Ever since I learned about the heinous cleaver attack on Ming Pao ex-Editor Kevin Lau, there’s been this tight knot weighing down on my heart. Prior to this incident, I had been trying to detach myself little by little from engaging in writing or speaking about current affairs in Hong Kong due to a daily-deepening feeling of powerlessness about my hometown’s fast deterioration from a sophisticated international metropolis into a crass, soulless, xenophobic and parochial Chinese city. What’s more troubling is the fact that the sea change has come by involuntarily from Hong Kongers’ standpoint. It has come in the form of more and more oppressive tactics, either overtly or deviously, being thrust down Hong Kong’s throat by the Central Government and the submissive puppet-like Leung Chun Ying administration.