Hong Kong’s Shattered Idea of Home |
For much of my twenties, I travelled back and forth between urban Hong Kong and the New Territories, a hilly area where my university campus sat. On countless afternoons, just outside of a campus gate, I would board a bus and watch the lush mountains in the distance as the bus skirted Tolo Harbour. Soon, the bus would take a left turn, and a row of high towers with light brown façades would come into view. That was Wang Fuk Court.
To numerous Hong Kongers like me, these towers were a signature of Tai Po new town, and a visual reminder that we were on our way to trade the verdant expanse of the New Territory for downtown Hong Kong’s buzzy districts. When I close my eyes, I can still see Tai Po’s curved train tracks cradling Tolo bay’s coastline, the crowded bus terminus, the grids of working-class housing blocks. Amid it all, the eight Wang Fuk towers standing tall.
After the mass pro-democracy demonstrations in 2019, I moved to Taiwan to finish my first novel. In the following years, I haven’t thought about Tai Po much, assuming it would stay steady, housing my memory of Hong Kong. This year, I decided to visit my family back home.
On Nov. 26, the day before my planned trip, a deadly fire broke out in Wang Fuk Court. As soon as I landed, I met up with a few friends at a cha chaan teng cafe to have claypot rice for late lunch. By then, the fire had been largely brought under control. But news sites and social media were still blanketed by images of tremendous flame and smoke spreading over these towers. The reunion was tearful. Horrified, we struggled to find words to comfort each other. At least........