Tokyoahead - Traditional Hong Kong

Hong Kong is not the first place in the world when you think about traditional or conservative notions. It is known to be a stronghold of cut-throat capitalism in the middle of Asia, the city for modern architecture, huge finance businesses, millionaires in fast cars stuck in traffic jams. There are a number of old buildings but they are torn down one after the other. However, in 2007 for the first time, this created an outrage when the Queens Pier's dooming demolition caused massive demonstrations, hunger strikes and other campaigns to prevent it from being torn down. Is the city traditional after all?


Interestingly enough, there are still a lot of old elements left in the everyday life in Hong Kong. And where the new skyscrapers are taking over, new shops and restaurants are striving to recreate the image of old times. And concluding from the amount of older items abound in the city, from Antique shops to old cars and bikes, there must be a will for the people here to keep the old and hang on to those things that remind them of past days.

But it its not only the nostalgy for Mao and communist propaganda that can be found mocking on caricatures, T-shirts and at peddlers who seem to have raided a 70's toy factory. It is not all about antiques, statues and heavy ornaments with which Hong Kong residents as well as mainland chinese people decorate their homes.

Its much more the daily life, in which people here queue up for hours to get into that special temple on that special holiday and light thousands of incense sticks and spirals to make the new year a better one.

Its the streets full of dried deer horns that will never be replaced by the modern blue pills ("Its not medicine, but for health" the merchant told me), the specially dried fish and lizards of which all have their special help for this or that ailment.

Its the way how the ornaments for good luck are specialized in its own industry, the way the food is hung up in the windows of the restaurants and the way the butchers cut their meat on wooden blocks right on the street. The traditions of Hong Kong cannot be seen on the coastline promenades or where the tourists flock to be cheated by camera merchants. The tradition is kept in the way that beliefs and superstition live alongside and passed on from generation to generation where they have been already long forgotten in other metropolitain areas of this world.

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