So this is a post that already seems outdated, but I thought I would do it anyway. Masks now mean something quite different than they did before, and I am sure that there will soon be a lot of scholarship on “mask culture” in Asia and how it helped East Asian countries extend their advantage over backward peoples like the Americans.
Not to long ago, however, masks meant something else. The Hong Kong protests, which are still going on, are closely connected with masks. Not to keep Covid-19 in, but to protect you from tear gas. Masks, were, for a while, a symbol of resistance.
Thus you get images like this,
And this.
These are both foreign inspired images, and the CCP has been insistent that the Hong Kong protesters are spitting the nation and rejecting Chinese-ness. This is bullshit for lots of reasons, but one of them is that the Hong Kong protesters are specifically tying themselves to Chinese tradition and identity as seen here.
One of the slogans of the movement is “Be water”, and you can’t be much more Daoist than that, although a romantic couple is a modern touch.
I suspect someone could do more with all this, but I just wanted to post the pictures. If you want to know more you could contact the author of the presentation I stole all this from, Gina Tam. She does a good job of explaining the complexities of Hong Kong identity and its relation to the Chinese Mother-in-law land.
