Everyday Movement, page 1
Riverhead Books
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
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Copyright © 2022 by Gigi L. Leung. All rights reserved.
English translation copyright © 2026 by Jennifer Feeley
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Cover design: Grace Han
Cover art: Garden Tulip, from ‘Opera Botanica’, engraved by Le Grand, published 1760s (colour litho) / Photo © The Stapleton Collection/Bridgeman Images
Book design by Alexis Sulaimani, adapted for ebook by Cora Wigen
Library of Congress Control Number: 2025035482
Hardcover ISBN 9780593855379
Ebook ISBN 9780593855386
International edition ISBN 9798217183487
Originally published in Complex Chinese in hardcover in Taiwan as 日常運動 by ECUS Cultural Enterprise Ltd., New Taipei City, in 2022
First United States edition published by Riverhead in 2026 by arrangement with ECUS Cultural Enterprise Ltd., Taiwan through New River Literary Ltd.
The authorized representative in the EU for product safety and compliance is Penguin Random House Ireland, Morrison Chambers, 32 Nassau Street, Dublin D02 YH68, Ireland, https://eu-contact.penguin.ie.
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Contents
Dedication
Part One
New Town
Vendetta Train
Life During Wartime
Sai Mui, Baby Girl
Terrain of Skin and Flesh
Part Two
Panda
Part Three
The Final Class
Snoopy Friends
The Outside World
Be a Girlfriend
Acknowledgments
About the Author and Translator
_155004762_
For all who carry anger and sorrow
Part One
New Town
No one could have imagined how events unfolded last Sunday. It was like drinking warm water every day, so habitual that you never questioned the nature of the liquid. There was no need to cautiously stick out your tongue to test the temperature. Who would ever suspect that the routines of an orderly life might quietly conceal an invisible poison? One day, scalding white steam curled from your cup. But still, no one noticed. The water slid past your lips, waves of searing heat engulfing the soft flesh of your mouth. Before you could react, the pain had scorched every inch of its tender surface. It was too late to spit it out. Your entire respiratory tract was ablaze. Everything was on fire.
It was the end of July, the height of summer. The sunlight was so brutal that even the birds sought shade among the trees. At the end of a tree-lined lane overlooking the university sports ground was Ah Lei and Panda’s dorm building. Inside their double room, space was tight. A ceiling fan stirred. Ah Lei lay sprawled on the bed, her face slick with sweat, her body leaving a damp, oily imprint on the sheet. All sticky and bothered, she felt like a piece of fish jerky mid-cure. Her eyes still foggy with sleep, she didn’t want to get up. She reached for a bottle of water and took a sip. It made her throat prickle. On the other side of the room, Panda was meticulously putting on makeup in front of a mirror. Her hand stayed steady as she traced her lash line.
“Don’t drink it,” Panda warned Ah Lei. “It’s from the protest. It might be contaminated.” Ah Lei didn’t utter a peep. Snuggled under the covers, she subconsciously touched the back of her neck, as though the stinging still lingered. It had been days since their ill-fated visit to New Town Plaza, but Ah Lei still had vivid nightmares of what happened.
“I’m having lunch in New Town Plaza with my cousin Ah Mak. Remember him? You should join us!” Panda moved on to her eyelashes, lifting them upward with a mascara spoolie. Ah Lei shook her head, limp as a broken-winged insect, with no will to go anywhere. Panda couldn’t take it anymore. She yanked the covers off Ah Lei and pulled open the curtains. Sunlight poured into the room.
Ah Lei shielded her eyes instinctively. She couldn’t help but wonder how her roommate could go on living so merrily, with such ease. After the terrifying ordeal they’d just gone through together, Panda appeared to have no trouble eating or sleeping, just like any carefree university student.
“No matter how painful it gets, life must go on.” Panda shoved toiletries into Ah Lei’s hands as if she had heard Ah Lei’s thoughts. “Get ready and join us! Besides, you really need a new phone. It’s been such a hassle these past few days.”
These words persuaded Ah Lei to comply. She got out of bed. The broken phone had been a gift from her older sister, who was studying abroad. It had a cute little bunny charm dangling from it. Had she held on a bit tighter that day, would it have made a difference?
But there was no way to go back in time to change what took place in the mall. In her dreams and waking moments, she kept thinking about that severed finger covered in blood, tumbling onto the cold, glossy marble floor.
* * *
—
When Ah Lei stepped into the shared bathroom, two young women were brushing their teeth by the sink. Behind the sink were several toilet stalls. At the other end, there were four shower booths. During the semester, sometimes dormmates had to wait for their turn to wash up. Ah Lei made her way to the far end of the sink and fixed her gaze on the mirror. She might’ve been imagining things, but she felt the young women were stealing glances at her.
