Hong Kong 香港

Well, it’s been a minute, hasn’t it?

Without a previous frame of reference, Hong Kong is vibrant. There’s a strong sense of atmosphere steeped in nostalgia, even if you never experienced that past — the buildings, the ding-dings (trams), the neon signs, the street-level restaurants, the fishing villages, the traditions, the wet markets, the aromas… There’s an aura of efficiency above all, even if it may seem brusque. With one foot firmly rooted in the grit of the working class, it keeps the other foot in the present, with its bustling subway, that vibrant skyline, the endless malls, and its ever-expanding propulsion, with new neighbourhoods under construction.

If you’ve been here before though, you could say the same story. The gist may be the same, but the tone might be a little different.

From the moment we arrived at the airport, we were questioning our perception: was it this worn before, were there this few options? That set the tone for the week. That famed brusque and efficient service seemed now to lean more of the former. Busy areas like Tsim Sha Tsui 尖沙咀 and Central 中環, once evoking a mix of grandeur and nostalgia, felt instead a little outdated and less crowded than before. There’s fewer of those neon signs now. Whereas Hong Kong used to be on the cutting edge, I see it now playing technological catch-up. It’s still a great place… but has this place faded a little or and I just getting jaded?

But there’s a bigger thing. We noticed, and everyone we met up with asked us if we felt it too: “Doesn’t it feel like Hong Kong is quieter now?” Fewer people, more boarded-up shops? Slower economy, fewer multi-national corporations and foreigners?

The official messaging is something related to slow pandemic recovery. Hong Kong had some of the most onerous restrictions in the world well into 2023, but it almost seems like a forgotten topic already: everyone across the spectrum points to the 2019 protests and resulting 2020 National Security Law as the inflection point. Everyone knows people who’ve left, particularly those of the younger generation. (On my recent trip to Europe, I ran into several people who did just that and moved to the UK, including one who felt at risk of arrest and could not return to visit his aging parents. And at home in Vancouver, there’s a visible wave of new arrivals opening HK-themed businesses.) The political divide and boisterous discourse that existed before also don’t matter anymore: a new status quo has been imposed, “patriots” only. It’s quite interesting to see the stoic attitude across the friends, family, and even taxi drivers we talked to, whether or not they were actively choosing their words. At best, they say, things move faster because there is no longer any opposition party.

Is Hong Kong truly quieter now? Is the paint peeling off a bit? Or is it both safer and playing it safe? Are we just over-scrutinizing through the bias of political upheaval?

There has been a lot of other outwardly visible change with no room for subjective interpretation. There’s far more Chinese flags flying than ever before, and much of it accompanies infrastructure newly built since my last visit. Hong Kong’s old Kai Tak 啟德 airport, replaced in 1998, has finally been torn down and replaced with a whole new neighbourhood and stadium to boot. West of TST is a new Arts Centre district still partially under construction, adjacent to the Hong Kong station of the first express-rail link to Mainland China. There’s the incredible and jaw-dropping Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau bridge/undersea tunnel/triple-border-crossing hybrid, the world’s longest sea crossing that’s so long that it takes nearly an hour to drive.

Both the train and the bridge are increasingly popular: with higher prices and slipping quality and service in Hong Kong, friends and family like to make weekend trips to the mainland to eat and shop. It may have just been a single weekday, but a family friend drove us out to Zhongshan 中山 (2 hours each way) to give us their weekend experience — and it was a lovely time!

There’s a lot of food for thought, and more too with what role Hong Kong has to play for the mainland now that lines between the two have been blurred, and its importance as an autonomous global financial hub runs into perceived new risks by foreign investors as a result of the security law. China’s economy used to depend on HK, but now it’s the reverse — and mainland China’s comparatively better economy shows signs of slowing too.

But you know what? I’m here for food for the stomach.

Okay, there’s more than that of course, but I can’t resist a punny transition. Above all, I’m here to see friends and family: the passage of time has strengthened some and weakened other relationships, and this visit made more clear the directions that they’re going. But I’m here to envelop myself in the culture too, one that I feel more kinship towards in recent years. I re-read what I wrote 9 years ago and think back to that version of myself: despite less immersion, despite the city being “my homeland but not home,” I identified more as a Hong Konger back then, and I tried to feel invested in the culture, invested in its future. As Hong Kong went through upheaval and I looked from the sidelines, never living through it, my thoughts on that identity and motivation have changed. I may hold documents from Hong Kong, but try as I might, it’s a stretch to call myself a Hongkonger. Without ever living there, my opinions do not and cannot reflect the population’s.

And yet, despite having very few Cantonese-speaking friends at home, seldom listening to Canto music, and following no TV series, my Cantonese has improved significantly over the years from just speaking with my parents. That’s partly due to the shame I hold from being able to read and speak in so many other languages apart from the one I was raised with. (I’ve still never successfully read a book in Chinese, and that’s a future goal.) Being able to communicate is immensely gratifying, and a crucial link to the culture — one which I’m realising I’ve been exploring partly as an expression of identity, but mostly in an effort to better connect with my parents and my ancestry. It’s a gateway to watching classic and contemporary HK films too, which bring more interesting conversations. (It will never be a gateway to me appreciating Chinese opera, to my mom’s chagrin.)

Food is part of that! Back home, I’ve become a bit of a food court grandpa on the weekends — staking out busy spots on my own (book in hand rather than a newspaper) for classics like HK breakfast (ham and macaroni soup, egg sandwiches, satay beef), rice rolls, baked pork chop rice, siu mei (HK barbecue)… I’ve grown more fond of family dim sum lunches too. They’ve become favourites, and it’s such a joy to be surrounded by my favourite comfort foods from the source — even if emigration to Vancouver means the quality’s just as good there. I didn’t have time to cover every meal I wanted!

