Hong
Kong Architecture: Photos of key buildings and places around the city
The British Far East - Architecture & The City
Hong Kong guides tend to be by tourists, or inhabitants, but this is by
neither.
Written by a temporary worker - architect and writer - on a two month
secondment from the UK, the guide takes an offbeat look at every day life
in Hong Kong rather than the tourist sites.
HONG KONG THROUGH THE EYES OF AN ITINERANT WORKER
Week One: Arrival
Courteous efficiency and a clean sophisticated airport - Chep Lap Kok
- met my arrival in HK. I couldn't help feeling UK citizens are still
welcome here with such a smooth entry.
The heat hits as a wall on leaving the airport, I took two layers off,
the flight was cold! Women with straw hats and smog masks mingle with
smart businessmen, there's the friendly noise of local children on some
trip. I first encounter the Cantonese 'noise' in Frankfurt Airport, continued
on the plane, so am a little acclimatised. On the flight I sat next to
a very old Chinese man who bumped past me without waiting for me to get
up: despite this we struck up a useful camaraderie and shared many jokes
using sign language. Very heartening, a great gradual introduction to
the Far East.
Catch a bus to HK. The huge scale of blocks even out here on Lantau astonishes,
no sprawl, cheek by jowl with untouched landscape.
Week Two: Settling In
Do you get used to the temperature and humidity? Yes, after a few days
I found. Ten days on and I'm aware of it but don't worry anymore about
feeling damp, nor do most of my colleagues. As long as you wash daily
what else can one do? You can't feel embarassed, which was my initial
reaction.
Threading through HK are old double decker trams, apparently from Glasgow
when the Scots decided they were surplus to modern requirements. I didn't
know about these prior to arrival but they're fun and very cheap at $2
per ride flat fare, that's around 16 pence. Beware, they run in parallel
but on opposite-routed tracks so don't stick your head out to take a photo,
or it risks being hit! The sound of a tram horn and bell is, with the
road crossing repetitive clacking, a key sound of Hong Kong, all pervasive,
unforgettable. People on the tram are fairly noisy, especially the Filipinos.
The guidebooks all mention Sundays as being a day when Filipino workers
congregate in the centre but until you're in the thick of it you cannot
really understand this phenomenon. Thousands of women in one place, braiding
their hair, chatting, picnicking. They occupy the city, laying down their
rugs. One of the most powerful gatherings is under Foster's HSBC building,
a populist cathedral for a day! Each group is apparently related to a
community back in the Philippines so one could imagine a fascinating comparative
mapping from country to city centre.
The Central district is Corbusian dreamland - you can walk through the
centre continuously above the traffic, weaving through malls and over
traffic-filled 'gorges'. The system is not totally coordinated so expect
some wrong turns! In the heat and humidity this can be exasperating.
The swirling crowds may look chaotic but there is no rush here, no walking
lines on the escalators, nor the order of a city like London. Time is
less of a concern here it would seem, I don't know why.
The markets are often dominated by the pungent odour of dried fish. At
times it is too much and I have to leave. The exotic mountains of vegetables
and meat, live fish and hens has to be seen though. Markets are dominated
by the sound of the hatchet chopping away. Chop chop of machete into meat,
fish and ice. The chopping is mostly done onto large sections of tree
trunks.
I was shocked to see a guy in a butchers smoking a cigarette. Then, two
doors down, I saw both butchers smoking, one spring chicken cutting stringy
duck with a fag dangling from his mouth. I also saw a butcher loading
chicken from damp cardboard in the gutter, utterly unhygienic. The fish
splashing disgorges water into the gutter and occasionally they jump out,
only to be thrown back in without even a cursory rinse. I wished I had
my children with me to see these crabs and fish live on the street, but
the wriggling halves of eels - chopped in two - may shock some people.
Week Three: An Inhabitant
Ok, almost two weeks gone in HK, just got access to my website via a bargain
laptop (with keys in Japanese) so feel MUCH better. Thoughts? Chinese
pop music is a different world. Ok, some rap copycats but almost all is
lyrical, soft and generally melancholic....which makes it not exactly
ideal for a lonely westerner in their hotel room missing their family!
Arty videos, a bit French art-house, a bit old-fashioned and this in many
ways is refreshing, especially against the sex & aggression of the
american rap sandwich on MTV.
Hong Kong people?
