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Sunday, August 20, 2006
The Future
The future is happening. I’m looking out from the top of No.1 Peking Rd, looking north, towards China. Sulphurous light renders the roofs and towers of the New Territories ominous and silent. They stretch in front of me for miles. The future is definitely happening.
The moment of reflection is lost. I head back upstairs to the bar, where a fifty-something expatriate makes a fool of himself, passionately embracing a young Cantonese woman he’s sharing a seat with. The past happens at the same time as the future.
Later the rain starts again, splattering the tilted windows. Rain, rain. In the taxi on the way home I can’t get the skyline image of the New Territories out of my mind. I know what the New Territories are like. Old houses, old people, poor people, decrepit buildings, public housing. The small factories that turned out anything you can imagine have all gone across the border. Soon the people that worked in those factories will follow them across the border as well. But the image seems more real than my knowledge.
The future is still happening. I’m standing in the middle of the Convention and Exhibition Centre. Thousands of people, children, teenagers, parents are excitedly chasing down the objects of their obsessions. Online games that require special printed cards to be bought so as to open up new areas of the game. Foot-high metal statuettes of Japanese robot-suited action heroes. Young women dressed as lecherous maids. Comics. And, incongruously, a series of DVD’s detailing how to perform such prosaic skills as card tricks and making a coin appear out of someone’s ear.
Life is lived online – games are more real than daily life. These obsessions will last all their lives. I can sense how something is changing. I wonder what a happy grandfather makes of it all as he leads his grandson through the crowd. He talks in Mandarin – he must be from the mainland. From the Cultural Revolution to this. The future is happening.
tags: china | hongkong
The moment of reflection is lost. I head back upstairs to the bar, where a fifty-something expatriate makes a fool of himself, passionately embracing a young Cantonese woman he’s sharing a seat with. The past happens at the same time as the future.
Later the rain starts again, splattering the tilted windows. Rain, rain. In the taxi on the way home I can’t get the skyline image of the New Territories out of my mind. I know what the New Territories are like. Old houses, old people, poor people, decrepit buildings, public housing. The small factories that turned out anything you can imagine have all gone across the border. Soon the people that worked in those factories will follow them across the border as well. But the image seems more real than my knowledge.
The future is still happening. I’m standing in the middle of the Convention and Exhibition Centre. Thousands of people, children, teenagers, parents are excitedly chasing down the objects of their obsessions. Online games that require special printed cards to be bought so as to open up new areas of the game. Foot-high metal statuettes of Japanese robot-suited action heroes. Young women dressed as lecherous maids. Comics. And, incongruously, a series of DVD’s detailing how to perform such prosaic skills as card tricks and making a coin appear out of someone’s ear.
Life is lived online – games are more real than daily life. These obsessions will last all their lives. I can sense how something is changing. I wonder what a happy grandfather makes of it all as he leads his grandson through the crowd. He talks in Mandarin – he must be from the mainland. From the Cultural Revolution to this. The future is happening.
tags: china | hongkong
Labels: china, future, hongkong
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