Hong Kong - The Tunnels of the MTR Train (The Transport Series)

Hong Kong - The Tunnels of the MTR Train

              Scattered around Hong Kong are cavities in the ground. They disrupt the stable, concrete surfaces that define the city and add yet another vertical layer to the urban, altering how we move through space: we are no longer confined to a life of upward mobility, but also have the option of moving downwards, into a life detached from natural light and air. While the train functions as a means to efficiently travel through the city, the complex network of underground tunnels that accompany this transport simultaneously give life to an entirely alternate world – one that lives and breathes right under our feet, entirely hidden from our view. What this buried world embodies is a parallel universe: while it may be located in the same place and contain the same culture and language as above, the people – once they enter these concrete-encased tubes – are momentarily transformed from organic, autonomous individuals into quasi-human machines. We begin to inhibit a cyber-world that is characterised by a wholly technologized sensory experience that guarantees organisation of bodies and our compliance with the latter.

Once we descend, the underlying, human murmur of the outside is instantly replaced with multiple, bodiless voices that to seem emanate from the walls, ceilings and floor of the tunnels – that engulf you from all angles and cannot be attributed to any identity. These disembodied voices command you to “Hold the handrail on escalators”, “Take elevators when wearing sandals”, and we listen to them, without questioning their authority. The melody accompanying these commanding voices is one of infinite beeps and dings, radiating from the hundreds of phones that are not only a way to maintain connection with the world above, but also function as a technologized extension of our own bodies: as our eyes and limbs continue to be glued to these devices during the ‘mundane’ commute on a train and its underground world, our phones become the link between the human and the technological, forming into a cyber-organic limb that is always latched onto our body and/or mind.

 Coupled with these robotically-voiced regulations are arrows and lines that dictate the flow of movements within the space. While they may only be coloured symbols on the floor, these seemingly inconsequential signs tap into our subconscious and turn individuals into inert machines that conform to the desired direction and pace of movement. Humans become vehicles, joining a highway with a specific number of permitted exits and a speed limit. In this moment, as we enter the tunnels, we forget that we have the right to turn left or right, move slower or faster, and instead unconsciously agree to use the space provided in the precise way the arrows and lines expect from us. I, too, become sucked into this dormant state of being: my body and mind fuse into one single unit of permitted, mechanised movements that align with the imposed expectations of the space.

Accompanying this transformation, from sentient human to passive machine, is the loss of interaction with and acknowledgment of other people. Despite being in a space that is so crowded, the train station is an anonymous space. We do not dare to lock gazes nor speak to another, for that would be too transgressive, going beyond the type of activities that are permitted. What we move past, in such proximity, isn’t an individual with an identity and complex history, but a hollow body – moving matter. Even when body-to-body contact occurs, there is little to no acknowledgment of the other. It is here, at this moment, when we fail to recognise each other’s humanity and bypass others without even a flinch of interest, that we have completed the metamorphosis: we, now, fully embody the human-machine of the digitalised, underground universe.

Hong Kong - The Double-decker Tram (The Transport Series)

Hong Kong – The Double-decker Tram

The bus. The train. The tram. All of these vehicles function to serve a single objective – to take you from Point A to Point B. They all run alongside each other within the same environment, vertically or horizontally, separated by only a few metres. And yet, each is a door to an entirely different experience of place and space: what you feel, see, hear and smell by situating yourself within the window-planed, metal compartments of a tram is the polar opposite to the sensory potential that is enclosed in the seemingly constrained space of an underground train, and vice versa. Urban space can completely transform depending on the ways you move through it. If we harness and attune ourselves to this transformative capacity of transport, we may come to notice that the urban is complex and always in motion. A city has no single essence: a place is not just x – it is also a, b, c….

During the last eight weeks, I have grown more and more aware of just how differently Hong Kong unfolds and presents itself before me – how differently I and my subconscious process the city – with each new form of movement I take through this urban space. As such, I have decided to begin a series of posts that devote my attention to the diverse and often-overlooked universe of transport. While the following anecdote of the ephemeral, sensory world I inhabited within a double-decker tram does not do the complex experience of Hong Kong justice, it serves as a means of acknowledging and exploring the way transport changes my and other peoples’ understanding of urban space.

The Double-decker Tram

              It’s coming. The ear-splitting squeals of metal wheels grinding against metal rails manages to pierce through the symphony of other noises emanating from the urban world – the tram is making its presence known. It comes to a halt, making the final, climactic squeak and groan (its run-down, rusty body must be exhausted from the decades of hard labour). You step on, manoeuvring through the wooden doorway that opens out onto the street, taking a right to climb the winding stairway that curves onto the second floor and silently sliding yourself onto a vacant, not-very-ergonomic seat. It is here, as you begin to peer out of the windowless window-frame, that you suddenly become the observer – the One who can see all and know all from above. The omnipotent, invisible eye that can see but cannot itself be seen.

