710: Umbrellas Down

Ira Glass

When I first heard about the new Chinese national security law that went into effect this month in Hong Kong, the person I wanted to talk to about it is this Hong Kong protester that I will call Jennifer. Jennifer is somebody who I and a couple of other producers from our show spent time with and went to protest with last fall.

So many things that she said to us back then would now be illegal under the new Chinese law. In fact, any criticism of China or the Hong Kong government, anybody calling for democracy in Hong Kong anywhere in the world, could be prosecuted under this law.

Calling for the United States to support the protesters, which Jennifer did, that is illegal. If the Chinese decide that talking to reporters like us is collusion with foreigners, that would be illegal. Chanting at protests about Hong Kong independence has been declared illegal. Damaging subway stations is categorized as terrorism with severe penalties.

Books by activists have been removed from public libraries. People have been arrested for carrying pro-independence flags. China is setting up its own separate national security apparatus in Hong Kong to handle these cases. Maximum penalty-- life in prison.

What we're going to do today on our program is play you the episode that we made last fall about the Hong Kong protesters, where we tried to explain the feelings and the ideals behind the protests. And then, at the end of the hour, we will play you the interview that I just did with Jennifer this month on the second full day that the new law went into effect about the law.

If you're listening to the podcast version of our show and you heard this episode when we first put it out in the fall and you just want to jump to the new part with Jennifer, the new interview, it starts around 14 minutes from the end. OK, here's the episode.

It's nearly 2:00 in the afternoon when we reach Jennifer's family's apartment. She's just gotten up. She's still eating a very late breakfast.

Ira Glass

I'm with my co-worker, Emanuele Berry, and we're in a quiet working class neighborhood in the part of Hong Kong that's called New Territories. It's a Sunday, so Jennifer is getting ready to do what she does every weekend-- what she did yesterday, in fact. That's why she slept late. She's going to a protest-- with a little backpack.

Ira Glass

So this is a maroon bag.

Ira Glass

The first aid kit is a little zip-up bag with roller bandages and gauze and gloves and stuff to sterilize a wound. Jennifer started at the volunteer ambulance corps in seventh grade and has used all this stuff at demonstrations. She packs her wallet and her AirPods.

Ira Glass

Two batteries for her phone, because she's on it constantly during protests, checking the continuously-updated online maps that show where the police are and show escape routes. She packs a black T-shirt. The uniform of the Hong Kong protesters is black shirt, black pants, surgical masks to disguise their identities-- though she's wearing a striped maroon shirt for the bus ride to the protest.

Ira Glass

For a Hong Kong protester to live at home with her mom and dad, that is not unusual in any way. If you know anything about the demonstrations that have overtaken Hong Kong since June, you know it's mostly young people in the city where rents are high. Jennifer is 22 and just graduated college. She's working her first entry-level job at a public relations firm.

I came to Hong Kong because there were things about the protests that I really did not understand. And we'll get to that. One of things that fascinated me once I arrived was learning what a routine the protests have become and what that was like for the people in them. This was mid-September, the 13th week of protests for Jennifer.

Ira Glass

Speak of the devil, it's her friend, the one who kisses her boyfriend at demonstrations. And she's calling with bad news. She was going to bring gas masks to the rally today. They'd order them from Amazon, Jennifer thinks. But now she's learned that bringing gas masks would be a bad idea, because at the subway station--

Ira Glass

Not ideal, but she's gone without gas masks before. Jennifer grabs her knapsack, says bye to her mom, who tells her to come home early, a request that will be totally ignored. And we head outside. But then she turns and runs back.

Ira Glass

Rubber bullets, that is.

Ira Glass

Also, protesters hide behind a wall of umbrellas when they're painting graffiti or dismantling a closed circuit TV camera on the street, doing anything else they don't want the police to see. As she and I and Emanuele head to the bus stop, we notice other young people carrying full-sized umbrellas on this totally sunny day.

