Mimi Martin
Mimi Martin is the writer-performer of Youth in Flames, a show headed to Edinburgh Festival Fringe between the 1st and 24th August at ZOO Playground – Playground 1, starting from 19:00 (60mins). Tickets are available through the EdFringe Box Office.
I began writing Youth in Flames as a token of remembrance for my time growing up in Hong Kong – a love letter to everything the city gave me. I moved there when I was ten and only moved back to the UK once I had completed my studies. It wasn’t until I came back that I realised how little people truly knew about Hong Kong’s political journey. For many, understanding came through filtered headlines or token media coverage. But I had lived it – I was in the immediacy of it.
It was a sobering experience: witnessing Hong Kong’s autonomy slowly being stripped away, seeing young people hospitalised for protesting, and watching local media silenced day by day for speaking out. Though I’m not a local Hong Konger, I felt compelled to keep the city’s story alive and to spark a wider conversation about how young people, time and again, are at the forefront of change.
To give more context, Hong Kong is a former British colony which was handed back to China in 1997. From that time, Hong Kong has worked under the ‘Basic Law’, the principle being ‘one country, two systems’. For the next 50 years, Hong Kong’s judicial and legal system would be separate from China, including rights for freedom of assembly, freedom of press, and freedom of speech. This has been set to expire in 2047. But in April 2019, Carrie Lam proposed an extradition bill that would allow for criminal suspects from Hong Kong to be extradited to Mainland China under certain circumstances. The move sparked immediate and widespread outrage. The Hong Kong public feared that the bill would give China greater influence over Hong Kong; silencing activists, targeting journalists and eventually eroding the city’s autonomy.
The protests that followed were staggering in scale and emotion. What began as peaceful marches quickly escalated into chaos. Clashes between police and demonstrators grew more violent. Tear gas became a near-daily occurrence. It felt like it happened overnight. One minute, I was walking to my part-time job; the next, I was barricaded inside an office building, trying to avoid clouds of tear gas flooding the streets. I wanted to capture that very atmosphere in the play — to bring audiences into the intensity, the fear, and the courage that many in Hong Kong experienced and lived through.
As an expat, I’m acutely aware of the privilege I had in being able to leave — and to speak. I constantly asked myself: Am I telling this story in a way that respects those who can’t? For many in Hong Kong, telling a truthful account of what was happening carries real and lasting consequences. In writing Youth in Flames, I made deliberate choices: to only tell the story I bore witness to, and to speak with the awareness that while I have the freedom to do so, I am — in part — speaking on behalf of those who do not.
Jake Mace
