As an archipelago comprised of 273 islands, Hong Kong is shaped by its relationship to water. Its built environment, ways of life, politics, and economy have formed around the deep waters of Victoria Harbour and the South China Sea it flows into. Water also separates the city from mainland China. However, as China reclaims the territory, it is suturing this divide, politically and psychologically, through a compulsory patriotism; and physically, through a vast infrastructure of bridges, tunnels, and high-speed rail that connects Hong Kong to the Greater Bay Area (GBA), a finance and technology hub linking eleven cities and seventy million inhabitants. Hong Kong’s future is being defined by its role in the GBA, and the city’s youth are being groomed as energetic entrepreneurs ready to compete and contribute to the prosperity of a unified nation.
“Be water” also became the unofficial slogan of the 2019 pro-democracy movement in Hong...