Newsletter (2017-2018) May 2018 Newsletter | Page 9

His proceeding to the following grade was like
entering into another cage, prolonging the pro-
cess of devaluing himself. Also, Form 3 was dif-
ferent Form 1 and 2. He was required to choose 2
or 3 elective subjects for senior classes. Knowing
his lack of academic ability, he once told me that
he just wanted to be a blue-collar worker who
worked at a construction site for the rest of his
life. Today, he is still plodding through his final
attempt to move up to Form 4.
hard the situation is, she goes on.
Seemingly, they have only themselves to blame.
Kin did not achieve the adequate examination
results, so he was not supposed to move up to
another grade. My mum did not act like a syco-
phant to please her boss, so she got sacked. They
did not fit into the system. But who created this
system? Us.
Like the multiple droplets in the sea, we can-
not separate from each other in this world. As
Sonmi-451 from the movie Cloud Atlas rightfully
said, “Our lives are not our own. We are bound
to others, past and present. And by each crime
and every kindness, we birth our future.” Even
the simplest act influences our future. If we just
blindly follow a problematic, corrupted system,
we develop an inauspicious future. For most of
the time, we endure the effects of suppression,
until there is a person to turn the system over––
like Mahatma Gandhi leading the Indian peo-
ple to abolish the policy prohibiting them from
extracting salt from the sea, like Winston Chur-
chill sparking the British people’s faith to defend
their nation from the Nazi military, like Martin
Luther King Jr. campaigning to mitigate the se-
verity of discrimination against black people.
Then, there is my mum, a 51-year-old woman
working as a dish cleaner––a situation in which
she had never imagined she would be before.
Way back when she was young, she worked as
a civil servant with a reasonably high salary and
in a comfortable environment. A year ago, when
she found out that I got accepted by EdUHK for
an English Education programme, she said, “I
used to work with bosses from foreign countries
and talk in English almost every day in the office.
My English, too, was rather good back then.”
As you may know, Hong Kong people, especial-
ly the older generation, still think a certain pres-
tige emanates from a good command of English.
But that is not the case for my mum anymore.
She got sacked for her blunt personality towards
her boss, although she had excellent working
skills and was super-efficient. She is now work-
ing as a dish cleaner in a hot pot restaurant,
which has never been considered an honourable
job in Hong Kong. Sometimes if the restaurant is
short of manpower, she also needs to help pre-
pare the food, including dishes like fried fish-
balls and fried tofu. At first, she was not used to
it at all. Her hands were swollen, for she washed
dishes for long stretches of time. Her legs were
tired and numb, for she stood still from the time
when she arrived at her working basin to leav-
ing work.
Before that day, we may live with difficulties.
We may feel down. But most importantly, we
stand up again. We do not go gentle into that
good night. We rage, rage against the dying of
the light. No matter where we are, we are born
with the similar bodies. No matter which wave-
length we are on, we are travelling in the same
direction. No matter what difficulties we have,
we are all fighting till the end. Just like when
we are young, we keep crawling, keep walking,
keep marching on, keep going forward. And this
is us: humans.
One time when she was frying food in the small,
badly-ventilated kitchen at work, she got hit by
the boiling oil the moment she put tofu into the
pan. She quickly washed off the oil and covered
the burnt area of the skin, but that could not less-
en the burning sensation. In pain, she slid down
to the ground along the sink and cried. Right
there. Alone. The world was not bothered. “Why
do I have to work in this damp kitchen instead
of the well-ventilated office as I used to in the old
days?” she was thinking to herself. But, however
Tyler majors in English at
EdUHK. He established
his own blog, tylerhh-
wong.wordpress.com.
He enjoys writing for
the expansion of human
knowledge with a cup of
chocolate sundae at Mc-
Donald’s.
7
MAY 2018