"The Spirit of the Resistance"

A talk delivered on April 27, 2025 by Albert Wan, owner of Bleak House Books, to some lovely students from RIT

I’m going to start this talk the way most other people start their talks: by thanking the person who roped me into doing it in the first place. That person’s name is Mei.

By now, it’s a cliche to say that we’re living in troubled times. Not because it isn’t true, it most certainly is. But when someone says something like that, it’s important to think about how and why these times are so troubling.

Sadly, universities like RIT have become ground zero for a lot of what’s ailing this country. As I was writing this talk, I saw news that the government had revoked the visas of at least eleven foreign students and alumni at the University of Rochester. RIT wasn’t spared either, and reported that immigration authorities had revoked the visas of several of their own students.

This is all part of the efforts of the administration not just to stifle dissent but, really, to reshape the culture and values of this country. And not in a good way. It is a country that values raw power and doublespeak above all else. Other values like free speech, scientific inquiry, and diversity matter only to the extent to which they advance the interests of people in power. Which, right now, isn’t much at all.

There are many universities out there that have fought back. Others have adopted a more transactional approach, trying to stay on the good side of the president by giving him some but not all of what he wants. Anyone who’s ever dealt with a bully knows, however, that giving in to the bully only encourages him to bully you more.

It is against this backdrop that Mei emailed me out of the blue. All she wanted to do was to organize a field trip for her students to a local bookshop run by a washed up lawyer. But in this climate, when acts once thought to be non-controversial are being examined and debated to eternity, Mei’s email came as something of a surprise. Finally, I thought to myself, here’s someone who wasn’t about to give in to the bully.

This is all a very long way of saying thank you to Mei for reaching out. I’m inspired and encouraged by your bravery and compassion for your students.

Okay, so I’m at the part of my talk when I really wish I had a warm-up act. I know many of you right now are resisting the urge to look at your phones. That bowling accident mash up reel isn’t going to watch itself. Well, I don’t have a warm-act up today. I have something even better: a bookshop-themed thought exercise.

Imagine you know nothing about Bleak House Books, about me, or the story of the bookshop. It’s summertime. School’s out. You and a few of your friends have rented a cute little cottage by Keuka Lake for the week. On the way to the cottage, you decide to take a slight detour through our beautiful village of Honeoye Falls. You see our rustic bookshop sign out front and decide to stop in and see what we’re all about. I mean, who can pass up an old timey bookshop in an old timey village setting?

Thankfully, it’s not a Monday or a Tuesday, so the shop is open. You walk in through the front door and see this grumpy, middle-aged Asian guy sitting behind the checkout counter. What might be some of the first thoughts to cross your mind?

Here are some of the things that I might be wondering to myself if I were in your shoes. “Does this guy also work at the Chinese takeout down the block?” “How does he manage to make any money?” “Is he here because he lost big on some kind of bet?” “Maybe that’s why he’s always frowning?”

Because let’s face it. Appearances matter. First impressions matter. As the famously funny, Floridian writer Carl Hiassen once said:

“The humane qualities of any new acquaintance should be evident in the first five minutes of conversation – ten minutes, tops. If it requires the psychological equivalent of a metal detector to locate somebody’s true self, then they’re not worth the trouble. Life is short. Say goodbye.”

I’m hoping that by this time in the talk I’ve convinced enough of you that I’m worth the trouble.

Returning to our thought exercise, I think it’s fair to say that not many people who step foot in this bookshop for the first time, could imagine that the Asian guy behind the counter is a former civil rights lawyer in Atlanta, Georgia. Born in Queens. Raised in suburban Long Island. Sucked at math. Loved RPG video games and comic books. Okay, you probably could’ve guessed the last one.

For those of you who know about the story of Bleak House Books, you know that you’re really at the second iteration of the bookshop. I moved to Hong Kong in late 2016 with Jenny, my wife, and our two kids, Charlie and Ida. I had never lived in Hong Kong or any other foreign country up until that time. But my parents were born and raised in Hong Kong. They left the city for the States at a relatively young age. At home though, with my sister and myself, my parents still spoke Cantonese, watched Canto dramas, observed the lunar new year, and prepared foods like stir fried beef with broccoli, steamed fish (with the head still on), spam and macaroni soup, and, of course, hot pot. In Canto, we say “da been lo” for hot pot, which literally means “hanging out by the side of the stove”.

I’ve never told anyone this but it was liberating for me to live in a place like Hong Kong. How so? For starters, I looked like everyone else. Black hair, brown eyes, vertically challenged. Also, I spoke and understood the Cantonese language and all the quirky, often profane expressions that come out of it. One of the worst Cantonese insults you can say to another person is: “hum ga tsan” which translates to: “may your whole family go bankrupt.” If you’re going to remember anything from this talk, please do not remember that.

Granted, my childhood home in suburban Long Island had some diversity too, even back in the late-80’s, mid-90’s. My best friend in third grade, Gerald Tam, also had parents from Hong Kong and spoke Cantonese. But I didn’t need to travel too far to feel like I stuck out like a sore thumb. The only thing more embarrassing than carrying a powder blue Care Bears lunch box with a matching Thermos is having to explain to classmates and teachers what I had brought for lunch that day in my Care Bears lunchbox. “That’s not a steaming snowball. It’s a red bean bun!”

There was something else about Hong Kong and Hongkongers though that gave me a sense of belonging and freedom that I didn’t always feel like I had in the U.S: a communal energy and shared sense of purpose. One of the great things about being a bookseller is that I learn about new books and writers all the time. Jan Morris is one of those writers. Someone with British and Welsh roots, Morris gained fame for being a part of the British expedition in 1953 that successfully conquered Mount Everest. Up until that time, no one had reached the summit of that legendary mountain. But two intrepid explorers named Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay changed that. Morris was there to capture the moment and sent news of this historic accomplishment back home to Britain.

Jan Morris, whose birth name was James Morris, is also known for being one of the first public figures to identify as transexual. She underwent gender reassignment surgery in 1973 to become a woman. As a historian and travel writer, Morris lived all over the world, including in Hong Kong. And she’s probably penned the best ever passage to describe the kind of “communal energy and shared sense of purpose” that moved me as a Hongkonger. Here’s that passage:

Sometimes in the early morning I like to walk down to one of the city waterfronts, to watch the lights of the ships go by, share the pleasures of the couples strolling along the piers, or eat fried chicken on a bench in the gathering dark. The air is likely to be rich and humid, the sky is lit with the brooding glow of a great city’s lights, blotting out the stars. It does not matter where I am, Kowloon or Hong Kong-side; around me always beyond the little pool of quiet I have made for myself on bench or bollard, the huge endless stir of the place, the roar of the traffic, the passing of the ships, the comings and goings of the ferries, combine into one gigantic sensation of communal energy. For the most part, I know very well, it is not energy expended in any very high-flown purpose, but still its ceaseless rumble and motion move me, and I sit there gnawing my chicken, drinking my San Miguel beer from the can, more or less entranced.

“One gigantic sensation of communal energy.” Some might dismiss Morris’s phrasing as hyperbole. But I want to tell you, it’s a real thing. Like Morris, I felt it too. And it saved my life as a bookseller.

One of the hardest things I had to do when I started selling books in Hong Kong was to actually start selling books. Not many people understood or supported my decision to open a bookshop. A lot of them focused on the fact that I was once a lawyer. “It’s a waste” they would say “to throw away your legal training to sell books. Of course, I didn’t listen to them. But their words still stung. And I spent a lot of time and energy looking over my shoulder at my own place of business, unsure of whether I had made the right choice to ditch the law and sell books. These pangs of self-doubt, as you can imagine, came at the worst times: usually when I was knee-deep in some tedious and soul-sucking task like cleaning grubby books or being nickeled and dimed by a guy who wanted to sell me his worthless paperbacks. During these times, I’d think to myself: “I went to law school for this?”

I can’t tell you when, exactly, I stopped looking over my shoulder and embraced my work as a bookseller. But I did turn the corner at some point, and I haven’t looked back since. What got me there was what Morris called the “communal energy” of Hongkongers.

I felt this energy early and often after moving to Hong Kong. I felt it on the streets, commuting to and from work. I felt it in the wet markets where I shopped for fresh produce and seafood. I felt it among my awesome and brave bookseller colleagues who built their own bookshops and communities from the ground up like I did.

