Looking at this picture brings back childhood memories because I was born in this wonderfully vibrant and ever-changing steel jungle. It reminds me of a passage in Dionne Brand's What We All Long For, a book I had read for my Modern Canadian Fiction course. In the story, the dissonance of Ornette Coleman's "The Jungle is a Skyscraper" is compared with the clash of cultures, peoples, histories, stories in the city. Hong Kong had been colonized by Britain and Japan until 1997 when China regained sovereignty. Technically I am British, but also Chinese, and now I am a Canadian too. In the piece, "every horn is alone, but they're together, crashing." This seems particularly applicable to this special space that functions under the "one country, two systems" principle. It also describes the complex identity of its citizens like me!
Check it out:
