Tears of Survival
31 Aug 2021
I can hardly remember My Little Airport ever disappointing their fans. It’s not a difficult task, especially for a band having released ten albums. People criticise their once-beloved bands out of two reasons: they changed, or they never change. Did My Little Airport change? Yes, the texture of their music shifted from time to time. Do they stand steadfastly? They do. They remain sensitive to life, to the city, and to the era. They managed to balance audiences’ nostalgia for familiar elements and expectation for surprises; and that’s the key to their success.
The new album Sabrina’s Tears (SABINA 之淚) recaps most of the singles released since 2019. It opens with “Sycamore Street (詩歌舞街),” which depicts a midnight walk with electrical touches. Then, with their consistently accurate capture of imageries, My Little Airport presents to audience a series of love songs regarding losing and separation. Love has always played an indispensable role in their works, and in this album they probe into the melancholic sigh after once again becoming alone.
These private moments are followed by several tracks responding to the fate of Hong Kong, including “Not Knowing by Then (那陣時不知道),” one of their most-streamed songs. Although “Ms. Wu (吳小姐)” is excluded from the track list, traces of history scatter throughout the album: Hong Kong has suffered, since 2019, from anti-ELAB movement, the pandemic, and National Security Law. These massive changes are recorded in the lyrics, as several other social movements were.
I’ve never been to Hong Kong. Nevertheless, My Little Airport’s music as if put me in the urban ambient on the subtropical land. Hong Kong has long occupied a unique corner in the complicated Taiwanese national identity. After the collapse of “one country, two systems” policy, local awareness of the two places became intertwined more closely. Confronting the Chinese authority, some Taiwanese people regard the status quo of Hong Kong as an alert for our own future. The common origin of oppression further strengthened My Little Airport’s image of political correctness, as their works have been obliged to withdraw from the Chinese market.
The totalitarian regime of Beijing is reestablishing the authentication of works as a manner of thought control, forcing more and more Taiwanese and Hongkongese artists to choose between submitting to the Chinese nationalist ideology or giving up the vast market. In light of such phenomenon, political standpoint gradually becomes a criteria for evaluating works. During the 2019-2020 Hong Kong protests, Denise Ho impressed the Taiwanese public by constantly voicing out for the movement, though many of Taiwanese people might have never listened to her music. And so it goes with My Little Airport. Their lyrics caught a certain amount of attention owing to the political metaphors that elaborately respond to our times.
But great works are not based on political correctness; an era isn’t only composed of historical burdens. However hard the time is, people still have private lives. That’s why My Little Airport deserves so much praise: Their approaches to our times start from the segments of daily life, which appear affecting and real. Those segments remind us that Hongkongese are not merely tragic heroes of the dark times. Instead, they are human, who love, write, and survive. They survive to become the protagonists of their own story.
My Little Airport has made another great hit by leading us to reach the spirit of Hong Kong. Their music declares to the world—especially to those who care about the city—that Hong Kong is still alive and will be living on. Sabina shed tears for the society, the people, and love. And this is the so-called history, as Julian Barnes noted—
History isn’t the lies of the victors. It’s more the memories of the survivors, most of whom are neither victorious nor defeated.