skyline

Seen things

The sky fades at sunset over the harbor in Hong Kong, with TST in the foreground

For two years, we have the kind of view that I will never be able to capture adequately, never be able to share completely. From our vantage point we watch the rain roll in from the north, pour down on distant islands and sweep over Kowloon until it obscures one of the world’s tallest buildings, until it finally pushes across sports fields and the park to crash against our glass-walled box. As the view disappears I feel lucky to be alive.

Looking left, up the hills of Hong Kong island towards the towers of Leighton Hill, Beverly Summit, and Jardine’s Lookout, I play a game, unfocusing my eyes against the mass of towers. I watch windows, elevators, and stairwell lights flick on and off, looking at the patterns rather than the details, creating my own personal pixel art. A few seconds unfocused like this are enough to see two or three lights turn on, or off. It’s beautiful in the way of Star Wars cities, of Bladerunner. The impossible density of Hong Kong made visible due to my height.

From the twenty seventh floor we can see twenty odd tennis courts, eight soccer pitches, three pools, six basketball courts, and two pickle-ball style short courts. Plus a running track, a school quad, the central library, and a half dozen hotels, office towers, and neon signs, all without considering the apartments, without considering the harbor, without considering Kowloon or the distant islands. The view is all encompassing, and the architects took advantage, constructing our entire tower on an angle so as to maximize it, and filling the walls with nothing but glass.

We will probably never have a view like this again. It’s a product of Covid, of us putting our travel budget into our apartment, of lowered rents, and of good jobs. Two years later it feels absurd, like something we should reconsider. We do.

Tonight, though, watching the rain sweep across the harbor, blotting out the neon temporarily, I know I’ll never forget this, and I’ll struggle to describe it. So I try, sitting on the balcony until the rain passes, eyes wide to memorize. And then I return to the table, to write while looking out at the Star Ferry, at M+ and the rest of TST, at Langham Place all the way out in Mong Kok, and at the towers of Admiralty, just barely visible behind Times Square and Hysan in Causeway.

This is a lucky view. I can see probably 800 hotel rooms scattered among the towers, and the lightning that strikes the tallest one in front of me is four times its height. The cruise ships that pull past in the mornings are huge, and yet temporary against the mountains behind the city, against the peaks of Lantau visible on clear days.

The fireworks, when they happen, are just in front of the yacht club, which I have watched closely with binoculars, looking for boats bearing friends. The fireworks at Disneyland are visible on a clear day, small plumes on the horizon.

The flight path north out of HKG goes straight overhead, high enough to be beautiful rather than a nuisance, and we watch the varied liveries for fun. The tram line runs just in front, far enough away to likewise be picturesque but close enough to hear, sometimes, from the balcony. The elevated highway along the water, the new walkway out towards north point, the walk of stars along the TST waterfront, all these things are visible, and beautiful.

It is the kind of view filled with too much to write about, too much to describe. On Saturdays we watch the junk boats pull out from Central, carrying their party crews to bays out around the corners of Hong Kong. At sunset we watch the clouds, the sky, and the water change colors from bright to oranges and pinks, until at last the sun falls behind the mountains and everything fades into purples.

I don’t expect to have this view for long, and I will try to remember how much I’ve seen while sitting here, these past two years.

I’ve seen things, indeed.

Looking at us

The view from Hong Kong island across Victoria Park to Kowloon as the sun sets.

Standing on the balcony I can see so many of us. Two teams play rugby on the pitch near the library. Next to the field a group does sprints on the 100 meter track. Around them dozens of joggers do slow loops. Across a wall and worlds away six tennis courts are filled with lessons. Behind those another ten are busy with private matches at their club. Behind those in the dark two boys play basketball in the schoolyard.

Across the street the park glistens, soccer courts and basketball courts and walking paths busy. Beyond that the harbor is full of motion. The pilot boats head in and out to cargo ships on the horizon. The ferries troll back and forth. In between the elevated highway carries busses, taxis and cars, the former two outnumbering the latter. On King’s Road, closer in, the tram trundles in their midst. All these forms of transportation and the occasional airplane overhead.

