the spirit of hong kong – part three

this is where i lived, in the midlevels, with my room facing the peak. on the other side of the apartment, i had a big window front towards the harbour and watched all those planes (mostly 747-400s) land at Kai Tak and make that checkerboard approach. awesome. to bad they closed it. since then, hong kong was able to grow further into the sky and change its skyline completely.

 

i took the tram from North Point to Central in order to catch the next Star Ferry to Kowloon. I wanted to go through Queensplace, the Hutchinson House to the Central Pier. I was aware, that they built a new Central Pier, but i didn’t it would be that far off… “No, you have to get off in Central, near the Government House, to be closest to the pier…”, somebody told me. I told him, that i lived here 15 years ago and so much the city’s appearance had changed. A brit ex-pat listened and replied, that really a lot had changed since the hand-over since 1997, when China reclaimed Hong Kong to be the SAR. We all wondered, how Hong Kong would change in the next 15 years. Maybe the harbour would be completely gone by claimed land, to build more skyscrapers. But the people haven’t changed, the life hasn’t changed, the sights, sounds and smells are the same: the spirit of hong kong.

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