Ira Glass

It's like, are you on my side? Are you one of us? Once you're at the protest, everybody's in a mask so you don't really know who's on your team. Here in the neighborhood, it's kind of exciting to wonder who your allies might be.

The protests in Hong Kong have been international news for months, kicked off by people's fears that mainland China is threatening some very basic things about their city and their lives. But for all the coverage here at our show, we felt like we weren't seeing many stories where we got to know anybody very well-- who they were, what exactly they expected was going to come out of the protests, given China's intransigence.

Three of us arrived in Hong Kong in mid-September, me and Emanuele and a co-worker, Diane Wu. I have to say, one of the things that was fascinating, given the ugly state of democracy here in the United States lately, was to be among so many young people who believe so intensely in democratic ideals and yearn so deeply for the basics, like normal elections and free speech and free assembly.

Though, just in the last few weeks since we got to Hong Kong, we've watched the situation changed dramatically. It's gotten much more violent, harsh new measures by the government.

This hour, we have the story of the change that we witnessed and what we think it might mean. If you haven't been following the story at all-- maybe you've been sitting this one out-- we're going to catch you up on what you need to know. We have all sorts of people from all sides of this that we want you to meet.

From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. This week, overseas with a lot of people who have some very American values. Stay with us.

Ira Glass

Act One, The Cursed Generation. OK, so what politicized thousands and thousands of people this much, that they've dropped their normal lives and they're coming out every single weekend to protest? It's now been 18 straight weeks.

Take Jennifer, for instance. She's somebody who worked at Abercrombie and Fitch during college. She told me on the bus to the protests that's why her English is so good. She's somebody who wanted to be a singer. Actually got a chance to go pro when she was 16, but her mom quashed that, saying it was too much of a long shot and she should get an education and get a normal job. Jennifer was actually very surprised when I informed her that an American parent might have said the same exact thing.

Ira Glass

So how did this Glee watching, internet savvy college grad in her first office job, how did she end up protesting in the street every weekend with tens or-- I don't know-- maybe it's hundreds of thousands of her peers? Well, for starters, Jennifer's 22, which means she's part of a special generation in Hong Kong.

Ira Glass

And here's a protester we're calling Alice.

Ira Glass

Here's her friend we're calling Tiffany.

Ira Glass

OK, let's just pause on these 22-year-olds for a minute for some quick history. As you may or may not know, Hong Kong sits on the edge of mainland China, right? It was a British colony for a really long time, starting in the 19th century.

And then finally in 1997, the British got out. They handed it over to China. And the idea was, there was going to be a 50-year transition period. After 50 years, China would fully be in charge. But during that 50 years, Hong Kong would be a democracy.

Ira Glass

That's the last British governor of Hong Kong during the handover ceremony in 1997.

Ira Glass

But to be clear, Hong Kong had not been a democracy under Britain. But they were going to transition towards it over a bunch of years. And the hope was, after 50 years, in 2047, the Chinese government would let them stay a democracy-- which, at the time, did not seem like a crazy idea.

China was opening up in all kinds of ways, though it wasn't clear how this was going to play out. And at the end of the day, after 50 years, in the year 2047, China was going to be able to do whatever it wanted in Hong Kong. These are the children born the year that clock started ticking.

Ira Glass

Originally, the joke had to do with a coincidence. They were cursed because of some weird, bad luck during some big childhood milestones they all went through together, like the year of their kindergarten graduation, the SARS virus hit Hong Kong. And the city shut down, graduations were canceled.

Six years later, when they should have had their elementary school graduation, same thing happened again, but with swine flu. And Jennifer remembers that her friends joked that when they graduated high school, it was going to be Ebola. And that's when they started using the word "cursed."

Ira Glass

Jennifer says the "chosen one" side of things didn't really kick in until their senior year of high school. It was 2014. They were 17, the 17th year since the handover. And that year, people in Hong Kong were still expecting that mainland China was going to let them start holding full-on elections, where they could choose their own leaders, as promised back in 1997. And that year, China announced it wasn't going to happen.

