Friday 22 November 2013

Hong King

So here I am. After long but comfortable flight with Cathay Pacific, not having proper sleep for 48h I have finally put my ignorant feet on an Asian continent... and this is the way to start!

What is my first impression? Crazy, restless, mind-boggling... It's a municipal orgy after Chinese tuning. Some skyscrapers are more like scary-crapers, almost floating in the air, packed with inhabitants desperately filling any living space.You can imagine condition inside these capsules.Kowloon Walled City has been demolished in 1992 but there are still stories of people living in the cages, literally!

Streets swarm with pedestrians. How do 6 mln inhabitants fit on the 2 relatively small islands? All your senses are being tested and raped. Nathan Road in Kowloon and Hennesy/Queensway on the Central Island are like permanent Christmas sale in London but still Chinese love walking and god how they walk! Street resemble motorways but they treat them like promenades where you can have a random chat, swing in every direction like there is nobody else or just cut through the crowd like a buldozer. Glued to their phones like it's their beacon connecting physical avatars with the stream of life, not really present but painfully material, friendly, curious and aggresive - is this the future of humanity or just cul de sac of civilisation?

Despite brutal rush and aggresive architecture there is plenty of green oasis, asylums from the city pressure. Kowloon Park gives refreshing shade to tai chi practitioners and Hong Kong Park grows like a weed in the middle of the concrete jungle. If Dubai echoes muezzin's calls for prays, Hong Kong buzzes with karaoke attacking you from every corner like people have no shame here... 

If I had any presumptions or expectations Hong Kong is jeering at my imagination. It's a Gotham City, growing vertically in bold attempt to outsmart gravity. It's like a King Kong standing on Empire Building, seemingly prehistoric and primitive creature willing to destroy and kill, frightening all civilised New Yorkers but unexpectedly sensitive and fragile, embarassing us in our self-esteem and making us think who is the real beast here. We Europeans in our laziness and arogance should be afraid now. The wind of change blows from the East. Judgment day is coming, and it's coming fast!






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