Front and Back Covers, Volume 38, Number 5. October 2022

Front and back cover caption, volume 38 issue 5 PARTIAL ELECTRIFICATION HONG KONG: THE GREAT MIGRATION Hong Kong's Lennon Walls, vibrant displays of free expression and mass protest, once adorned the city's many passageways. From 2019–2020, ordinary citizens made their voices known on these public walls, criticizing police brutality and the suppression of civil rights. Since then, displays such as this have been cleared out, erased and made illegal by an increasingly authoritarian government. Following the mainland Chinese government's decision to impose its new national security law on Hong Kong, the United Kingdom, citing its historical link to its former colony, opened its doors to those leaving the city through the British National (Overseas) visa. Over five million people are eligible to resettle in Britain, the largest movement of non‐Europeans in the country's history. Trauma, unlike the pen‐and‐paper Lennon Walls, is much harder to erase. Many commentators have raised concerns about collective post‐traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) amongst the group of individuals who have come to the UK on the BN(O) visa. Conversely, pro‐Chinese forces argue that mental health struggles, current and future, are more likely the result of anti‐Asian discrimination and violence in the West. As governments and political players debate, one thing is sure: countless families continue to uproot their lives and start anew in the UK. In this issue, Mark Chih‐Wei Liang argues that conceptions of trauma and mental health have become political tools to advance the agendas of both the UK and China, with Hong Kongers often caught, voiceless, in the middle of this global struggle. While PTSD, depression and anxiety are diagnosed in the clinic, they become relevant and influential in the courtrooms, rallies and other public spaces across the two continents. The Lennon Walls may be gone, but the story of these BN(O) visa holders is only just beginning. HANDING BACK THE BENIN BRONZES The story of the Benin Bronzes turns on the fateful events of 1897, when the British military conquered the Benin Kingdom – in what is today Nigeria – and took its looted treasures back to London. 125 years later, several museums in Britain, Europe and the United States have decided to return their bronzes to Nigeria. This is a welcome and unexpected development for the people of the Benin Kingdom, the Edo. In this issue, Barnaby Phillips shows how this brings opportunities but also challenges. Nigeria's federal government, the Edo king, or Oba, and local state government, all say they want to display the returned Benin Bronzes in museums. But the story of museums in post‐independence Nigeria is not a happy one. Several are already endowed with superb collections, including Benin Bronzes, but have suffered from decades of neglect and play only a marginal role in Nigeria's vibrant cultural scene. The inherited colonial model of cold displays of objects in glass vitrines seems to have run its course. But can the competing interests in Nigeria today redesign the museum concept in a way that gives the returned Bronzes relevance to the Edo and other Nigerians? Under a European gaze, the Benin Bronzes were admired on a strictly aesthetic basis as works of art. But to the Edo, their meaning was more complex. They were religious objects, historical records and political power projections. There are reasons to be hopeful. Often overlooked in the heated debate about colonial crimes, restitution and museums is the resilience of Edo culture. In Benin City, people still revere their Oba. The ancient bronze casting guild, the Igun Eronmwon, still uses the ‘lost wax’, or cire perdue, a method perfected by its ancestors hundreds of years ago. Today the Edo have an opportunity to write a new chapter in the story of their Benin Bronzes.