By Katy Chan
Where did Hong Kong begin? Hong Kong’s history was written by China and Britain, the two great powers that have asserted sovereignty over Hong Kong for centuries. In China’s telling, Hong Kong was a part of China from ancient times until British imperial aggressors unjustly took it with the Treaty of Nanjing in 1842, which concluded the first Opium War. It was the start of China’s “century of humiliation” by the West, and only with the return of Hong Kong to Chinese rule in 1997 was this perceived indignity finally resolved. In Britain’s narrative, there was no prehistory of Hong Kong. It was a ‘barren rock with barely a house upon’ that would never turn into “a mart of trade”, as the British Foreign Secretary Lord Palmerston denounced upon his arrival in the colony, in outrage that Britain had got such a raw end of the deal. But owing to the British Empire’s framework of laissez-faire policies and appropriate welfare reform, Hong Kong surprisingly turned into a global financial centre, one of the world’s wealthiest economies within only decades.
There is a folktale, outside and beyond the stories by the two great powers, of the mythical Lo Ting who is considered to be the ancestor of Hongkongers. In the fifth century a Chinese official named Lo Chun incited a rebellion against the Jin dynasty. After losing he fled with his army to Lantau, one of Hong Kong’s islands where they lived in caves. It is said that from eating so much raw fish Lo Chun and his army grew fish heads, evolved into a kind of mermen which we call Lo Ting today. These mermen are said to be able to navigate both water and land with a livelihood sustained on salt-making. The Song dynasty, a successor to the Jin, nonetheless exerted an absolute monopoly of salt prohibiting all private salt-making and embroiled the mermen in a tragic massacre in 1197. The few mermen survived the massacre are said to be the first men of Hong Kong.
The Lo Ting were short, with black-and-yellow eyes, brownish fur, and tiny pointy tails, and mostly kept to themselves, fearful of the people on the land. They came and went with the tides. Being fond of the taste of chicken blood, they often traded seafood for livestock with humans. But they would return to the sea in no time when they sensed danger. The female Lo Tings loved to laugh and were less shy in interacting with humans. Some loved flirting with the land-dwelling men, falling in love with them. But some were held captive by humans against their will, being exploited for sex and entertainment.
The Lo Ting had long gone. They were last seen in 1993. One was caught by a fisherman in South Lantau. But the fisherman let it go, because it was believed to be a curse to entrap your ancestor. Some said the Lo Ting got assimilated into the land people. Some said the last of them went with the ocean waves and were eventually lost to the water. Some said they turned into white dolphins, singing day and night songs about pirates and treasures that humans could not hear. They may have turned into dragons either, started to grow beautiful pearl scales yet too heavy for their size, that they could not swim up to the earthy world anymore. Some said the Lo Ting never existed. It was just a story.
The Hong Kong Exhibition Centre was built into the shape of the Black Tortoise in Chinese mythology. It is believed to sit right on the remains of last Lo Tings. As the myth goes by, the Lo Ting will rise and revive, when the Black Tortoise falls. The Black Tortoise’ shell will break, releasing spirits and ghosts of those who died in Hong Kong’s past turmoil. The Judgment Day will come.
“When the Lo Ting comes in their glory, and all the spirits with them, they will sit on their glorious throne. All the nations will be gathered before them, and they will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. They will put the sheep on the right and the goats their left.”
“The goats will go away to eternal punishment, but the sheep to eternal life.”
The future will become the past; the past will become the future.
The history of Hong Kong will end, but the tale of Hong Kong continues.
***
The old tale of the Hong Kong mythical figure Lo Ting, a half-human, half-fish species said to be the first men of the city-state, is being told and recreated into a story about the time ahead, where the merfolks ascend from the underworld to separate the faithful from the unbelievers. The future is utterly fantastical, so is history.
The story is narrated in a cloned voice of the artist, sound of her conscious kept in the future by yet-existent technologies. In the background, a fragmented version of the story is translated to Cantonese, the artist’s mother tongue; but the cloned voice does not recognise or speak the language. Prophecy is incoherent, concealed, misinterpreted and beyond speech, so is memory.
Subscribe to our email newsletter: