Revisiting My Hong Kong, 20 Years After the British Left

This piece so resonates. Was there from end 1994 to mid 1998 and also worked in the media. Went through the same 'living in a room smaller than a prison cell' experience at the start, the endless McDonalds meals, the boozy nights in Lan Kwai Fong and Wan Chai, and the shock of the Asian Financial Crisis which destroyed so many jobs (mine survived but not for too long). As the author points out, in hindsight it might appear to have been a great 'romantic' Dick Whittington-style experience, but the reality is that HK chewed up and spat out a lot of people who didn't have the readies/couldn't take the pace...nevertheless many fond memories along with diminished brain cells!

Loved reading it! Thank you!

What a lovely story. Thank you.

Beautiful - I had to come sit at the computer and tell you how much I enjoyed this article! I have never been to Hong Kong - I yearn for earlier simpler times,ones that we romanticize in retrospect, but were hard to live through at the time........ But mostly you made me think of when I was 25 and I spent 4 weeks in London, taking a Shakespeare intensive as an actress, at the London Academy of Dramatic Arts. I had a fifth week on this excursion - but I had no money to stay in London. I bought a bus ticket to Wales, and I hiked solo through the country for a week. I remember every moment of that trip as if it was yesterday - but I can't remember what I did 3 days ago - LOL! It was a time, 1986, when I lived without the distractions of the phone, television news, media in general. I was open and available physically and emotionally to the moments, as they unfolded with each step taken through Llangollen, Bala, up to Conway....... memories ingrained in my mind and heart. I have never been back.....You have shown me now that I MUST got back, as there would be so much joy in retracing the steps of my fearless youth. Thank you.

Great piece! I can smell the harbor. What a noisy, busy, smelly and frenetic place. No one has mentioned the bus to Stanley, so I will. The tree limbs smacking the windows on the buses' upper deck on the twisty road, the view of Repulse Bay and the South China Sea. Haven't been there for over ten years - won't try to figure out the exact number because it will make me miss HK too much.

Beautifully written article. Thank you

Loved this. Beautiful travel writing with a personal edge.

I worked in Brazil for a while and spoke no Portuguese. A Brazilian friend of mine still talks about the day he picked me up from the office I was working out of. I spoke only English; my colleagues spoke only Portuguese. He watched us have an entire conversation, totally understanding each other. I thought nothing of it and had gotten used to it.

I was lucky enough to live in Hong Kong for three years, before and after the Hong Kong. This well-written article brought back some pleasant memories. I too had a few beers at the Globe.

Wonderful writing, wonderful story. Now I want to go to HK.

Great story; accurate description of Hong Kong, where the transportation network is among the best in the world. The people are very friendly, and the food is great. Macau is a must see city, with arquitectural characteristics that reminds Rio de Janeiro. A must see city when you are in Hong Kong. There is an excellent Portuguese-food restaurant in nearby Macau, that should not be missed.

Thanks for this beautiful love letter to Hong Kong. I'm reading it on the 20th anniversary of Hong Kong's handover to China, a day that is often depressing to those of us who care about the place and its people. So I welcome the light the piece has helped shine onto this city that I moved to 10 years ago. The author is right in that Hong Kong's a tough city but I consider it worth the effort to stay as it really is a wonderful place, where unlikely friendships can indeed be made and new discoveries (including about life in general) can be made pretty much daily. :)

What a beautiful and instantly recognisable story. I lived in Hong Kong with my young family for three years from 2010 to 2102 - a long time after the writer, but no matter how much the city changes it still seems to stay the same - that's why we all love it so much, i guess. I'm sure that almost all of my friends from this time - only a few of whom are still living inIong Kong - would feel the instant stab of familiarity and genuine fondness for a city that makes up for its pace and toughness with lashings of friendliness, humanity and authenticity. I cannot stay away from Hong Kong for more than 12 months and cherish my new and old memories there. Thank you for sharing your beautiful memories with readers. What a gift amongst all the bad news! I'm so glad you were able to reconnect with your friend and even come away with an enhanced understanding of your relationship and each other.

I don't care much for most travel writing but this was thoroughly engaging and somewhat enchanting. I was there once in 1997 and would like to go back someday.

But what became of the artist's sick wife?

