Just Saying | Hong Kong has Covid-19 under control, but not the real pandemic of hate and suspicion
- Yonden Lhatoo looks at the public response to the government’s universal coronavirus testing programme to lament that there is no vaccine for the real disease plaguing the city
Readers who buy this newspaper in its physical form, rather than access it online, may have noticed a little, illustrated booklet tucked into Friday’s edition.
It looks and reads like a children’s picture book, telling the story of the “Sand People” and the “Sea People”, who “have been sceptical about one another, feeding myths and negative beliefs” until one day, two youngsters from the opposing tribes fall in love, Romeo and Juliet-style, and run away from home. That “brings both tribes together in unity to search for them” and they eventually end up living happily ever after in harmony.
The wishful analogy is obvious between the story’s little, yellow and blue cartoon characters and the city’s similarly colour-coded anti-government and pro-establishment factions in real life.
Sceptics may well dismiss the efficacy of such messages of peace in a city so riven by hate and suspicion, so deeply distressed and divided by the political and communal turmoil that exploded last year and continues to tear the social fabric asunder.
