10 years ago, on this day, demonstrating students were killed in and around Tiannamen Square in Beijing. In Hong Kong, on this day, people gathered to remember them.

We five interns gathered that evening, shoulder to shoulder with solemn thousands, to hold flickering candles in Victoria Park. We listened to the songs they sang, over and over; I could not understand a word. The speeches, too, were all in Cantonese.

We looked at the grotesque, frighteningly lit statue of human arms reaching, faces with mouths open in silent cries. Still dizzy with the newness of the city itself, exhausted from the time change, I felt I did not understand anything. Especially not why people my age had been snuffed out, as our candles were repeatedly in the night breeze, when they had posed about as much danger to a ruling regime as I did.