Lost In Translation: One Man's Personal Journey Through Hong Kong
By Christopher Malcolm
21 Apr 2009
I don't know what I was expecting.
After two previous overseas trips brought me to Europe, I was determined to try something different. Hong Kong definitely fit the bill. Between my lifetime fascination with Asian culture, an enviable Bruce Lee DVD collection, and a hopeless crush on Hong Kong movie star Cecilia Cheung, the small city on the Southeastern coast of China seemed like a natural fit. So I shoved as many clothes as I could plausibly fit into my carry-on sized duffle bag and hopped onto a plane.
It didn't take long to see just how different Hong Kong would be. Granted, my vision was a bit cloudy. One detail they seem to have left out of all those kung fu flicks is that apparently Hong Kong is, in fact, the physical manifestation of heat!!! Well, not so much heat as humidity. Although at the pace of three showers a day, I'm not so sure that my body could tell the difference. The minute the plane touched down, the first bead of sweet emerged over my left eyebrow. By the time I passed through customs, I was in need of a clean shirt. After a brief stint on the ruthlessly efficient Airport Express subway train, I reached the hotel in such a state that left the bellboy wondering if I had lost enough bodily fluid to be in need of medical attention.
Of course, what sets Hong Kong apart is more than just the climate. But like the climate, the city's photographic potential took a little getting used to.
If you're like me and tend to stick to the tourist friendly havens like France, Italy, or Egypt, you may find the photo gems of Hong Kong significantly more elusive. They are there. But they require a bit more work. Case in point. The Louvre versus the Hong Kong Museum of Art. Both contain hundreds of paintings, sculptures, and other miniature objects that cost more than my house. Both have thoughtful and courteous staff. But while they both house art, the Louvre itself is a work of art. Any photographer with a disposable camera can get twenty great images before he or she ever even reaches the Mona Lisa. The Hong Kong Museum of Art, on the other hand, is largely functional. If it weren't for the paintings and security guards reminding you not to use flash, there really wouldn't be a great deal separating this building from any average office park. A very nice office park. But noticeably absent of the elaborate ceilings or elegant art direction which makes The Louvre worth the price of admission. Speaking of the cost of admission, one time when The Hong Kong Museum surely outpaces it's European rival is Wednesday, when entrance to all area museums is free. Hard to beat that.
So my photo safari hadn't gotten off to the best start. Unable to find inspiration in architecture, I instead turned my focus to history. Film history. Full disclosure. I am a filmmaker. And like any decent filmmaker, I am also a film buff. So the prospect of touching down in a cinema landmark such as Hong Kong is invigorating. This is the home of Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan. The inspiration for the moody films of Wong Kar Wai. And, of course, home to the aforementioned Cecilia Cheung. As any kung fu fan will tell you, Shaw Studios was ground zero for the Hong Kong film movement which hit it's peak in the 1970s. The Shaw Brothers had built a studio to rival any of it's U.S. counterparts. Though the studio itself has long since ceased operation, the facilities remain. Being from Los Angeles, the home of the Hollywood studio tour, I naturally assumed that I would be able to plunk down a few bucks and be sheparded around the Shaw Brothers lot in on of those brightly colored trams that seem to scream out "tourist" and "geek" almost simultaneously. But a few quick strokes of the keyboard put all of that to rest. Though the lot is currently home to Celestial Pictures, the stages haven't been used for decades. Not only is there no studio tour, but the facility itself is off limits to visitors. The few images I was able to find on the web had been gathered by a select few lucky enough to have a personal connection with the studio. The images show a slightly neglected, though no less fascinating place full of film history. Seems to me they could make a fortune off of the tourist trade. Pull poor schmucks like me around in a wagon. Let me snap a few pictures. Make me pay for the privilege. Sounds like a plan to me. But hey, who am I to say? Not that they can be fully blamed for letting this once proud studio slide into obsolescence. A brand new high-tech Shaw Brothers studio is opening just miles away with all the amenities a filmmaker could ever imagine. But still, there's something to be said for being able to literally walk in the footsteps of legends. To revel in an unobstructed view of greatness.
I share this story with you because it's illustrative of the vital theme of today's Hong Kong. It is a land full of history being swallowed by the advances of the modern world. As I walked through the streets, I saw block after block of historic temples and significant landmarks. But time after time, as I went to frame my photograph, I found my unique subject matter crowded out by a growing mass of high rises. One can walk through the ruins of ancient Rome and see them much the same way they existed thousands of years ago. Yet even in the most beautiful of places in Hong Kong cannot help but be engulfed by the mass of modernization.
I won't lie. The first three days of my trip were a major drag. I wandered from attraction to attraction, checking off my Hong Kong visitors map one suggestion at a time. Despite my non-existent grasp of the Cantonese language, I found the Chinese people to be most welcoming and extremely warm. People like Henry Lam, the tailor who I met on the street who, immediately after shaking my hand, proclaimed his love for Barack Obama and offered me a quick tour of Kowloon. But despite all this kindness, the photographer in me was still left searching. Where was... Hong Kong? Where were the iconic images that set it apart from the other great cities of the world? What was it about this place that made it so special?
The answer was staring me right in the face. I just wasn't looking.
