"Indelible City" by Louisa Lim

Louisa Lim grew up in Hong Kong and later covered China and Hong Kong for a decade as a correspondent for BBC and NPR. Her previous book, "The People's Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen Revisited," recalled China's brutal suppression of protest in Tiananmen Square in 1989.Now a teacher at the University of Melbourne in Australia, she found herself immersed in familiar territory when protests broke out in her native Hong Kong in 2019. The protests were a reaction to a crackdown by Chinese authorities who want to bring the city under its control.Lim said she found herself caught up in the protests that swept through Hong Kong before the covid shutdown, forcing her to question her objectivity as a journalist in covering the scene."Indelible City" covers Hong Kong's past, from the British takeover in 1842 to its "return" to China in 1997 to the present situation as Beijing lays down ever-stricter rules for citizens.Lim talks to Steve Tarter about an exodus from Hong Kong by citizens who seek to avoid Chinese domination and start little Hong Kongs across the globe.