Hong Kong as an example of East meets West? It’s probably where sky meets earth in a jumble of enormous high-rises. It’s also where a teeming mass of people are always rushing somewhere. But both descriptions are cliches.
To see the real HongKong you’ve got to be there and experience a little of the transitional dynamics. It’s an ‘artificial Port City’ is what one of my friends who worked in Hong Kong claimed once. Of course it’s a country that imports almost everything but never worries about a foreign exchange crisis even remotely. Hong Kong’s own dollar is strong and much sought after, and these days of course Alipay and all those cards and Chinese origin apps would pay for anything.
So what exactly is Hong Kong a microcosm of? To find out, this writer decided to do a bit of a sojourn in the well-known and lesser known parts of the city State. It’s not bad to have a look at a country that’s said to be transitioning because we in Sri Lanka are transitioning too. What from? An era of economic meltdowns perhaps, and conflicts. Hopefully, to a more peaceful and stable future.
All people in transitions are supposed to be negotiating delicate periods of change, but is that so for those who live ordinary lives, quite apart from those of high profile politicians and major league businessmen?
What can be said about Hong Kong is that ordinary people seem to be too caught up in their daily lives to so much as feel there is any transitioning going on. Anyhow, Hong Kong is steeped in history, and there have been different strands of civilian life that all coexist together within the city State’s relatively smallish land area as long as anybody can remember.
Reminders of the British era are almost everywhere, from streets named SoHo to Metro stations that are called Admiralty. Incidentally, some British have never mentally left Hong Kong and that seems to be obvious from the way they reminisce about the place in various YouTube videos and all of that.
DEPICTED
They seem to feel nostalgic for an era when their country ruled the roost in Hong Kong, but for the ordinary people who live there including those who have come and settled in the city State from all parts of the world, any change they experience is seamless. People seem to get about their very fast paced lives, by various means of transport, mostly Metro trains and double-decker buses. Then there are the trams which one suspects are there because they are a nod to the past.
It is easy to see why they are. They are called Ding-Dings because of the distinctive musical noises they make while gliding along the tracks that have been carved almost literally in the middle of the streets. It’s nice when a mode of transport can both be used for riding and for romanticizing about the quirks of a different era.
Hong Kong is so full of such seeming stark contrasts and blasts from the past. It is also modernity that sits cheek by jowl with the phenomenon of a certain — though very limited — cross section from among the populace trying to live very hard-scrabble lives in extremely restricted spaces. The writer has not seen any of those so called cage houses or coffin-size accommodations that are said to house some workers in Hong Kong for a monthly rent they can eke out, but there are enough takes on the Internet about those.
ETCHED
These days the country is full of tourists from China also, and they are swarming the beaches and the well known attractions such as the Avenue of Stars. Hong Kong was of course the film capital of this part of the world. That’s because there was a need for a special brand of movies that were different from the standard Hollywood fare that would appeal to a global audience.
So Hong Kong had its special brand of entertainers and impresarios, and all of them are now memorialised at the Avenue of Stars that is no doubt a spin-off idea following after the Hollywood Walk of Fame. There are no stars on the tarmac here; instead the names and the handprints of famous Hong Kong film personalities are etched onto the railing of the Victoria Harbour promenade.
Bruce Lee statue at Avenue of Stars.
It is as if to say we here in Hong Kong have our own way of doing things. For the most part it seems both ordinary person and the more politically aware are sure that if they have to get past this change phase, they have to do it their own way because Hong Kong definitely has a new identity after the British left,and that is a fact of life. This identity is seen manifest in various different ways among which the variety of payment systems on offer are among the most significant. A lot of the time in Hong Kong you may not be able to use your Visa or Master cards, but you would definitely use your Alipay or WeChat payment cards or QR codes.
The young people of Hong Kong seem impervious to all this talk of change. They say that they feel they have a city that’s diverse to live in, that’s central to the changes that are taking place in the world today. Someone may say, but those are only the kids you met, but even so, that’s the general vibe you get in Hong Kong. Which is that people get on with their lives looking beyond the categories that are spoken of when Hong Kong is depicted in the world media.
DESTINATION
It is definitely a country that stimulates the senses in a million different ways and this aspect is not lost on anyone, be it a new visitor or someone who is coming back after several years. But there is also the Cantonese charm everywhere, and this writer states this with trepidation because perhaps a lot of people in Hong Kong may think this is a stereotypical categorisation too. But then for us visitors this is a significant facet of life that has to be captured on camera or written about with certitude because it is there, it is what’s happening in Hong Kong, and for us rank outsiders it is something new.
Perhaps this is the ultimate takeaway from Hong Kong, that everythin gold and new, and past and present, and politics as perceived and as in reality, all coexist in this one small space. It is a manifest destiny of sorts even though that sounds a trifle verbose. But let it be, because sometimes there are only a few ways of describing any location accurately.
Many Hong Kong residents are flocking to Shenzhen in China the closestNortherly Chinese city these days, it is said. That is a reversal of sorts because the Chinese used to come to Hong Kong for shopping. But a great many Chinese products are cheaper and this new cross-border phenomenon is to be expected and doesn’t bother people in Hong Kong. There is little doubt that Hong Kong is still a tourist destination that has its charm, a fact not easily erased just because some of the country’s shopping dynamics may have changed.
By any yardstick the standards of transport etc. haven’t changed because everything remains efficient as can be. Then, there is all the media attention being paid to high living costs. The city has always been expensive and still is. There are Internet reports that businesses are closing down in Hong Kong but it’s bustling, and the reports, it seems are about the exception rather than the norm. The politics of the city State are being gone through with a fine tooth comb in some articles, but it’s not the subject of this article which resulted from a sightseeing tour of Hong Kong. It still kind of assaults the senses, this place, with its vibrancy and sometimes over the top glitz. But then, that’s Hong Kong.
Rajpal Abeynayake in Hong Kong