“Therefore I Exist” in Hong Kong

I got drunk one night and bought tickets to Hong Kong. It’s a bad habit I have recently, buying flight tickets after having one too many glasses of wine.

You know when you get drunk and you have these so-called deep conversations with friends or families talking about all these brilliant ideas you have in life and just how close you are to achieving them? Well, that’s how some of my nights end and in that moment what my mind does is that it gets into this zone, this method where it thinks traveling will solve everything, and it’s the lack of it, that is a problem in my life. It’s an incredible pain for my bank account the day after, but it’s also exhilarating, funny, random and young.

It was my second time in Hong Kong and I stayed at this hostel called Hop Inn on Carnarvon. It was 1580 HK dollars for 2 nights for a single room which is definitely not as cheap as I had wanted it to be but most hostels and hotels in Hong Kong are quite expensive for its quality. I met someone at the hostel who told me he was staying at a rather cheap hostel in a shared room but its quality was just horrendous that he moved out the first night even though he had already paid.

Considering the risk of staying in a place with a rather not so nice quality and also having to share your room, I thought mind as well as stay at a hostel with an ok assured quality. Hop Inn had a small clean bed room with a relatively clean private bathroom. They also had a rooftop where you could enjoy a free cup of coffee & tea, which is all you get but also all you need.

Hong Kong was truly an interesting city. Even though I come from Tokyo, which is known to be one of the most condensed cities in the world, I was extremely surprised by how closely sat each people’s lives were. Every mansion you could see, was like a bee hive.

The mysterious disappearance of five book Clerks

If you walk the vibrant streets of Causeway Bay, a famous area for shopping in Hong Kong, “Causeway Bay Bookstore” on the second floor, of a crammed up building, will probably remain unnoticed. Despite its rather obscure placement, its significance in Hong Kongese history is profound.

The bookstore used to sell controversial books, books about the relations of China and Hong Kong, books about the sexuality of certain Chinese political figures and so on. In the course of a couple of months in 2015, clerks of this book store, suddenly went missing. Later on, most of the clerks were found in either Mainland China or just reappeared but it is still unclear why and what had happened. However, it is clear that this bookstore is a monument of media rights and human rights as a citizen of Hong Kong, and shows exactly why these riots are currently occurring in Hong Kong in its sensitivity of relations with Main Land China.

During my trip, I decided to explore how the bookstore remained today, and to be honest I was surprised of how apparent the bookstore was kept.

Big sign boards sticking out from the bookstore, numbers that seem like phone numbers remain on windows, doors simply locked as if it was just a day off; it was clear that this bookstore was not hiding itself.

Then walking back into the streets in front of the bookstore, is just your ordinary hong kong, fully condensed rush of people, laughing, walking, eating… this incident never occurred, this bookstore never existed and these clerks never went missing. “Identity” is something that was on my mind during this trip. Why do we exist? How do we exist? What the Chinese government presumably did to these book clerks was detrimental not just because it harmed their safety, but because it took away their identity as people of Hong Kong. The book store remains, but as time passes by, the history of these clerks, the living proof of these clerks will vanish.

They say that people die twice; once when we stop breathing and once when somebody says our name for the last time.

We exist because we exist, but the power of those around us, the people, the society, the country that pastes a name on us to distinguish us as people, create our identity, and therefore we exist.

I think this is one of the reasons why these riots are occurring in Hong Kong. Because these people in Hong Kong, are aware of what might happen under a different government, what injustice they might face, how they can be silenced, how their identity can be put into danger.

It’s that important to stay relevant, to keep your eyes open, until you just become buried in the course of history.

I walked up to a “Lennon wall” (originally refers to a wall created during the umbrella movement, a wall made out of messages written on post-its crying for democracy and equal rights) recreated in the modern context.

There, you could witness the voice of the people.

I truly hope, peace and daily life returns to the people of Hong Kong as soon as possible.

Hong Kong taught me the responsibility of being a global citizen, to not take any of these rights for granted, to be aware.

What makes me exist.