Recently someone – no name, no return address – sent me a white cotton T-shirt.

On the front it said clearly in thick, blocky, black typeface capitals: INDEPENDENT HONG KONG F**K THE REST. 

The T-shirt, to me, signalled Hong Kong, beaten into submission, its democratic demands silenced, leaders jailed for demanding human rights, books removed from libraries that mentioned Tiananmen Square, somehow, against all odds, is still holding on.

Hong Kong people, gritty and resilient, are, in the biting Chinese phrase ‘eating bitterness’ while ‘sitting small’ but they haven’t lost their spirit.