city living

Two inches

Crossing Wun Sha behind a turning Tesla, the distance between leg and side panel. Lately these scant centimeters1 impress me. We have spent enough time in the US recently to remember the differences: cars stopping for us mid-street while we wait on the sidewalk for them to pass. Cars giving us 15 feet of birth when on bicycles. Cars switching lanes to avoid us. Huge swaths of empty streets.

Two inches.

In Hong Kong everything is closer. Of course the limitations of land, of mountains and oceans, and the number of humans drive most of this. Yet these two inches are cultural. There is no fear, or at least less. Double decker buses roar past a hand’s breadth away. Trams pass each other close enough to high five the opposite passengers. And the cars on Wun Sha do not stop as I walk towards them, confident I will not walk directly into their sides.

This change goes both ways. Cars have the right of way in crosswalks here, and speed at me constantly. I take this in stride, knowing no one wants a collision, no one is truly trying to injure anyone. We are all just seeking to move through the world as quickly as we can, as smoothly as we can. Unlike the cars that stop some 20 feet short of the crosswalk as we carry our child out into the street in Fort Collins, the Hong Kong drivers do not pause, do not give extra grace. They are not threatening, but they are not stopping. They are not afraid of their own ability to kill. Perhaps they should be, the cars are no less dangerous. Perhaps they should grant me a wider berth.

They do not need to. That, I think, is the central difference. In Hong Kong (and Shanghai, and many other places) the density is a well-tested phenomenon. The Tesla on Wun Sha is not afraid of me because hundreds of people walk by the car this close every day. Because we are all here, all coming this close to one another, and all surviving.

It’s nice, underneath, to be less afraid.

  1. I no longer think in either metric or imperial, but in both, poorly and with fluidity.↩︎

With new eyes wide

A view of Hong Kong island as the sun sets, with orange and blues streaked together over the peak.

In the last light of one of the year’s last days, we lie on her futon and stare at the peaks of Hong Kong Island. They are capped in pinks and golds, wreathed by the light of the sun that has itself sunk from sight. It’s a beautiful view, one of the world’s best, as far as cities go. The lights are coming on across the city, and the sky up top is starting to settle into the truly dark blue of space. The air, blown back in from the ocean all day, is soupy, the petrochemical mass perfect for refraction. Like LA, sometimes Hong Kong has the most beautiful smog-driven sunsets.

For five whole minutes she lies on top of me utterly still. On my back, my view is of the sky down to the building tops. Her weight, held upright by my right arm, is scant enough that I do not grow stiff. Her view is perpendicular to the ground, facing the island. She can not see the scrolling lights of the ICC. It’s not dark enough for them to dominate the skyline anyway. The purples slowly drip down into the golds, until the hilltops are ringed mostly in a deep rose. It’s subtle, the matter of a few minutes. Perfect for a post-nap six-month-old’s attention span. I’ve never held her this still and not asleep.

I watch the shadows of the hills against the skyline, reflected in her eyes. It’s a strange feeling, seeing someone so clearly a blend of our families take shape. The square jaw and face shape is so familiar; I’ve been waking beside it for fifteen years.

Her room smells perfect. It smells like vacation, and memory. The tatami is brand new, and the scent of fresh straw permeates everything. The room smells like our onsen in Gero. It smells like the hotel in Osaka where she laughed and rolled for hours. On top of the tatami, the single futon folds perfectly in thirds exactly as mine did twenty years ago in Saitama. Though a single, it is big enough for two or three of us, at least for a while yet. I’m still trying to introduce the cat to it. He loves the one in our room, which is thicker, a solid mass of cotton. This one, softer and more malleable, will take him time. Or maybe that’s the occupant, who he’s fascinated by and annoyed with in alternating measures.

Either way, lying here in the afternoon light looking out over the harbor and peaks feels like a new phase. She has her own room with it’s own scents and objects, a new person and a new story being written. At the end of the year, that’s the biggest change, the thing I’ll remember most.

For later

Looking towards Kowloon in the fog

I will remember this winter of 2022 I expect. Every morning I make tea and look out the window at Kowloon. This morning city is strangely foggy, closed off, quiet. There are no runners on the track, no tennis players on the courts. Few folk are out. I cannot see the ICC across the harbor, one of the world’s tallest buildings ghosting me. Neon on other TST rooftops is still on, bleeding through the fog with vague appeals.

This is a rare view of Hong Kong, a city usually bustling and humid. I am grateful for the quiet moments, as they match my life, unemployed and awaiting great change. By the peak of summer’s heat everything will be different, our lives, work, weather, this room, the fact that I sit wrapped in a blanket.

These quiet mornings the past two years have given me time to think. I’ve wasted much of it on reading news and random things, and still around the edges the quiet hours have done their trick. I’m happy here, in the house before it wakes, with my brain before it does likewise. I am glad to tend the cat and put away dishes, to make tea and then watch the treetops of Victoria Park, looking towards the harbor. Even the cockatoos are silent today. Usually they wheel about at seven thirty sharp, expressing their opinions of the morning to the world in loud voices.

