藝評

圖片說明：
1.–4. 2019新冠病毒大流行下，面戴口罩的日子，香港， 2020年5月 (圖片由作者提供)

Caption:
1.–4. Face-masked during Covid-19 pandemic, Hong Kong, May 2020 (Photos: John Batten)



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2019年新冠病毒，令我在資本主義香港社會一向繁忙的生活方式大打折扣。我沒有再執行想像中價值數百萬的股票交易，也沒有再做白日夢，想著開辦香港最出色的現場另類音樂表演場地。我不再在停泊地中海的超級遊艇上懶洋洋地過日子，而很久以前，我還在喝出虛構的頂級波爾多紅酒。我也沒有再走訪那間空中樓閣的深圳電腦晶片廠，更沒有出席私房火窩宴，和我的成都供應商一同大乾茅台、紅著臉地開懷大笑，又或享受他們提供的「娛樂」。

那些夢境才不過是幾個月前的事。2019新冠病毒，令未來經濟百上加斤：現在，能夠有大夢想的空間真的不多。

自3月以來，我的晚間生活都是深居簡出。留家抗疫，我便下廚做晚餐、吃飯、聽收音機，然後在上環一帶懷一下舊、散一下步。我看著人們溜狗，主人們通常成雙成對、手牽著手，身穿萊卡運動緊身褲，口罩不住他們的快樂，也有外傭負責溜狗，他們同樣是戴著口罩，也穿萊卡運動緊身褲。晚上餘下的時間，我會在已關閉公園仍然開放的地方看書。我曾經擔心自己很快患上認知障礙症，所以那時起每天都以報章填字遊戲做練習。我承認，能通常達到「很好」的水平確有令我放下心頭大石。那麼，我現在應該消除認知障礙症提早發生的恐懼，停止每天都做填字嗎？我喜歡這項挑戰，我享受測試，而且我還未達到「非常好」的水平！我明白被逼留家的兒童怎麼想：他們需要同學的挑戰，在真正的課室內他們會爭相答題。

2019新冠病毒改變了我的日常。因為暫時不可能上戲院、聽現場音樂表演、到音樂會和做其他令人分心的事，連宵夜也不大可以，令我有更多時間去做夢和回想，在現在想從前。我的想像很多時會回到童年，嬉戲玩樂、一家人聚在一起和安全的美好時光。2019新冠病毒是本年最重大的事件，關於它的傳媒報導也是鋪天蓋地，激發了我在過去數星期回憶1960年代後期重大的「世界」新聞（當年今日也一樣，以美國為主），那時我在澳洲，還在唸小學。老實說，我的童年是安全和無憂無慮的。

1960年代後期的新聞主要有：越戰；尼日利亞的比亞法拉飢荒；美國和蘇聯的太空競賽，到了1969年太陽神11號登陸熱球時到達高鋒；各種文化與社交改變，例如反文化運動、和平遊行、人民力量、反戰示威、「代溝」、規模漸大的女權主義運動所引發的焚燒胸衣、避孕丸、自由性愛和性愛自由；電視和我們都看過的精彩節目；搖滾音樂和胡士托等流行音樂節；開放使用藥物和過量服食藥物； Amerika（留意拼法，指德國式亞美利加）的種族動亂；中東的劫機事件和戰爭（似乎當年今日也一樣模式又再出現）；1968年巴黎學運；蘇聯入侵捷克；各種科技創新出現，如原子粒收音機取代了體積較大的膽機；林登．約翰遜出乎意料地決定不再連任美國總統，然後甘迺迪遇刺，還有後來選出尼克遜後所引發的連串事件和美國政策改變：由水門醜聞到承認共產主義中華人民共和國的外交地位。這些都是過去發生的事情，但是只要改改國家和關鍵人物的名字，今天仍然似曾相識。

我那時也在晚間電視新聞中，模糊地聽過小孩所誤解，有關香港流感的報導：首宗「香港流感」個案於1968年7月在香港確診，但可能源自內地。流感其後於1968年年末至1969年先後以兩波傳遍世界。香港流感和2019新冠病毒一樣是冠狀病毒，名為H3N2。這種病毒現在普遍稱為「季節性流感」，可以透過流感針給你一些保護。然而，即使在今天的美國，每年都有3萬多人因為流感死亡。

香港流感大流行在全球奪去超過100萬人的性命。歐洲和美國死亡人數眾多；其中，德國便有6萬宗。無疑，世界上一些較窮的國家，還有很多沒有算進去的死亡數字我小時候懂的不多，但我們的日子在沒有口罩、沒有封城、沒有酒精搓手液和消毒濕巾下繼續地過。大流行減退後，也沒有「新常態」！