I was touched by this lovely story - it made me very homesick. Having been born in Hong Kong in the 50s to missionary parents, I lived there till I was almost 15. My parents gave us an extraordinary amount of freedom to get around - taking the bus from our home in Kowloon down to Tsim Sha Tsui to the YMCA, where we watched movies and met up with our friends. The Hong Kong of those days - Kowloon City, Kai Tak Airport, the Swiss Cheese building on the Victoria waterfront and so much more - isn't there anymore, but the spirit of the city as you so beautifully wrote never dies. I've been back a few times in the last decade, and manage still to find our old home on Kadoorie Avenue, my schools - Kowloon Junior and KGV - and little byways on "Hong Kong side" that are still there. Living in New York is the next best thing - but Hong Kong - my first home and first love, always....

I never comment on articles, but this story was just too wonderful. My girlfriend used to live in Hong Kong, and she and I read this story together, and she started relating tales of her time there. I've longed to go for many years, thanks to the cinema of John Woo and Wong Kar Wai. I think it's time to start looking at tickets!

Thanks to the author! This story was amazing!

Great article, lovely memories and
amazing experiences. This is why
we travel. Thank you.

I was one of those poor kids growing up in the street of Honk Kong in the 60s. I remember vividly the first time my parents took me to the rural areas in the New Territory. I was about 5 years old and for the first time I found soil instead of concrete under my feet. I was curious and asked my father why the ground was so loose. Hong Kong has always been a concrete jungle.

Mr. Kulish, thank you for giving me the nostalgia of my birthplace.

I spent two days in Hong Kong in the fall of 1994. I was working in South Korea as an English teacher (1993-1999), and went on a 10-day vacation to Hong, then Thailand, and then to the Philippines. I greatly enjoyed my two days walking around Hong Kong and wished then and now I had had more time there. I had a great time there, riding the Star ferry, walking up Victoria Peak, and going out to a hill in the countryside by taxi to look over at the Chinese border.
I enjoyed the article. All people who spend time in a place and then go back years later can relate, but exotic/unique places are a little different. They get modernized, busier, and the mood is sometimes different.

Nick's story may be set in Hong Kong, but the tale is universal: a young person making a stab at claiming a professional identity is consumed by work and fun, improvises a living, and finds/makes friends with people who are in similar straits. Sweetest part of all, when this person returns as a professional settled into a career, he manages to reconnoiter with a dear friend who's a touchstone with that early passage in his life. Thanks for writing your story, Nick! It made me remember being young again!

I was hanging on to your every word, Nicholas. So beautifully and vividly written! My mother left Hong Kong when she was 27, and I went to try living there when I was 28. You touched on so many points (North Point overcrowded with maids on their single day off, the fetid live flesh markets, dizzying Mong Kok, the Mid-Levels escalators, etc.) that you brought me back to Hong Kong in all it's amazing sensual glory. I worked there for a year in a Hong Kong company that had their required "half day on Saturday" schedule. Needless to say, after 8 months of working 11 hour days PLUS half day on Saturdays, I was completely exhausted. I look at pictures of myself from that time, and I look like an exhausted wreck. You sum it up all at the end, Nicolas: the city is indeed "too tough", and I felt beaten by it despite my initial enthusiasm. Only then I fully understood why my mom left when she was 27, and am so grateful that she left for Canada where she had us kids. I loved my adventure in Hong Kong but I could not take it on. I survived a year in the sticky, crowded metropolis and know now why just about all my relatives left Hong Kong as soon as they had the means. It was tough that year, but one of the best things I've done to feel closer to my roots. Thanks Nicholas for your beautiful details about finding your friend Ng Chung.

OMG--this writing is so human and so real--a friendship based on the need for companionship in difficult circumstances and without a common language. I have had similar but brief instances of human connection during travel to foreign places. This is a beautiful story. Glad you were able to meet up again after 20 years to recall those earlier days, and after each making your way in the world!

Friendships like this one, what a gift! So glad the two men met again. Wonderful, wonderful!

What a great story. Thank you. It reminded me of my first overseas trip in 1971. I was 21 and spent over a year travelling throughout South East Asia, in gorgeous East Timor before the war with Indonesia, Penang in Malaysia with all the American troops on R&R in the bars and bordellos with nothing to lose but their lives. Everyonn e felt so "alive". Then Ache in northern Sumatran where kids through stones at me as they rarely saw white westerners. Jakarta, Jogjakarta and Surabaya with the raw feelings of the American instigated revolution of 1965, still very unsettling and yet the Javanese people became my friends the old culture still predominant and finally arriving in Kuta Beach in Bali with the gentle Hindu culture, the exquisite bare breasted women and the very few western surfers. No paved roads, no cars, only kerosene lights and a culture based on fabulous art and living as a work of art with everyone participating in a culture that I thought could never be overtaken by the west. I never returned but people told me it changed dramatically.These memories will never leave, just like your own. They are part of our personal narrative, our very own lives. I returned to Australia a changed man, a better man.