I wish I could take credit for the great epiphany. I wish I could say it was through my years of intense study and knowledge of the art of photography that I came to my decision to change tactics. But honestly the whole thing was something of an accident. After returning from a particularly fruitless day trip to Macau, I stormed home in frustration. Not only was it still indescribably humid, but my effort to reach a planned walking trail in the former Portuguese colony was complicated by my guide book's stubborn refusal to point out that the walking trail was so hard to reach! But that's a story for another day. At the moment, I was more concerned with the long walk to my hotel from the last Metro station on the line. Not that I don't love the prospect of a two mile walk in back breaking humidity, but in my current state I found myself even more grumpy than usual. My photography work has always carried certain formal informality. Whether I be shooting a portrait or a sporting event, editorial or travel, I've always prided myself on my ability to pull off a kind of balance. Items are where they are in the frame because I wanted them there. The left side of the frame is as equally considered as the right. Same goes for top and bottom. Even the most abstract of images carry with them a certain unseen symmetry suggesting balance and harmony. But as I made that long walk down Des Voeux Road that evening I was far from harmonious. In fact, I was beginning to wonder if I was ever going to find a shot that would make me happy. I openly considered that perhaps my style just wasn't a good fit for the hustle and bustle of Hong Kong. It was day five of a seven day trip and my only period of sustained inspiration was during a half-day jaunt to Lantau Island, to visit the Giant Buddha statue on the hill.
I'm sure the locals were a bit confused by the sight. A six foot two inch black man striding angrily through the dried seafood market waving his Nikon about in the air, talking to himself, badly dehydrated, and cursing the day he was born with flat feet. So frustrated was I that I began literally shooting from the hip. Clearly, however I was shooting before hadn't been working. I might as well just snap of some shots at random. They could hardly be worse than what I had shot so far. At that point, I would try anything.
Then as I sat in the restaurant that night, reviewing the days work on the camera's LCD, it suddenly hit me like a ton of bricks. That's it! By George, I've got it! How could I have not seen this before. That's the secret. That's what makes Hong Kong special. That's what you can't get anywhere else in the world... the people. It wasn't about trying to find Hong Kong's version of the Coliseum. It was about Henry Lam. The photograph I saw that night contained three distinct faces. I'd shot it while crossing a busy street, from the hip, while trying not to get run over by a passing trolley. The focus isn't perfect. The framing isn't something I likely would've chosen had I had more time to plan. But it's everything Hong Kong is all about wrapped into one. The hustle. The bustle. The heat. The high rises. Hong Kong's perfection is in it's imperfection. In order to see clearly, I had to do more than wipe that still persistent sweat from my eyes. I had to remove the very filter of past and future. I had to stop comparing my images from Hong Kong to those from Paris or Rome or Florence. I had to stop planning for all the great shots I wanted to get while living in a hectic environment that may or may not provide them. In short, I had to learn to be present. How ironic that in a land so intertwined with Buddhist principles that the secret to my photographic success would be my ability to simply... be.
Freed from the shackles of perfection, I was reinvigorated behind the lens. Suddenly I had a new lease on life. In a land of tall buildings, the trick was to look beneath the surface. From that point on, I would train my camera on the people. From the working man to the business woman, the proletariat would be my Mona Lisa.
Granted, my newfound freedom came with it's own challenges. In case I hadn't mentioned this before, I was a six foot two inch black man in Hong Kong. I didn't exactly blend in with the scenery. Add to this the Chinese seemingly superhuman ability to know when they are being watched, and I could be sure that as soon as I turned any corner, all eyes would be on me. Not the best scenario for someone hoping to catch candid moments. In any other situation, the solution would be clear. Simply introduce yourself, explain your project, and ask their permission to immortalize them on film. Only one problem... I don't speak a word of Cantonese.
It's not that I haven't tried. Some years ago, frustrated that my dependence on English subtitles was impairing my ability to stare aimlessly at the close-ups of Cecilia Cheung in movies, I set out to learn the language. Lacking the funds to take a proper class, I instead decided to visit the local library in search of a few language tapes to solve the problem. They didn't. While western languages such as English, Italian, or French are all based on Latin, eastern languages, like Cantonese, Mandarin Chinese, or Japanese, are all based on tones. The same word can mean several different things depending on the pitch used for each syllable. In essence, you don't so much speak Cantonese as sing it. With my own singing court mandated to only take place in the confines of my own shower, I was already in trouble. There are eight primary tones in Cantonese from high to low. The combination of which form words. My problem? While I could easily discern the difference between the highest and lowest tones, all the tones in between sounded exactly the same to my untrained ears. Convinced that any effort to explain my photo project by cobbling together words from my trusty phrasebook would surely result in my being run out of town by Hong Kong natives wielding sticks and threatening me for apparently offering to show the town elder the cat in my pants, I decided to spend as much time as possible on mute. No need to make me run. Especially not in this humidity. So instead I decided to return to what got me here in the 1st place. I shot from the hip.
The moment I saw a crowd of interesting subjects, I would dive right in, framing my camera in my mind as I went along. I continued to engage with anyone who spoke English. The Aussie ex-pat who explained to me that no matter what my guide book said, his apartment was, in fact, not a monastery. The Sri Lankan toy manufacturer I met on the cable car who was nice enough to point out that I had missed my stop ten minutes ago. Or the two Japanese tourist who, when they saw me framing a shot in Madame Tussauds wax museum, kindly warned that the figures I was shooting were actually only popular with tween girls and that my having heard of their music was a serious mark in my troubled relationship with cool. I walked up the street. Down the street. East. West. I tossed my vindictive guidebook out in favor of a compass and followed only my own sense of adventure. I got lost. And finally, finally, I found Hong Kong.