Food is also where I realised I’ve diverged from my parents, among other things. With my friend Jacqueline, I finally got to visit a real dai pai dong cooking with kerosene for that amazing wok hei flavour and atmosphere — that’s something I’d never be able to get at home, yet a cultural touchstone of Hong Kong. And amongst the iconic snacky things — dessert soups, egg tarts, bubble waffles, pineapple buns! — I did see a bit of innovation that I’d love for Vancouver to copy.

I spent hours wandering around, taking the subway, and getting lost, taking in the atmosphere, the bustle, and the characters of different neighbourhoods. In my process of aiming for my parents’ culture, I instead grasped a different cross-section of Hong Kong that they had less familiarity: back in their day, having attained a level of affluence in the years before emigrating, they’d never navigate on foot or transit. They’d never sit at a dai pai dong. They’d never line up for a cramped restaurant that rushes you out the door the moment you finish your last bite. And they just don’t care for street food. But they know of all these things, and I think they’re happy to see that I’ve found my own way to engage with the culture they tried to pass down. I learned last time that there are far more facets to Hong Kong than I previously knew, but this time it feels like the rabbit holes just get even deeper: and there’s a bunch I want to follow.

I see my parents’ own renewed interest in reconnecting with their own parents’ working-class roots, too. We wandered around the crammed streets of my dad’s old neighbourhood of Sham Shui Po 深水埗, and a new movie set-turned-exhibit of the infamous former Kowloon Walled City 九龍城寨, on the perimeter of which my mom used to live. The Walled City was once the most densely populated place in the world (35000 people in the area of four soccer pitches), with high rises so close together that many denizens received no sunlight, and often passed things to neighbours living in adjacent buildings. I cannot imagine the current version of my parents ever living in either place, and yet my mom looked back fondly on the times my grandfather would take her to the roof watching planes land at the old Kai Tak airport directly next door. Visiting together gave them another chance to share stories we never heard which simply needed physical presence for context.

While Hong Kong is known for its verticality and urbanism, the majority of the land is actually nature and rural traditional villages. My hopes of hiking were mixed due to the stifling heat, and I didn’t have enough time to go deep into the New Territories, but with Jacqueline, we spent a day visiting the far-flung but scenic fishing village-on-stilts of Tai O 大澳 on the far western edge of Lantau Island. The glitzy skyline of Macau 澳門 and the mega bridge are visible, but the mountainous cover feels truly a world away. Watching locals idly hitch up their boats, dry fish on racks, salt cure egg yolks, bike around the car-free streets, and tend to their small temple all to the soundtrack of near silence was both such a wonderful shot of nostalgia yet also a complete contrast to the freneticism that typically comes to mind. The lanterns, the posters, and the roaming cats only add to the charm. It can’t be an easy life out there though — the stilts are ramshackle, many homes are shacks exposed to the elements, they get walloped by typhoons, and there’s few jobs for younger folks, who need to commute at least an hour or two into the city.

On the other hand, the city is known for its glitz and glamour too, the nightlife and the high life. It’s not exactly what I seek out or have much insight into, but for my friend Drew, it’s his line of work. Having met him in his native South Africa 9 years ago, he moved to HK shortly after for a job opportunity, not expecting to stay long. Now he’s more of a Hongkonger than me, even if he only speaks a bit of Cantonese or and doesn’t really enjoy the place. He and I both see a Hong Kong proud of its age of superiority, but he sees it more as a superiority complex, one decreasingly deserved as it coasts on its reputation while others (like cities in the mainland) surpass it.

Hong Kong ranks high globally both in overall wealth per capita (driven by sky-high housing values for those who can afford it) and the severity of the wealth gap. Much of this is borne on the backs of the many many live-in domestic helpers from the Philippines and Indonesia (hey, our family had one way back when, who still sends us Christmas cards!) and imported labour from South Asia and Africa. Even on a visit of just a week, I was uncomfortable with cultural attitudes I occasionally heard towards these populations, and the racism was not a surprise. But for Drew, an African on the other side of the wealth gap, both bearing witness to and being on the receiving end of such treatment remains an irritably frequent occurrence.

So much of the population — foreign workers, rural residents dealing with fading traditional industries, those seniors you see everywhere doing menial labour in the heat, the ubiquitous hawkers, people living in those notoriously cramped cage apartments — fall under the poverty line. The city may have gone through seismic systemic change in recent years, but I can’t imagine that mattering to them if the system hasn’t changed at the bottom — a different perspective I hadn’t thought about before.

What also haven’t changed much (or enough) are cultural pressures and expectations at home and at work. Stories (which aren’t mine to share) of complicated family dynamics and treatment broke through the otherwise rose-coloured veneer of nostalgia my parents had during our stay. I always thought that they chose to uproot themselves to Canada for my sister and me to have a better future, facing the uncertain upheaval of the 1997 British handover to China: they sure did, but I’ve learned that they also moved to create distance from quotidian things that they did not like. We got a peek through a window of what life would have been like had we not left, and this version of me is very grateful for their decision.

We have our own inequalities too in Canada, and in our society of voices, the noise of everything from differing opinions in politics to wild misinformation hinders the speed of progress. Every place has its flaws. For me though, the diversity of people and culture, the ability to share in all without the pressure to follow one strictly, the broader range of possibilities to thrive aside from wealth — that’s something I don’t take for granted. Hong Kong’s gone in a different direction. It may have driven some away, but it’s worked for others. Given what I’m used to, that just doesn’t include me.

But without Hong Kong, flaws and all, there is no me, and it’ll always be special because of that. I can’t wait to come back for another visit.