The women were mainland students who lived in the room at the end of the hallway. They stayed in Hong Kong over summer break for their internships. Once, after returning from a rally, Ah Lei and Panda washed their helmets and goggles and left them to dry in the common lounge. The two mainland students had just finished making breakfast. Upon catching sight of Ah Lei and Panda, they immediately gathered up their bowls and chopsticks and retreated to their room.
“Maybe they’re nationalistic Little Pinks. Maybe they’ll secretly snap photos to post on Weibo so they can put us on trial in the court of public opinion!” Panda said with a grimace. “Do you want to talk to them? Try to win them over with love and peace?” Ah Lei removed the filter from her face mask and said, “It’s not like that.” Things weren’t so black and white.
It wasn’t always about taking sides or trying to change someone’s mind.
It was a more intricate and elusive dynamic, like a metronome swaying back and forth. You never knew which way it would lean at any given moment. She noticed the way the mainland students looked at her; it probably wasn’t disgust or disdain, but she couldn’t quite name it. Lately, she hadn’t been able to figure out some of her own feelings. After that lounge encounter, she started drying her protest gear in her room, so as not to bother anyone.
For the past two months, Panda and Ah Lei had also stayed in their dormitory room instead of returning to their homes for the summer. In hindsight, it was a wise decision. This way, they didn’t have to report every outing to their families, who were especially nervous given the ongoing street demonstrations. It spared everyone unnecessary family friction.
The two had been classmates in junior high, although they could hardly have been considered friends back then. Panda’s outspoken and carefree personality had always made her popular at their all-girls school. Ah Lei, on the other hand, was quiet and reserved. She agonized over every decision, needing to think through different angles before finally making up her mind, only to second-guess herself all over again.
Before becoming roommates, the only time they’d ever spoken to each other was back in ninth grade when the government tried rolling out national education in schools across Hong Kong. A few senior students formed a concern group, going from class to class to explain how the proposed curriculum was a thinly veiled “brainwashing” attempt at stuffing students full of patriotic ideology. They had prepared a petition letter against it and collected signatures. Panda was the first in their class to sign it and rushed up to the blackboard to rally her classmates to do the same.
“A single spark can start a prairie fire. Adults think we’re still just kids, incapable of using our own judgment. They tell us to stay out of politics and focus on schoolwork, but that’s just wrong,” she said.
She mimicked the tones and expressions of those parliamentary candidates on TV, clenching her hand into a fist and waving it in the air. She spoke with such conviction that it was as if she caught those dazzling yet slippery terms such as “right and wrong,” “justice and righteousness,” in her grasp, where they swelled into a scepter and struck the ground with a resounding thud.
“We aren’t old enough to vote yet, but isn’t it high time that we practice what we learned in Civic Education class and show society that we care?” she asked.
At first, the students passed the petition around like a hot potato, afraid of getting into trouble. But Panda’s impassioned speech echoed in the hushed classroom like the luring tunes played by the Pied Piper of Hamelin. One after another, her classmates offered their signatures.
When the forms reached Ah Lei’s desk, she kept twirling her pen as the pages fluttered under the fan. She was struck by the lightness of these sheets. Could signing them really make the proposed policy go away? Did her fellow students truly grasp the weight behind words like “righteousness” and “justice,” and the price that came with them?
She wasn’t sure if she herself fully understood these ideas.
“Are you hesitating out of fear?” The two classmates were not even familiar enough to address each other by their names.
Panda leaned in, her body blocking the sunlight from the classroom window. Her question was really a statement: Anyone who hesitated to sign was a coward.
To Ah Lei’s relief, the class bell rang.
“Let me think it over,” she mumbled, sidestepping Panda’s question. She hastily shoved the form into her drawer just as class began.
No one had imagined that the petition and the students’ newly kindled passion would end up like an unlucky paper airplane, trampled and forgotten before it had a chance to take flight. The very next day, when the members of the concern group were handing out flyers, they were called into the principal’s office.
It wasn’t clear what the principal said. Rumor had it that when the students came out of his office, some were sobbing miserably, some were red-faced with anger, and others, apparently stunned, wore blank expressions. The concern group disbanded that very day. Their Facebook page was wiped clean. From then on, there wasn’t any voice of dissent left on campus. On the bulletin board put up by the Civic Education Society, there were more pictures than words.
* * *
—
Two years ago, when Panda and Ah Lei started university, they were assigned to the same dorm. Even then, they didn’t become particularly close—their personalities still differed, and their schedules rarely aligned.
This changed in June when they went to Tamar Park for a peaceful rally to protest a proposed extradition bill. Since its sovereignty was transferred from the UK back to China in 1997, Hong Kong had been self-governing and maintained its own legislative and law enforcement systems. This was the era when Ah Lei and Panda grew up. Ordinary citizens were alarmed by the new bill because they suspected it would open the door to mainland law enforcement and feared scenarios where their fellow Hong Kong residents might be secretly arrested and transferred to the mainland for trial.
