TAIPEI, Taiwan — Outside the British Consulate in Hong Kong this week, bouquets and handwritten tributes piled up as a long line of people waited in sweltering heat to pay their final respect…
By Stephanie Yang and David Shen | Los Angeles Times
As the traditional Chinese mid-autumn Moon Festival was celebrated in Hong Kong and elsewhere, John Chang, 56, stood in line at the British Consulate for three hours. He penned a message of thanks to the queen, and brought green and white flowers, colors that he remembered the late monarch often wearing.Chang, who is preparing to immigrate to Britain, said the tribute underscored his increasing dissatisfaction with Beijing’s rule.
As China’s Communist Party has clamped down on political dissent, any praise of Hong Kong’s colonial past has become potentially subversive. Earlier this year, Hong Kong authorities revised school textbooks to deny that the territory was ever a British colony, instead describing it as having been temporarily occupied by foreign forces.
While he is accustomed to aficionados of the British monarchy, Ong said he was taken aback by the depth of grief being publicly expressed. “Nostalgia is always about romanticizing the past, but I think nostalgia is always about critiquing the present as well,” said John Carroll, a professor of history at the University of Hong Kong.
As teenagers in Hong Kong, she and her siblings took to the streets to try to catch a glimpse of a visiting Elizabeth but were unable to push through the welcoming crowds. Nearly 36 years later in Taipei, she paid her respects on a rainy afternoon to the queen she never got to see.
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