Jason Wordie
I want my son to be able to show his grandchildren that, once in his life, he met such a person as Mrs Tu.
While vocally active in Hong Kong’s public life for several decades, labelling Elsie Tu as a “politician” is seriously wide of the mark. Any attempt to pigeonhole her wide-ranging political stances – and many have, down the years – completely misses the overall point of this remarkable, redoubtable lady’s decades of dedicated public service.
Elsie Tu: A true hero of the common people in Hong Kong
No single label – “pro-establishment” is the most widespread term used to describe her – can neatly package her complex skein of apparently contradictory views or do personal justice to a genuine original. True to herself, whatever the consequences, she remained, until the end of her very long life, a magnificently inspiring one-off.
Elsie’s political convictions were – much like the lady herself – the practical, public embodiment of an old-fashioned, now largely extinct personal value system. Put most simply, Elsie was “decent”. Outspoken in the cause of basic social justice on behalf of the poor and powerless at a time when few others were willing to publicly speak out and always prepared to match words with actions, she regularly attracted the outrage of smaller-minded, less courageous people. Not that their approval (or otherwise) bothered her much. Doing what she could to assist others, when and how she could, always remained her primary motivation.
SEE ALSO: Tributes pour in for legendary Hong Kong activist and campaigner Elsie Tu, who died aged 102