This led to a movement called the Umbrella Movement, headed by young people, teenagers, who'd learned their politics in these public school classes that all these 22-year-olds talk about as being instrumental in their thinking, classes that began as part of the handover called Liberal Studies classes that explained, among other things, the promises of 1997 and the rights of Hong Kong citizens.

They took to the streets, most of them for the first time, demanding to vote, carrying umbrellas, thousands of people in a vast procession down the streets in a protest movement that was almost entirely peaceful. And they lost. They didn't get the vote. After three months, the protests ended.

Alice works for a multinational company in an entry level job out of college. She's a management trainee. She says she went to some protests back then out of solidarity with her peers.

Ira Glass

But she didn't really get all the politics. That changed in June 2019, when Hong Kong introduced the bill that would allow mainland China to extradite people from Hong Kong to be tried and punished in China under Chinese law.

This was seen as a new and very menacing encroachment on the rights of Hong Kong citizens. Since 1997, they'd been ruled by Hong Kong laws and Hong Kong courts. Everybody is presumed innocent with the rights we know in most democratic countries. Now anybody could get thrown into the prisons and courts of communist China.

Ira Glass

Wanting Hong Kong to stay like it is, with its own laws, separate from China. A week later, 2 million people came out.

Ira Glass

Other 22-year-olds also told us how radicalizing it's been to see police tear gassing and beating peaceful protesters. And at this point-- I didn't understand this before we got to Hong Kong-- a lot of the emotion driving the protests is just about the police.

Ira Glass

Of course, nobody knows where this is going to lead by 2047, when China fully takes over Hong Kong. But for Jennifer and lots of other people her age, things are starting to feel pretty ominous. Was Hong Kong going to become just like any other Chinese city run by the communists?

Ira Glass

She's talking about internment camps, where the Chinese are holding perhaps a million Uighurs and others.

Ira Glass

Because she's politically active, this does not feel like an abstract threat. When these 22-year-olds picture who China's going to crack down on, it's them. Tiffany's also in her first job out of college. She works at a bank. She asked us to replace her voice with an actor's.

Ira Glass

Tiffany's heard of the social credit system that China has started to monitor and rate its citizens. She fears that if China decides that you're anti-government, it will make it impossible for you to get the job you want or rise in society.

And the devices that China uses to monitor its population, an estimated 200 million surveillance cameras around the country with facial recognition software, they've been going up around Hong Kong, tens of thousands of them.

Ira Glass

This is something else I didn't understand before I came to Hong Kong. The protesters like Tiffany and Jennifer don't just fear what's going to happen to them in the future with extradition laws or losing the internet or losing free speech.

In their daily lives right now, they believe they're watching China already transforming Hong Kong, making it less like the Hong Kong they know and more like the mainland. Jennifer points to changes in the public school curricula, like, she says, her seven-year-old nephew is speaking Mandarin in school five days a week. It didn't happen when she was a kid. Mandarin is what they speak in mainland China. In Hong Kong, people mostly speak in Cantonese and in English.

Ira Glass

It's part of what makes Hong Kong, Hong Kong. These days, when Jennifer pictures what her life is going to be like between now and 2047, she imagines her own kids going to public schools, not studying Cantonese, coming home and parroting the pro-government line that'll be the curriculum by then.

Ira Glass

Another change she says she's seeing right now in Hong Kong, she's upset at other mainlanders moving there in her neighborhood, and university students that she and her friends encountered at college. So many mainlanders, she says.

Ira Glass

OK, I'm just going to pause the tape right there for a second. The total, by the way, is over a million mainlanders since 1997, roughly 45,000 a year. But I'm stopping the tape because I don't know how you're feeling about Jennifer, but this was a point we came to in a few interviews with these 22-year-olds. When you got them under the subject of mainlanders, get ready for a wave of totally bigoted opinions.

