Voyages to Kowloon

The Star Ferry is perhaps the most famous in the world, beating out even the one to Staten Island, and like its New York counterpart, it’s always filled with residents and tourists. For decades, it and other ferries were the link between the island of Hong Kong to its country cousin, Kowloon, Macau, and the smaller islands. Even now, it’s the most picturesque way to cross Victoria Harbor and hundreds of passengers forgo the more rapid and efficient subway system or a bus to catch a breeze, feel the waves, and ogle the Hong Kong skyline.

It’s a speedy little voyage, taking less than ten minutes, and is at the top of the list of ten things to do in Hong Kong. In a place where time is money, it mirrors the city that it serves, being both beautiful and efficient.

I love being on the water and after a trip or two to Hong Kong, I ignored the Star Ferry in favor of the less photogenic boats that would take me through the harbor to the port and beyond. I never grew tired of seeing ghost mountains looming like dreams behind jagged green hills and the prickly little islands dotting open water that seemed limitless and was always a different shade of blue. These small journeys were my reward for learning the crowded maze of city streets that I roamed through every day of my time in Hong Kong; on those rolling tubs, I had space and solitude. My mind no longer needed to chart landmarks and fit neighborhoods into a mental map. This was hydrotherapy and nourishment too.

On my latest trip to Hong Kong, I wandered around North Point, vaguely aware that a ferry terminal was close to my apartment. Since this journey was dedicated to making the island a coherent and navigable place for me, I ignored the signs that would lead me to time on the water. But each weekend the streets I walked every day were filled with tour groups, crowds of shabbily dressed people led by flags of different colors, headed toward fresh markets, clothing stalls, and food shops.

Hong Kong island and the edge of Kowloon are both thronged with shoppers from mainland China, but the ones I usually saw were on their way to luxurious shopping malls, international supermarkets, Cartier and the other fabulous names whose stores glamorized the streets  of Kowloon near the Star Ferry. They were the reason why I stuck to the eastern part of Hong Kong when Saturday and Sunday rolled around, but here they were, in another form that I’d never seen before. Where did they come from?

I had a map that, when unfolded, took up enough floor space to hold a bed and nightstand. It charted Hong Kong from the river that separated the New Territories from Shenzhen to the coastal communities of Aberdeen, Stanley, and Shek-O. It was detailed enough to include portions of open water that were designated for future reclamation and it was segmented by dotted lines that showed the region’s many ferry routes. The ones that led from North Point to portions of Kowloon were as long as many that led to the outer islands and they went on my list of things to do before I left.

On a morning so bright and sparkling that it could only take place in a city that lies near saltwater, I got on the ferry with the longest dotted line. Hong Kong’s skyline dominated my journey as completely as it did when I viewed it from the Star Ferry but here it was less compact, less carefully planned, sprawling in more space than it was allotted in its postcard setting. It was clearly an evolving masterpiece that was almost matched by the buildings that faced it on the Kowloon side. This voyage was a spectacle of human hubris on a mammoth scale, dwarfing even the phantom mountains that usually claimed my attention.

When I disembarked in Kwun Tong, I was surrounded by new glass towers that reeked of Blade Runner and old industrial buildings that could have inspired Charles Dickens. The older buildings still held small manufacturers with workers visible in ground floor spaces that were open to the street while the new towers were all shrouded in ultra-modern privacy. The sidewalks were a mixture of delivery carts and workers rushing toward lunch; long lines had formed outside tiny diners and mammoth restaurants whose signs featured whole roast pigs.. This part of the city was so closely related to Manhattan’s Garment District of my teenage years that I instantly fell in love.

Beyond the crowds and the buildings designed for various versions of labor, there was a gleam of color and I walked up a sloping street to see what it was. There waited another cityscape from another time, low-lying buildings painted in soft colors and in eccentric shapes, bowed like steamships or curved inward in the softened enclosure of the letter C. This area was equally crowded but the pace was slow and people of my age sat in pocket parks shaded by small groves of trees.

