Wan Chai Footbridge

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City of Open Secrets

Mah-jong followed me wherever I went in Hong Kong. Walking down a quiet alley in the neighbourhood of Wan Chai, the distinct sound of tiles being shuffled tumbled down from a second-floor window. Passing by a row of shops in Shek Kip Mei, I spotted a group of middle-aged men and women sitting at the back of a variety store, surrounded by stacks of toilet paper and cleaning supplies. Again, the unmistakable clatter of mah-jong tiles. In mainland Chinese cities, mah-jong is played like a casual spectator sport in public parks and streets, but in Hong Kong, the bright, colourful tiles show up more often in stockrooms or an auntie’s salon. Perhaps this is the case because the island city is so crowded, and privacy is often illusory—or perhaps because of the pre-eminence of people’s working lives. But however hard Hong Kongers work, there is always time for another marathon session of mah-jong.

Hong Kong is a uniquely intense experience, a high-rise metropolis clinging to the edge of a continent, a city of open secrets trapped for a century between two empires. Until 1997, when the territory was handed back to the Chinese government, Hong Kong was a colonial oddity, a Chinese society ruled by the British. Some of the smallest and most unexpected aspects of the city’s quotidian life can suddenly reflect that legacy, such as the way street markets are arranged in nearly identical fashion to London markets, or how a Hong Kong breakfast of choice includes both macaroni noodle soup and a beverage called milk tea: black Ceylon tea, strained through silk stock-ings, blended with thick evaporated milk.

Every inch of Hong Kong is seething with life. For lack of space, restaurant kitchens spill out into back alleys and onto sidewalks. It’s not unusual to find someone washing pig’s intestines by the side of the road. Particular specialities tend to cluster near one another, so that singular musky odours come to define entire neighbourhoods. Sheung Wan is a lovely district that smells like dried shrimp. Other neighbourhoods, like To Kwa Wan, reek of motor oil and grease, thanks to the auto body shops that seem to occupy every other storefront. In every part of town, laundry hangs from apartment windows, revealing the colour preferences of the city’s undergarments (conservative white).

Despite its liveliness, the city is often accused—usually by transplanted Westerners—of being a “cultural wasteland.” When he left his post last March, the outgoing British consul-general warned Hong Kong that if the city did not recognize the importance of becoming a cultural, artistic and intellectual hub, it would never measure up to, say, New York or London. But even if its museums are somewhat provincial and its art scene is overlooked, Hong Kong is hardly devoid of culture.

Culture, like mah-jong, is everywhere here. Small things matter: the real story of a place’s identity can be found in everyday life and the stuff it leaves behind. In Montreal, for example, the city’s story is told through the language of street signs, old advertisements and outdoor staircases; in the florid tile mosaics of Christ or a Catholic saint that Portuguese families affix to the entrance of their apartments. (Do secular or Muslim families, moving in, remove the tiles?) Urban layering is what makes a city like Hong Kong (or Montreal) so fascinating. Individually, all of these pieces of cultural detritus can seem inconsequential, but considered as a whole they tell us who we are and how we live. They are our living heritage.

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