Ira Glass

So for all the alarm that Jennifer and the cursed generation feel about the future, their parents are often not as alarmed about China taking more control of Hong Kong and about what the island's going to be like in 2047. Like Tiffany's parents, they hate her going out to protests every weekend.

Ira Glass

What's galling about this for Tiffany is that she feels like she's being the responsible one, fighting for everybody's future. And they're telling her not to protest. She was like, maybe if her parents had done this themselves years ago, things wouldn't be so bad today.

Ira Glass

So Tiffany and Jennifer and so many others, they've kind of given over their lives to protesting. They work during the week, protest on the weekends. They say they don't have much time in their lives for much else. But what's interesting is, they don't think it's going to work. Most of our interviewees told us that. They don't think China is going to give in. Again, here's Jennifer.

Ira Glass

Again, here's Alice.

Ira Glass

2047 is coming, and this is a very grand thing to say, but so many of these cursed generation kids feel like they have a special destiny. Alex preferred to speak to us through an interpreter. She's a frontline protester, builds barricades, has been arrested.

Ira Glass

Again, here's Jennifer.

Ira Glass

After an hour bus ride, we get to the protest. This is Act Two, The Fight. Once we're off the bus, Jennifer ducks into a public restroom and comes out in black shirt, black pants, black mask over her face, hair pulled back in a ponytail. And we head on to a street where we're surrounded by hundreds of people dressed exactly like her.

A big shopping district, the stores closed, and no cars. All the side streets have been blocked off with barricades by the protesters-- scaffolding and fencing, trashcans, and orange construction cones piled in the street. They do an efficient job. We meet up with Jennifer's friends by a big Victoria's Secret store.

Ira Glass

For the record, I'm with them all afternoon. No kissing at all. The city is giving permission for fewer protests these days. And this is an unsanctioned demonstration we're at, which means that everybody here is breaking the law. Anyone is subject to arrest, which affects crowd size. The maximum penalty is 5 years-- 10 years, if you're convicted of rioting-- which is why all the protesters are so scared of getting arrested all the time.

But despite that, the beginning of the protest has the feeling of a block party. People strolling, chatting-- you see a few parents and kids. Some non-protesters cut through the crowd, running errands. But an hour into all this, I look around and realize-- no families, no kids. It's not feeling like a block party at all. People are standing on top of fences, trying to see what's ahead of us. They're starting to put on gas masks.

Ira Glass

It's like two or three blocks away. We walk towards the police and the tear gas, past teams of protesters who are knocking bricks out of the sidewalk with long steel tools.

Ira Glass

Also, people throw bricks at police. We march straight to the front lines, where hundreds of protesters are massed on a side street. The police are just half a block away, but we can't really see them through the crowd. And then a whole wave of tear gas canisters arcs towards us, hits us.

And lots of people, us included, run back a ways, half a block away. Jennifer calmly administers saline solution into strangers' eyes. The controls on my recorder got knocked around running through the smoke, so I do not have a decent recording of that.

This is the role that she's assigned herself in the protests-- first aid, helping anybody who requires it. She even brought energy candy specifically to give out to people whose energy is flagging. After being driven back, Jennifer and her two friends and I wait for the smoke to clear.

Ira Glass

After a couple minutes, we head back toward the front line.

Ira Glass

And then we wait around.

Ira Glass

A water cannon goes off, blasting water that is dyed blue, laced with stuff that stings your skin. More tear gas, and we pull back a little. Then we move forward, wait again.

Ira Glass

So many protesters are like Jennifer. They think it's their job to support the people at the front, who are the hardcore ones, who push back against police and throw Molotov cocktails and chase police with sticks and metal rods and tear stuff down to build barriers to slow the police, wearing full gear, helmets, goggles, and gas masks and gloves.

