The Tsim Sha Tsui promenade was a picture of dereliction on the second day of the Lunar New Year. It was a heartbreaking sight. Home to several arts and culture venues — such as the Hong Kong Cultural Centre, the Hong Kong Space Museum, the newly renovated Hong Kong Museum of Art, plus retail destination K11 Musea — the Tsim Sha Tsui waterfront is the city’s cultural nerve center. Its carnivalesque scene — comprising buskers, food trucks, and mobile photo stands, to say nothing of the sprawling sit-out area that comes with an uninterrupted view of the neon-lit Hong Kong cityscape — attracts thousands of visitors every day, even without the bonus of the New Year parade and fireworks display illuminating Victoria Harbour. Sadly, such celebratory events were canceled this year to prevent more people from catching the deadly coronavirus, which has infected over 14,000 people worldwide and claimed at least 300 lives on the Chinese mainland.
The cancellation of New Year festivities is the latest in a long list of many over the last seven months. A number of international acts pulled out of Hong Kong events since the protests began in June, casting a shadow of uncertainty on whether a show could be held as scheduled. One of the toughest challenges festival organizers have been facing is securing travel insurance for the star performers they invite.
Festival organizers will probably have their work cut out for them in March — the busiest, most event-intense month on Hong Kong’s cultural calendar — when several international art fairs, including the city’s flagship art event, Art Basel Hong Kong, plus the Hong Kong Arts Festival and Hong Kong International Film Festival, run simultaneously. I imagine the organizers cannot be having an easy time in the lead-up to these events as the specter of disruption from two possible sources — protests and a potentially lethal virus — continues to haunt them.
The worrisome situation at hand makes me wonder if art really matters when people’s lives are at stake. Would anyone really mind not getting to see new art from the Philippines, South Korea and Pakistan, or not seeing the prodigiously talented Sergei Polunin dance, if it were possible to ensure that more people won’t be infected or hurt in the bargain?
Unfortunately, no one knows how protests or the now-raging coronavirus will play out in the coming weeks, and the likely impact these might have on the events planned in the months ahead. However, what we do know is that arts festivals have made a difference to deeply distressed and ruptured societies. Recent examples include the biennial Reborn-Art Festival, held in Japan’s Miyagi prefecture to lift the morale of those who were displaced by or lost family and friends to the devastating 2011 tsunami. The Ubumuntu Arts Festival, started in Kigali, Rwanda, demonstrates the value of reconciliation and peace-building to the victims of the 1994 genocide through theater, is a fine example of how art can help heal wounds and foster empathy between people who may not see eye to eye.
One of the useful things that artists, writers and performers do is to help add clarity to our understanding of the situations we are faced with. That is perhaps why we need them in Hong Kong, especially now. Now is the time for the local government, private benefactors, invited artists, arts entrepreneurs, all manner of stakeholders and indeed anyone who cares about Hong Kong’s future to back the hard work put in by Hong Kong’s festival and art-fair organizers and ensure that even if the shows have to be postponed to protect people’s health and safety at the moment, then they will be rescheduled rather than scrapped altogether.
The author is the culture editor of China Daily Hong Kong.
