闫博士之声【闫博士/斯蒂芬·格里菲斯】（中）《Morewellian》中的人物原型以及“香港反送中运动”带给西方和闫博士的震撼和启发

在这期节目中，闫博士对话小说作家斯蒂芬·格里菲斯，探讨其以新冠疫情和中国吹哨人为背景创作的小说《Morewellian》中的角色原型，包括以香港黎智英和闫博士本人为基础的人物。双方深入交流了香港2019年反送中运动对西方及个人的震撼、中西方年轻一代对自由态度的对比，以及中国大陆体制下的洗脑教育与追求自由的心路历程。

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I see that you said the theater you were working in shut down during the pandemic, and that gave you time to write your second work of fiction, Morewellian. Would you briefly introduce it? I don’t want to tell people too much, in case they’re interested in reading the whole book, but I’d like you to introduce it briefly to the audience. I can tell our audience that the book gets very good, five-star ratings on Amazon. If you read the comments, you’ll definitely be interested in reading it. Stephen, could you also tell our audience why it’s so interesting?

Yeah. It’s a fictionalised account of the COVID years, told from the perspective of a British journalist and a Chinese whistleblower. To be honest, the Chinese whistleblower was inspired by—I think I had an idea of having some sort of collaboration, but then I saw you on the Tucker Carlson show years and years ago. You had fled to America, and I incorporated that idea into the book.

I wanted to write the book to awaken people to what was going on, but to do it in an entertaining fashion, with a storyline. It was also cathartic for me, because I was very frustrated that everything we were being told by the media, especially in my country, and by the government, just didn’t add up.

I was prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt for the first couple of weeks, maybe the first month. Then all my doubts and suspicions seemed to be confirmed. I don’t know why, but I’m naturally sceptical, and I was sceptical quite early on. The PCR tests were not reliable, but nobody was reporting on that. Quarantining children and healthy people should never have happened. That was an inefficient use of policy. They lied about the origins of the virus, and they kept changing their minds about face masks. All these things were going through my head. I needed to vent, really, and writing the book was my way of doing that.

I incorporated my limited knowledge of China. I came at it from the angle that the virus was deliberately released from a lab. I’ve changed lots of details, and there are lots of characters in the book that you might recognise, but the names are changed slightly. Some of them—oh, this Klaus Squib—they’re all based on real people, with a bit of imagination. You’ll—

Yes, I have. Please, please. I’ve recognised some of the names you used in the fiction. Besides the one you said was inspired by me, I saw there’s a character named Doctor Yun Yuen, who’s working on this. Thank you for creating such a character, which I didn’t know about until you published the book.

I also saw that you talk about a Hong Kong-based big newspaper owner, whom you call Johnny Lee in your book. He owns the Pan Apple Daily, but I immediately recognised that he is Jimmy Lai, who owns Apple Daily. He is a very respected person in Hong Kong, and he is now in jail because the Chinese government claims he incited subversion, Hong Kong independence, and things like that. He isn’t allowed to leave prison. The Chinese government definitely doesn’t want him to have any impact among the people of Hong Kong or in the world.

In this fiction, as we just talked about at the end of the last section, you created a character based on the leading Hong Kong anti-CCP publisher Jimmy Lai, and also his Apple Daily. Would you like to share with our audience why you wanted to create such a character, what you know about Jimmy Lai, and why you think he inspired you to create this character? What would you like to share? In the U.S. and the U.K., there are still people advocating for Jimmy Lai’s release from jail. People are really worried that China might make Jimmy Lai sick or even cause him to die in jail, as they did to other real dissidents. Why did you want to create such a character?

While I was in Hong Kong, I was aware of Jimmy Lai and his Apple Daily. I knew he was one of the biggest characters in Hong Kong.And as he was sort of, it was like a rags to riches story. He arrived as a refugee in Hong Kong when he was five or six years old, I think. And I just admired how he built up first a clothing importing newspaper. And when he was being attacked, even while I was still in Hong Kong, and the freedoms were being slowly eroded, and a lot of other newspapers like the South China Morning Post and I'm censoring because I knew they didn't want to upset the Chinese authorities.

But Jimmy Lai and the notions of freedom of speech and standing up for the Hong Kong people were so strong in him that he was prepared to make the sacrifice. And I just think that's a very impressive human attribute when people do that. So that's why I would always stand by someone like Jimmy Lai and others, even some in my own country who are being locked up for their own freedom of speech nowadays.

Yeah. So during Hong Kong's pro-democratic movement in 2019, at that time, do you also come to contact your previous friend in Hong Kong to know more information about Hong Kong from them, or you do establish new social connections with Hong Kong people, for example, in UK, to know about the movement?

Yeah, no, it was a shame, really, because I left Hong Kong kind of before social media and everything, and the email I had at the time changed, so I lost contact with. So I was really just watching on television or online. So I didn't have a personal contact in Hong Kong to tell me what was going on, but I was aware of some of the student activists.

So some of the characters in Morewellian were based also on these actual student activists that again were prepared to risk their own for the cause, and I just admire them so much. And I was just struck by the contrast between being blood with the young people in the West, where young people in the West seem quite happy to lose their freedoms and to not stand up for democracy and not caring about freedom of speech, not caring about government interference, whereas the Hong Kong people were standing up for all the things that I feel be important in life.