They tend to bump into you with rarely an apology, their concept of personal
space is different, totally. They don't mind pushing into the queue ahead
of you, they don't hold the door open for you - ever - and generally look
after themselves. If you are buying something or using a service then
you are often treated politely. If not, then you can be generally treated
fairly disdainfully. For example, a first visit to a cafe is met by tea
- everywhere - and when the bill came at one cafe both waiters banged
another cup down, a physical 'give me a tip'! No tip meant less vigourous
tea banging on subsequent visits. But in one wonton cafe or 'noodle house'
- where they rarely speak even basic English - I tried in vain to give
a tip, so not sure about this aspect.
Week Four: A Regular
Soup.
Sometimes when I ordered a meal I immediately got a bowl of tasty soup.
The first time this happened I'd just been to Happy Valley Races - fourteen
storeys of humanity watching the floodlit ponies rotate against a skyscraper
backdrop. Although I'd had a warmish hot dog and Yoshitori Chicken, the
two pints of Carlsberg must have wet the taste buds so I dropped into
what became my regular cafe for some noodles. But first they dropped a
bowl of soup in front of me, and I ended up not being able to finish the
ever so slightly too oily noodles. A further visit resulted in no soup
so I tried the oily noodles again, but no soup. I surmised as to whether
you get soup on first meal, or certain times, or with a certain dish,
or maybe if you have to wait a long time when the kitchen is busy. But
none of this made sense as two weeks later, there was the soup again,
with a dish I'd had before - soup free!
The cars?
Hong Kongers love German cars and the wealth of cars was for me the biggest
surprise in HK. Ok, I like cars but nevertheless the percentage of expensive
cars is phenomenal and noticed by all my western colleagues. There are
as many German cars as Asian cars - if you discount the ubiquitous red
and silver taxis which are mostly Japanese saloons. The favourite make
has to be the Mercedes, and the bigger the better! Hong Kongers don't
take too well to BMW's, Jaguar's or Audi's, it has to be a 500 or 600
series Merc. Looking down from the hotel I see big chauffer-driven Mercedes
swishing through the streets below hour after hour, but there are also
cars I'd only seen in magazines before - top of the range Lamborghinis,
Ferraris and Maseratis.
Buildings?
They are articulated like most across the sub-tropics to provide shade
from the sun. The facades are articulated with air-con boxes. Typical
housing has them slapped onto the facade - to save taxes, or possibly
to aid functioning and free up valuable space. Better quality buildings
have them typically sandwiched between concrete ledges - they become good
architectural devices. Air-con seems to be Hong Kongers number one gripe
- no week goes by without overhearing someone complaining to their landlord
about malfunctioning.
Tea?
In the cafes I visited it was universally jasmine: from clear plastic
beakers or porcelain in the smarter venues. Elsewhere, green tea is popular
but English / Indian is generally available. Tea is rarely drunk from
cups or mugs in the office, but out of small flasks intermittently through
the day.
Week Five: The Big Con
Watch out for the condensate! Along most streets the buildings tend to
overhang roughly half way across the pavement. You may wonder where the
frequent puddles come from: air-conditioning boxes which are generally
strapped to the outside of blocks. Embarrassing damp patches on the shirt!
Week Six: Departure Lounge
My time to leave Hong Kong had arrived. The place my five-year old daughter
had called Honky Konky will live with me forever. I'd seen the famous
view with the junk in front of skyscrapers, and the Peak, but had no real
idea of how it would 'feel'. Like any world destination there are tourist
areas, expat areas and places for the locals. In HK the expat community
is huge and very settled, thus pervasive of the experience, especially
for workers as opposed to tourists. Although there is a duality of lifestyles
here, each one - whether in Kowloon or Wanchai - is so much richer and
chaotic than back home. Life is good, the place buzzes and people work
really hard, frequently leaving their families to hit the office at the
weekend.
As I sat in the departure hall at Chep
Lap Kok tapping away on my laptop I realised I'd taken on a bit of
the HK life, and I was going to miss the energy of it.
Architecture
Competition
New York Architecture
World Architecture : e-architect
- a guide to key buildings across the globe
Hong Kong Architecture
- by Architect
Chep Lap Kok Airport + HSBC Bank building: both by Foster
& Partners
Comments or building suggestions / photos for the Hong Kong Architecture
Guide page welcome: info@e-architect.co.uk
Hong Kong Building - page : adrian welch / isabelle lomholt