No one can talk about the “communal energy” of Hongkongers, however, without talking about the historic 2019 protests that shook the city to its very core. At its height, almost one-third of the entire Hong Kong population – around 2 million people – took to the streets to voice their demands and anger at the government. What started as a dispute over a government-sponsored bill that would have given the authorities the power to extradite Hongkongers to mainland China for certain crimes, morphed into a city-wide reckoning over what it meant to be a Hongkonger under Chinese rule.

If you ask any Hongkonger who attended a protest in 2019: “what sets Hong Kong apart from its mainland neighbor?”, that person will likely answer: freedom and rule of law. These values meant so much to so many Hongkongers that they turned out, en masse, week after week, month after month, in an unprecedented show of force and solidarity. It was just the kind of “gigantic sensation of communal energy” that Jan Morris believed was the defining character trait of Hongkongers.

The protests didn’t let up until sometime in early 2020. That was when the COVID pandemic hit and also when Beijing imposed its National Security Law in Hong Kong that essentially criminalised any anti-government speech.

The front line means different things to different people. If you are in the military or have a loved one who is a service member, to you, the front line might mean someone who is in the thick of armed conflict. If you are a doctor, the front line might mean a healthcare professional working long shifts in the ER or a scientist at a laboratory conducting breakthrough research . If you lived through the 2019 protests in Hong Kong, however, the term front line, or tseen seen in Cantonese, might mean something more like this:

The chant echoed in the canyon between the buildings, under the looming concrete overpasses: ‘Gwong fuk Heung Gong! Sidoi Gaakming!’ ‘Reclaim Hong Kong! Revolution of our times!’

As the crowd prepared for the police onslaught, the fully equipped frontline troops – kitted out in their black-bloc attire, yellow hard hats, and face masks – came running in formation through the crowd to face the police lines. The crowd roared in support. With their improvised shields made from road signs and planks of wood, the frontline braves had picked up a new trick from the riot police, who would beat their shields with their batons as an intimidation tactic. The protestors began to do the same, beating their shields against the ground or against the barricades, beating the traffic dividers and rubbish bins with umbrellas – a beat that was tribal, raw, a death rattle that rallied their spirits as they faced the police, who now came in full-bore with tear gas and rubber bullets. A violent clash ensued, with bricks being thrown, protestors wielding slingshots, and, for the first time, Molotov cocktails being hurled. A barricade was set ablaze.

That’s from Antony Dapiran’s book City on Fire, which was one of the first English-language books written and published about the 2019 Hong Kong protests. We sold many copies of that book when we had our bookshop in Hong Kong. Today though that book is effectively banned in the city, and anyone who tries to sell it risks prosecution by the authorities.

By now, I think many of you want to know what all this has to do with Bleak House Books. Like many other individuals and businesses in Hong Kong, we took sides in the protest. We called out the government for its many lies and its constant gaslighting of the public. We attended protests and participated in general strikes. We stocked and sold books that provided some much needed historical, philosophical, and journalistic context to the protests and public fury. To our bookshop family, this was the right thing – really the only thing – to do. Silence would have meant complicity.

It is fair to ask what we all achieved in our resistance. Beijing continued to tighten its authoritarian grip on Hong Kong despite all of the protests and overwhelming opposition of the public. There’s no longer an opposition party in Hong Kong. News outlets and residents alike must be careful not to cross an ever-shifting, ill-defined “red line” in what they say or write about the government. With the increasingly oppressive political climate, my wife and I had to make the difficult decision to leave Hong Kong with our two children. Thousands of other Hongkongers left as well. And Bleak House Books, as you all know, suffered a similar fate. We closed it on October 15, 2021.

As you can imagine, there was a lot of anger and heartbreak in our family during that period of upheaval and loss. The spirit of the resistance never left us though. Even today, that spirit burns bright in the hearts and minds of many Hongkongers including myself. And it burns especially bright in the place where you now sit. A simple bookshop with a new lease on life. Conceived from and nurtured in Hong Kong’s trademark “gigantic sensation of communal energy.” We continue to carry the torch of resistance in our new home of Honeoye Falls so others can do the same.

To quote the great American civil rights activist, John Lewis: “Do not get lost in a sea of despair. Be hopeful, be optimistic. Our struggle is not the struggle of a day, a week, a month, or a year, it is a struggle of a lifetime. Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble.”

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