Finally, the front liners yell that they want room to retreat. And so we need to retreat. And so we fall way back, a couple blocks.

Ira Glass

And there we headed to a massive retreat, as the police advanced towards us. And for the first time, there seems to be actual real fear. We're running down streets and side roads. We get separated from Jennifer's friends and from Emanuele, dodging the police, and finally, taking refuge in a church. There are safe houses like this around Hong Kong that protesters duck into.

It takes over an hour, and finally, the coast is clear. And Jennifer calls a friend to pick her up. They're volunteer drivers for the protesters, part of the infrastructure they've created. Jennifer changes out of her black T-shirt into civilian clothes. No makeup-- she's too tired, she says. And no need if she's getting picked up.

Ira Glass

And she heads home.

Ira Glass

Coming up, we hear from people in Hong Kong who welcome China's takeover of the city with open arms and how one of them came to feel that way. That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio, when our program continues.

Ira Glass

It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today, we are returning to a program that we first broadcast this past fall about the protests in Hong Kong. I traveled to Hong Kong with my co-workers, Diane Wu and Emanuele Berry.

Under the new national security law that China put into effect a couple weeks ago in Hong Kong, many of the things that these protesters said to us back then that you are hearing this hour could theoretically be prosecuted. We have changed nearly everybody's name.

We will end the show today with an interview that I did this month about that law with Jennifer, who you heard in the first half of the show. For now, we have arrived at Act Three of our program. Act Three, Good Cop, Dad Cop.

So as an American visiting Hong Kong for the first time, one of the things that kind of killed me was hearing that, before the last few years of protests, people were really into the police. They were trusted. They were respected.

And it was only in the last few years, especially the last few months of protests, that changed all that. At a rally, I actually saw people chanting at a row of cops that they hoped that they and their families would die. And feelings about who to side with-- the police or the protesters-- they've gotten so intense, it's tearing families apart.

On the Telegram app, there's a whole channel for protesters who get kicked out by their parents and need a place to live. Alan Yu grew up in Hong Kong. He knows a family that is very far apart on this. The son is a protester. The dad is a retired police officer.

And Alan had them sit down and do what nobody in Hong Kong is doing-- talk to each other. There is really no dialogue between police and protesters anywhere in Hong Kong, as far as we could tell.

And can I say, listening to this story today, nine months after we first broadcast it, after weeks of protests against police violence across the United States, I really do wonder how common this kind of experience is in our country. Anyway, here's Alan.

Alan Yu

I've known this family since I was six. I knew them because of my friend, Jonathan. I rode the school bus with him every day. His father, Peter, was the first policeman I knew in real life. I was excited to talk to him because you never hear what the police think about the protests. Police here are not really allowed to talk to the press.

Peter's retired, but still very connected to the force. So before the family all sat down together, I asked Peter to get together with me and my producer, Emanuele. I hadn't seen him since I was 12. Back then, people called me "Yu-don," which means fish ball. Because the Cantonese for fish sounds like my surname, Yu, and because I was fat.

Alan Yu

As a kid, I liked Peter. He'd take time off work to stop by during recess and buy us chips and other snacks. My friend Jonathan would have his birthday parties at the police station, which we loved-- big barbecues, other policemen around. Peter was the cool dad.

People in Hong Kong trusted, even revered the police back then. One of the most popular TV shows was a cop show, [CHINESE], where the police were heroes. Peter's hair is gray now. He's tall, athletic. He plays tennis.

Alan Yu

He still likes his dad jokes. I cannot imagine Peter ever doing what I've been seeing in these videos-- beating up unarmed protesters, kicking people on the ground. I thought surely he would object to some of those things and that his views would be complicated.

Alan Yu

I ask him about different situations the police have been criticized for. I even show him videos of police brutally arresting people, things I think are clearly wrong. But he always seems to have a justification for the way police behave. He says, you're judging the police based on what you see in these clips. That's not fair. You don't know what the officer was facing.

