Tat Ming Pair

Protest

The Hong Kong protests, alongside the events involving the Kurdish people, stand as one of the defining stories of 2019. After the Umbrella Revolution in 2014, the city seemed to have bowed its head to Beijing's authority, until this year, when Chief Executive Carrie Lam introduced a bill that would have allowed the extradition of Hong Kong residents to mainland China, bypassing the city's own courts. The protests then erupted furiously, culminating in the massive demonstration on 16 June (two million people according to organisers, 340,000 – still a staggering figure – according to authorities).

Lam then withdrew the bill and publicly apologised, but the protests did not stop, both in response to repeated abuses by the police and because of leaked recordings in which Lam appeared to be a puppet in the hands of the Chinese Communist Party. Days of urban guerrilla warfare followed, with the city on the brink of martial law and the attention of news outlets worldwide. The United States passed three measures in support of preserving democracy in Hong Kong, passed with bipartisan support from both Republicans and Democrats.

Introducing the band

Tat Ming Pair are Anthony Wong (vocals) and Tats Lau (multi-instrumentalist), active since the mid-1980s, when they became hugely popular in Hong Kong with a series of sophisticated albums blending traditional Chinese melodies with the sounds of Western art pop and new wave. The duo mostly handled the music themselves, commissioning lyrics from outside writers after briefing them on the subject to address. The most frequent lyricist during the early part of their career was Keith Chan, a man fully embedded in the entertainment industry both in Hong Kong and mainland China, who nonetheless had no qualms providing them with lyrics on the thorniest of subjects, always toeing the line with Beijing's government, from the crackdown on student protests to Chinese society's poor acceptance of homosexuality (Wong would later come out in 2012).

The duo first split up in 1991, with both members poised for fruitful solo careers: Wong became one of the icons of Cantonese pop, while Lau moved into the world of film, also working as an actor. Over the years there have been numerous reunions, always greeted by tours that sold out Hong Kong's arenas in a flash.

In mainland China, the band's fame is tied chiefly to a 1987 song, "石頭記" ("Sek tau gei"/"The Story of the Stone"), after which they were unable to achieve any other major hits, due to the government's hostility towards their politically outspoken songs.

Commemoration is a crime

The saga of Tat Ming Pair deserves every possible in-depth look, but on this occasion we'll focus on their latest single.

At the start of the year the duo got in touch with Albert Leung, commissioning him to write the lyrics for a new song. Leung is one of the most prolific songwriters in the history of Cantopop, winner of the Golden Needle award in 2008. This is the highest honour the city of Hong Kong bestows on those who work in music, and in 2019 it was won by none other than Tat Ming Pair themselves, in recognition of a prolific and untarnished career that never gave in to compromise. During the awards ceremony, Wong gave a lengthy speech in support of democracy.

A few days later, the band's name had vanished from every streaming and download service in mainland China. In the past Tat Ming Pair had faced opposition, but their music had always remained available. Since this past January, that's no longer the case, and for the rest of their career the pair will have to make do with the fiercely loyal following they still command in their own city.

Either way, they haven't lost heart in the slightest: proof of this is the song born from their collaboration with Leung, essentially an anthem for all the protests that have taken place in China from 1989 to the present day.

Translation

What follows is one of several possible Italian versions of the lyrics, given that Leung's literary Chinese can support numerous shades of interpretation, and it isn't feasible to render them all simultaneously in our language.

Back then, you asked the heavens: “How can you allow thoughts to be destroyed?”

As if they had risen up for the mere sake of leaving a legacy.

Don’t ask now who has the courage to openly commemorate.

Hijacked by reality, you can’t blame the heavens.

If candlelight is a crime, darkness will persist for decades.

If scars have a soul, their face hasn’t changed.

If commemorating is a crime, how can the truth stay silent?

If people lived through the history, the truth will come out.

If you ask today “Do you regret taking a step too far that day?”

The roads are broken, no one has the courage to venture down them.

If you ask me today “Why do you insist on commemorating?”

After a fire is put out, there will be smoke.

The heavenly sovereign owes no answer to anything,

it only has to make sure that people forget.

Houtu knows neither heat nor cold, memories don’t follow you into saṁsāra.

History only knows how to move forward, yet we've turned in circles for thirty years.

Now the youth has changed, it won't ask questions of the sky.

If we raise our umbrellas, whose fate are we holding a funeral for?

So many farewells in the square…

Even if it's the truth, who will keep on resisting?

I hope the voices won't disappear from the square.

It might be useful to decode some of the symbolism used by Leung:

– "the candlelight" is not metaphorical: it refers to the candles that thousands of people bring to Victoria Park in Hong Kong every year, on the anniversary of what in the West is known as the Tiananmen Square massacre (in reality the crackdown was concentrated in other areas of Beijing, which did not carry the same symbolic weight);

– in mainland China it is absolutely forbidden to commemorate that event, hence the title of the song: "Commemoration Is a Crime". Some brave individuals still try to reference those events, writing in code: among the most widely used are "8964", or simply "64", referring to the date (June 4, 1989);

– the Heavenly Sovereign (天皇) is a figure from Chinese mythology, said to have reigned for eighteen thousand years, during the origins of humanity. Leung has turned him into an avatar for Xi Jinping;

– Houtu is the goddess of the Earth in traditional Chinese religion;

– saṃsāra is the cycle of life, death and rebirth found in religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism. After rebirth, all memories of previous lives are erased: hence the clear purpose of the term, which is set in parallel with the Beijing government's attempt to erase the memory of any inconvenient historical event;

– "the umbrellas" are of course those of Hong Kong's 2014 protests.

The song is accompanied by a striking video, embedded at the top of the article, which contains several of the symbols that appear in the lyrics: the Tiananmen protests (the man in front of the tank), the candles, the umbrellas, and the "Error 404" screen, referencing the fact that certain topics return no results on Chinese search engines.

It's fairly evident how much courage it took to sing such lyrics. In every respect, "Wui jik jau dzoey" is a masterpiece of protest song and the most valiant track produced by popular music in 2019, on a global scale. Because no Western street rapper or urban poet can hold a candle to someone who puts themselves on the line in an oppressed country, standing on the front line in the street and choosing, between a comfortable career and a slalom through the pitfalls of boycotts and censorship, the latter.

Music

If the lyrics are as strong as they appear, the instrumental backing, composed by Lau, is no less impressive. An epic ballad somewhere between art pop and folktronica, it blends futuristic sounds with ancient sources: on one hand programmed beats, saturated synthesizers, guitar jangle compressed into the background; on the other, solemn timpani strikes and the suona, an enchanting Chinese wind instrument dating back to the third century, which had already featured on one of the duo's most important tracks, "天問" ("Tin Man" / "Heavenly Questions"), from 1990.

Above it all, however, stands Wong's splendid voice, a first-class crooner, at once delicate and capable of conveying the full suffering of his people. Probably the closest thing to David Bowie that Chinese culture has ever managed to produce.