Evolving space

Looking towards Hong Kong Island at night from West Kowloon’s open space, with people hanging out on the grass in the foreground

Evolving space

In West Kowloon we lie on the grass and watch people make smoothies by bicycle. It’s an inefficient method, the loading of both human and fruit a bit slow. As food services at a grassy area go it’s good company. No diesel emissions, no power consumption, and low noise, plus the amusing faces and failures, the friends video’ing and the staff trying to explain pedaling to those with a limited set of experiences. With this distraction and the view on the other side, that of Hong Kong Island across the water, I am entertained. In between the two, the children run and banter. Barefoot they chase each other, the soccer ball, bubbles, and each other again. After the smoothies two of our party walk along the water to a place that sells pizza and procure dinner for our group. A bit later, in the semi-dark of a million lights, I have a beer and stand barefoot on the sea wall, looking out at the city and the boats between us. Behind me people jog, couples chat and wander, families eat and debate how long to let their children roam, and folk with dogs follow their pets. Earlier in the day a man walked his cat, as comfortable as any I’ve ever seen, through the park in a long loop, accompanying a friend with a small dog. I wonder how long they’ve been doing that to have the two animals happy to explore together. It’s been a long time since Mr. Squish was comfortable with a dog, and thinking of those days makes me remember how far he’s come.

It’s the long weekend built out of China’s national day, and we mostly take it easy, one activity a day. On Thursday we climb Red Incense Summit for the fireworks, joining a hundred and fifty others to perch on the rocky outcroppings above the city for twenty three sweaty minutes of fireworks. I hold onto an edge with one hand, balanced on a boulder with one leg, leaning on another. Next to me, on the inside of the rock, a man with a huge camera tries to make space for us but there is none. We are in contact for the entirety of the show despite our efforts. My view is blocked by the youth, who stands on my bent leg while I hold her up with one arm to see. It’s precarious, all of us agreeing not to move in the dark on these rocks on this hilltop so we can share the view. For the twenty three minutes Fives narrates in the staccato style of the fireworks:

“Wow”
“I like that one-
“I love that one!”
“That’s the best!”
“Explosions!”
and at last
“What the!”

It’s a phrase she’s learned from a classmate, whose other famous saying is “Of course I can.” They’ve both been adopted. I’m grateful for the language exchange of kindergarten, for the words of Cantonese and odd slang for bugs.

Compared with the live-streamers, with their tripods set up ages before the sunset, with their multiple phones and constant Mandarin narration, her exclamations are a welcome overlay, though at times I’m conscious of her volume given the huge number of people. After the display we linger on the rocks for an hour, eating snacks and letting the youth climb things. She’s careful in the dark, not wanting to go up high or stand on slanty things. Eventually we leave the rock to a group of South Asian men with a bluetooth speaker. I wonder if they’re students or delivery drivers, or both. Either way I assume they need the space.

On Sunday we watch Fives learn rugby with a gaggle of other children, all local, on the pitch next to the library. She’s easy to spot among the crowd, of course, but more importantly she’s now at home, part of the group and aware of the rules of each drill, making faces with her friends while waiting their turn. She runs hard with the ball and without, though not always in the right direction. Youth sports are both an adventure in enthusiasm and an exercise in patience. I say hello to a couple of other parents, to a couple of other children, before we all go home to shower. It’s still hot here in the beginning of October. Cooler weather is coming and the temperatures no longer feel impossible, but we’re still glad of the aircon, still hunting shade.

In the afternoon, during quiet time, I finish a book I’ve been working through for some time, Karen Cheung’s memoir of Hong Kong. The Impossible City is the kind of book I read in small segments, requiring processing time. Her stories of protests, of music venues in Kwun Tong, and of growing up here uncertain of what Hong Kong is or could be, drift through my mind as I run along the harbor near Fortress Hill, to Quarry Bay and back. Against the backdrop of this long weekend the book feels like a good complement to all the kinds of Hong Kong we see, to all the people we know.

Later we meet at our favorite restaurant, a homey Japanese place in Quarry Bay. The staff is happy to see 5’s when she waves in the door before entering. We’ve been coming here since before she was born, hunting a feeling we’re both learning to rely on. It’s long been our Sunday spot, our place for a brief break before the week. 5’s orders 海老フライ (fried shrimp) and お好み焼き (okonomiyaki, a savory pancake) in Japanese, semi-politely, and we take our time with dinner, surrounded by families both local and Japanese doing likewise.

“I don’t want to be fancy,” my partner says, sitting on the bed one day in the apartment we’ve returned to. “I know what I like.” We do, I think, and it’s complicated, a mishmash of people and emotions, a mishmash of landscapes. From a junk a few weeks back filled with Ukranian women and their kids to the parents-run rugby club, from the promenade of West Kowloon with food trucks and bay lights to the Hakodate Japanese restaurant, from the Fire Dragon celebration that fills our neighborhood to the public bathrooms up the hill behind it, Hong Kong is filled with people and things we love. Like all cities everywhere, it’s filled with everything, somewhere. Riding the ferry home from Kowloon on Saturday we leaned on the rail, looking at the city, apartment towers all the way to the mountains, to the horizon. “So many boxes,” we say to each other. It’s a phrase we’ve used since moving here, since before moving here. Surely, with so many apartments in sight, we’d say, there must be one we could rent, somewhere here in this city we could build a life.