The only reliable motion is the trundling busses, double decker ones and mini ones, back and forth on King’s road and up the hill. I love that the only sound is public transportation. There are people out of course, this is a dense urban center, but no more than twenty or so visible, scant different here at seven from two am this morning. There are always ten people visible from our seventh floor apartment. This is Hong Kong and we are never alone.

I wonder what this room will feel like in July. I wonder what my mornings will be like in the heat? Will I run AC in here or enjoy the mornings before they grow too hot? What did I do last year? It’s hard to remember the same as always. I got this chair in June. We gave away the couch that had occupied this spot some time later. The shapes of prior furniture come back to me, vaguely, but not the
feel of their coverings on my skin. Years later and I am still confused by the changes in weather.

The restaurant downstairs

We live above the type of restaurant I used to dream of running. My inspiration came from Stella’s, a coffee shop in Cornell’s college town. To my younger self, Stella’s was the perfect place, big enough that there was always space, light enough to read and study but dark enough to feel alone. There’s a fine balance in lighting that serves both mood and need. Stella’s had a couple of tables right at the front, before the counter. These were perfect for newcomers, for those on a date and uncertain of whom they were meeting, and for the quick chat type of business meeting or project discussion. They were visible from the street, rarely occupied for long, and didn’t require engaging with any of the other clientele.

Further back there were small tables and booths. The booths, with leather benches, were coveted by those planning to remain until their paper on Cicero was complete, sometime in the spring. Those were staked, like claims, with piles of books and papers, and the occupant would be alternately deep in thought, asleep, or completely gone, having left sufficient weight, sufficient evidence of intent behind to hold their space. Other booths would be filled with noisy groups of friends, playing cards or arguing about physics. As a teenager I would hole up in one, if lucky, with a book and a journal, alternately deeply self-absorbed and totally engaged in watching the behavior of those older than myself.

Downstairs, in Hong Kong, the coffee shop is smaller, of course. There are not enough tables to occupy with books, but the three counters, one for each wall and one for the serving space, provide plenty of seating for those trying to craft startup ideas or simply surf the net from a place not their apartment. The front steps are a frequent stopping point for dog walkers, who build knowledge of one anther through their pets behavior. The staff is friendly, the coffee good, and, like Stella’s, in the evening there are cocktails and a smattering of food. In many ways it is perfect.

These types of shops are not rare now, no longer solely the providence of college towns. There are coffee shop slash bars in almost every city and town, and I’m sure I’d find a favorite in many. Even here, the cafe downstairs is a second branch, the first having opened in Central some five years back. What makes the spot special, in the end, is the title. The restaurant downstairs is the simplest of descriptions, and the most powerful. It is a statement of density, of multi-use buildings, and of accessibility. Of course the staff knows me. Of course we are regulars. We live up stairs.

This is the second time in my life I have ever lived above a restaurant. In Shanghai, Tokyo, Houston, Boston, and San Francisco, I did not. Only once, for brief summer months where I lived on a sofa in New York, has the phrase ever been true before. As with my joy at finally living downtown by the train in an American city, I am thrilled with the current situation. Walking downstairs for coffee or bread is a great reminder of exactly what Hong Kong’s density has given us, so many parts of my perfect city made real.

I’m sure eventually we won’t live above a restaurant, it’s a rarer scenario than it should be. Until then though I’ll probably keep wandering downstairs in my flip-flops looking for fresh beans, comfortable with the hours and staff, and slowly meeting the neighbors. I wish more people, and especially more Americans, could enjoy the same.

Morning hours

From the window, coffee in hand, I look out onto the rooftops of Tai Hang and appreciate those who rose early. On three laundry is already hung, drifting in the eight am breeze. These are Hong Kong’s beauty days, when windows are open and the sky is clear. For a few weeks in November and most of March and April, the weather lingers on a setting between too hot and long sleeves but not much else required. It’s a time to do workouts on rooftops, or in parks, and to go on long hikes to explore abandoned villages. These pursuits will become unbearable in May, and remain so until almost the year’s end.

In these gifted weeks I try especially to rise early, to look out, and to enjoy the freedom of the weather. Squish joins me, watching pigeons and napping in the sunbeams. Soon those beams will be too hot and he will instead nap under sofas, pressed against the concrete. For now though we luxuriate in the open, and the fan blows fine fur in strange arcs as it oscillates. The sky is a clear blue, all the way to Shenzhen, a reminder of our horrid impact on it in better economic times. As always, I wish for the death of the automobile, partially for the view and partially for the noise. Seven stories up, windows open, I can hear people, their odd bangs and crashes as they open shops, unpack cartons, and unload trucks. But mostly what I hear is cars, trucks, and busses. They are wildly louder than all other activities, and a constant presence. One day children, when listening to a recording in a museum, will be astonished at the sound of internal combustion, and react in disbelief that our lives were full of such noise pollution. Until then I wait, and try to rise early to listen to the birds. Cities are full of life and animals, of course. They’re just hard to notice over the cars.