So my admiration for the Hong Kong people just grew, even leaving Hong Kong and just seeing two million people on the streets out of seven million people, it was incredible, and it was so well organized and everything that I was sort of inspired again to write about them and to in the book.

Oh, yeah. When you talk about millions of Hong Kong people go to the street, yes, I was in Hong Kong at that time, and actually, I, when I read your description in Morewellian, this second fiction, it's not only a fiction for me because I can see that you combine a lot of the knowledge in depth about the politics and also the culture among the people between under different structures like Hong Kong, which is UK's more about UK style, and China is a pure communist style.

So it reminds me a lot of things happened in Hong Kong, like for example, you have mentioned that why only cross one river in Shenzhen, the Shenzhen River, people live in Hong Kong and live in Guangdong Province, a totally difference in their thinking, their also their values, ideology. And also you mentioned that Hong Kong people, as you just mentioned, when the student become rebelling, actually is for freedom. They are in pursuit of freedom.

While back to UK, you said it is the student minority or something. It's more about try to be communist sympathy even, or even from anti-democratic structure. So these are all the things I have observed when I was in Hong Kong from a different angle. Because your background is the Western culture, my background is from the Communist China. The education I received in China for over twenty years, and all this kind of propaganda from I was born gave me different kind of thinking background.

So I try to understand, figure out why there are such differences. And talk about the protest, I want to share something with you. Do you know that as a mainland Chinese born and educated, I even didn't realize the power of people, and even under this kind of very, very, very strong control of the Chinese government, and this makes me start try to collect a lot of information as much as I can to understand the differences.

Why I even in the past over thirty years, including my life in Hong Kong, I even didn't realize the power of people and also the protest, and I can't have the idea to fight against the communist China government before I saw Hong Kong people's activities in the street in 2019. So can I, please? So, sorry, can I ask you? So, if you're the mainland and never gone to Hong Kong, you think you would have still developed your belief, your love of freedom, or was that something that just fermented itself while you were in Hong Kong?

Housing society and also the culture in mainland China. Because when I moved to Hong Kong, I already uh complete my PhD study. And if I want, I could stay in a big hospital in Guangzhou and be a ophthalmologist. And also, uh, my family actually wanted me to stay in China. My parents they wanted me to stay in China because that's a life they can foresee. It's in the future stable and have a good income. Be respectful doctor. But I don't want stay there. So that's why without any other help, I don't have people who like the other Chinese student have the uh supervisor to recommend them, introduce them to the overseas lab.

I don't have this kind of connection, and I don't get uh apply the government scholarship. None of these things. I just want try my best to leave that uh society, and finally I get offer from the University of Hong Kong. So for me, I would say I because of my uh maybe because of my whole childhood and my family bring me a lot of books from the West, like and also I watch the uh Disney cartoons, the U.S. movies, and I read the European fictions and literatures uh during my childhood. So I have this kind of feeling in pursuit of freedom. That's why there are also something uh conflict.

Uh, in myself, fighting against the existing uh culture in mainland China. When I was there, I don't feel comfortable to stay in that kind of society. Even if uh I could be a doctor in a big hospital, I don't like that feeling. And so, for me, I think even if I didn't get the chance to go to Hong Kong, I would still find the other opportunity to uh go to other places out of mainland. And if I must stay in China, I.

Think I would be uh unhappy and uh not comfortable because I can't recognize a lot of values there, especially the the uh the things government want uh input to us want bring um do the brainwash like I don't want see I don't want the uh see people stay in unfair environment and without any chance to struggle and so yeah for me I think I have the motive to leave Hong Kong at that time uh leave China at that time. Yeah, you you must have quite a strong character to.

Be able to maintain an independent thought process when you're in a sort of indoctrinated society. I mean that you're, I guess, or do you think there are a lot of people in China like that, but just keep quiet? I would say that there are definitely people like me. I won't say I'm the only one or such unique have this kind of feeling in personal freedom or by reading the Western literatures or the uh.

Like understanding the Western values, the universal values. But I would say that there are a lot of people if they didn't get opportunity to leave China and they stay in China, then they would be kind of in a suppressed ways, which could, like for example, cause people have depression, which is very common in China now, especially among the intellectuals. And also because the whole system, even the education system, from beginning of our childhood is already designed the way to select the people fulfill the.

Have this kind of motives and feelings to have freedom. That's why when I moved to the United States, when I ah joined my colleague, Mr. Luda, Luda Media, ah using the Chinese speaking channel to advocate for anti-communist China to reveal the darkness of communist China, we get.

Huge feedback from China and from Xi Jinping's, uh, people around Xi Jinping's, uh, regime, uh, to the local, uh, Chinese people, even in the village, and also that make Chinese government very, very angry. And, uh, they have launched very strong, uh, forces to arrest, disappear these people in China because they know these are like the seeds of freedom. Once your mother seeds to go to the ground, they will grow up.

So I'm a lucky one. I can do what I want, and I'm still lucky. I'm still survive. This is very important because, as you know, that in Hong Kong, the brave Hong Kong fighters or people who want to go to Hong Kong, even back to Jimmy Lee's period, they some many of them are not unlucky enough. They even lost their lives. I I'm a lucky person, so I still can do what I want, and I want help people to change their life because I know that feeling. Once you have this kind of very, uh, strong motives inside, but the society doesn't allow it. It is really kind of a torture for you.