Editorial Review

On June 4th, 1989, China’s Communist Party massacred hundreds of people in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. Two years later, Hong Kong, the center of the democratic movement and the hub of outrage at the incident, gave birth to Club 64, an intellectually stimulated watering hole that held its own amid Central’s materialistic opulence. Some five years ago, I couldn’t bear to let go on the last night of Club 64, and I borrowed an acoustic guitar and sang the Talking Heads’ “Heaven” while bohemian loyalists hugged each other around me and lamented the death of an institution — of a part of themselves. Club 64 was a classic political salon, a commons where revolutionary culture was alive and hipsters played avant-garde jazz, activists convened to draft manifestos, and thinkers and dreamers jotted down one-line philosophy on the writing-covered walls. There’s nothing like it anymore, and the owners were banished to the fringe of Central on a quiet alley in Noho and opened Club 71 — named after July 1st, 2003, when half a million people marched for democracy. There’s little doubt that the 6-4 movement, despite its rebirth as the 7-1 cause, is all but dead. But Club 71 is still one of the counterculture hubs of Hong Kong — and hence an oasis that must be guarded and treasured.