Something I didn’t pay much attention to on my previous visits to Hong Kong, is the constant noise of the city. Trains moving underground, traffic backed up, the footfalls of a million pairs of feet in a desperate need to be somewhere else. Late at night, when the MTR stops, the traffic abates, and most people are safely in their homes, you can hear the city snoring, as if anything approaching silence is an anathema to the spirit of the city.
The flag of Hong Kong should be a middle-aged man, screaming into a mobile phone
I usually barely wake up when Arum gets up and ready for work. I have no job here, no obligations, nowhere to be. I sleep late, get up, shower, shave and dress, and leave the flat and not return until Arum has finished work. Without her, the flat is a cold, empty place.
The national symbol of Hong Kong should be a Rolex shop, one of three on the same city block, entirely absent of clients.
Word on the street is that due to the interchange of four MTR lines, Admiralty Station is insanely busy and chaotic. Out of sheer bloody-mindedness, I visited at 1645, and found it to be tame and uninteresting. For me, the TST/East TST is far busier and interesting, with the contrast of people moving to and from Chungking and Mirador mansions, and the upscale K11 Art Mall. I stood still for two minutes, the ultimate sin, listening to Apparet’s Goodbye , just letting the tide of humanity move around me.
Hong Kong is full of 7.4 million people who don’t know their left from their right, or know, and don’t care.
The bar is smoky, it’s dimly lit, and that’s doing more for me than the waitress, in the beer-girl dress I have seldom seen outside of Vietnam. Of course, I could not remember what brand of beer the dress was advertising, but I do remember the row of perfect roses tattooed on one perfect leg.
Hong Kong only dreams on a feather bed of late-stage capitalism.
With Arum, I attend two meetings of the Peel Street Poetry Club, high above a street side restaurant in Central. Usually poetry does not appeal to me much, but I find this gritty, raw variety more compelling. On the second meeting Arum reads a poem of her own, to much acclaim, both of the poem and her recital. Now she is one of them, while I am still an outsider, but some of that belonging does rub off on me, as a poet-consort, like Arum’s glitter on my shirt.
If you liked this post, please check out the rest of the posts from this trip here!
Adrian's Got The Moose 