PD Smith

The first thing that strikes you about Hong Kong in late May is the humid­i­ty. As I stepped out of the air-con­di­tioned hotel bus, my glass­es instant­ly steamed up. It was like walk­ing into a sauna. The air was tan­gi­ble: thick and moist. In this cli­mate you soon appre­ci­ate the ele­vat­ed walk­ways in cen­tral Hong Kong – so much cool­er than the streets filled with cars and bus­es.

The pedes­tri­an esca­la­tor, which takes you up the steep, low­er slopes of Vic­to­ria Peak, is a high-tech exten­sion of these. All you have to do is stand still while you are con­veyed through Hong Kong’s sticky air above the city’s busy streets. At some 800 metres, it is appar­ent­ly the longest of its kind in the world. Futur­ists like HG Wells and Jules Verne imag­ined that sky­walks and trav­e­la­tors would one day be ubiq­ui­tous in cities. They were wrong, but the cli­mate, geog­ra­phy and wealth of Hong Kong has made them a real­i­ty here.

Even in this age of megac­i­ties, Hong Kong’s sky­line at night is awe-inspir­ing. There is beau­ty in its audac­i­ty and ambi­tion. The glit­ter­ing cathe­drals of com­merce, their lights undimmed by the glob­al reces­sion, tow­er above the har­bour. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the gaudy green lasers that blaze out from the high­est pin­na­cles threat­ened to reduce the whole cityscape to the back­drop of some 1980s pop video. All it lacked was dry ice.

Hong Kong is a ver­ti­cal city: it has more high-rise build­ings than any oth­er city. It’s only when you notice the old colo­nial build­ings that you real­ly grasp the scale of the place. Today, the tow­ers of the cen­tral busi­ness dis­trict dwarf the LEGCO Build­ing (built in 1898) on Stat­ue Square, once the heart of the city. (You can see an old pho­to of what the square used to look like here.)

Hong Kong has not tired of reach­ing for the skies. Opened this year, the Inter­na­tion­al Com­merce Cen­tre has become Hong Kong’s tallest build­ing, soar­ing 484 metres (1,588 feet) above Kowloon. The Ritz-Carl­ton Hotel on floors 102 to 108 is now said to be the world’s high­est hotel.

Like every tourist, I made the pil­grim­age up the Peak. Despite the cloudy weath­er, the view was indeed mem­o­rable. Look­ing down from the 550-metre Peak, you can see how Hong Kong’s sky­scrap­ers are hemmed in by the sea on one side and by dense for­est on the oth­er, a con­cen­trat­ed rib­bon of con­struc­tion. They had no choice but to colonise that extra dimen­sion of space above them. And beyond Hong Kong, lost some­where in the mist and the smog, was the main­land – the vast­ness of Chi­na.

Equal­ly mem­o­rable was the hair-rais­ing jour­ney up to the Peak, along a pre­cip­i­tous, wind­ing road on top of a sway­ing dou­ble-deck­er bus. Hong Kong is also served – rather more sedate­ly – by a won­der­ful sys­tem of old dou­ble-deck­er trams, which start­ed run­ning in 1904. I have read that they are the last oper­a­tional dou­ble-deck­ers in the world.

Anoth­er rem­nant from the past are the island’s last gas lamps (two-light Rochester mod­els) which still illu­mi­nate the Dud­dell Street Steps, a reminder of an age before elec­tric­i­ty, before today’s wired, glob­al cities.

But this is a city that doesn’t have much time for his­to­ry – unlike near­by Macau, whose six­teenth-cen­tu­ry cen­tre has been turned into a quaint but over-crowd­ed tourist Mec­ca.

One morn­ing, I took the Num­ber 1 bus north up Kowloon’s Nathan Street to the Kowloon Walled City Park. This was once one of the dens­est urban slums on the plan­et, home to more than 30,000 peo­ple.