I think of the Lorde lyric I quote often when people ask me about how long we’ll be here, about Hong Kong and what it feels like now. I think about what we’re looking for, and how we feel when we find it. And I think about all of the people we’d never imagined meeting, who we now spend so much of our life with, in small bits and large ones, on pitches and at school, in water and on concrete.

“What the fuck are perfect places, anyway?”

At last adrift together

Looking towards Hong Kong in the sunset from the eastern mouth of the harbor, on the water

At last adrift together

On a Saturday towards the end of September I once again step off the top of the boat as the anchor drops. As my body hits the water two stories below my first thought is “at last”. We’re back on a boat, adrift in Clearwater Bay up around the north west edge of Hong Kong. It’s been longer than I’d expected, some six years now since the last time. In so many ways those six years are what I talk about when I say “I am no longer making five year plans.” Our lives are brief and the future hard to see.

Especially with my eyes closed in the ocean under water.

From the surface, with nothing in sight save boats, waves, hills, and the couple of public beaches, there’s not much to think about. Except where the four-year-old is. And I see her, grinning like mad as she climbs down the stairs to the boat’s back deck and steps off into the water, holding her life jacket tight like a pro. This is the other side of the speed of our lives: suddenly, here we are, adrift in the ocean together. I’ve been excited for this day for years, and here we are. And while I am still looking forward to more swim lessons, to less need to watch for drowning, I’m also so grateful we have made it this far, laughing and splashing each other. I watch her balance on the floating mat, doing her best to surf the waves and the impacts of the other children before tumbling into the ocean. This, I think, is how we are meant to be. Soaking wet, mouths full of salt, having to think to breathe.

Life in Hong Kong is good, I hear from people over and over during the day. Life in Hong Kong is relaxing. It’s not the first thing people say, when asked about time here. It’s not the first thing people think in a city of 7.5 million that’s among the world’s densest. It’s true though. When we’re walking home down the fire dragon path from rugby on a Sunday, or when we’re having breakfast together in the coffee shop downstairs, we are at peace. When we’re on a beach on Lantau or on a boat, when we’re on the ferry to Lamma for school or at the beach on Repulse for the Mid-Autumn lantern celebration, there are a lot of moments of peace, of being able to look around and say yes, this is good.

Especially when trying to throw a frisbee from the water to someone jumping from the second deck.

Six years is too long. I won’t make any plans, but I’ll try to say yes to more time in the water, wherever it may be.

The neighborhood wakes

The neighborhood wakes

In the early afternoon of a Thursday I use the public toilet up behind Tai Hang, near the temple. As always I am grateful for the infrastructure, for the cleaning staff, for the rubbish removers, and the maintenance workers. Living in Tai Hang for much of our eight years here, and working mostly from home, I’m familiar with their faces, if not their names, and much of the neighborhood’s rhythm, the bustle of early morning school busses and taxis, the ebb and flow of the coffee shop crowd, the dai pai dong crowd, the grocery shopping folk. I’m comfortable with the other folk that work from coffee shops in the afternoons sometimes, hunting variety and caffeine.

So it is that this week I feel the neighborhood come alive. Workers hang lanterns and flags for the upcoming Fire Dragon dance. They erect a large sign proclaiming it with lights that shine in our window all night, an odd outlier in a world where most of the large neon and commercial signage turns off at ten pm or latest eleven. Around these signs, at most but not all hours, clusters of visitors stand, chatting or taking photos. They bring a new energy to most shops, people who have to read the menu, who aren’t sure of the hours. In the mornings new groups of runners gather alongside those for whom Tai Hang is their normal loop, both having coffee covered in sweat. In the evening the pizza shop has a line, as does the Vietnamese place, and several of the smaller local establishments. The mix of groups is welcomed, everyone in Tai Hang happy for the businesses to make money, for their friends to be busy, for their shops to be full. This is a small community, and we all need each other, and are aware that a rising tide can do little harm, not in a single week, or two.

Mostly, we appreciate the change in weather. July and August in Hong Kong have been alternately rainy and intensely humid, the type of weather that does not reward exploration. And so when, in the middle of September, the temperature tops out at 30ºC and the humidity drops to 70%, we rejoice. Part of this awakening is the season, is the upcoming fire dragon dance, is the national holiday for October first. Part of it is more human: we are suddenly happy to be out of doors.

Typing this with my feet up on a bench, in the shade of a coffee shop’s awning, I am glad to be at home after the summer’s whirlwind, glad to be back in this neighborhood again, eyes open in the changing weather.

Vibrating

Lorde on stage and also projected on video screens, mid-concert

Vibrating

I sit against a wall in the breeze, drinking strong coffee. I am in Luxembourg, again, and my brain starts to move at full speed after a day of jet lag and information overload. The people next to me discuss the challenges of marriage. The baristas discuss getting mugged in South America. My mind vibrates. I am reading about octopuses, a novel given to me a year ago by a friend from Madrid who lives in San Francisco and I met in Shanghai. I’m here to see Lorde, again, with a friend from San Francisco who lives in Barcelona. Life moves apace.