Alan Yu

He's not conflicted about police. And he isn't very sympathetic to the protesters. He thinks the protests are destroying Hong Kong. The extradition bill is OK. He doesn't think China will end free speech in Hong Kong. And protesters' fear of China is way overblown and naive.

Alan Yu

I'd already been worried how this family conversation was going to go. Hearing what Peter believed did not help. Peter told me he understands that Jonathan goes to protests, but doesn't ask him about it because he doesn't want any details. Jonathan said he does not ask his dad what he thinks of the way police beat and tear gassed protesters for the same reason.

So this family does not talk about the protests at all. Tennis, yes. Soccer, yes. Pets, great. But no politics-- till tonight. They've agreed to have the conversation they've been avoiding after dinner. Jonathan's mom, Alva, washes the dishes.

[ALVA HUMMING]

I recognize the song right away. I'm surprised she's humming it in front of Peter. It's the protesters' new anthem, "Glory to Hong Kong." Alva is on Jonathan's side. She works with lawyers, including some in the pro-democracy camp.

I ask if Peter knows what that song is. She says, maybe. That's kind of how it's been going between her and her husband. No real discussion, but the occasional passive-aggressive comment while they're watching the news, or some passive-aggressive humming during dishes. This is another reason Jonathan avoids bringing up the protests. He doesn't want to start a fight between his parents.

Alan Yu

That could be his mom, or his dad, or him.

We all sit at the dinner table. I don't know why they agreed to talk about this. Maybe just because I've known them for so long, and I asked. Or I hope maybe part of them wanted to talk, and I was just a good excuse.

Peter's facing me. And Jonathan and Alva are next to me. Jonathan has their dog, Loki, named after the Marvel character, on his lap. The conversation starts with all of them saying, in different ways, it's fine that we don't talk about this. We all have mutual respect.

Instead of talking to each other or looking at each other, they're talking to me or looking at the dog. It feels all very careful, proper, and calm. This continues for half an hour. Then everything changes when Peter uses the word "compromise."

Alan Yu

Compromise-- it's basically the government line. That's what Hong Kong's chief executive Carrie Lam says, that the protesters should stop protesting. And after that, the two sides can talk. Alva and Jonathan hear that as meaning the protesters should back down. They both lay into Peter.

Alan Yu

Alva says the police are the ones who need to change. They have to calm the situation. Peter says the police are doing their job. I don't know why, when the police arrest people for fighting or breaking stuff, it's treated as weird. It's illegal, so arrest them. No problem.

Alan Yu

Johnson says, OK, yes, arrest them. But how much force does the police need to use? Sometimes a person just asks the police a question, and they still get arrested or beaten. Or people who are already on the ground, kneeling, subdued, they still get beaten. Peter doesn't respond.

Then they argue, openly argue for the first time, about one of the protesters' main demands, something the government refused to budge on-- to start an independent investigation into police behavior.

Alan Yu

Peter keeps repeating the same thing over and over, like he's been backed into a corner, that there's no need for independent investigation. Now is not the right time.

Alan Yu

The city already has a system in place to investigate complaints about the police.

Alan Yu

They talk a little longer, but it doesn't go anywhere. Alva tells me later she had other things she could have brought up, but decided against it. She didn't want her husband to feel trapped. The word she used was [CHINESE], which translates as dead corner. No place to go. Preserving the family was more important to her than trying to win an argument.

Later, Jonathan told me he still loves his dad. But he's given up hope that his father could be a reasonable human being, at least when it comes to the police.

When I started this, I was kind of naive. I thought maybe Jonathan and his mother and father, people who actually want to understand each other, could talk about this in a productive manner, and that if they could, maybe there was hope that the rest of us could. But now, I don't have a lot of hope.

Ira Glass

Alan Yu, he's normally a reporter for WHYY's show, The Pulse. Jonathan, his brother, Chris, and Alva are now thinking seriously about leaving Hong Kong. Peter is not.

