I’m a-walking down Nathan Road with a strut in my legs like I’m dancing, crowds thick as steam off the paving, cars pressed cheek to cheek and blowing fury, shop sign neons stretching into the middle of the road, competing, elbowing those on the other side, and hissing sparks, red and orange. In a hurry, I sharp turn onto a street stall alleyway, and I’m on my toes, alive with the noise rattling in my ears, the clatter of kettle drums and disco beats, the high-pitched Canton screams, noodle sucks and slurps, the slice of a gaggling chicken throat.
This is Hong Kong’s flavour, and like Picasso and the soft yolk of an egg split on the bowl, it’s spun and shredded, reassembled, turned upside down and inside out…
Flew in a day early on Cathay Pacific from Bangkok, lights failing, toilet music wheezing, the wings rattling their screws. And while we were gliding across a green so fluorescent, in over Vietnam and across the Macau peninsula, there came an amazing calm shining up at me, out of the blue of the South China Seas; and it was a religious thing, because I already knew, the green turning to blue, the blue turning to neon, that I was in love with Hong Kong; before the plane had struggled down onto the melting tarmac of Kai Tak; before Baby would even have the chance to arrive.