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.
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