The Hong Kong Way

I had a very full Chung Yeung Festival.  It started when I went with cousins to pay our respects to our grandparents at Aberdeen Chinese Cemetery.  While there, I took the opportunity to visit the former president of Peking University - Tsai Yuan-pei’s tomb.  Then I went to Happy Valley to visit the Muslim Cemetery, and then the Catholic Cemetery where some of my teachers were buried.  

Then I re-visited an important part of Hong Kong’s past - a route that millions of us used to be very familiar with, but now feels very distant.  

It started at Victoria Park.  Which often took hours and hours to get out of.  

We would quickly got stuck outside of a pawn shop, staring ahead at a circular footbridge, waiting and waiting, not knowing when we could move ahead. 

We often had to inch along the road, finding a way through the buses, trams, and other vehicles stuck in the middle of the road because of the traffic. 

We then filled up the huge pedestrian crossing outside one of the most iconic department stores.  I made the mistake once, to meet someone at the street corner outside the department store in the middle of a march.  Big mistake!  But miraculously, we managed to find each other.  That created a special bond between us.  I am sure we will remember that for a long long time. 

We would walk under one of the many footbridges across the main road.  They are always filled with people watching, taking photographs, applauding, cursing, …

Eventually, after many hours, we would arrive at Admiralty, sometimes using a footbridge to cross a main road. 

Other times just pushing across the road itself to arrive outside a small “square”.  

The marches were always peaceful and orderly.  Sometimes other activities take place after the marches along “the way”.  But the marches along “the way” were always peaceful, rational and non-violent.  Many would recognise that as the Hong Kong Way.