Hong Kong

We arrived in Hong Kong on the 29th of February, before arriving, I was expecting a stale but grand selection of western style skyscrapers and shopping malls, kind of like Yokohama. Getting off the direct train from the airport landed us in west Kowloon, and we were greeted by a giant and luxurious shopping mall, my expectations were confirmed, right until we got out into the outdoors and discovered this was on a whole new scale.

The second thing that hit me was that there was an alarming amount of development in this area. Entire city blocks had been flattened and were in the process of some grand reconstruction.

This third thing that hit me was that Hong Kong is most definitely a city of two halves, we were in  Kowloon, the mainland area to the north of the main island, and it was significantly 'chinese' and significantly rougher than what I had got used to in Japan.

I thought that Tokyo was crazy but Hong Kong takes both dramatic scale and architecture, and the run down, far eastern, blade runner cyberpunk aesthetic to a new level.

One of the most surprising things was the amount of bamboo scaffolding which was littered everywhere, seemingly propping up the vast forest of concrete.

That evening was the Chinese New Year fireworks, which lasted for over 20 minutes and was the most dramatic display I'd ever seen, beating even Preston Grasshopers' yearly event.

The next day, we took off to the site of the Kowloon walled city. Kowloon walled city was infamously the site of much outlawed activity such as gambling, prostitution and unlicensed dentistry from the 1920s-1980s until it was demolished in 1994. This was due to its status as an unadministered exclave of china, during the time Hong Kong was governed by the British.

During its peak it had a crazy density and lack of building quality, even by Hong Kong standards. All that remained was a shaky concrete foundation and the sign from the old gates, as well as the old almshouse.

The rest of the site is now a picturesque park, in traditional Chinese style, and in the almshouse is a good but small exhibition on the history of the walled city.

The most important part of the day was a visit to the south, to the main Hong Kong island.
Here we were delivered from hectic china-town, and into anonymous international business district proper.

A building that many contemporary accounts of architecture regard as important, Norman Fosters hi-tech HSBC headquarters. Is remarkably puny in this skyline nowadays, and fails to make the dramatic impact it once yearned for.

A trip up the hill took us past an amazing number of stupidly high apartment towers, named very British names such as 'Hillsborough Court'. They seemed to cling onto the edge of the hill, an extraordinary example of how market forces can push engineering to stupid lengths.

The view from the top, from the blazingly commercial peak tower, gave an exceptional view over the concrete jungle of Hong Kong; a view of a city which is more honesty and excitingly built up due to market forces and its status as a tiny country-within-a-country than the large, empty, and sterile business districts of Canary Wharf, La Defense, and Yokohama.

The third day mainly took us to museums and Chinese restaurants, but to keep the blog in its design vision, I must step aside to give attention to Zaha Hadid's Hong Kong Polytechnic Innovation Center.
The only other Hadid I have visited in person is the Glasgow Riverside museum, which is hard to criticise as it is literally just a tin shed. The Innovation centre however, finished in 2014, is a much more delectable target. Designed in the 'parametric' style, it attempts to impress us with its futuristic vision, however it is still stat in a field of rubble and porta-cabins, barely attached to the rest of the campus apart from a tiny drawbridge, a far cry from the incusive public space outlined on the concept drawings.

It is also caked in dirt, assumably it's dynamic visors are a challenge to clean, and is still pesked with that dirty reality of bamboo scaffolding that lines the site.It is also simply not good looking, from the most busy spot to see it from, it has a very awkward and unsatisfactory backwards lean.

Back on topic, Hong Kong was an amazing city to visit, I had never seen urbanism on this scale, but the compact size and good underground network made for a surprisingly walkable and humanistic city environment. However there was a sharp contrast between the pristine wealth of Hong Kong island and Kowloon, although malls and luxury condos are popping up there too.

The food was good too, a wide range of options from barely hygienic plastic-chairs-on-the-pavement food from the markets of Kowloon, to fine dining in Hong Kong city. One thing to note though is that it is actually a cuisine authenticity represented in Britain, unlike the Japanese which was very unique.


The next stop is Vietnam, a short flight dropping us in Hà Nội, where 'travelling' proper will commence.