When I walked back toward the water, the area beneath the elevated highway was brilliant with painted concrete pillars that held the weight of the traffic above. Each set held a different color, another pattern, a unique mood. A small building encased in bamboo held public restrooms and facing the waterfront were benches and covered shelters. A single food truck sat beneath the overpass with a sign in English;  it claimed to have chocolate-covered frozen bananas. A young white guy wearing a dashingly piratical bandanna that held back his mane of hair apologized. “This is our first day and you’re our third customer. The bananas aren’t completely frozen yet.”

Without other customers to distract him, he was in a mood to chat. “When I first came here, three years ago, this area under the highway was covered with all kinds of scrap, waiting to be recycled. Things change fast in this city.”

Near the water, next to the long promenade that had been built on the shoreline were abstract constructions, squares that tilted on edge or rectangles that claimed a patch of ground. Many were built from wood and were covered with glass windowpanes, in memory of the recycling that they had replaced. After dark those windows gleamed with light, sending small signals to the ferries that docked nearby.

I passed a woman in full bridal dress, her attendants holding a wide train of white fabric that struggled to join the harbor’s wind, and a community of old men on benches, chatting and scrutinizing the marine traffic that dotted their view. Less than a block away was an old Victorianesque shop front that now, in gilded letters, announced Cafeholic; a long line of chicly clad office workers waited outside to eat Italian pasta dishes.

“They say it’s going to become the new Central,” a young businessman said, and I shuddered. Right now Kwun Tong was known for illegal loft-dwellers and independent music clubs. It was a pretty safe bet that condos and chic nightspots weren’t lagging far behind.

In the first half of my Hong Kong visit, I stayed in a building with a doorman and an elevator that was bigger than any of my Hong Kong bathrooms. There were four apartments on my floor and the carpeted hallway was immaculate. The building was new, sandwiched between shops and facing a street filled with market stalls. The tram clanged its way through shoppers and delivery carts all day and into the night and my twelfth-floor flat gave me a fabulous view of the whole scene.

Unlike any other place that I’d stayed in Hong Kong, this one didn’t shrink from light. Its outer walls were banked with windows and my bed was wedged against most of them. It had to be. The main room was in the shape of a hallway, rectangular with the door at one end and windows at the other. A spattering of basic furniture lined the facing walls: a wardrobe and shelving unit flanked off against a desk and a refrigerator that were separated by a shoe rack. Two doors had been placed on the inner wall, one leading to a tiny bathroom with the smallest bathtub that I was too claustrophobic to spend much time in and a kitchen that was just big enough for one person at a time. Beyond that was a covered balcony for drying laundry that I would have washed in the tiny machine placed under the kitchen counter if I hadn’t been afraid of breaking it.

If my efficiency apartment in Seattle were partitioned into two rooms, each half would be approximately the size of this flat. But my place rented for what amounted to 6000 Hong Kong dollars and from what I’d read over the years, this spot was probably closer to 20,000 HKD a month. Its market street setting was humble but it was on Hong Kong Island, and down the block from it were two new, spiffy-looking hotels. Although North Point wasn’t chic yet, it wasn’t cheap either.

I knew I could never afford a place as palatial as the one I was staying in now but I was curious. What would my Seattle rent yield me in Hong Kong?

I went to Craigslist and discovered that the answer was not much. For 800 US I could rent a room with shared bath that had probably been partitioned off from a larger room and would have just enough space for a bed. Quite a few of these Spartan domiciles were in North Point, which was the only advantage I could see.

One of them was in one of the many Hong Kong neighborhoods that I’d never heard of and, curious, I looked it up online. To Kwa Wan was a place in Kowloon which wasn’t yet on the subway system. It was a low-income, industrial neighborhood with a waterfront. In fact, it was one of the destinations that I could reach from the North Point pier.

The ferry docked near a public pier where a family was busy with poles and nets in search of their Sunday dinner. A walkway led past land that was fenced off with chain metal but held unmistakable signs of habitation: clothes hung on lines that were tied to bushes, a smattering of children’s toys, a bicycle. Just beyond that was a phalanx of parked buses and many, many people, all in motion.

Off to the side was a huge building with a sign that identified it as a shopping plaza but none of the other markers were evident. It held no Starbucks, no MacDonalds, no Watsons or Sasa or Cafe de Coral but it was busy. I followed a crowd inside where I hoped to find a restroom.

