GEORGE CHEN

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To live, longer

Chuk Yuen Seafood Restaurant (竹園海鮮飯店)

This seafood restaurant that has been around in Happy Valley for decades is coming to its end now due to the pandemic. This restaurant survived in the SARS, bird flu, swine flu, financial crisis (twice!), social unrests and on and on. But Covid-19? It finally means game over.

And this is not about one restaurant. Everyday, dozens of cafes and restaurants are closing in Hong Kong, and now we see even theatres, stores, galleries, and perhaps soon some local schools are facing the same destiny.

Since 2020 we have kept saying next year would get better. No, it didn’t, and I doubt things will get fully normal even in two or three more years. The world has been completely changed and to this day we are not even 100% sure how this all started, really.

I guess my generation is OK; we have already experienced (enjoyed?) a lot, for better or for worse. But imagine if you were a college student who started your college life in 2020, that would be really a sad story.

The best age of their lives has to be through isolation, quarantine, “study from home”, very few friends and connections in the society, and just staying puzzled about a lot of things that may be justified by the laws and the government but can’t be reasoned in common sense sometimes.

I guess it is all about destiny. We, human beings, have to share this same destiny of the planet.

I remember once I saw a T-shirt, which says “If you can’t fight against the future, then just try to live longer, and longer.”

全世界,一齊鬥長命。