Scent of a history: the “12.3 Incident”: A history in Macao of 50 years ago

ABSTRACT

Fifty years ago, there were massive anti-colonial movements in Hong Kong and Macao. During the same period, the Cultural Revolution started in mainland China. The writings afterwards painted these movements, and these people, with the colour of the Cultural Revolution. Local is vanished. These movements constituted the starting point of modern Hong Kong and Macao. The aftershocks of these movements are still strong and widespread within the present political environment, the ideology of the public space and the sentiment of the public. It seems necessary to re-examine this history and to restore those people and those events from the distorted impression. Let’s try to read their oral history with sympathy and historical imagination, feeling the scent of a history.

KEYWORDS:

• Macau
• 12.3 Incident
• oral history
• subaltern studies
• Cultural Revolution
• nationalism
• colonialism
• social movement
• cultural politics

Acknowledgements

I would like to express my deep gratitude to Professor CHIU, Y.L. Fred, my master craftsman, for his input in my apprenticeship. I would also like to thank the Department of Sociology, Hong Kong Baptist University for offering me a chance to make a dinner table story for my MPhil thesis as a written piece. I would like to offer my special thanks to Professor CHEN, Kuan-Hsing, for his encouragement for my work.

Notes on contributor

Li, Hau-Chi, Hanif was born in Hong Kong, with a Macau family background. He is now a salesman in an oil company. As a middle-aged man, his reading habits never stopped.