Opinion

The Death of Lo Kei: A maze of words that goes beyong time and space

After her last novel Children of Darkness,Hong Kong writer Wong Bik-Wan spent six years quietly working on her new book. The “non-fictitious novel” named The Death of Lo Kei was published this year, based on a true story that happened in Hong Kong. 

In 1966, due to an increase in the ticket prices of the Hong Kong Star Ferries, a series of mass commotions took place for two nights consecutively. Among the participants of the demonstration was a young man named Lo Kei.  Almost one year after the incident, Lo Kei was found dead, hanging from the ceiling of a friend’s apartment. It was said that the cause of his death was “suicide”. 

In The Death of Lo Kei, the text is mostly based on the related historical facts and journalistic reports from the media at that time. Thanks to her background with a master's degree in criminology, and as a practicing lawyer, as well as her experience in journalism, Wong Bik-Wan is highly proficient in this kind of “writing”.  Through extensive research of historical documents and journalistic reports, she distilled from a pile of scattered materials, pieces of factual accounts to be woven into a fictional text. 

“The meanings of these words which betrayed one another can only be contradictory,” she explained. The style that misleads the readers into a maze of fiction and historical facts, not only challenges the traditional reading experience; it also opens up further possibilities of writing “non-fictitious novels”.

Adept at descriptions of lower class characters in Hong Kong society, Wong Bik-Wan has transformed this historical incident into a quick-witted and sophisticated maze of words. As a reader, I was dazzled in between the past and the present, superimposing history into the society of nowadays China. 

 

 

For example, Lo Kei who was supposed to have hung himself, was actually found with his feet still touching the ground. And there was also evidence of him having been cooking and eating. One cannot help but think of all these “supposed suicide” cases that we see from TV reporting nowadays. 

Lo Kei was also described as a young worker who was angry about the unfair social system and social environment. This also leads us to think of the “Fai Qing” (useless youth) and “Fung Qing” (angry youth) of Hong Kong society today.  As I proceeded into this maze of words, my mind could no longer distinguish if it was just a fiction or if it was indeed the story of a real historical incident, the true story of a real person…

My deepest reflection on The Death of Lo Keitook place as I followed the story page by page, paragraph by paragraph, even sentence by sentence. I realized that I needed more time to ponder each detail, reflecting on what was supposed to be in the past and what is actually happening in our society now. The ongoing re-positioning between reality and fiction led me to the realization of how history repeats itself. 

And exactly because of this muddling experience, readers are provided with a space to distance themselves from the overlaying words and the details of the plot, to remind ourselves to reflect on and question reality through these fictitious words. 

Towards the end of the book, the author suddenly changes the direction of the story into the journalistic records of the incident of the Mong Kok civil unrest, which happened in 2016, and the trial of Edward Leung Tin-Kei. Perhaps it was in this way that Wong Bik-Wan intentionally opened up an exit from this maze of historical facts to what is happening now. 

But more than an accusation of the society nowadays, these words act more like a sentimental link between the past and the present. Through the twists and turns of these words, the readers experience hopelessness, frustration and despair. By breaking through the limitations of time and space, we can hopefully discover new realizations to be inspired by.

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