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A CITY ON THE MOVE

“ Wherever you go, go with all your heart.”

—Confucius, 551 BC to 479 BC

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the biggest transport interchange in the galaxy. Do not leave your baggage unattended. Do not stop moving. Do not bother to stop and smell the roses. (They are made of silk.)

They say Hong Kong is a city on the south coast of China, but I don’t think so. The way I see it, it’s not a city at all, but the Grand Central Station of Asia. In fact, it must be the biggest travellers’ interchange on the planet, which probably means the whole solar system, at least.

Let me explain what I mean. More people pass through Hong Kong than those that actually live here. In that sense, one can argue that it is less of a city than a huge arrivals-and-departures lounge. You want numbers? Between six and seven million people consider themselves residents. But it is not untypical in any given year for twice that number—12 million people—to actually travel in and out of the place, mostly as photo-snapping tourists and money-making businessmen.

When no one’s looking, art gradually creeps out of the galleries and onto the streets.

Business people pour in and out of Hong Kong International Airport, built on the site of a former enclave of pirates at Chek Lap Kok… so no change there.

And I submit that even the people who live here don’t belong to the place in the way that inhabitants of other places belong to their home countries. In this regard, consider the term “expatriate.” In other places, it refers to a tiny percentage of people, usually one percent or less, who were born elsewhere and who have come to that country to work. In Hong Kong, it’s not the same at all. Until the mid-1970s, more than half of our population consisted of people who were born outside the city but had come to find work. In other words, it has been literally true for most of Hong Kong’s existence that the majority of residents have been expatriates in the strictest sense of the word.

Today, the majority of members of the younger generation can declare that they were born here. But they know that their parents and grandparents first saw the light of day elsewhere. Families still like to organise visits to their heung ha, or ancestral homes, which are usually outside Hong Kong. So in historical terms, the roots attaching residents to this city do not run deep. This is not a bad thing. Indeed, I would say that it is this “new arrival” mentality, this immigrant ethic, this “now-we’ve-got-here-let’s-seize-the-day” philosophy that provides much of the restless energy that has made Hong Kong what it is.

On a daily basis, the city’s gotta keep moving compulsion is most clearly evident in the transport system, which is kept humming as it shifts millions of people a day. It seems almost everyone is always on the go. Take the underground railway: during the day, trains on the most popular lines run at frequencies of a couple of minutes or less. Within seconds of your arrival on the platform, a train will blur into the station and welcome you with open doors. Hong Kongers are so impatient that they will sprint across the platform and hurl themselves through the closing train doors at great personal risk, despite the fact that missing the train would mean that they would have a stultifyingly boring wait of maybe a whole 90 seconds!

Slick and efficient, the ultra modern Chek Lap Kok airport is a favourite among travellers. It has won numerous awards for passenger service since its opening in 1998.

The Star Ferry offers passengers spectacular views of the harbour and Hong Kong’s cityscape. Still a timeless icon, the Star Ferry plies the harbour in wooden boats (and still costs almost nothing).

If you miss it, there are the massed ranks of circling taxis, gliding around the streets like vultures; tens of thousands of them, the majority of which are bordello red.

For the visitor to Hong Kong, the Zen-like adage that the journey is the destination and the destination is the journey is never more true than in this city, where you have a dazzling choice of funky and fun ways to get around. While many of the classic old buildings have been replaced by soulless towers, there thankfully has never been any need to replace the old transport systems (other than the sedan-chairs and rickshaws, which now exist only for fun). So the old Star Ferry still chugs across the harbour as it has done for more than 100 years, since it was started as a tiny boat service by a moon-lighting Indian chef from a Kowloon hotel. The funicular railway known as the Peak Tram still takes the same route up the mountain as it has always done, and you still lean back in your seat at an unnatural, dentist-chair angle as you are dragged up the slope by a thick metal cable. And the trolley-style streetcars that trundle along the flat parts of the island still move at a speed barely faster than walking, and cost so little that you think you have slipped back in time.

All types of ships—from oceanliners to the venerable Star Ferry—ply Hong Kong’s busy harbour.

An expertly-pedalled bicycle can easily out-speed a classic tram on Hong Kong’s busy streets.

During rush hour, everything’s a blur.

Still on a transport theme, Hong Kongers are justly proud of their airport. It is one of the few structures in the world which is so gigantic that it has its own internal railway, to whisk people from one side of the building to the other. (I would love to live at the airport, simply so I could say to my spouse: “Excuse me, but I need to catch the 5.15 to the kitchen.”) The airport is breathtakingly efficient. I use it a lot, and it takes me as little as five minutes to get all the way from the aircraft to the real world outside.

But despite all the high-speed transport thundering over, under, around and through the city, there is one surprising fact visitors often comment on. Pavement traffic is slow and a short stroll can take ages. That’s because the population is so dense there’s no chance of sprinting anywhere. So grit your teeth and take it easy.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a train to catch; if I miss it, I’ll have to wait a whole minute.

Most homes are tiny, so Hong Kongers are always on the street and on the move, as this picture of the Central District attests to.

The Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre features a seven-storey glass window that offers spectacular harbour views.

Trams, once uniformly green, are now ablaze with colourful advertising (left). This one (above) tries to sell you noodles…

While this one has taken on a rainbow of colours…

And on this one, the spirit of a dragon appears to have hitched a ride.

Hong Kong’s harbour remains one of the busiest in the world, bustling with cargo freighters, luxury cruisers and even floating casinos, which get past legal restrictions by quietly drifting out of jurisdiction.

With sails like the membranes of giant long-extinct pterosaurs, the last few wind-powered junks can still occasionally be seen.

Today, those old five-kilometres-an-hour rickshaws have been replaced by turbo-charged fuel-injected traffic jams which move at four kilometres an hour.