Causeway Bay Days (by Marcus Jervis)

Hong Kong street scene (photographer unknown)

Every single day

is like a blank page of our life.

Every person we meet and

every event we encounter

is a vivid essay.  

(Cheng Yen)

   It doesn't matter how far you've been, or how many times you've stepped into your unknowns, arriving somewhere new will always mess with your head. The disorientation, the fatigue, the fear that comes with adventure makes the streets and sidewalks alien, otherworldly, threatening. But there's nowhere on Earth left to discover and as much as you feel like Columbus stepping into the New World, to the smiling man who grabs your bag and summons the lift, it's just a city. It's just a home. And he's just making rent for his sweetheart.

   Stepping out of the car onto hot pavement, weaving, scurrying between bodies all with somewhere to go, somewhere important, somewhere they had to be ten minutes ago; they know the ways, the routines and quick win short cuts. They're making their deals. I just want a cigarette without the mandatory $5000 fine for lighting it in the wrong place. I risk it on a railing on the corner and feel like a kid at school again.

   Only that kid wouldn't have come here. That kid never really went anywhere. Too broke. Too much of his cash destined for life in the till behind the bar. He saw places like this on late night television and talked a big talk about how he'd own them given half a chance; how he'd rule the city with wit and wisdom flowing ever more easily after each whiskey. He'd show them. He'd show the world...

   I throw the cigarette into the designated cigarette bin - bright orange beacons, one on almost every corner, a meeting point for local kids to furtively inhale their West Lights away from prying parental eyes - and step into the hotel feeling I'll never know it as well as the other guests, running for the top floor gym or sauntering to the all-day breakfast room. I go to see what's on offer from the mini bar.

   The usual suspects: Coke; Sprite; water; beer; gin; vodka and two packets of cheesy things, packaged to look like regional treats, but no different to mini bar cheesy things in London, Paris or Berlin. I don't even look at the prices. The 7/11 will be cheaper anyway. The man who drops my bag tells me so as he waits, patiently, for his tip. Win some, lose some.

   The news says there's a storm coming, the tail end of a typhoon that's buffeted Taiwan for the last three days, but for now it's early evening balmy. Oppressive even. It's Saturday, and the pretty young things have parties to go to and bars to grace with their presence. Sky high heels click rhythmically, dropping an occasional beat, regaining their groove before the boys stop dancing, dancing the night away.

   An older guy - 55, 60 maybe, not so pretty or young anymore - carves an imprecise route through the twilight, his feet marching to a metronome only audible in his head. His shirt is unbuttoned to the waist, half in, half out, sweat drips from his balding head. He's drank the kids under the table before they've even started and he'll remember it all in the morning too. Even if he doesn't want to.

   Kowloon. The Big Brother. Not Orwell's all-seeing-eye - although further north and closer to the real, visa-still-required China, it might be that too - but the bloody-nosed, been-there-done-that big brother; the dark half, snorting lines and popping pills while its southern island sibling was still in short trousers.

   You could get lost in Kowloon. Especially if someone wanted you lost. A quiet word to the right taxi driver, who knew the right night porter, who knew the right wannabe gangster working his way up the ranks and dreaming of a hilltop apartment overlooking Stanley Bay. Yes, you could get lost here and nobody would notice. Nobody who mattered anyway. And the handful that did would know to keep their mouths shut.

   It's New York City when New York City still had fangs and a blade up its sleeve. The Americans and Europeans do their open top bus tours, hopping on and off at have-to-be-experienced markets, but you know - you feel it inside - that you don't want to turn the wrong corner at the wrong time.

   I walk south along Nathan Road from Mong Kok. Everyone is trying to sell me something - a watch, a camera, a phone - all at Great Price for Best Deal. The locals keep moving, heads down, ignoring the sales patter. I try to match them, but they know the streets' uneven cambers and jagged edges better than I do, and I know I'm a stranger here.

   A narrow side street clogged with workers on lunch breaks provides respite. I find solace in a small, down at heel restaurant, order spicy beef and rice from a waitress with a beaming smile and broken English. It starts to rain and Tom's Diner begins playing in my head. A loud, excitable gaggle of teenagers burst into the restaurant, laughing so hard, they barely notice their hair has gotten wet.

