Chungking Mansion: That Corner of Hong Kong at the Centre of the World

Chungking Mansion was my first ‘buen refugio’ in Hong Kong, when I arrived many years ago directly from the old Kai Tak Airport, well known for the thrilling landings, which foreshadowed that the plane would alight on the roofs of the houses, if not crash to the ground.

Actually, I happened to choose Chungking Mansion by chance, without being aware of the mystery surrounding this building, and with the only desire to find a cheap hotel, before I could afford to live in a small apartment or at least in a room in a shared apartment.

To those who have never set foot in this building, Chungking Mansion looks like a normal grey building, from the outside. Instead, it is a world apart and unique in its own kind. It houses 4,000 residents from 129 countries, hundreds of shops selling all the specialties of Southeast Asia, Middle East and Africa and more than 500 'guesthouses' – distributed over 17 floors and three blocks and with names that recall the United States, Canada, Australia, the accommodation of choice for tourists on a limited budget and backpackers in search of the cheapest bed in Hong Kong.

From the time I lived here, I remember my small but decent room at the guesthouse, the elevators constantly overcrowded and often out of service, and a small fire caused by an overloaded power grid - not designed in the 1950s, when the building came up, to handle air conditioning or televisions, not to mention the commercial kitchens. I now find those nostalgic thoughts again when I visit the Indian restaurant that I was so fond of, and that fortunately is still operating - a very rare occurrence in Hong Kong, where many small businesses in the catering industry have normally rather short lives.

I have always regretted not having been able to deepen my knowledge of the place, if not through readings, such as that of 'Ghetto at the Center of the World', by the anthropologist Gordon Mathews, who describes the building at the crossroads of a sort of alternative globalization, where trade takes place across continents without taking into account the implementation of law and copyright, because everything is managed through cash transactions. According to Mathews, Chungking Mansion is an active centre connected as much to the markets of Lagos and Karachi as to Nathan Road, the street from which people access making their way through moneychangers, tailors, electronics stores, stalls selling triangles of samosa and sweets of unlikely colours, sellers of copy-watches and other services in a setting where legal and illegal coexist.

Here people come and go, try their luck and search for temporary jobs in the many restaurants or inns. There are those who seek political asylum (‘Christian Action Refugees’, the largest and most active NGO that takes care of the refugees’ rights and assistance, has its office here) and sex workers, who already in the past welcomed Americans in transit in Hong Kong during the Vietnam War.

So, when I recently read that the founder of ‘Africa C entre’ (a newly-formed entity that aims at connecting the African and Chinese communities of the city), Innocent Mutanga, organised a tour of Chunking Mansion with a typical African lunch, I immediately joined the group. Innocent, an anthropology student at Chinese University in Hong Kong, assisted by his Somali friend Abdi – employed in a trading company – explained the story of Chungking Mansion and then sent us to discover foods, products, phrases in languages unknown to us.

During this tour, I moved cautiously, mostly not to get lost in the labyrinth of corridors, neon, spices, henna, and shops of all kinds but at first glance all similar. I even stumbled upon a space that housed a curious art installation made of colourful recycled plastic. With Abdi and Peter, originally from Nigeria, we also climbed onto the roof of the building from the seventeenth floor, enjoying a shard of Hong Kong bay between one skyscraper and another. We then explored the world of guesthouses, visiting a couple of these narrow but very clean spaces, where a bed in a tiny room without a window can cost over Euros 150 during the Chinese New Year period or when the city holds some important trade fairs.

The lunch served to us by Tess, a beautiful and nice lady from Ghana, revealed the culinary rivalries between Ghana and Nigeria. I tasted dishes that I had never tried before (Jollof Rice, Waakye, FuFu, etc), based on chicken, fish, beans, rice, semolina, and cassava. All seasoned with the stories of new nice friends that I will surely have the opportunity to see again since they have just launched the initiative of a monthly book club dedicated to African authors.

After lunch, before finding myself in Nathan Road, I passed through the long queues of tourists waiting for the elevators, the smell of curry, the turbans of the Sikhs and the trail of scent of an elegant old Chinese gentleman dressed all in white, with a beard and long hair of the same colour and who looked liked he had just walked out of a movie set. In those few minutes, I grasped the essence of Chungking Mansion.

And I was not surprised to learn that the new generations of Hongkongers find here something that does not belong or is not dedicated only to Chinese or white foreigners, but a place where to explore and get familiar with products, foods, customs and traditions, feeling immersed in South Asian, Middle Eastern and African culture. And Chungking Mansion becomes that corner of Hong Kong at the center of the world, a corner that cannot be found anywhere else in the city.

Link to the article in Italian, published in ‘Ciao Magazine’ here

Gordon Mathews' very interesting book 'Ghetto at the Center of the World' is available online at amazon.com and bookdepository.com