My Next Trip

In another month, I will be in Hong Kong, on the island for five weeks, which is the longest I have ever been in that place. On my very first trip there, I had a weekend in a hotel that sat right in the thick of things and was thrilled by its familiar urbanity.

Unlike Bangkok, it was built for walking and it looked as though everybody in the city was on the sidewalks. There were coffee shops with decent caffeine, bookstores, cheap clothing shops, and street markets, abutting malls that seemed to define the nature of luxury. There was a rush to it that resembled New York and a setting that rivaled San Francisco. A gigantic hillside behind it all gave it a natural backdrop and, I was told, contained a variety of wildlife.

I wandered through Wan Chai, thinking of Emily Hahn every step of the way. I was ready to spend my life on this island, right up until the moment that I was taken across the harbor on the ferry.

If Hong Kong was New York, Kowloon was Times Square. I walked through miles of neon and touts that afternoon on Nathan Road and when my time there was over, I knew the next time I came, I would stay in the part of Hong Kong that’s attached to the mainland, not on the island.

I found a place in Chungking Mansions that was Nepali-owned, clean, and quiet, where I stayed for a total of five months over the next three years.  I explored Kowloon, walking from the harbor to the site of the old airport, which is now a Thai enclave, discovering the fabric market at Sham Shui Po, and buying fruit at the street market in Yau Ma Tei. And on every trip, I would take the train as close to the border as I could get without a visa.

There is a splendid historical museum in the New Territory city of Shatin and that drew me to the places that lay between Kowloon and Shenzhen. It was always Kowloon where I spent most of my time until I finally got the ten-year visa that allowed me to cross the border.

It was during my two-month stay in Shenzhen that Hong Kong Island began to appeal to me again. It had the layers of history that its freshly-minted would-be rival lacked, and its density of population caused every square inch of its area to be used, except for a barrier of steep hills that bristled between the final portion of the city and the ocean.

2046 is a date that looms over Hong Kong, when China’s promise of “one country, two systems” will expire. However mainland money and a mainland population shift, to the tune of 150 immigrants a day, has changed the entire area, from the island city to the farthest reaches of the New Territories. Thick forests of high-rise apartment blocks fill areas that were rural, Mandarin is supplanting Cantonese and English, and Hong Kong’s English-language newspaper is now owned by China’s answer to Jeff Bezos, Jack Ma.

The island is the center of government and finance, the heart of the area, and for all of the time that I have spent in that part of the world, I don’t know it at all. My forays have been limited to the trolley route and the parts of the city where ThingsAsian Press has kept its warehouses. The last time that I was there, Chai Wan, the end of the subway line where the city meets the hills, had changed significantly from my time there a year earlier. Its industrial buildings were being rented by artists and artisans and its working-class grit was being diluted by small incursions of gentrification--the kind that are welcome until they submerge all existing character of its host territory.

In the weeks that I will be there. I’ll be in North Point, a part of the island that seems to have historically been a port area and resolutely plebian. That’s changing. The building where I found an airbnb room is a highrise with an elevator, wifi, and a bathtub. Only in my stay in a luxury hotel in Shatin have I ever had a bathtub in Hong Kong.

The room also has windows--unbarred and large, on two sides--along with a balcony. This is unheard of comfort in a city where space is limited, privacy is guarded, and light is not a prized quality. It is not local living as Hong Kong has known it before.

But it’s centrally located, with a market and, I hope, food stalls that support the people who sell the food. I hope my next spot is more spartan, but I’ll enjoy this to the hilt while I have it.

I want to walk Hong Kong as thoroughly as I can in the weeks that I’m there. By the time I leave, I want to have mapped it on foot, with no neighborhood left unknown. I’m taking all the shoes I have, including my latest purchase, leather slides from Portugal, and my oldest, battered and comfortable Aerosole flats.

I may not like all of it, but I want to see it all.

It is going to be difficult to ignore the parts of Hong Kong that I imperfectly and truly love, but I may give myself one day a week to walk along the river in Shatin and plunge through fabric in Sham Shui Po, visiting Swindon Books and buying Thai bananas in Yau Ma Tei. In fact I know I will.

I’m certain to go to a couple of islands, and I want to cross the bridge from Macau to Zuhai. There’s a ferry to Zuhai from Hong Kong Island that’s appealing to me, and that high-speed train to Guangzhou is waiting. And I would like to see Mr. Lee, if he’s still at Granville Whale’s Cafe--and why wouldn’t he be? It’s only been seven months.

I’d love to see Gordon Mathews if he has time, and with any luck at all, the HK Art Museum will have reopened. If not there’s always the Heritage Museum in Shatin.

It’s so easy to list things I want to return to. The things I don’t know are why I’m making this trip and staying where I will. Exploring, wandering, staring, eating--these things are what keep me alive at my core and I'll have them all in autumn.