I really enjoyed this. My time in HK was the mid-1960s. Sometime I want to go back.

Thanks so much for writing this. I lived in HK for 6 years between 2007 and 2013. Even during the time that I was there the city changed so much as it continued the metamorphosis started in 1997. What's remarkable however is how I knew almost every spot mentioned in the article and moreover how I richly I was able to share the author's experience as he retraced his steps so many years later. I had a similar experience when I returned to HK in January of 2017, after having been away almost four years. There is something amazing about the way this brutal, heaving, beautiful city imparts a deep fondness along with the scars.

This brought me back as well. I remember the local beers they had on tap at the Globe (outside of the standard San Miguel/Carlsberg purview) being quite decent. A time long ago it seems, but the friendships, experiences and memories still visceral.

I was so lucky to be able to be a street rat both in HKG and NYC back when kids could run the streets with wild abandon and live off of pennies. Stayed in HKG on the way back to USA after leaving home age 17.
ChungHingDaiHa (Chunking Mansion) on Nathan Rd.hahahaha, what fun and crazy times I had living there. Better than Manhattan in many ways, actually. Lots of innocent fun with some sinister overtones.

This article brought back so many wonderful memories of my three years in HK 1977-1980. Star Ferry, Stanley Bay, Hollywood Rd, the tram to the peak...I attended Island School then. The mix of cultures and diversity I experienced in HK shaped my worldview. I did go back once to visit in 1995 before China took over. So much had changed since I had last seen the island. And I will be visiting again coming August. I am certain many places I would not even recognize. After reading this essay, I can't wait to experience HK all over again. Thank you so much

I too was a young expat in the late 90s in Hong Kong and this article completely transformed me back to that time. How beautifully written, thank you for sharing!

I really enjoyed this piece, as a regular visitor to HK...thank you for sharing your experiences there.

Beautiful story. Thank you.

Written with such affection for the place and time. Alas memory can be frail. Thank you Nicholas

Best summary ever of the "Hong King" kong" I experienced four years ago - a great narrative to accompany my slide show. Thanks.

this is an excellent story and brought back many memories of my time in Hong Kong when my sister presented at the University.

Between 2001 and 2014, I spent a lot of time traveling between the US and Hong Kong. Up until 2003, Beijing's influence was hardly evident. That really started after SARS had a devastating effect on the Hong Kong economy, and Beijing started issuing "shopping visas" to well-heeled mainlanders to boost Hong Kong's finances. When the South China Morning Post (Hong Kong's largest English-language newspaper) started referring to the Tiananmen Square massacre as the Tiananmen Square incident in deference to Beijing, it signaled that "One Country, Two Systems" wasn't going to last 50 years.

Nicholas, your report brings back fond memories of my post-college mid-70s move to Hong Kong, where I lived in the New Territories when they were still completely dominated by villages and flower farms. I taught English, lived close to the bone, and also had a "home" bar -- the Yellow Submarine, where I forged a rogues' gallery community of friends. Society there was completely permeable for the adventurous, and I moved through the homes of my students, parties in the Peak apartments of colonial officials, welcome dinners from kindly nuns who also taught in my school, and forays into the forbidden Walled City (where "guards" posted on street corners steered you away from nearby opium dens). I even befriended the head cop of HK, whose gritty stories were vicariously riveting for me. You sum it up well: a little history, a little adventure, and a little excitement. Thanks for the article.

Nice piece of travelog. Young men & women should wander around the world and store up memories of adventures. Hong Kong is a wonderful and much safer place than many parts of the world to do it. To this day, while the remnants of British colonial rule is fading it is still visible to those who look. To me nothing represent lingering colonial influence more than the names of Christian schools from kindergarten to college dotting the entire former colony. Christian missionaries played a role in "taming the wild population" and made ruling the concession a bit less problematic. Hong Kong is a tri-lingual place where anyone speaking English, Cantonese and Mandarin (Pu-Tong-Hua) can feel quite at home. Another lingering effect of the colonial past. There is no place on earth like Hong Kong. Go visit.

Also a HK expat, (albeit not broke), I found this enchanting . Well done!

I remember the Globe, a friendly place with a good beer selection and a fun juke box. I'm not a banker, but I wonder whether a few of your beers ended up on my tab?

I loved this narrative. Just beautifully written. Thank you.

Nicely done. Memory's Midas's sketch book.