{"id":27641,"date":"2021-02-01T18:30:03","date_gmt":"2021-02-01T09:30:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2021\/feb\/01\/the-fearless-hong-kong-that-made-me-an-overnight-popstar-that-city-has-vanished"},"modified":"2021-02-01T18:30:03","modified_gmt":"2021-02-01T09:30:03","slug":"the-free-hong-kong-that-made-me-an-overnight-popstar-that-city-has-vanished-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=27641","title":{"rendered":"The free Hong Kong that made me an overnight popstar? That city has vanished"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s hard to believe just how quickly the vibrant city has changed since I first arrived in 2013 to perform a song at a protest. A blanket of fear covers it now<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Listen to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/music\/audio\/2021\/jan\/27\/episode-1-hong-kong-accidental-pop-star-podcast\">Reverberate: Music That Shook History \u2013 episode 1: Hong Kong\u2019s accidental popstar<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>My first experience of Hong Kong was, I must admit, unusual. It was 2013, I was 30 years old, and I\u2019d just flown 6,000 miles to perform a song at a huge protest.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019d written the song six years earlier. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/lifeandstyle\/2014\/mar\/15\/experience-pop-star-overnight-kashy-keegan\">It was called This Is My Dream<\/a>, and it was a defiant song about not giving up. At the time, I was a struggling singer-songwriter living in the small English retirement town of Worthing; I posted the song on a website for unsigned musicians, and then mostly forgot about it.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2021\/feb\/01\/the-fearless-hong-kong-that-made-me-an-overnight-popstar-that-city-has-vanished\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s hard to believe just how quickly the vibrant city has changed since I first arrived in 2013 to perform a song at a protest. A blanket of fear covers it nowListen to Reverberate: Music That Shook History \u2013 episode 1: Hong Kong\u2019s accidental popstarM&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1871,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,50,48,425,80],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-china","category-hong-kong","category-music","category-protest"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1871"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27641"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27641\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27643,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27641\/revisions\/27643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}