Hong Kong still seems like the same place in many ways, but it feels different. I don’t know how much of it is due to the changes in me or the changes of the place itself. But I am still so fond of it, because I grew up with a media diet of cantonese music and dramas. Somehow listening to people speaking cantonese makes me happier? What a strange phenomenon, especially because I am not cantonese myself.
Even while travelling or living in foreign places, it was always visiting cha chaan tengs that brought me great comfort. It wasn’t chicken rice or nasi lemak I craved when I lived overseas, but hong kong milk tea and pastries.
Hong Kong is nostalgia on steroids. Their old ways of living still exists in large pockets, for now. The young business people seem to appreciate this, starting new cafes with decor that pays homage to their heritage. Old buildings are preserved and turned into creative spaces:
Perhaps it is because I am from a country that keeps tearing down old stuff in order to build shiny new things, I can’t help but be drawn to all the old that exists in Hong Kong:
One of my favourite neighbourhoods is Sham Shui Po, where you can find stalls selling knick knacks like this:
My partner was so excited to stumble upon this stall:
Sadly many shops did not survive the pandemic. Instead there were a ton more hipster cafes. Hopefully we’ll get to experience a different evolution of Sham Shui Po in time to come.
There’s not many places in the world where you can come across a person working on chinese calligraphy on the street:
I particularly loved visiting Sai Kung, even if we had to take a 30-minute vomit-inducing mini bus ride:
…but we’re rewarded with these beautiful rainbow mosaic tiles on the way:
We just loved these coffee/tea cups – in Singapore everything is homogenous looking, perhaps because such attention to detail would not be rewarded in an environment where cafes and restaurants routinely do not survive beyond a few months. Why is Hong Kong different? It is a dense highly-capitalist city too after all. My guess is there are simply more REITs here, while Hong Kong has a lot more space with different types of ownership, especially out of the central business area. It is also probably different growing up in a place where everything is a beautiful chaotic mess, versus the type of pristine orderly (sometimes sterile) beauty we have here in Singapore.
Everyone seems crazy about these soft serve trucks – you can buy souvenirs like toys and postcards of it:
…and who doesn’t like trams? We like that they are not air-conditioned since we are covid-cautious, and they cost about 0.40 usd per trip.
I also appreciate you can see old junk boats against a modern city-scape:
Speaking of cityscapes, one can see majestic hills even in the city, and there are a ton of hiking trails.
I like that if you’re willing to venture far enough, there are areas still relatively untouched by modernity.
The reasons why I love Hong Kong are the same reasons why some people dislike the place. It can be grimy, chaotic, old, messy. It is everything I didn’t grow up in. I love it as a occasional visitor of course as a caveat. But I do have a school mate who moved here to study in her teens, and she disowned the opportunity to live here in favour of the chaotic mess of her original home even with all the political baggage. There are people who made the move in the other direction. The environment that happens to make us thrive can be such a strange inexplicable phenomenon.
I am a very different person from the person who last visited Hong Kong 8 years ago. I am glad to have the opportunity to experience the place with a different perspective, and through that I got to be closer to myself, because like people – places are a mirror to our selves.