Water that is Now Land. The Hong Kong I Grew Up In.

Hong Kong

The pollution is truly awful today. Can only see faint outline of the Kowloon waterfront from the Island. There is a haze if you look across the road. My eyes start watering when I am out. My friend’s sinuses are disco dancing. Makes us want to quit smoking or something. At least I didn’t go down to Cause Way Bay, where I have to take allergy pills to keep my hands from swelling.

Part of me hope it stays this way tomorrow so I can take photos of it. Part of me wants the wind to come so I can breathe again.

I miss those days before China Industrialized, thus the South China Winds blew away our pollution into the sea and clean air swept in. When most days were clear and the city sparkled at night (literally).

Days like this makes me think of the old cleaner, quieter Hong Kong. Before it remade itself into the Uber city of all amenities and state of the art technologies.

The days when kids our age learnt to ride bikes on Wan Chai Road (One of the busiest streets in the city now). Or when the number 23 bus was a quiet ride home. Or when Conaught Center was the biggest thing here. And Borrett Rd only had three buildings, one high school, lots of trees, and no traffic, where you could find snakes in the hills, shrimps in the water ways and bomb around like the lunatic children in need of Ritalin which we were.

When most of the buildings in Mid Levels were four to eight stories high and I walked to the little “Si Dor” (Store) to buy my candy with my porpor (grandma) and the neighbors all said, “hello.” When I could still see Lantau Island and the sun set from Castle Road. When our harbor wasn’t so reclaimed it looked like part of the sea.

Now we all look into our neighbors green glass, pink tiled 60 storey buildings, their pools and three storey parking lot filled with Mercedes, and Beamers and run off to Seven Eleven. And the harbor is the size of a big river.

I know that it all means, Hong Kong’s Standard of living has gone up in general. But on a more selfish level, I wish they held off on the development. It’s pretty much why my family moved abroad. Part politics (the fear of China after 1997) and the encroachment of space.

A friend moved back after ten years, and we were driving in his convertible down Magazine Gap Road, staring up at the big buildings pointing to places that our friends lived when we were teenagers. “They ruined it all,” he said, “It used to be so nice up here.”

I know.

We both agreed, after a while it starts to feel its a personal assault on our collective memories, rather then a way to make Li Ka Shing or Board of Directors at Hong Kong Land richer.

Even if we understand that it was a colonial Hong Kong -something that’s not to be looked back upon. But there were parts of it that was so nice to wander in. Less convenient, less impressive, less affluent for most, but there were history, old China, trees and birds, hills and waterfalls, communities, kids playing on the streets. Places to scrape your knee and fall into mud. Old men who stilled used abacus. Grannies wearing Cheng Sam, outside of weddings. Quiet corners that was possible to fall off a skateboard, break an ankle and sit two hours before a passerby came to call for an ambulance (that wasn’t me.)

Every time they pull down another building that I have a personal relationship with, stick another giant 9 building complex in the middle of the forest or by the Mai Po Marshes, or close another shop that’s been around since before I was born -in the name of “Urban Redevelopment,” my throat closes up for a second and its not due to the pollution.

They pull down everything and pour concrete over it, and rebuild, rebuild, rebuild.

This is not the city I grew up in because there isn’t much left that can be recognized.

I bothers me that this place increasingly becomes an impersonal stranger to my early life. Already two million more people, participate matter swirling in the air, and land that used to be water.

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