Arrival in Hong Kong

(Written Friday 10 April, morning)

 I’m sitting in my hotel room, a very pleasant and peaceful refuge, in a hostel perched on a hillside in Lai Chi Kok, having (just about) recovered from jetlag. I’m reflecting on my first few days in Hong Kong, having been selected for a student residency with HKOP here almost a year ago. This has given me the opportunity to anticipate this month’s stay - I’ve been building a picture of this place in my mind over the last twelve months, based on some (now fairly hazy) recollections of a visit that I made some 20 years ago, together with conversations with friends who have lived and worked here, plus some library and internet searches (I was particularly drawn to the photographs of Michael Wolf (http://photomichaelwolf.com) who has made a series of photographs of the high density tower blocks that are an ever present feature of the Hong Kong environment).

There is nothing quite like the moment when your travel fantasy actualises into reality, which for me began as I rubbed my sleep deprived eyes and looked out of the plane window as we made our descent through a dense blanket of cloud, and the lush, green and hilly landscape of Lantau Island (where the new airport is now located) was revealed like some magical apparition. A swift journey on the MTR train and you are right in the heart of Kowloon City.

There’s that moment when you emerge from the cocoon of the underground system (MTR), with its universal familiarity, onto a strange street in a very strange land. It’s a very long time since I’ve been so far away from home, and never without the company of my friends and/or partner, so this was quite a moment - alone in a street with two bags of belongings half way round the world, and quite jetlagged and disorientated.

One thing that really hit me was the smell! One intake of breath just took me straight back those twenty years to the last time I was here. It’s a mixture of damp warm air, vegetation, and quite different food smells, and it’s a real signature of the place, very evocative. I think about how I can make connections with a place through the experience of drawing, but if I could bottle that smell, it would be the most pungent and vivid of reminders.

I’m also aware of a real feeling of extreme discomfort. I think I’m so used to the familiarity of the world in which I live at home, and everything is so different here. The people, language, signs, customs, landscape are all so alien to me. There’s a part of me that wants to turn round and take the next plane home. And I also know that good can come out of this discomfort.  I hope that it will provide some stimulation for my drawing and printmaking - I just have to learn to live with it.