I think I should stop now.

Last line of Tat Ming Pair’sFootnote 1 “High-flown 天花亂墜” (1989)

How do we end this book on Tat Ming Pair? Hit by a flush of sentimentality, we wonder if we should mention any sense of an ending at all. In Chapter 1, we called this publication our Tat Ming project, and we located it in the intersection of popular music studies and cultural studies. That is why pop matters, this is where pop matters, we wrote. While we are wrapping up ours, the Tat Ming project at large, as launched and sustained by Tats Lau and Anthony Wong, is still going on. The previous chapter is a testament to the resilience of this electronic duo, established more than three decades ago, in a city that has been through so many vicissitudes. As we are updating this coda, in January 2024, Tats is planning two concerts in Hong Kong the coming month following the publication and success of his memoir He also did a promotion tour in Taipei. Anthony is planning a tour later this year to Australia and Taiwan, after his Hong Kong concerts, scheduled for August 2023, were cancelled shortly after they were announced. The venue, the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, informed Anthony they “are not in a position to proceed” and returned the deposit received.Footnote 2 Last year he completed a tour to London, Manchester, Amsterdam and Berlin.Footnote 3 Tat Ming themselves plan to continue the REPLAY series of concerts, in whatever form.

We think we should stop now. And we are reminded of Tat Ming’s hit song “High-flown” released in 1989. A Hong Kong pop song critiquing Hong Kong’s popular music, its lyrics can readily render a typical Frankfurt School reading of popular culture. It laments on the monotony, emptiness, and omnipresence of popular music, ultimately sounding a death knell for authentic feelings of the people. When the song ends, the music fades away and Anthony starts speaking: “I think I should stop now.” Literally, the Cantonese phrase he uses reads “withdrawing one’s voice.” We think we should withdraw our voice now—in the previous six chapters, we have been speaking. We have also, of course, made an attempt to let Tat Ming speak, as well as their works—their songs, their MVs, their concerts. We have invited the voices of those who, more or less intensely or immediately, were inspired by Tat Ming in creating their own cultural products. Occasionally, we have included the voices of fans. It dawns on us that perhaps we should dedicate this coda to this purpose, to include more of their fans. We do it via two paths of contribution.

In 2022, Tat Ming staged their second series of REPLAY concerts in Hong Kong. In addition, they organised an online event, especially for fans who could not be there—it was still in the midst of pandemic and the stringent travel regime. Using the song “High-flown” as prompt, they asked fans to send in how Tat Ming’s music has felt for them. Fans would be selected, upon their submissions, to converse directly with Tats and Anthony during the online session. We have secured a copy, with courtesy of Tat Ming, and made our own selection to be included here. The other path that contributes to the coda is visually driven. As we think we should stop now, we are referring to the probable saturation of text, of written text, to be specific. Thus, we have decided to complement the fans’ responses with images we deem befitting, conversing, resonating.Footnote 4 It is perhaps also our manner to pay tribute to the affective, evocative, and future-making potentials of cultural productions we discussed in Chapter 1. This is a coda crafted to linger, to move, to be reminiscent.

With due respect for one subject matter of this book—music—we have chosen the understanding of coda in the musical sense. We love this dictionary meaning, i.e. “a more or less independent passage, at the end of a composition, introduced to bring it to a satisfactory close.”Footnote 5 We hope we are doing it, together with the fans.

A photograph of a pavilion with stacked chairs and tables.

“In 2016 I started listening to Tat Ming. I was 14. To someone growing up in mainland China, your songs made a huge, lasting impact on me. I would never forget the shock the fire-fighting song ‘The Ten Young Firemen 十個救火的少年’ gave to me. Since then I started paying attention to society and politics. That was also why I left for the United Kingdom to study political science and sociology. During the lockdown in the winter of 2020, here in the UK, I was on my own, trapped. I watched the video of REPLAY concerts again and again. I kept on crying when I listened to the song ‘Love in the Time of Cholera 愛在瘟疫蔓延時.’ I don't want to cry on my own, in the time to come” (from the United Kingdom).

A photograph of multiple telescopic boom lifts.

“So opaque, so real. Boundaries between memories and experiences so porous. I am so intricately engaged with things I have never been through, places I have never been, people I have never met. I am baffled” (from the United States).

A photograph of the parking lot of a building.

“I grew up in mainland China. During my teenage years when I felt enraged by the society and by the world, I came across Tat Ming. Then I discovered, you have shed all my tears, and you have expressed all my anxieties. With love and gratitude, I went to Hong Kong to study, simply because this city has Tat Ming. I am so grateful to have you in Hong Kong, to make me realise how powerful music could be. I am grateful that you feel how I feel” (from Hong Kong).

A photograph of a pair of glass windows.

“One evening in January I was on my own in a strange and yet familiar foreign city. I was hanging my laundry, while listening to Tat Ming’s new songs. Then I caught the words ‘bed sheets’, ‘chopsticks’, ‘where are you’. They corresponded so intimately with that very situation I was in. I became absolutely quiet, and I stopped everything else till the song ended. Yes, I ‘woke up in my new home’, but it’s too cold. I didn’t open the curtains” (from the United Kingdom).

A photograph of a school building with a few students standing in the corridor.

“I started listening to Tat Ming in 2017, when I was preparing for DSE [a pre-university public examination]. It was also the year when I suffered from serious depression. I felt like being devoured by the nihilism of living, losing the capacity to feel. Like Anthony said, the world is cruel to the young ones. Your songs have accompanied me through these lost days, returning the sensation of life to me” (from Singapore).

An aerial view photograph of many tall buildings.

“Your songs are prophetic. They seemed to be running ahead of history. They demonstrated the possibility of music” (from Hong Kong).

A photograph of a cartoon illustration of five young people sitting and sleeping, drawn near a street.

“I am 20 and living in mainland China, while Tat Ming started in the last century, Hong Kong. But it didn't affect how they managed to make me feel. The complexity of their lyrics made me realize the power of music, and the reach of music… Whenever I feel darkness and helplessness, their existence is like an umbrella, protecting me” (from mainland China).

A top-view photograph of people walking on the pavement.

“It’s my fifth year of loving your music. Not really long, but long enough to, through your music, understand the world more, enough to open up my mind, enough to get in touch with my heart, finally enough to be led by your music to enter humanity” (from Hong Kong).

A photograph of a crowd of people wearing headbands and holding different toys.

“I always tell people I grew up with nutrients supplied by Tat Ming. Your music, lyrics, album covers have impacted on my entire life. Especially the song ‘Forget He Is She 忘記他是她’, of 1989, I was 15 then. And the song made me realise love should be beyond gender. During puberty, I gathered the courage to start exploring love and sexuality with people of my own gender or not. I had my struggles, fear, critiques, hesitations, but in the end I realised love is love…” (from the United States).

A photograph of the back view of a toy placed on the terrace, facing the tall buildings.

“Thank you for the songs and what you’ve done to remind all the scattered souls we’re not alone!” (from Canada).