世界各地很多政客都和我年紀相約，他們把2019新冠病毒形容為前所未見。但是歷史所告訴我們的卻不太一樣：2019新冠病毒是1919年西班牙流感爆發以來，第四種圍攻全球的重大冠狀病毒。人類此前已經歷過2019新冠病毒的震撼了，就在過去100年便已經有四次。

上次發生的時候我還是小孩。然後，那並不是夢。再然後，我們還是繼續過日子 。


原文刊於《明報周刊》，2020年5月8日



Hong Kong Flu Isn’t a Dream

by John Batten


My usual hectic Hong Kong capitalist lifestyle has been clipped by Covid-19. I’m no longer executing my imaginary multi-million dollar share trades, or, daydreaming of opening Hong Kong’s best live alternative-music venue. I have ceased lazing on my Mediterranean anchored ghost super-yacht, and long ago, I drank my fictitious supply of excellent Bordeaux. I have stopped visiting my castle-in-the-air Shenzhen computer chip factory and no longer attend secret hot-pot banquets, washed-down with toasts of mao tai and hearty red-cheeked laughs with my Chengdu suppliers and their supplied ‘entertainment.’

Those dreams could have been just a few months ago. Covid-19 has pushed a much tougher economic future: now, with little room for dreaming big. 

My nights have become simpler since March. Homebound, I prepare dinner, eat, listen to the radio and, then have a little old-fashioned promenade around Sheung Wan. I watch the dogs being walked by their owners (usually, hand-in-hand happy face-masked couples wearing athletic lycra leggings), or, walked by their owners’ helpers (also face-masked, also wearing athletic lycra leggings). I read in the remaining open section of the closed park. In one worried moment, of getting dementia in the future, I start doing daily newspaper word puzzles. I admit, I am relieved to often attain the puzzle’s ‘very good’ level. So, should I now dismiss fears of premature dementia and stop doing the daily puzzle? I enjoy the challenge, I enjoy the test: and the ‘excellent’ level is still to be reached! I can appreciate locked-in children: they need the challenge of their school classmates who jostle and compete in a real classroom.

This Covid-19 change to my routine has allowed time to dream, to reminiscence, to let the past interrupt the present as cinema, live music, concerts, other diversions, and late-nights snacks are not temporarily possible. My imagination often returns to childhood and the good times of play and family closeness and safety. Triggered by Covid-19 as this year’s dominant event and its blanket media news coverage, I have over the last weeks recalled the major ‘world’ news-stories (then, as now, often USA dominant) during the latter years of the 1960s when I was a primary school student in Australia. A childhood that was, frankly, safe and privileged.

Those news stories in the late 1960s were dominated by: the Vietnam War; the Biafra famine in Nigeria; the space race between Russia and the USA, culminating in the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing; the cultural and social changes epitomized by counter-culture movements, peace rallies, people power, anti-war protests, the ‘generation gap’, bra-burning by a growing feminist movement, the Pill, free sex and sexual freedom; TV and all the great programmes we watched; rock music and pop festivals such as Woodstock; drug busts and drug overdoses; race riots in Amerika (note the spelling); airline high-jackings and the wars and troubles in the Middle East (seemingly then, as now, on repeat-mode); the 1968 Paris student protests; the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Soviet Union; technological innovations such as small electronic transistors replacing large valves; LBJ’s shock decision not to re-stand for President of the USA, then Robert Kennedy’s assassination, and the eventual election of Richard Nixon that triggered a host of events and USA policy changes: from the Watergate scandal to diplomatic recognition of the communist People’s Republic of China. These events are from the past, but just change the country and the key players’ names, and it all sounds so similar as today.

I also heard vague, child-(mis)understood reports on the nightly TV news about the Hong Kong influenza outbreak. It was July 1968 and the first case of the ‘Hong Kong Flu’ had been diagnosed in Hong Kong, but probably originated on the mainland. It then spread around the world in two waves during late 1968 and throughout 1969. The Hong Kong Flu was, as is Covid-19, a coronavirus, identified as H3N2 – the virus most commonly referred now as ‘seasonal influenza’, and which your flu shot gives some protection. However, even now in the USA, more than 30,000 yearly deaths are attributed to influenza.

The Hong Kong Flu pandemic killed over one million people worldwide. Europe and the USA experienced many deaths; Germany for example had 60,000 deaths. Undoubtably, many uncountable deaths occurred in the world’s poorer countries. As a child, I was oblivious: our lives carried on without facemasks, without lock-downs, without alcohol gel and hand-wipes. When the pandemic subsided, there was no “new normal!”

Politicians around the world – many of my age – have described Covid-19 as unprecedented. But, history tells it differently: Covid-19 is the fourth major coronavirus pandemic to encircle the world since the Spanish Flu outbreak in 1919. We have experienced Covid-19 before: four times in the last hundred years.

It last happened when I was a child. And, it isn’t a dream. And, then, we all carried on.


Originally published in Ming Pao Weekly, 8 May 2020. Translated by Aulina Chan.