{"id":15984,"date":"2020-03-17T12:11:22","date_gmt":"2020-03-17T04:11:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/?p=15984"},"modified":"2021-06-23T16:51:58","modified_gmt":"2021-06-23T08:51:58","slug":"a-path-to-freedom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/2020\/03\/a-path-to-freedom\/","title":{"rendered":"A Path to Freedom"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Walking along the Freedom Trail is like revisiting the history of American revolution.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Tommy Huang\u00a0in\u00a0Boston<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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  • \"\"
    Massachusetts State House, also known as Massachusetts Statehouse or the New State House is located in the Beacon Hill. It houses the state government and is well- recognised because of its dome sheathed in copper and covered by 23 karat gold. <\/div><\/div><\/li>\n
  • \"\"
    Statue of Paul Revere\r\nPaul Revere was a silversmith and an early revolutionist. He is most remembered for his midnight ride to warn the colonial militia of the British troops' march on April 18, 1775 before first military kicked off the American Revolutionary War.\r\n<\/div><\/div><\/li>\n
  • \"\"
    Faneuil Hall, \"the Cradle of Liberty\", served as marketplace and open forum meeting hall where Boston's town meeting first held to stand against British rule publicly.\r\n<\/div><\/div><\/li>\n
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    Old North Church is a steeple on Boston\u2019s Freedom Trail. It is Boston's oldest standing church, where Paul Revere's signal lanterns shone to alert the Americans about the route of British\u2019s attack. \"One, if by land, and two if by sea.\"<\/div><\/div><\/li>\n
  • \"\"
    Faneuil Hall Market, which has been known as \"Quincy Market\", is the busiest attraction in Boston with many shops and restaurants. Constituted of the central building, North Market and South Market, it was built as an extension of Faneuil Hall.<\/div><\/div><\/li>\n
  • \"\"
    Josiah Quincy III was the second mayor of Boston and the sixteenth president of Harvard University. Quincy Market is named after him in his honor.\r\n<\/div><\/div><\/li>\n
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    The Old State House is the oldest public building in Boston. It was the seat of the Massachusetts state government until 1798. The Old State House is where the Declaration of Independence was proclaimed to the triumphant crowd on July 18, 1776.\r\n<\/div><\/div><\/li>\n <\/ul>\n <\/div>\n \n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

    Boston was regarded as the birthplace of the American Revolution. Now a popular tourist attraction there, the Freedom Trail, is a 4 km red brick pedestrian walk starting from Boston Common to Bunker Hill, with 16 historical sites in American history. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Before the American Revolution between 1765 and 1783, Americans had to pay tax to their coloniser, the British government, but Americans had no representative in the British Parliament. “No taxation without representation” then became the slogan of the revloution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Two important sites on the Freedom Trail are Faneuil Hall and Old South Meeting House. Boston revoluntionists gathered in these meeting halls as they challenged the British Parliament and demanded their rights during the Boston Tea Party, a mercantile and political protest which is usually considered to be the catalyst to the American Revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Several weeks of town meetings discussing tea boycott were held upon the arrival of the British East India Company’s ships and the situation reached its climax on December 16, 1773, when demonstrators marched to Griffin\u2019s Wharf to board on those ships to dump 340 tea chests into the Boston port. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \u201cAs a major commercial port among the 13 Colonies, Boston was seriously affected in terms of trade when the British levied taxes on colonies,\u201d says Lian Yi-Zheng, an economic professor says. \u201cSo anti-taxation campaigns occurred in Boston,\u201d Lian, who had his tertiary education in the US and taught at the University of California, adds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The British government was angered by the the Boston Tea Party. In 1774 the British enacted the Intolerable Acts, a series of punitive laws, that the Boston port was closed until American paid for the dumped tea and restored British authority in the Province of Massachusetts Bay. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Lian says Boston had a highly independent colonial governmen under British rule, like Hong Kong before the 1997 handover from British to Chinese sovereignty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Lian points out many Americans liken today\u2019s Hong Kong to the US during the American Revolution. \u201cIn order to pursue freedom and escape from oppression, people left the motherland and established a highly civilized place economically and politically. In the end, the oppression of the government of motherland led to resistance,\u201d Lian says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \u201cThis mechanism is very similar with what the USA had gone through. In comparison with their own history, what happened in Hong Kong in 2019 consciously or subconsciously resonates Americans.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Edited by Lambert Siu<\/em>
    Sub-edited by Soohyun Kim<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The Freedom Trail in Boston marks how people pursued freedom in the American Revolution, which is similar to what Hongkongers are going through.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16299,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1803,72,543,11,18],"tags":[1415,1413,1414,149,1416],"class_list":["post-15984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-march-2020-issue","category-photo-feature","category-photo-feature-2","category-photo-story","category-vchoice","tag-america","tag-boston","tag-freedom-trail","tag-history","tag-revolution"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15984"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15984\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16454,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15984\/revisions\/16454"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}