These days, Hong Kong is a different city altogether. Over time, the city became, for the post-handover generation, less a place of transition, a stepping-stone for better lives abroad, but a place worth fighting for. Within a decade, Hong Kong had developed a regular protest calendar, with thousands marching through a dense network of skyscrapers in the financial district on set days every year to voice discontent and commemorate anniversaries. But change came slow, and borders remained free. The event had triggered an emigration wave: There were whispers of how Hong Kong would change, and many left because they did not want to be under Communist rule. I was born not long before the handover in 1997, when Hong Kong was to cease to become a British colony and be handed to China. Every June 4, we’d commemorate the Tiananmen massacre at Victoria Park with a candlelight vigil, then head to the dai pai dong (open-air food stall) above a wet market for beers. ![]() On one weekend, I might have headed to Lamma Island to meet an artist from Milwaukee who ended up in Hong Kong because of his love of Wong Kar-wai films the next weekend, I could have wound up at a mini-music festival hosted atop a mountain peak, at an industrial warehouse, or inside a cha chaan teng (tea café) in Yau Ma Tei with the shutters pulled down. When friends visited the city, we’d eat curries at Chungking Mansions, then walk over to Sai Yeung Choi Street, a popular shopping district, where political parties across the spectrum set up street booths and handed out flyers and balloons. In the aftermath of the 79-day pro-democracy occupation protests in 2014, every neighborhood across the city set up its own grassroots form of civic engagement: Residents self-organized home repairs for the elderly and ran historical walking tours to build stronger community ties. When I say I miss Hong Kong, what I mean is the city as I remember it between the years of 20. ![]() I know that were I to ever leave, they would be what I would miss most. In the last few decades, Hong Kong has frequently been referred to as a global financial center, but the city first gained significance as a major port in the early 20th century its fate has always been intimately tied to its waters. ![]() Over the harbor, the massive display screen of a newly opened art museum flashed a half-hearted message expressing well-wishes.Įvery time I think about Hong Kong, I inevitably return to the water - the masked couples making out in cars facing the smoggy sunset by Stonecutters Bridge the tourists jostling before the postcard-perfect view of the harbor from Avenue of Stars at Tsim Sha Tsui the tranquil walks along the reservoirs at the country parks surrounding the city. The promenade bustled with others who had permitted themselves these daily masked excursions: children speeding past me in rollerblades, burning off excess energy from school days spent on Zoom, and office workers sitting on benches clutching plastic containers of takeaway dinners. Across the city, hospitals were overflowing with the sick and dying, but the scene on the promenade was placid: a man playing a tune on an erhu, another performing handstands near the edge of a fountain. The sky was a wallpaper of twilight blue being shut indoors felt like a waste of spring. Throughout February and March, as Omicron cases in Hong Kong climbed to tens of thousands a day, I’d leave my apartment every evening for a stroll along the waterfront in Sheung Wan.
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