Hong Kong culture dont miss it

my name is lindsay

i’m half british and half machines which

is a mix of chinese and portuguese

i have two passports and a bit of a

mixed up accent

but one thing i know for sure is that

hong kong

is my home now like me my parents also

grew up in hong kong

so as a young girl they wanted me to

experience

the real hong kong and have a more

authentically hong kong upbringing

so as young children they would take my

brother and i out on boats to see hong

kong’s outlying islands

to see local fishermen and women drying

their catch in the sun they would take

us to dai pai dong

hong kong’s outdoor eateries to try some

of the local delicacies

my favorite was always conchi with

thousand-year-old egg

groceries in our family were always

bought from the local wet markets where

the live

fish chicken and frogs never fazed me

my mom would always encourage me to

speak as much cantonese as possible with

the market workers

and to learn all the names of the

different fish and different cuts of

meat

but as i grew up i noticed more and more

of these markets

these stores and the people that run

them disappearing

dai pai dong were closing down wet

markets were being replaced by

supermarkets

shoe shiners were being cleared off the

street to make way for a new fancy

shopping malls

and even the little old man who sold

white decorative flowers from a paper

tray around his neck

was gone and they were gone forever

it was then that i realized that i

wanted to document these people

their industries and their stories

before it was too late

because for me they represented the real

hong kong

that my parents had referred to

as i started looking beyond hong kong’s

city skyline

and the fancy facade that it’s become so

famous for

i discovered a whole host of these

traditional industries

and these artisans none of them were

selling modern day essentials like

iphones or wireless headphones or

speakers

these were people handcrafting

bamboo bird cages bamboo dim sum

steamers

these people were face threaders knife

sharpeners

fortune tellers and more to me

these were the people that my my family

had recognized from their childhood

these were the people that i recognized

from mine

these people were running these sunset

industries as they’re called

which are industries that are

disappearing or fading away

like the sunset despite all the odds

despite the many changes that hong kong

has gone through they had persisted

so i decided to call them the sunset

survivors and to me

they represented the real hong kong and

made this city so special

and really contributed to its

wonderfully unique

cultural identity i spent the next

three years visiting different

traditional artisans

and craftsmen and women around hong kong

to get to know a bit more about their

industries and their stories

and i’d like to share a few of their

stories with you today

first up i’d like you to meet mr long

low yik

today mr loan sits shirtless and sweaty

in a dark corner of the yao mate jade

market

once in their hundreds he is now one of

just

six remaining letter writers in the city

letter writers were once in huge demand

in fact

in the 50s and 60s of hong kong there

was a literacy rate of just 60 percent

so there was a huge part of the

population that relied on the assistance

of letter writers

to help them correspond with relatives

friends or family

overseas in mainland china or elsewhere

they also relied on meteorites to help

them write employment contracts

or applications for government welfare

and not just hong kong people but even

british sailors

required the help of letter writers to

help them write

love letters for the women that they’d

fallen in love with

in hong kong soil mr learn

tells me that he refused to write any

sordid love letters between british

sailors and local hong kong prostitutes

though

he assures me of that

mr long is originally from vietnam where

he worked as an account secretary for

columbia pictures

he came to hong kong in the 1970s to

escape war

in search of a better life and he worked

here as a bartender

he can speak five different languages he

speaks

vietnamese he quickly picked up

cantonese and mandarin after coming to

hong kong

he taught himself english from reading

the scripts that used to land on his

deaths get his old job

and he also speaks absolutely fluent

french

being from vietnam so you can imagine my

surprise when in the middle of this

very traditional jade market in hong

kong there’s this little old man

hunched over a typewriter speaking to me

in french

he has never used a computer a day in

his life

and continues to use the 50 year old

typewriter

that he’s always owned mainly

because the carbon paper is much cheaper

than any

in cartridge you would need for a

printer today

as the number of illiterate people in

hong kong decrease

due to compulsory education and other

factors

letter writer’s work decreased too

today in his 80s mr lung is well aware

of the decline of his industry

and he rarely writes letters for anyone

anymore most days

he simply reads the newspaper at his

store and passes the time

the government no longer issues licenses

for letter writers in hong kong mr lone

said to me

it is essential for any society to

improve with time

there must be some jobs that are

replaced or even eliminated

and i think we are one of them

now next up i’d like to introduce you to

master chan lok choi

master chan is the very last bamboo bird

cage craftsman

in hong kong he started to make bamboo

bird cages at just 13 years old

today he works in the yun po bird garden

in prince edward

surrounded by thousands of different

types of birds and insects

it takes him roughly two months to build

a bird cage from scratch

he has learnt to delicately bend each

bamboo rod into place

to drill tiny holes in the base of the

bird cage to fit the bamboo rods into

he paints them engraves them

each bird cage he makes is completely

