On Kowloon Ferry

Childless myself, I couldn’t say
How old they were; but when she tore
Her tiny raincoat open
In protest at her mother’s fussing
My slow smile burst into laughter.

On the night ferry from Kowloon,
New Year tourists from the mainland,
Two mothers, each with one daughter,
Their black hair tied in pigtails,
One an angel, and the other —

Whose antics caught my attention —
Anything but: snatching the blanket
Her mother spread across them,
And, after rebuking her attempts,
Buttoning her jacket herself

With a child’s careful concentration.
Indifferent to her friend’s efforts
To console her unbounded grief,
Her doleful gaze, turned to the shore,
Brought me almost to regret that

I don’t have one of these Xiǎo guǐ
In my keeping — till a mother’s kiss
Stopped her brimming tears from falling.
I tried, instead, to imagine
What she’ll be in twenty-three-years’ time.

One of 1.7 million
Engineers graduated last year
In China? Or one of three thousand
Protesters prosecuted
In Hong Kong since 2019?

But whether she remakes this world
With her wild impatience or her
Deliberate application,
It’s in the fires of her black eyes
That China’s future’s being forged.

— Hong Kong, February 2024

• • • • •

Kowloon, the smallest and most densely populated of the three regions of Hong Kong, is an urban area on the mainland, from which ferries run across the harbour to Hong Kong Island. Although most of Hong Kong is on the mainland, this term is used by Hong Kongers to refer to the People’s Republic of China, which celebrates the 75th anniversary of its founding this year. Since 2003, residents from 49 mainland cities can travel to Hong Kong twice a year for one week under the Individual Visit Scheme. This was imposed to protect Hong Kong traders from being undercut by cheaper goods from China. In 2047, however, the ‘one country, two systems’ under which the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region has been governed since 1997 is set to expire.

The Chinese New Year or Spring Festival, which this year began on 10 February, is the largest annual migration on the planet, with around 9 billion journeys made in 2024, the vast majority by Chinese workers returning to their place of birth. China’s one-child policy was finally revoked in 2016, but the fertility rate in 2024 is 1.7 births per woman, roughly the same as it was in 1996. Xiǎo guǐ (小鬼), a term used in Mandarin and Cantonese, means ‘little devil’, ‘imp’ or ‘mischievous child’.