The orig­i­nal walled city had been a Chi­nese gar­ri­son town. It remained Chi­nese even under the 1898 con­ven­tion by which the British gained con­trol of Hong Kong and Kowloon. It was an anom­aly, a walled com­mu­ni­ty out­side the juris­dic­tion of the colo­nial rulers. After World War II, refugees from main­land Chi­na cre­at­ed a shan­ty town here, beyond the reach of police­men or offi­cials. It became a self-reg­u­lat­ing city with­in a city. There was no elec­tric­i­ty or mains water sup­plies, so the resource­ful inhab­i­tants hijacked near­by pow­er cables and dug wells. They built rick­ety tow­ers up into the sky; every inch of space was pre­cious. In a city where there were no laws and no tax­es, crime and busi­ness flour­ished. It’s said that about 80% of Hong Kong’s fish balls were man­u­fac­tured in Kowloon Walled City.

Kowloon Walled City was even­tu­al­ly bull­dozed in 1993. Today, it has been turned into a tra­di­tion­al Chi­nese gar­den, a haven of trick­ling streams and care­ful­ly tend­ed plants. Ornate pavil­ions have been built where once ram­shackle ten­e­ment blocks stood (and some­times fell). Nar­row alleys lit by flu­o­res­cent tubes have been replaced by ser­pen­tine walks between clipped hedges. Now all that remains of Kowloon Walled City is a scale mod­el.

It’s June now and I’ve returned to a chilly, wet Eng­land. But my mind is still alive with mem­o­ries of this extra­or­di­nary city: busy food mar­kets sell­ing every kind of fruit, veg­eta­bles, fish, nuts, spices, dried mush­rooms and fresh­ly butchered meat;

tiny spe­cial­ist shops crammed with goods up to their ceil­ings, like an Aladdin’s cave;

vast mar­ble shop­ping malls in which the air is as cold as a mau­soleum (how many Pra­da shops can one city sup­port?); the sharp, jar­ring smells of sea­wa­ter and diesel fuel on the Star Fer­ry, cross­ing from Hong Kong island to Kowloon;

exquis­ite dim sum (my mouth is water­ing as I type this); nar­row streets like canyons, snaking between sky­scrap­ers; peo­ple prac­tic­ing Tai chi on the Kowloon water­front each morn­ing in a slow-motion bal­let;

an elder­ly woman push­ing a poo­dle in a pram at Hung Hom; tem­ples hazy with incense; the clank­ing of the trams on their met­al tracks in Cause­way Bay; bare-foot pil­grims chant­i­ng in front of the Big Bud­dha on Lan­tau Island.

One thing is cer­tain: I won’t for­get Hong Kong.

(You can watch a slideshow of my pho­tos of Hong Kong and Macau on Flickr.)

“It is not easy to live like Debord. It is not easy to think like him or even with him. Which is why it is not easy to for­get him.”

~ Vin­cent Kauf­mann

I have reviewed Kauf­man­n’s insight­ful study of Guy Debor­d’s life and work for this week’s TLS. You can read a slight­ly longer ver­sion of the review here.

“In his dystopi­an nov­el The Sleep­er Awakes, begun in 1899, HG Wells por­trayed a future world in which vast machine-like cities were linked by air trav­el. Since then, no vision of the urban future has been com­plete with­out ubiq­ui­tous air trans­port, from Fritz Lang’s Metrop­o­lis (1926), in which gnat-like air­craft soar among the sky­scrap­ers, to the police spin­ners of Rid­ley Scot­t’s Blade Run­ner (1982). In 1997 JG Bal­lard pre­dict­ed that “the air­port will be the true city of the 21st cen­tu­ry”. Now John Kasar­da, an Amer­i­can man­age­ment con­sul­tant and aca­d­e­m­ic, is jet­ting around the world show­ing politi­cians and busi­ness lead­ers how Bal­lard’s pre­dic­tion is about to come true.”

My Guardian review of Aero­trop­o­lis: The Way We’ll Live Next by John D Kasar­da and Greg Lind­say, and The New North: The World in 2050 by Lau­rence C. Smith is here.

The Times Lit­er­ary Sup­ple­ment has just pub­lished my review of the Ency­clo­pe­dia of Urban Stud­ies, ed by Ray Hutchi­son, a major two vol­ume ref­er­ence work.

My piece is not online but you can read a some­what longer ver­sion here on my site.

Now the whole world can see the chaos out of which my writ­ing emerges, thanks to Kate Don­nel­ly who has inter­viewed me for her fas­ci­nat­ing web­site fromyourdesks.com.