unique and handcrafted

he is a self-proclaimed perfectionist he

tells me

of course today factories in china and

elsewhere can produce these bird cages

at a much faster rate

and they are much cheaper too than mr

chan’s

handcrafted version struggling with the

competition

so much today he finds it very difficult

to find anybody that asks him to build a

bird cage

so mainly he just helps people fix their

bird cages rather than makes new ones

most days he says he just goes to his

stall again

to pass the time and give him something

to do with his life

along with factories challenging master

chan’s work he has also battled with the

changing of cultural traditions

whilst it used to be very common to see

typically elderly chinese men in hong

kong’s parks early in the morning

taking their birds for a walk in their

cages hanging them in the trees whilst

they sit

underneath reading a newspaper or

playing marshall

this tradition was largely damped

dampened by about a bird flu in hong

kong

and today a lot less people wish to keep

live birds in their home

master chen is incredibly proud to be

hong kong’s last bird cage maker

and whilst he was not sad that his own

shop or he would pass away

he was most concerned that the art and

the skill

the ancient practice of bird birdcage

making

would be lost from hong kong forever

i would love to have an apprentice he

told me

but no one with a school education seems

interested

in learning these handicraft skills

anymore

now the next person i would like to

introduce you to

is master ao yong ping chi and his job

might not be immediately obvious to all

of you

he is in fact a paper effigy maker

now there’s a common belief in chinese

religion that when someone closes

close to you passes away you can burn

these paper recreations of real-life

material objects

that they will be received in the

afterlife as offerings and gifts to your

deceased relative

master alyong is the fourth generation

owner of his family business

and is incredibly proud what he and his

family does for a living

his job involves delicately banding

bamboo rods

covering them in joss paper painting

them

to make them look incredibly life-like

and incredibly alike to the real life

objects which they are imitating

each effigy can take weeks to make and

can cost

thousands of hong kong dollars to buy

in the past a simple pair of shoes

perhaps a mansion

or a servant for the afterlife would

suffice

but today the majority of items that he

gets requested to make

are you may have guessed it

iphones ipads gucci handbags and prada

boots

these are the order of the day

and not just iphones and electronics too

but even the charges

mr ao young told me that he spent a lot

of his time

hand making these beautifully

sort of paper mache iphone chargers

with so many requests for iphones and

ipads

china’s factories opened up to this

market too and started producing

not the beautifully crafted paper

creations that mr alyong makes

but cardboard nets that you can fold

into these objects

much quicker and much cheaper of course

so today master ambassador young focuses

mainly

on the more unique and more intricate

requests that he gets asked me

in fact he has made a life-size massage

chair

he has made an electric guitar

he has made even a nintendo game console

which you can see here

you can see how incredibly realistic and

lifelike these objects are

in this picture the game console on the

left

is real the game console on the right

is the paper recreation that master ao

young has done

so you can see just how incredibly

realistic these objects look

after our chat about how materialistic

the world had become

i asked master alion what he might want

when he passes away

when i die he says i would like some

cars

houses and a hi-fi system a super deluxe

seven foot long mercedes-benz and

porsche

will do whilst it made me chuckle

i also learned that the main aim was to

keep the deceased relative

up to date with modern society so that

they didn’t lose touch

so perhaps it made sense after all

so often we wait too long to appreciate

things

it’s often tragically only after the

death of a grandparent

that we come up with a thousand

questions that we’d wish we asked them

we can’t force people to continue these

age-old traditional industries

their demise like all things is

inevitable

pushed out by rising rents replaced by

modern technology and a change of

cultural beliefs

and the main thing a total lack of

willing successes

these industries will vanish from hong

kong

because be honest how many of you

want to become bird cage makers and work

very long days for minimal pay for the

rest of your lives

with your 14 years with your seven to 14

years worth of education

i would imagine very few of you

even the people that i interviewed the

face threaders the shoe shiners the

many of them in their 80s and 90s none

of them wanted their children to follow

suit

they were incredibly proud that their

children had gone to school had gone to

university

and would not have to live the difficult

lives that they had led

we’re not losing hong kong culture hong

kong culture is all around us

but ever evolving hong kong culture is

everything from

going for dim sum with your family to

crazy cab drivers

to modern buildings alongside ancient

temples and ferries

it’s knowing to hand your business card

over with two hands and not one

it’s a place where burping out loud is

completely acceptable in public

we’re not losing hong kong culture it’s

evolving

but certain parts are disappearing so my

message

is this let’s get out let’s recognize

respect and

celebrate these old industries for their

contribution to hong kong’s unique

cultural identity i urge you

to reconnect to old traditions to

explore

your own city and embrace your own

culture and identity

because to me this is the real hong kong

not in a museum not in a textbook

but right here right now so don’t miss

it

thank you