Ira Glass

Act Four, A Slow Boat to China. So what about all the people living in Hong Kong who have no problem with China, who like China? There's a lot of them. And they hold their own demonstrations, which are pretty small-- flag parties where flash mobs show up at malls and wave Chinese flags and sing the Chinese national anthem.

And the big day to celebrate China normally would be October 1, National Day, the anniversary of the Communist Party founding the modern Chinese state. And this year was going to be a big one. It was the 70th anniversary.

And the people who support mainland China were kind of resentful, because this day was supposed to be this huge holiday for them, but anticipating massive protests, the city shut down. Fireworks were canceled. Trains weren't running. Almost all the malls were going to be closed. The protesters had ruined the day again.

So in defiance, the pro-China people organized an anthem singing party for the morning of the first. Our co-worker, Diane Wu, went.

Diane Wu

The party took place at 8:30 in the morning on a boat. Not just any boat-- on the Star Ferry, this iconic Hong Kong commuter slash sightseeing boat on the harbor. The ferries are these beautiful old boats from colonial times with names like Silver Star, Northern Star, Twinkling Star. And today, one of them is going to get completely covered with bright red Chinese flags.

A couple dozen people are gathering at the ferry terminal. They're mostly strangers, know each other loosely from previous flash mobs and get-togethers.

[SHOUTING IN CHINESE]

"I love China," they shout.

[SHOUTING IN CHINESE]

"Support the police."

[SHOUTING IN CHINESE]

[CHEERING]

It's kind of funny when you think about it, all these people up so early on their day off, getting on a boat to sing the national anthem together. It's also a little dark, because there's a real threat of violence against people who don't support the protest.

One of these flag parties two weeks ago at a mall devolved into a brawl when protesters showed up. People on both sides got beat up. And so going out on a ferry to shout pro-China slogans is strategic. Once you're on the boat out at sea, you ought to be safe from a counter protest. As one guy put it--

Diane Wu

In the terminal, everyone gathers in a semicircle, holding special holiday issues of the China Daily and singing the Chinese national anthem together.

[SINGING IN CHINESE]

It's a little shaky. The guy leading it told me he just learned the words a couple weeks ago. Most of the people here, best as I can tell, are not mainlanders who grew up with the anthem. The ones I talked to were all from Hong Kong. Being this into China is new for them, something that only happened when the protests got bad enough that they found themselves rallying around this new flag.

And it's not always comfortable. I'm getting on the boat with Daniel, the guy who was griping about being terrorized, when someone puts a heart-shaped sticker on him.

Diane Wu

Red, in the crayon box of the Hong Kong protests, refers to being pro-China, versus blue for the government and yellow for the protesters. Daniel almost didn't come this morning, actually. It's not really his scene. He sees being this patriotic about China as kind of dorky. Moreover--

Diane Wu

The two things he can't accept that we end up talking about are the lack of free speech and censored access to the internet.

Diane Wu

I pointed out to him that after 28 years, it's very possible those freedoms would disappear. And he had the same response that I heard from other people who don't like the protests. He was like, well, sure, maybe.

Diane Wu

It's a big jump from I could never live in China to I would sacrifice my freedom just to get this to stop. But the intensity of the protests and his frustration with what he's experiencing in the city have driven him to at least try on this extreme idea.

Daniel's 40, works in finance. He lived in the US for 12 years. He's a football fan. Roots for the Chicago Bears because he likes the tenacious defense. He says he wasn't politically involved before all this. Went to one of the big peaceful protests last spring, more to watch than to participate.

But that changed one day when he was watching a livestream of the young protesters storming the legislative council. He was surprised how ferocious they seemed, how even the police officers looked a little scared.

Diane Wu

He woke up the next morning to see that the coverage was wall-to-wall about police brutality. To Daniel, it seemed like everyone was leaving out the fact that the protesters had started it, which seemed deeply unjust to the police.

