Hong Kong is always
here. It’s starting to have been a very long time, since that time, when
I actually lived here; when ‘here’ was a home, when ‘here’ was a compromised
identity. I counted out the years, walking down Nathan Road last
night. A fading echo, step-by-step by step. “Hello sir. Would you
like to have a suit made, sir? Finest quality.” “Mm sai le.”
The gentleman, from somewhere in South Asia, almost certainly speaks Cantonese.
Intuition. The Chungking Mansions doorway is still jammed with people.
What a compromised prison cell I occupied there two nights in 1994. The composition
of this street is in the process of shifting into its late night incarnation.
Never lived here. Happily. Just walked here. So many, many
times, so many different years.
We’ve
been atop a duck restaurant: Chao Yang it’s called, just like the neighborhood
in Beijing. The food is Beijing cai. Sort of. Ah
yes, xiaolongbao. We have Beijing, Shanghai and whatever else
you need to justify all. I haven’t been to this one before, but it
reminds me of ‘Hutong’ over across the way, at Number One Peking Road, where
the food is secondary to the real Hong Kong specialty: Views.
“Chao
Yang” has a lovely view. There it all is. The harbor and the island
and the peak. The buildings that dazzled me in 1993 that are dwarfed now.
I’m staying over at the Sheraton, which, as always, sets me up with a rather
similar view, a bit lower, a bit closer. In the morning I took an early
walk on the harbor front, yet again lower, yet again closer. I lived on
the island when I resided here, on the western side, where the sun sets.
Different echo. Different view.
This
is the view of all the paintings I have in my house. The painting of the
St. John’s Church from 1856. The sleepy blue painting of the Peak at
night 1926. The angularly modern painting of Central, from 1982.
This is the idealized echo. This postcard reduction of the skyline isn’t
particularly important when you actually live here. But I don’t now.
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