“Affluence isn’t affluence at all. Hong Kong is the benchmark; everybody else’s affluence is mere tat. Until you’ve experienced that perfume-washed air as polarized glass doors embrace you into a luxury hotel’s plush interior, you’ve only had a dud replica of the real thing.” ~Jonathan Gash, “Jade Woman”
On this day we ventured out into Hong Kong.
I must say, all of these photos look like this because this is how I was perceiving the world. A sensory overload when my senses are dulled due to recovering from sickness… it just doesn’t mix very well.
But, I hope it really makes for a half-decent set of images…
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“Every inch of space was used. As the road narrowed, signs receded upwards and changed to the vertical. Businesses simply soared from ground level and hung out vaster, more fascinatingly illuminated shingles than competitors. We were still in a traffic tangle, but now the road curved. Shops crowded the pavements and became homelier. Vegetables, spices, grocery produce in boxes or hanging from shop lintels, meats a’dangle – as always, my ultimate ghastliness – and here and there among the crowds the alarming spectacle of an armed Sikh, shotgun aslant, casually sitting at a bank entrance. And markets everywhere. To the right, cramped streets sloped down to the harbor. To the left, as we meandered along the tram-lines through sudden dense markets of hawkers’ barrows, the streets turned abruptly into flights of steps careering upwards into a bluish mist of domestic smoke, clouds of washing on poles, and climbing. Hong Kong had the knack of building where others wouldn’t dare.” ~Jonathan Gash, “Jade Woman”
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“The Mologai. The sun shines less in the Mologai, but heat gathers there in the shade and smoke. Steep cramped dwellings, shops oldish. Oddly, smoke pervading the whole area. The streets cling to contours. You clamber up steps from one narrow alleyway to the next, among the stalls. It’s an antique hunter’s paradise – or rather purgatory, because the promise of heaven takes time to realize.” ~Jonathan Gash, “Jade Woman”
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I need to spend more time here. It is intimidating and liberating at the same time.
I’m not here long, stay tuned…
-Noah D.