Diane Wu

Other people sided against the protest for different reasons. A big one I heard was the disruption they caused. The security guard told me he had to transfer four times to get home one night because of subway shutdowns.

A woman trying to get cash out of an ATM that had been destroyed by protesters said, if you're mad at the government, take it out on the government. You're only hurting people like me. A man said to me, sadly, Hong Kong is our home. Why are they destroying it?

[SINGING IN CHINESE]

[CHEERING]

The crowd on the boat finishes belting out the national anthem a second time, when, suddenly, everyone rushes to the railing.

Everyone crammed together on one side in a position that's a little precarious. That's kind of like Daniel's world right now. He felt pushed to choose a team. Like it or not, these are his new people. He doesn't think like them exactly.

But he feels more aligned with these Chinese nationalists on this boat, waving at the police, than with the angry protesters ganging up on them, even if those protesters ultimately want the same thing he does-- to preserve their freedoms in Hong Kong.

[SINGING IN CHINESE]

Sitting on the upper deck of the Star Ferry, this was actually the first time Daniel had ever sang the national anthem in public. He told me later, as he sang, he was surprised to find that he felt something.

Ira Glass

Diane Wu. She talked to Daniel last week. With the passing of the national security law, he blames the protesters for killing the Hong Kong that he cherished, but says he accepts it as the only viable future. One of the first things, by the way, that he did when he found out about the law passing was change his Facebook profile back to his real name. Now he feels protected from the mob.

Ira Glass

Act 5, Nine Months Later. So as we've said, China's new national security law for Hong Kong went into effect this month. Or if you want to get technical about it, one hour before the month began.

And two days into the month, I reached Jennifer, the protester that you heard in the first half of the show. She told me that since we recorded her in the fall, protests have gotten a lot smaller, nothing like what we witnessed back then.

And she has kept protesting, she said, but less often, maybe once a month or so. She told me that she had thought that China might crack down some day like this, like it did with the new law. She just didn't expect it so soon. She thought they had years before any expression of dissent could be punished, like it can right now.

Ira Glass

That's Jennifer in Hong Kong. I'm going to end our program today with a recording of the last protest that any of us attended with Jennifer. This was back in October in a soccer stadium, where she sang along with the protest anthem, "Glory to Hong Kong." This week, the song was banned from schools.

Ira Glass

This is one of the movement's most popular slogans, "Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times." Last week, chanting this slogan was declared illegal under the new law by the Hong Kong government.

[CHANTING IN CHINESE]

[MUSIC - EMBER ISLAND, "UMBRELLA"]

Ira Glass

Our program was produced today by Emanuele Berry and Diane Wu. Our brilliant field producer in Hong Kong was Yannie Chan. Thanks to our interpreters, Flora Chung, Diana Chan, and Dominic Yang.

The people who put together our show today includes Elna Baker, Susan Burton, Zoe Chace, Dana Chivvis, Sean Cole, Damien Grave, Michelle Harris, Jessica Lussenhop, Miki Meek, Lina Misitzis, Stowe Nelson, Katherine Rae Mondo, Ben Phelan, Nadia Reiman, Robyn Semien, Lilly Sullivan, Christopher Swetala, and Matt Tierney.

Additional production by Noor Gill and Aviva DeKornfeld. Our executive producer is David Kestenbaum. Special thanks today to Dave Hill for the cover of the theme of the cops show, Armed Reaction. And special thanks to Laurel Chor, Karen Cheung, Howard Wong, Noble Wong, Yu, Tse Sai Pei, Alanna Thiede, Jiayang Fan, and Martin Lee.

Our website, ThisAmericanLife.org. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks as always to our problem's co-founder, Mr. Torey Malatia. You know, he'll never forget his first time on a carousel. The way he tells the story, he gets on a horse and starts to go around.

Ira Glass

I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.