Not Long for
HONG KONG Joe Brady
Hong Kong is a loud, bustling jewel of a city. It is perhaps my favourite city in the world. On sweltering days, what sounds like raindrops smack the pavement as hundreds of air-conditioning units drip liquid into the streets below. In North Point, you might as well be fifty years back in time. Thin double-decker trams ding-ding-ding their way through crowded market streets with smells pungent enough to turn your stomach in the humid air. New tower blocks develop a run-down patina in a matter of years. Everyone is shouting, all of the time. Enough people have asked me to share my experience in Hong Kong that I’ve decided to get around to doing it. I was reluctant for a few reasons. The first is that I felt I didn’t have anything particularly profound to say (it recalls white tourists returning home from building a cowshed in Vietnam and describing how seeing poverty really, like, made them grateful). The second was that there are enough Western voices telling us how to feel about police brutality and freedom movements, and I don’t see how my anecdotes would contribute to anything but further anxiety and sorrow for Hong Kong. I am not some kind of saviour, or for that matter a journalist. I did not do anything good for Hong Kong. I don’t see how I’ve earned my right to talk about it. So treat this only as a collection of thoughts, influenced and calcified by my time in a wonderful city. Do not go to Hong Kong right now unless you’re willing to get hurt for it. These are not localised outbreaks of violence. In Tsim Sha Tsui, the trendy shopping heart of Hong Kong, I saw a female tourist carried out of a tear smoke plume by her partner. I next saw her laid out several streets away amidst protester paramedics. It
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