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5 notes ON SEEING THE STREETS OF HONG KONG A mad rush of blood in my head. I remember stepping off from the airport carrying a heavy heart, exhausted by its constant pounding from excitement. This was the first time that I am wandering off alone in a foreign land, and the decision was a rather spontaneous one, a kind of escape from a burden that I had carried since a certain important person had left. Never would I know that my 6 days in Hong Kong would carry me in the same momentum as I was feeling then. For the next 5 nights, I stayed in a simple hotel that was just tucked beside a small park, a deceptively quiet corner where the next turn will bring me to the infamous Temple Street in Yau Ma Tei, Kowloon. Parks like this will appear out of nowhere in the middle of a bustling city street, which goes to show the drastic lack of space that people in Hong Kong have to live with each day. Out of mere habit, I took the first day and a half wondering around where my feet could take me, measuring my pace against the people on the streets and getting used to the ‘flow’ of the city. There was no intention to start concerning myself with photographing immediately; I have to find a connection with the location that I am in first, and the walk is sort of a quiet ritual for that purpose. Trust me that it wasn’t for the shopping.Familiarization is critical. Reading the flow of the traffic, sensing the spots where I can stand still and remain transparent to the people is important for the shy street photographer. Pointing a camera at strangers has never been a natural action for most people, and for many a times I have depended on my passion and interest in everyday life to let myself slip past the conscious thought of shooting. Somehow, I had managed to lose myself while taking the photographs. Camera and walk around lens, check. Wide angle lens, check. Doubts and disbelieve, forgotten. Wonder and excitement, plenty. I set off from the hotel ready to release the shutter. There is no big ideal behind what I am going to do, but to capture the life that I can see around me, within the best of my photographic abilities, and without the burden of trying to frame a ‘story’ around photographs I take. I can only see that way of photographing as bearing any truth, and the streets will tell their stories in their own natural, spontaneous way. Only the subject is determined, this time being the streets of Hong Kong.Hong Kong is a city that sheds its skin every few years, buildings are being demolished, rebuilt, revamped everywhere, and one can see thickets of “Building Reinforcement” signs in chinese stuck high on old buildings all around you. An endless flow of concrete change. There’s a certain sense of fluidity, of constant movement that carries a life of it’s own so strong, that it influences its people who lives in it - One can never stay still for too long. I guess for a city where land can cost a fortune that we may never be able to make in one lifetime, there isn’t many who can afford to stay grounded for too long. The city’s soul is always moving.The working class peppered the streets densely, their pace in a brisk and well-trained walk much alike to the sudden gust of cold winds that signals the arrival of autumn, and they are always gazing a few feet away from what is just in front of them. I was carried away into their pace in the tight pathways, and became a part of the race that they are in. In exchange, I’d lost a piece of my perception, realizing only later that I have missed the people who weren’t a part of our competition, mostly elderly folks who were hidden from view and making way from the crowd by taking the sides of tight walkways, or resting on elevated corners off the glass windows of some malls, and those who are making their rounds collecting recyclable materials off bins that lined the main street. I guess it’s tough for one to make simple living when all around you are just concrete and waste from the capitalistic, material world. A discomforting sense of familarity to what I had felt back home.I recalled a weird encounter that happened in an up-market japanese restaurant while I was having my dinner around Wanchai. A presentable girl in school uniform, probably in her early 15 or 16, sat alone looking at the menu with a blank look on her face. There is a certain air from her that tells me that she is from a well-to-do family. I was making my order to the waitress in English, when it appeared to have caught her interest. As the waitress proceeded to take her order, she started to do the very same by speaking in English, even though obvously struggling. The entire exhange between the Philipino waitress and the girl took an awkwardly long time before she is satisfied that she has made her order right. Even then, I thought, the competitive race continues, in a restaurant where it is usually the only place one can rest and seek solace away from the race that is happening outside. Yet even among the many weird incidents and social ills, one can still find glimpses of hope and positivity in the eyes of most youths and people that I have come across in my short exploration of Hong Kong. It gives me a sense of hope for the future of this profound city, and if given a chance again, I will like to capture deeper into its heart, to know more about the soul of this city that never seems to stop changing.A mad rush of blood in my head, in a good way. 
May 15th
Tags: Hong Kong, photography, art, society, journalism, spadea ho, spadea, street,

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