I’ve tried to keep a “happy face” to family, friends and students (the last group of which I never discuss politics with in any event) in recent days, but this ruling has hit me much harder than other Hong Kong national security cases. Chow Hang-tung @zouxingtong, Lee Cheuk-yan @ahyanlee and Albert Ho were more than just brave activists to me.

Let’s start with Ah Tung. She was a genius. She achieved perfect HK secondary school scores (like an ATAR 99.95 in Australia). She then aced geophysics at Cambridge, but decided instead that being a barrister was her calling (she did so well that she was a HK Bar Scholar).

She became publicly prominent in HK at around the same time as I did back in the 2010s. While we were not socially close back then, we bonded politically over our shared pushback against those who thought that commemorating the 1989 Beijing Massacre and pushing for China human rights were irrelevant to HK’s democratic development.

Through mutual friends, Ah Tung and I became drinking buddies in the period leading up to her current incarceration (our last dinner was literally a few days before she was locked up in 2021). She had an infectious giggle who could drink and eat in copious quantities. We rarely talked politics, and instead bantered about everyday life.

Yan Gor (“Big Brother Yan” in Cantonese) was a HKU engineering graduate in the 1970s. Many of his fellow alumni got rich doing HK and China infrastructure projects. But Yan Gor chose instead to fight for workers’ rights as a pro-democracy trade unionist.

I first heard about Yan Gor from striking HK wharf workers in 2013, of whom I was supportive. The workers told me that Yan Gor was selflessly helping them even though they were (back then) mostly politically pro-Beijing. I came to know Yan Gor in mid-2010s after becoming a HK activist. It turned out that we lived in Mei Foo area – we were effectively neighbours.

As for Albert, he became an affluent lawyer at a time when the HK property market was booming, and conveyancing work was heavily regulated. Many lawyers who once made money as conveyancers sided with Beijing for money-making opportunities after conveyancing work was deregulated.

But not Albert. He worked tirelessly as a pro-democracy politician and activist. He was also a voice of wisdom. Albert would often rightly counsel me to be patient, forgiving, and above all, humble, when the elitest big-end-of-town lawyer side of my persona got the better of me when dealing with other democracy activists.

A friend, a neighbour, a mentor. These were what Ah Tung, Yan Gor and Albert were to me. They were well set for “conventional” success in life, but chose instead to fight against a brutal past and for a better tomorrow. I yearn for the day when Ah Tung can again plunder my alcohol stash, when Yan Gor and I can meet in Mei Foo again, and when Albert can again counsel me to pull my head in.

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