This post piggybacks off of my Wednesday post about visiting the Hong Kong Maritime Museum. When we were walking back from the Central Ferry Piers to the IFC Mall, we stopped to take a look at the All Things Hong Kong Wall.
This wall has been up for awhile.
Definitely over a year.
Everytime I see it, I just think of it as quite a novelty, but today, we decided to stop and take a closer look.
It's a really awesome wall to check out things that are thought to be quintessentially Hong Kong. Like above, egg waffles are one of Hong Kong's signature street foods. I had my first egg waffle down in Mong Kok and have since found a few places to get them out here in Yuen Long.
When we were walking around checking out the products on the wall, it was fun to see how the brown folding "chairs" (stools) were also quintessentially Hong Kong. We had bought two when we first moved into our place…thoughts of other people owning these very stools made me feel like I belonged just a bit more to this City than usual.
We slowly listed all the things we'd tried, the wind-dried sausages, the egg tarts, eating dim sum out of bamboo steamers, buying fruit from stands with red market lampshades hanging over them, seeing old men with their bird cages along the Yuen Long waterway…having lived next to one of the pawn shops that still uses the original sign…
If I had been a tourist, I wondered if these things would amaze me even more than that moment of walking around that wall.
QUESTION: Are these things really what define Hong Kong?
ANSWER: Definitely not, but it is, like I said, a novelty that is fun to identify Hong Kong with.
I'd started wondering if these products transcended a few generations. I wondered if my in-laws thought these things were anything special then. Did they think of these things as anything special now?
My husband definitely told me a few stories about playing with the windup tin toys in his childhood. We have seen these toys being sold from $30 HKD at the Red Brick House recently and also at the PMQ. There has, as long as I've lived here, been a revival or nostalgia over things that were Made In Hong Kong.
My favorite bit of nostalgia is over the"red-white-blue" bags, which were used for functional back in the day. Now, in shops like Gods of Desire, I've seen the "red-white-blue" bags being refashioned into trendy wallets, handbags, and backpacks.
This wall was definitely a conversation starter.
I'd like to hear what other people think about this wall. What are their first impressions? What are some lasting impressions?
I think, over the summer, since junk boat season is coming, I'll have more opportunities to ask my friends what they think…as our boats usually launch from the Central Ferry Pier.
Until that time, I'm glad that we stopped to see what the wall had to offer. The wall doesn't seem as lonely or abandoned to me as it did before…lonely sitting there at the end of the Central Ferry Piers.