You are watching a spectacle unravel itself, as though you are the audience and Hong Kong a never-ending, theatrical performance with an ambiguous plot and an infinite number of actors and actresses. Indeed, the framed nature of the window mimics that of the cinema screen. As you sit there, elevated and detached from the ground-floor world, the pedestrians gradually begin to lose their humanity. Although you can listen to and observe the vast urban space, you cannot see and individual’s face, witness their infinite, infinitesimal movements nor feel their body warmth next to you. These people are without identity, fusing together into an indistinguishable, uniform mass of skin, hair and clothes that steadily flows like a river through the concrete channels shaped by the towering walls of skyscrapers.

              However, there still exist those occasional, transgressive moments that break the bifurcation between you, the detached spectator, and Hong Kong, the endless performance. An aroma of sizzling oil from a fried tofu stall may insidiously lurk its way upwards, through the openings of the seemingly impenetrable space of tram and suddenly take over your senses. Leaves and twigs of a tree may violently smack the metal exoskeleton of the tram, as though they were protesting against being object to your invisible gaze. More importantly, someone – a person – may without warning break into improvisation, go against his or her script, by looking upwards – away from the ground-floor into the separated life of the tram, locking onto your gaze. Look you straight into the eyes. And, in this moment, your world of isolation and spectacle collapses: you have returned to the everyday happenings of Hong Kong, as the division between you and them has been tainted by a mere look of a stranger. You are no longer the Eye ‘who can see but cannot itself be seen’. And so, with this defeat and failed attempt of continuing your legacy as the spectator in mind, you descend that winding staircase that is now understood as the entrance to the Spectacular, never-ending Hong Kong Show, and leave the tram only to become a part of the faceless mass of skin, hair and clothes.

Hong Kong - Groceries I

Hong Kong – Groceries I

It’s Saturday morning. 9:00am. The sun looms over Hong Kong, the city with a severe case of insomnia. The stubborn humidity sits in the air, refusing to give my body a rest from its ever-lingering presence. My skin already covered with a thin, but steadily growing, layer of sweat. And so, with my list of groceries in one hand and wallet in the other, I enter the labyrinth. From the clamour of roaring car engines, determinedly-moving bodies and the clank of machine against tarmac, building yet another 30-story skyscraper, I wander into a different kind of organised chaos: an infinite cacophony of aroma, composition of colour and orchestra of sound.

My nose twitches at the anticipation of the hundreds of peculiar odours that will, at any given moment and without warning, thrust themselves into my body: the biting smell of dried fish paired with the gentle lull of ground basil, or the crisp sensation of ginger fused with the ambiguous scent of durian, altogether forming an olfactory experience that both enlivens and exhausts my nose. My eyes cannot decide where and on what to fixate their gaze. With every step I take, it seems a new world of colour, texture and shape unfolds itself before my eyes: starting from the glistening butcher’s blades slamming down onto the still-moving bodies of fish that struggle to release themselves from the firm human grip, to the perfectly organised displays of dragon-fruits, melons and pineapples that – through their animated colour and form – bring a certain liveliness and energy to the space. My ears, too, are spoilt for choice: whilst the space is dominated by the noise of rustling plastic bags or unsatisfied customers haggling with relentless shop vendors that refuse to accept the formers’ ‘unreasonable’ price suggestions, underneath this lies a vast, sonic universe: the drone of constantly-working escalators; the desperate groans of carts’ wheels that are forced to carry so much weight on their shoulders; the giggling of playing children that emanates from the cramped corners of the hall and the intermittent bawk-bawk of caged chickens who appear to be completely oblivious to their fate of being a future meal.

And mixed in this overwhelming, visceral experience are customers, each of which desires to – as efficiently and quickly as possible – tick off all the items on their shopping lists. In the first few minutes of navigating the space, I know this is not a place to peruse nor saunter for a pleasant stroll. It’s a battle field; every man for himself. Standing around and waiting until the crowd clears away from a stall won’t get you far here, nor will indecisive deliberation on what to purchase: if you come here, you better know what you want. Having fought my way through the sea of people, all drifting in opposite directions with different ambitions in mind, I finally reach a vegetable stall. When I eventually manage to remove the shopping list that had dug itself down to the bottom of my bag and return my attention back to the vegetables, the salesman has already lost interest in waiting for me to organise myself and moved on to the next, more competent customer. Before I know it, my body has been nudged back into the stream of people that steadily flows through the narrow paths of this fantastically entangled maze.

