We Used to Be Here

Guest author Maureen Tai discovers remnants of the past in a constantly changing Hong Kong

Words and images: Maureen Tai

One of the bittersweet joys of living in a neighbourhood for a long time is that you don’t only know where things are, but where things used to be.

Take for example that darkened rectangular shadow in the nearby children’s playground. It once housed a wooden steam-powered train, a replica made of large wooden logs, smoothed of splinters and painted a gooey, chocolatey brown. My daughter—now officially a teen—clambered all over it when she was a toddler, waving in delight from its roof as I tasted my heart in my mouth. That supermarket across the street, selling frozen fishballs and salmon heads? Years ago, it was a Fat Angelo’s, a family-friendly Italian eatery where my son—also a teen these days—scribbled on paper place mats with free stubby crayons and flirted with the smiley waitress whose name badge read “Michelle”. Or that spot by the road, now paved and flanked by fancy coffee shops and hot pot restaurants. The Old Shoe Uncle used to squat there, surrounded by his tools and cigarettes. The loafers he resoled for me still languish in my wardrobe, even as no trace of him remains on the street corner.

Change is inevitable, but it feels raw, sad, hurtful even, especially if it’s a change you have no control over, an alteration of a perceived order of the universe that you were least expecting.

This is how I felt on a day in 2021—raw, sad, hurt—as I stared at the massive temporary walls surrounding the area where a sculpture used to stand. It was cold and just coming on to 6 a.m., my favourite time of day. The lone security guard nervously rubbed her hands together to warm them. She was unsure of my motives; if I must be perfectly honest, so was I. I hesitated for a second before greeting her brightly. “Chou sun!” At least, I hoped it would be a good morning. Alarm defused, she smiled back. I could tell by her eyes even if I couldn’t see her mouth for her mask. Unbidden, she looked the other way. Perhaps to give me some privacy, or perhaps so she wouldn’t feel obligated to shoo me away if I decided to break any rules. I reverentially walked the perimeter of the yellow wall, peering through small holes threaded with deceptively strong twist ties.

In the space where the bloodied, twisted bodies of men, women and children had spiraled skywards, melting into a Pillar of Shame—as the work was christened by its Danish creator—there was nothing. The ground was layered with white plastic sheets, fluttering in the brisk morning breeze, weighed down by sandbags and upturned wheelbarrows. I remember a summer many years ago when we came across the sculpture as we wandered, slightly lost, along the labyrinthine corridors and walkways of the university. “Why are the people sad?” asked my son, his chubby hand in mine. He was then too young to understand the many ways that humans hurt other humans. I can’t remember how I explained the events that had inspired the artwork, what had transpired over three decades ago in Beijing, China. What I do remember saying is that painful as it was to look at, the sculpture had a reason, a necessary purpose, like a scar. It stood as a reminder of Something Awful that had happened in the past, so that we could be careful the next time, so that that Something Awful wouldn’t happen again.

I rubbed my eyes. The scar was now gone. Even as the memory of it remained, fresh and real, that would also, in time, fade and disappear. I stood and listened to the birds chirping against the increasingly frequent rumble of cars and buses. I slid my phone in between the yellow barriers and took a picture. I remember promising to myself that this image would be my scar, my reminder, of something that used to be here.

My feet headed homewards, and I stopped by a bakery to pick up some por lor bao, pineapple buns with, ironically, no pineapple in them. As I placed the coins in the Old Aunty’s wrinkled hand, I looked into her rheumy eyes for the first time in the decade that I’d been visiting her shop. It was barely 7 a.m. and I was already entertaining morbid thoughts. “How much longer?” I wondered inwardly. “How many more years before you too, are gone?”

I asked myself the same question when I trekked over to my neighbourhood swimming shed some months ago, when the winter bite had yet to nip at my heels. Five decades or so ago, a few residents of a township in the western part of Hong Kong Island called Kennedy Town created an informal club of hardy sea-swimmers. Leasing a sliver of land from the government, the members built some changing rooms which morphed into a tiny clubhouse of sorts, nestled among tall trees and lush ferns, clinging to the rocky cliffs off Victoria Road. I pressed my palms together and bowed my head at the Goddess of Mercy statue, sitting peacefully in her shelter outside the clubhouse. Taking a shaky deep breath (I’m terrible with heights), I continued down the narrow steps towards a wooden platform that extended into the open seas, right at the bottom. I stood at the end of the rickety gangplank, my hair whipping into my face as waves lapped against the rocky shore. Someone grunted behind me. I stepped aside apologetically as an elderly man, wearing a blush-worthy tiny pair of Speedos and a swimming cap, sidled past and readied his descent into the rolling ocean.

“How far out can you go?” I shouted impulsively in Cantonese. The man turned his goggled eyes to me.

“As far as I like,” he grinned, flashing yellowed teeth. He flourished his arms energetically. “I can go anywhere!”

My searching eyes took in the wide waters, the small island in the distance, the dark shadowy smudges of boats, buildings, and hills beyond. With an almost imperceptible splash, the old man slid into the water like a fish, gently disappearing.

In this constantly changing Hong Kong, I feel a desperate need to remember these people, these places, these moments as they are now. I’m acutely aware that someday, I too, like them, will become someone who used to be here. All memory is consigned to inevitably forgetful minds or, if we’re so lucky, to records of literature, art, history.

The Old Aunty jolted me out of my reverie as she handed me the brown paper bag with my children’s por lor bao inside. They were still warm.

“May I?” I asked.

“Sure,” she smiled.

As she smoothed her flour-speckled apron with her work-worn hands, I whipped out my smartphone and took a picture. And then another, and another.