The crisp air is wonderful. Thirteen degrees C this morning as I did stretches and headed out, in jeans and a hoodie. After a while in the sweat of Hong Kong’s late summer I’m so glad to drink coffee outdoors as it steams, to finish this novel, to make some notes for my own memories.

These small breaks, these long loops to shows in countries we barely know, are an age. They are the experiments of people looking forward, looking for what’s next for themselves, and looking backwards for the music that’s shaped them. Like all things I am sure this phase is temporary. Like balloons, I often tell our daughter. And fish, she tells me. Brief joys, moments that prove we are alive. Prove that we’re able to go and to come back, to adventure. In the flurry of each year there are moments that will remain, things that will stand out. Some times we see them coming, and sometimes they surprise us, accidents and acquisitions both. Sometimes the concert tickets bought on a whim become things to look forward to for more than a year.

My first day here we walked Vianden Castle, along north-eastern edge of this small nation. The second we see Lorde, in a university town along the country’s southern border. In between there is the coffee that opened this post and a glass of wine at my favorite cafe, both in Luxembourg City, the middle. In between there are plenty of free trains and long walks, hours spent catching up on the last few years.

Twenty hours, I’ve always said. This was more like twenty seven, a bit of luxury. Time enough to catch up and to adventure, to stand on castle walls and to swap books. Time enough to buy presents for our children and discuss parenting philosophies.

And most importantly time enough to share favorite songs, to look up the set lists from prior tour stops, and to dance. Like the rest of this series, the artist is someone important to me, songs attached to parts of my life, memories wrapped up in each future listen. And so, once she’s finally there, on stage, apologizing for last year’s near miss and dancing on top of LED displays, I am ecstatic, dancing hard, as happy as I can be. Worth the wait, I tell myself the next morning, singing bits of various tunes as I walk a forest path through the hills behind my hotel.

Worth the wait indeed.

In the summer rain

In the summer rain

Behind me the water patters down on top of the aircon that cools this room. Stuck out the window, it is exposed to the weather. It is exposed to the water currently sluicing down the side of the building, from overhang to windowsill. Thus the stacato thump timp tump thump of heavy drips and intermittent splatters behind my head. In Hong Kong, at nine thirty PM on a Thursday, it’s raining. The same would have been true on Wednesday, or most of August. Or most of July. Or much of June. The summer is one of the wettest on record. July was the second wettest month of the name, behind only a typhoon in ’94.

Our walls are decomposing, slowly, as the water seeps into the plaster. It’s nothing dramatic, just the gradual peel of paint, bubble and crumble of the base material. Mostly it is the knowledge of wear that can not be fixed until the weather changes. Once the rain ends we can sand, scrape, patch, and paint again, fixing a part of the wall that has been repaired dozens of times before. This is an old building. Everything has been repaired before. Often the same spots over and over by the same workers, by the same residents. By us, now in our fifth year in this apartment, both intimately familiar with its quirks and totally surprised by the changes. In the three years between our first four years and this one numerous things were patched and caulked. Hardware was swapped, the kitchen was re-done. Some of it for the better, much of it out of necessity. Some of it just because. Through weather we are learning which is which.

Rain, in any tropically-inclined city, is a trade. It’s welcome, for it drops the heat, holds down the daily highs by a few critical degrees C. The difference between 32 and 28 is the ability to go running comfortably, the ability to wear pants occasionally, the ability to walk long distances without considering whether doing so is critical or whether it could be avoided. Rain, in the hottest months of the year, is a blessing. And yet rain for months exposes the weaknesses in drainage systems, in mold prevention systems, in humidity control. With enough rain everything drips and everything leaks. Especially old things. Especially old moldy things that have seen years of typhoons and humidity.

As a child of the east coast I’m familiar with humidity. Without that background Hong Kong would be harder, like it has been for my partner. The transition from Colorado to South East Asia, from the mountains to the ocean, even by way of San Francisco, is a shock. Nothing can ever be left out on the counter overnight. This mantra, so normal to me and so unfamiliar to her, remains a shock when told to those from her home town, where bread, fruit, and butter all survive for days without worry.

In Hong Kong they’d be slathered in ants and chased by geckos, rotten and working their way towards spore production.

And yet when the sky overhead opens during dinner and we are able to skirt buildings home, crossing only four streets in our ten minute walk, emerging largely unscathed despite the downpour, I know Hong Kong is also built for this weather. The overhangs of older buildings, now banned by the poorly-considered code updates of modernization, provide shelter in even the stiffest rain. Standing under one outside the 7-Eleven the other night, buying milk for the youth, I laughed with a fellow customer at the storm just begun. Luckily for me I had only one block to go, and mostly overhangs to get there. Luckily for them they lived around the corner, though on the flat side of the building. Their level of saturation would be determined by their speed with keys on the downstairs gate, mine by my ability to cross the one road at a run. Both of us would be fine, we reckoned, despite the storm obscuring the skyscrapers of Kowloon.

This is Hong Kong in the rain.