TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Taiwanese rock band Fire Ex. (滅火器) and Hong Kong songwriter Albert Leung (林夕) have collaborated on a song to support the Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters, with the title, “A City Of Sadness,” reminiscent of Taiwan’s own 228 Incident.
The four members of the Kaohsiung rock group have a history of supporting student activism in Taiwan. The new song, whose Chinese title can be translated as “A Tale of Two Cities” (雙城記), bears the same official English-language title as the 1989 Hou Hsiao-hsien (侯孝賢) movie about the 228 Incident, the large-scale repression of a Taiwanese uprising by the Kuomintang government in which thousands of people died, and which was followed by the White Terror period of executions, disappearances, and banishment.
What Hong Kong is going through today looks more and more like what Taiwan went through 70 years ago, Fire Ex. wrote on their Facebook page.
Their new song even uses elements from the score of Hou’s movie, CNA reported. The lyrics open with the line “Innocent people committed tomorrow’s crimes yesterday.”
Last June, Fire Ex., an abbreviation for “fire extinguisher,” contributed to a previous song about the Hong Kong activists. This time, they called on the public to attend a solidarity concert scheduled for Sunday (Nov. 17) evening at Liberty Square in front of Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall.