It was, in a way, selfish of people like me and Bao Pu to put the onus for changing the world upon the people of Hong Kong. They wanted to preserve their identity. Sure, that was tied up with concepts like democracy, liberalism, and the rule of law. But it was also tied to that other universal concept Wilson had talked about: the desire to be left alone. And over the coming decades, people were not going to be left alone unless they forged a solidarity with others who felt the same way, like different tributaries feeding into a larger whole, a building wave.