While getting your groceries should perhaps be a simpler task than this, I perversely enjoyed being challenged by the human forces of this city in my effort to purchase two carrots, an eggplant and some bok choy. It seemed ironically amusing that such a humble, trivial activity be faced with this a head-to-head battle with other humans who – like me – only seek to buy some groceries for home. While this severely forceful atmosphere may – on one hand – make ‘buying groceries’ a more laborious effort than it usually is, it is equally a demonstration of how humans involuntarily – and through circumstance – contribute to the creation of social space: in congregating in this compact area to complete the same task, we all unwillingly and subconsciously participate in the creation of a space which is replete with infinite amounts of visceral experiences. In going on such a simple endeavour like grocery shopping, these strangers have, together, made this wonderfully bizarre and bewildering environment – the environment of a Hong Kong Wet Market.

Hong Kong: Eating I

Eating: I

A father, a son and a jet-lagged, puzzled girl sit at a table together. No one speaks. No one dares to raise their gaze upwards in fear of locking eyes with another. The only sound emitted from this unplanned rendezvous is the slurping of noodles into mouths and the tapping of chopsticks against soup bowls. Each party has a single objective in mind: to finish their broth the fastest and leave as swiftly as possible, so as to avoid any potential for future human interaction. Looking around the compact soup deli, it seems as though all customers are participants in an unspoken competition of “Who can be the most efficient eater?”. Bodies no longer move with spontaneity, but are in a trance-like state, repeating the same series of mechanical movements over and over again; faces peering downwards, soup spoons and chopsticks moving manically between mouth and bowl. Every limb knows exactly where to go during this seemingly automated pattern of movement. There are simply no distractions from the task at hand: the body continues to execute its instructions regardless of the interruption, spoon into broth, chopsticks cling on noodles, eyes still lowered to the ground. Was everyone taught this wonderfully-synchronised choreography in school?

              This was my first experience of eating in Hong Kong. Having spent the last 30 hours of my life in solitude, running from gate to gate in foreign airports and gesticulating in novel, inventive ways to Hong Kong locals who appeared to have close to zero interest in giving me directions, all I longed for was a steamy bowl of noodle soup to comfort and caress my deeply disorientated soul. Little did I know that Hong Kong was not necessarily the place for slow-paced eating: as I entered through the door of the first noodle shop I found, not only was I thrust into a cloud of spice-laden steam, but was also grabbed by a pair of hands that forcefully pushed me into a seat on a table with two locals. Coming from Germany, a country where eating in close quarters with strangers is not a quotidian occurrence, I was taken aback by the apparent normalcy of sharing my experience of lunch with people I did not know and, notably, could not even speak to. After hardly two minutes, a woman placed a soup bowl in front of me, handed me a pair of chopsticks and a soup spoon and ordered me to “Eat!”, pointing her index finger at me, then the soup. And so, the series of robotic movements began. I deliberated whether I should introduce myself to the father and son, two people whose feet were only a few centimetres from mine, but after registering the implicit “No talking” rule, I decided to simply get on with this soup and become a consumption machine instead.

              Although it began as a strange, new experience, this silent eating session of automated movements soon became enjoyable. In such a large city as Hong Kong – a place where you pass thousands of people a day – it seemed reassuring to know that, whenever and wherever you may choose to eat, you can sit down with a fellow stranger and share the experience of your meal with them. While you may not speak nor interact during these few minutes, the mere presence of someone whose life is perhaps so different to yours, is something quite beautiful: you are together for one moment on that particular day and may never see each other again. The fleeting nature of this encounter suggests, on one hand, the obsoleteness of this moment. On the other hand, it makes this experience all the more important: for a few minutes, on the 24^th of August 2018, I sat with a father and son eating beef noodle soup together. I never knew their name, where they came from, their story, but what I do know is that for some reason they decided to come to the exact same place I was headed to and the world allowed us to share a brief moment together that will probably become lost as a trivial, worthless memory in each of our own lives.

My nine-day Road Trip along the Sicilian Coast of Summer, 2017

In Summer of 2017, my mum and I took a nine-day long road trip along the West Coast of Sicily, Italy. Our journey began in Sciacca - a small, but beautiful cobble-stoned town - through to Marsala, Caltabellotta, Erice, Trapani, Monreale and Palermo. Whilst feasting on sea-food and shamelessly indulging in what seemed like liters of house wine, I found myself enamoured with the serene remoteness of Western Sicily: it was not so much the lack of people as the mere atmosphere of the waves crashing into the shore, the roads that wound themselves around hills and the coastal winds which engendered the aura of tranquility. Accompanying me on this small endeavor was my analog camera. Here is just a handful of pictures I took.

Fish Auction, Selinunte

Salt Mines, Trapani

Mum, Trapani

Me

Beach, Castelvetrano

Fish Auction, Selinunte

Enzo

Sunset, Trapani

Scala dei Turchi

Me

San Vito Lo Capo