The shops were filled with merchandise that looked quite a bit like the stuff for sale in my North Point marketplace and the shoppers all looked familiar too. They were arranged in separate throngs, each led by a person carrying a colored flag.

Beyond the shopping center things got eerie. The crowds bustled behind their flagbearer down a main street that was otherwise vacant. The buildings that they passed were closed and had the distinctive Brutalist architecture of Hong Kong's small industries, glass bay windows that ran the entire length of a structure from top to bottom and held elevators, objects that looked like exterior baskets but were actually ventilation systems, placed near huge white numerals from one to four that identified each floor of the building.

Lanes that led from this thoroughfare were the magnet destinations. Here were small shops that sold food, traditional Chinese medicine, small electronic items, their windows filled with beckoning ceramic cats of varying sizes. Above these shops laundry hung from metal window frames. A grim diner on a corner that was locked and barred bore a sign in Chinese and English. The words I could read said Cafe de Joy.

Squatting on the sidewalk outside a more hospitable dining option was a large group of women, all with shopping bags, all wearing clothes that had seen better days. Each of them had the unmistakable look of people who were ready to go home. Others with more energy were following their flags to the North Point ferry.

How did this part of Kowloon become a shopping mecca for ordinary people, I wondered, and how did the ordinary people who lived above the beckoning cats react to the weekend invasion? The only way to find out would be to rent my own set of metal-framed windows and hang out my laundry--but I’d have to do it fast. The street of industrial buildings where I’d followed the crowds had construction barriers running down its center. The MTR was on its way and Starbucks wouldn’t be far behind. I would need to take up residence while the ferry to North Point was still the quickest way to leave Kowloon..

There was one last ferry route from North Point that I hadn’t yet taken and I had deliberately saved it for last. It went to Hung Hom, an area of Kowloon that I’d always thought was a bit bedraggled, but from there another ferry would take me back to Hong Kong Island. The ferry to Wanchai was a longer route than the Star Ferry but had much the same view of the skyline, with the same expansiveness of the other North Point seascapes. If I made a complete round trip, it could take hours perhaps and I couldn’t think of a better way to end the day.

The sky, water, and distant mountains had all taken on different shades of blue, from azure to cerulean to the pale and smoky navy of spectral shapes silhouetted against the horizon. When I stood on the open lower deck of each ferry, I was wrapped in a brilliant monochrome, broken only by buildings and the surprise of green hills that rose behind them. A sailboat with a black sail floated in front of me, followed rather improbably by one whose sail was pure white, and suddenly I realized the day I was living had become visual poetry.

Then the ferry pulled into Hung Hom, where I learned there was no other route. The ferry to Wanchai had been discontinued several years earlier.

Drowning my sorrows in a drink from Starbucks, I looked at where I had ended up. There was a luxurious hotel in a park-like setting that was edged by the waterfront walkway that every neighborhood seemed to provide, but this one was studded with signposts that said the Hung Hom Promenade would lead to the one that ended in the Star Ferry.

One reason I rarely went to this part of Kowloon was because it seemed so cut off from the rest of the world, broken and scarred by highways and railway lines. My walks there had never been ones I’d cared to repeat or expand upon, so this promenade was an unexpected present. It was a wide and almost empty path with an unfamiliar sense of space that gave me a fresh jolt of energy, until it came to an end.

A sign directed me toward a new walkway that curved up a tree-covered hill and I obediently followed. Suddenly I was above the harbor, with the entire Hong Kong skyline on my left and a thick screen of greenery on my right. Beyond that was the ugly elevated highway that Hung Hom had turned into an asset.

It ended in construction when the path descended into the harbor neighborhood of Tsim Sha Tsui and the Star Ferry.  Even so, I was delighted by the unexpected beauty of a neighborhood that I had been quite certain had none and the promise of an expanded harbor walk to come. Kowloon was capitalizing on its gift of space, turning that portion of Hong Kong from a grim and dingy sprawl to a destination point that would match its more sophisticated neighbor across the harbor. Although many of the area’s changes made me queasy, this was one I looked forward to watching and hoped I’d be able to return and witness its completion. ~Janet Brown