Ah Lei hadn’t been the most political person, but even she understood it would be an infringement of civil liberties in Hong Kong, so the night before the rally when Panda invited her to join her, she agreed immediately. That day, the peaceful gathering turned into turmoil when police fired tear gas at the crowd. Some rallygoers were arrested. In the months that followed, as they shared more unthinkable experiences, they came to realize it was at the park—when they linked arms and ran together—that their lives became entwined like vines, winding tighter and denser as time went on.
That summer, it felt like they had each begun leading two different lives. On weekdays, they worked part-time jobs; on weekends, they took to the streets. A few of their friends always led the way at the front, while Ah Lei and Panda trailed behind to provide support. They each carried a large bottle of saline solution, with smaller bottles in their pockets. After tear gas struck, they were ready to help people rinse their eyes or wounds.
Out there, Ah Lei’s nerves were always stretched tight, like a rubber band pulled too far but unable to snap. Every scrap of update or conversation she heard left her on edge. Her hands were so sweaty that more than once she fumbled the saline bottles and had to go after them as they tumbled down the street. In the aftermath of a clash with the police, it was always a mess. People sprawled face down on the ground, vomiting; some had swollen, bloodshot eyes that couldn’t stay open; some of them were injured on their legs or arms with blood streaming down from fresh wounds. Cries and moans blended with the sharp cracks of gunfire nearby. In the first few weeks, Ah Lei always stood frozen on the sidelines, unable to chip in.
The Hong Kong she knew emphasized instrumental rationality—a “first-world” materialistic city ruled by capitalism. An elite education had drilled in her that this city ran on cool-headed speculation, analysis, and salesmanship.
But none of these things explained how, on a recent outing, human blood trickled on the ground, streaming past her half-dirty Nike sneakers.
That day, when the police began closing in to clear the scene, protesters fled into the metro station, found a spot without CCTV, and changed out of their black outfits—a sort of protest uniform—before boarding a train.
As their train left the station, friends traded information. A few people gossiped about celebrity news: who was hooking up or breaking up with whom; someone suggested grabbing a late-night snack. Occasionally, a fellow passenger shared updates on protests in other areas—where bullets had been fired, where fires had broken out. Most riders hunched over their phones, lost in their own information feed.
Ah Lei found a quiet corner and sat down with Panda. She wryly noted that the most obvious benefit of the movement thus far was that weekend-night train cars were no longer jam-packed, and one could easily find a seat. She leaned against the grease-smeared glass, the reflections of her companions indistinct. Now and then, a burst of laughter or an impassioned curse drifted over.
Before heading back to campus, several classmates stopped at an all-night cha chaan teng. It was already past ten, but all five round tables in the modest dining room were still fully seated. A few elderly men picked their teeth and cursed at the newspapers in front of them. Ah Lei guessed they must have lost their horse bets. Diners sat almost back-to-back. A waiter sailed through the space to refill the teacups. A waitress retrieved various dim sum delicacies from the steamer pot. Fire flared up from the wok as the chef stir-fried beef chow fun in the open kitchen.
The owner ushered the group outside where he had set up some tables and chairs for them. They ordered a few small dishes to share. In the sweltering weather, the air was thick like a layer of plastic wrap clinging to everyone, squeezing them tight, making them sweat without end. Ah Lei couldn’t stop scratching the back of her neck, fearing that the poisonous gas had left a rash blooming across the skin she couldn’t see. Panda asked if she wanted to ice it. She shook her head.
The young men at the table were starved and tore into the food like ravenous wolves. A sexy barmaid sidled up to promote beer, and they ordered several bottles right away. Suddenly, Ah Lei felt a cold sensation creeping across the back of her neck and yelped. She turned around and saw Panda and the others popping open the chilled bottles. A guy immediately began chugging his beer.
Panda pressed one of the icy bottles against Ah Lei’s neck and asked, “Any better?”
“Are you even supposed to drink alcohol after being tear-gassed? Isn’t it just adding poison to poison?” Ah Lei responded.
The guy sitting next to her stiffened. “Don’t be scared, it’s fighting poison with poison!” he said.
Panda chimed in. “C’mon, alcohol gets the blood flowing—maybe it’ll flush out the toxins faster.”
Ah Lei silently picked up a bottle and poured drinks for the others. As she watched the foam rise and overflow, she realized she wasn’t able to join her friends’ banter.
Her thoughts returned to a recent encounter at a metro station. She and her friends hadn’t had a chance to change and were still dressed head to toe in black when they brushed past a family. A little boy wearing a cartoon animal headband, clearly just back from a theme park, excitedly pointed at them like he’d spotted some exotic beasts. “Mommy, protesters! They’re protesters!” he shouted. His mother panicked and rushed to cover his mouth. Ah Lei and her friends were flustered and scrambled away.