As the evening settles on the harbor the neon comes on. I think of how many words like that are no longer accurate. Filming. Neon. An album as a disc. Ideas created by technologies that have been themselves turned over. In Hong Kong, where individual bulbs blink, creating the image of rain trickling down the ICC, so many of us live in the intersection of technology and reality. The tram’s rough hum, a sound immediately discernible amid the combustion engines and sports sounds, is of another era. The lit scoreboard in Victoria Park’s central court for a tennis game likewise, not of a different era but of a unique priority compared to the dozens of public courts visible around it, the concrete soccer fields, the basketball courts packed with recreational players. Likewise the Chinese Recreation Club’s fancy pools speak to a priority of wealth, when across the street a huge public pool occupies a chunk of Victoria Park.

I can see so many of us. The Pullman, in Causeway Bay along the park, is almost full. On Saturday I think it was, or close. A shock to see so many of the rectangles lit after years of the pandemic when the building was mostly dark. A shock to realize in that earlier surprise how comfortable I’d become with no tourists, without people in hotels, without travel. How awkward, in some way, it feels to have everything busy, to have Mandarin dominate Tai Hang’s coffee shops on the weekends instead of Cantonese or Australian, French or Singapore’s more British English.

I look at the office towers, still mostly lit, and the dozens of apartment buildings, where lights flicker on every minute as someone returns home, and am glad. So many boxes for humans. There’s both no space, and so many options. A paradox of density and the need for more, driven by the kind of services, the kind of life, available when so many of us are in sight.

California light

Sunset towards Malibu

Sitting in the hills north of Los Angeles, looking over the Pacific, the light seems both too harsh and too perfect. My eyes struggle to adjust to the brightness of air without humidity, or a sky without clouds. Along the horizon to the south the smog of downtown shades the air brown. In all other directions the sky is the particular light blue of southern California. As usual, it is both hot in the sun and cool in the shade. After two months of summer sweat and air conditioning in Hong Kong, leaving the patio doors swung wide is a glorious feeling.

We are once again on the move. For the first time in twenty twenty one we have crossed a border, boarded an airplane. For the first time in twenty twenty one we are in the company of old, old friends. For the first time in twenty twenty one we are on vacation. The combination is a wonderful feeling. Driving up the coast last night, working hard to do simple things like lane changes correctly after a year and a half abroad, we marveled at how comfortable we are here, on the southern coast of California, where neither of us are from and where we have never lived. We are comfortable here, on the PCH, precisely for that reason: it’s always vacation.

There’s a glory to returning to a vacation spot, to well-known restaurants and streets, to old friends and familiar beds. It’s an easy trigger for the body, which relaxes so quickly in these comfortable surroundings. Arriving, we chat with our hosts in the quiet dark of the house before all heading to shower and bed. We are so much more comfortable than we’d been, two dozen hours before, still exhausted from the work day and barely finished cleaning and packing.

Fishing for peace

Harbor view

On the edge of a block of concrete built to support a highway, they fish. It’s Sunday, and the sun is going down on the weekend, out to our left behind the island. These concrete chunks would already be in shadow were they not perpetually so because of the highway above. In Hong Kong some shade is a good thing, and these are regular fishing spots. The fishermen, for they are all men, seem to know who sits where without any spoken interaction, which points to a long established tradition. People have been fishing these blocks on the shore of Quarry Bay for years, probably since before there were concrete blocks to fish from.

The real joy from this spot isn’t the fishing, though. It’s the water, and the view across to Kowloon, Lion Rock, and Kwun Tong. That far shore is still lit, a beautiful shimmer of golden hour glory and the bay’s moving reflection that emphasize how much Hong Kong is a city of the ocean and the mountains. And so there are photographers here too, both casual and more serious, trying to capture this light. In so many ways the city, the dense urban towers that are home to eight million people, appears the smallest part of the view. Perhaps this is why so many people are able to live so tightly; the water and mountains are often in sight and rarely out of reach.

The story of density is told frequently as a sacrifice, but rarely as a comfort. Here, watching the fishermen sit on their blocks of concrete, rods out and down and lines into the bay, less than a dozen feet from each other and mostly silent, is a reminder that company without conversation can bring peace. In many ways the stories of dense urban areas are not of individual apartments but of shared spaces. Whether Central Park in New York or along the rivers of Paris and Rome, the spaces we share are what builds the fabric of the city. In these spaces we see each other, and are not alone.

In Hong Kong as Sunday ends I am so happy to walk the shoreline and watch all those out, like me, to find some peace. Fishing, jogging, taking photos, or just wandering, we’re all here together, part of this island and this city.