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Hong Kong culture
OpinionChina Opinion
Annika Park
Annika Park

Opinion | Let Hong Kong be itself, a city where life always finds a way

  • Like a flower growing from the pavement, Hong Kong’s unique charm comes from those who take up space in the cracks of modernity

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Domestic workers spend the National Day holiday in Central, Hong Kong, on October 2, 2023. Photo: Sam Tsang
Annika Park

Every Sunday, when I walk through the covered walkways of Central, I feel as though I’ve stepped into a parallel universe. Past Exchange Square, in the same spots occupied by cigarette-smoking financiers on weekdays, I see middle-aged men lying face down for a cut-price massage.

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When I make my way down onto Des Voeux Road, where executives are seen during the week hurtling back from their mid-day workout classes, women are precariously perched on kerbside railings for the most public eyebrow-plucking sessions you’d ever see. From potluck picnics to dance classes, this is an entire subculture and sub-economy at work.

As someone who’s had to explain what goes on in our streets every Sunday to friends and family, it’s a shame that all we can give these women is the gift of a blind eye. But what I also have is an immense amount of respect for the ways in which they find room for joy and community. Whether it’s through roadside karaoke sessions or birthday parties hosted beneath the shade of a highway flyover, on Sundays, they will find a way.

I recently read Christopher DeWolf’s book Borrowed Spaces. A long-time contributor to the Post, DeWolf captures the enduring importance of informal urban spaces – especially in a city like ours where we don’t have much space to begin with.

He observes that it’s those constraints that historically gave rise to the ingenious and resourceful ways people have managed to blur the lines between shop and pavement, official and unofficial, public and private.

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