This has been my fourth time back to Hong Kong. Hong Kong was the first city I went to as a solo traveller, after having saved enough money during my first job years ago. As a young traveller, I loved the bustling metropolitan city and Disneyland.
This time as part of my dom tour to Hong Kong as Professional Dominatrix/30-year-old adult, I started to see the city differently. What allured me about Hong Kong this time was her raw and unpretentious energy - from the revitalised West Kowloon Cultural District to the gentrified Lee Tung Street, and the gritty & seedy Wan Chai. Colourful, authentic, spontaneous and raw. The juxtaposition of order/disorder, hyperlocal/globalisation, revitalising/gentrifying, legal/illegal is what gives HK her energy; the bamboo scaffolding, street hawkers, brothels, sprawling rooftop bars, Nigerian eateries at Chongking Mansions.. these messy urbanism, is what makes Hong Kong real.
Of course, modernisation and gentrification has taken on a toil of the soul of Hong Kong - the last village from the Kowloon Walled City has been displaced and Lee Tung Street is no longer sells traditional wedding cards, but is now a high-end shopping district. Some areas of Hong Kong feel homogeneous - just like Singapore. But within certain nooks of Hong Kong - Flower Street, the makeshift roadside stores set up by domestic workers from Philippines along Central, the long queues for the street food along Yau Ma Tei, is a soul.
In Christopher DeWolf's book, 'Borrowed Spaces: Life Between the Cracks of Modern Hong Kong', he writes, "If you stripped away all its accoutrements - laundry hanging from bamboo rods, street market stalls, assertive neon signs, potted plants in the street, awnings and newsstands and red market lamps - Hong Kong would be little more than a barren landscape of ugly concrete building. It would be as cold and vacant as the suburbs I left behind. "
And within this messy urbanism, is a melting pot of cultures, tolerant and accepting of all identities, where kink flourishes.
PS: I had my pig's blood before leaving the city. It was a great trip. 🤤 PPS: FMTY into Hong Kong are available. e-mail me direct.
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