   Children revel in the squelching and sploshing of their feet on the wet sidewalk. Wednesday morning commuters have their mid-week misery compounded by having to splash through puddles created by last night's downpour. The city may look like a Gotham vaguely, affectionately remembered from Batman comics of youth, but it's a serious business. The skyscraping cathedrals, earthbound yet heaven-touching temples - candle-like grim greys, browns and creams, aflame with multicolour neon at night - were built by the hands of men, not children. And the cranes that populate the perimeter of Victoria Harbour promise mightier offerings to come; so great that a returning visitor twenty years from now will recognise the city not by its skyline, but by the comforting sight of a new generation jumping through the previous evening's puddles.

   Last night's rain wasn't the promised storm, the news presenter says, just a taster of what's to come. The morning sky shifts slowly to a light, welcoming blue.

   Labels. Everywhere. Some - Nike, Adidas, Puma - are familiar on any damp-sodden British corner. Others - Jimmy Choo, Louis Vuitton, Versace - only from occasional missteps into Kensington or Chelsea. All of them, and hundreds besides, battle for prime space at Times Square shopping centre, preaching material success and capitalist endeavour to citizens who find peace with Buddha in outdoor resting gardens. A Yin and Yang of perfectly balanced contradiction.

   Times Square has thirteen floors; four more circles of hellish inferno than Dante travelled. The air becomes thinner, the atmosphere drier, the higher you go and there's no way of knowing if it's the altitude or the flames of hades burning in the structure's core that make it difficult to breathe. It's a no smoking building but I choke anyway and make an uncertain escape to I don't know quite where, but there's sky rather than steel above, and I take that as victory.

   I walk for a couple of miles, slowly finding myself and leaving the terror, safely cocooned, behind me. A boy crosses the road in front of me. The slogan on his tee shirt reads 'She completes me.'  Next to him, and holding his hand lightly, almost guiltily, a girl wears a tee shirt that says 'He is my missing piece.' Normally, I would have a go-to cynical response but I don't. I just smile.

   Further down the same road, it might be Tung Lo Wan but night is falling and I'm unsure, I read more tee shirts; slogans are a big deal. As is western music. I spot The Beatles, The Stones, KISS, AC/DC and, as I sit on a bench to rest tired feet, vintage Metallica from '92.

   And the earth becomes my throne...

   The peaks of buildings blur into smog and smoke; satellite signals battle through the harbour's hot mist.

   I've seen dragons attack beautiful princesses; battle-weary Norse gods feed the ground with blood at Ragnarok; primordial big bangs and distant vapour trails over Lantau. I've seen laughing babies' faces, star-splattered wizards' hats and the sinister become the sublime in the blinking of an eye. A helicopter, diving, rising, diving again, complies with instruction, its pilot trading lifelong memories for cold hard cash.

   Painted skies; more beautiful than reality.

   My last day and still the storm hasn't hit, but the moist, perpetually humid air hints at torrents to come. I eat a late breakfast of Dim Sum in my room and take a leisurely stroll across Victoria Park for an ancient tea at a small cafe, clearly aspirational and ambitious, but as yet retaining far too much humanity to rival Starbucks.

   Opposite me, a girl in her late teens looks like she's been here for five hours already. Her table is full of empty green cappuccino mugs and half-eaten pastries. Her face is pained, fleetingly contorted with disinterest, as she reads through a large pile of what look like educational handouts about history, economics and a million ways to succeed. Diligently, she makes notes in red and blue marker.

  She takes an iPod from her bag, scans the songs and puts her headphones on. She sits back and smiles for the first time. Her sparkling eyes light up the room.

   I walk back across Victoria Park, pausing to watch the Tai Chi class under the trees. Grandmother, daughter and granddaughter; the blood and bones of generations in harmony with each other and with their surroundings, their home, their spirit. A few feet away, horns blare, brakes screech and tyres scorch like summer sun on virgin white flesh. But it doesn't matter. Here there is peace. I go back to my room and pack, the news channel giving round the clock updates on the weather.

   The storm is still on its way. I step out of the lobby, onto the burning concrete, casting my eyes hopefully skywards, determined to chase it wherever it might go.