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.