Visiting Hong Kong had been a matter of opportunity. Good flight deals had convinced me to give a go at the city so here I was for 10 days. It seemed much at first and I was wondering how I was going to spend such an outrageous amount of time in one city. Little did I know that 10 days would be barely enough to scratch Hong Kong’s surface. By the end of my trip, I knew for a fact it wasn’t even enough to be fed up with its skyline, no matter how many times I saw it.
I had arrived a couple days earlier without much expectation but a first gaze at the ocean of lush mountains and skyscrapers stretching to the horizon, right out of the airport, had taken my breath away quite literally. The closer the skyscrapers grew, the wider my eyes got. When the bus entered the large Nathan Road, where my hotel was located, I had to focus on the names of the stops but my attention was grabbed by the endless neon signs all around me, making my head dizzy.
I got out just one stop too far and had to go back to find the entrance of the Chungking Mansions. It had a reputation for being the cheapest building in Hong Kong and I did not know what to expect of it. As it turned out, it was best I expected nothing. The entrance of the building looked like a casino and the first few stores seemed alright, although the atmosphere was feverish. The further I walked, the more dubious the stores got. Some of them looked like they were selling items straight off the back of a truck. I walked past them and got to one of the few lifts in the building but there already was a long line and the out-dated lift could only contain a handful of people.
A couple days later, I had grown accustomed of my tiny room with almost no wi-fi, as I had of the shady stores selling second-hand cell phones, suspicious Chinese visas and porn magazines. I wasn’t even trying to use the lift anymore and the smell of moist and piss in the stairs did not bother me. The Chungking Mansions was my home in Hong Kong.
The city had unveiled quite a few of its mysteries but I was still looking eagerly at the skyline across Victoria Harbour, which seemed so close from the Tsim Sha Tsui Promenade near my hotel but felt like a whole world away. I couldn’t wait to discover the island of Hong Kong but first, I was meeting a friend at the Hong Kong University.
Just like every university in my book, I was expecting a grey, rather dull building. Therefore I thought I was in the wrong place when I discovered a rainforest instead. Students were coming and going with little regard for the signs warning them of monkeys. Yet, it all seemed fascinating to me, especially as I recalled my home university in France where the only fine specimen I could hope to see were pigeons.
The whole area near the University was of the same ilk with streets buried under dense vegetation. Creepers falling out of trees were a common sight and the cries of exotic birds a common sound, as if nature had been allowed to grow freely in the city and had become part of it entirely.
I felt the same way when I got out of the subway and into the CBD. Nature seemed a little more domesticated there but it still lied at the feet of every heritage building the British had left behind and every futuristic glass skyscraper the new city had erected. As I walked deeper into the CBD, a yellow façade struck me. St John’s Cathedral stuck like a sore thumb in the midst of all these grey titans tickling the skies, looking out of a place in a city that was on perpetual move. In the shadow of intimidatingly high buildings, it also felt like a welcome haven, sitting at the heart of the hectic CBD but feeling miles away.
I sat there for a while, until a group of local school girls approached me giggling. When one of them dared ask for a picture with me, all her friends followed suit. They took picture upon picture, as if I was a celebrity of sorts. Perhaps they’d pin this picture on their fridge door or just keep it on their phones forever and forget why they even took it in the first place. I smiled thinking of the many ways in which those pictures could end and kept smiling even as I was queuing to access the tramway going up to the Victoria Peak.
Seeing the skyline from the ground was one thing indeed but I had to see it from above too. The tram going to the top of the Victoria Peak was so heavily advertised that I had to try it for myself, no matter how overpriced it was. Granted, the ride was pleasant, yet it was nothing compared to the panoramic view awaiting when I came off of it.
On one side was the city’s majestic skyline and the Kowloon Peninsula just across Victoria Harbour, where the iconic and last remaining junk boat was sailing, a red dot from above that looked like a ghost from the city’s past. On the other were lush mountains and wild islands emerging from the sea. On one side was endless wilderness and another side was frantic urban landscapes, but perhaps both were merging into one.
I decided to skip on the tram on the way back and found a path going to the city. I followed the Old Peak Road where thick foliage kept the city hidden for a while before it resurfaced again every now and then beyond the trees. I had now seen the Hong Kong skyline from every point of view. Every one of them was beautiful in its own unique way.
I came back the next day to enjoy the illuminations at night I came back a couple years later to watch fireworks lighting up the sky over the harbour. One thing was clear, I’d never get tired of the skyline magic.
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