Early, and along the harbor

Looking at Kowloon across the harbor in Hong Kong under low clouds

Early, and along the harbor

One Saturday morning, up early and without stress, I go running along the harbor while the family paints. It is twenty five ºC and humid, the kind of cloudy breezy morning that makes running feel ok. I walk out of Tai Hang down the Fire Dragon path with a bounce, headphones in and happy. This is the kind of life I dreamed of on moving here, though not perhaps the specifics of distance running. The new pedestrian pathway that winds under the highway along the north east coast of Hong Kong Island is the type of structure people deserve. It allows for running, cycling, and small play, with space to walk, spaces to sit, to fish, and to simply be outdoors along, over, and around the water. It’s beautiful, especially when the clouds keep out the sun. Especially when it’s not 34ºC.

In this slowly changing weather, in the briefest of flickers of Hong Kong’s fall, where pants feel possible if not recommended, and where we are glad to sit out of doors with dumplings in the evening, we are once again busy becoming the people we want to be. The changes in this era go further than prior attempts, fitting for us as we age. Gradually we expand our patience, our capacity for kindness. The changes are driven by the four-year-old, and by each other. It’s not always easy, and our tempers are never as far away as we’d like. We argue, we get stuck in negotiations with someone whose sense of logic is woefully elementary, and we brood. At least I do. And yet there are moments when we’re able to reach out, to share, and to care for each other in new ways. These are the important lessons, I think. Most of them are the important lessons of recovery, the gradual reclamation of our time and energy. It is a a turn in focus from customers and build plans to fitness and family skill building.

“Now that I’m four, I’m learning everything,” says our young accomplice. She is. One week brings both whistling and the climbing of doorframes into reach. These new abilities are the result of repeated failure, the kind of repetition that is the basis of all skills. She walks around for days lips puckered until at last a sound emerges, and the joy in her eyes is mirrored in my own. In the ocean one afternoon she finally figures out how to hold her arms extended and use her kickboard to surf the waves. After a half dozen runs from where I’m standing neck deep in the water to the sand of the beach she tells me, breathlessly, that she’s fallen in love with the ocean.

These are the moments we’re here for, that we are trying so hard to be present in. These are the parts of life we are trying to devote our energy to, with moderate success.

We are also working on ourselves, on what we bring to each other as well as to the family. We are working on how we argue, how we plan, how we share, how we doctor. None of these are headlines, but they are all important, all non-stop attempts to be more like the people we intend to be, rather than who we have been.

And we run. Along the harbor, around the track in the park, around the track by the library, we work on our bodies in the most accessible of manners. We run in Tokyo, the family biking along side for several km until it’s time to swap. We explore the small neighborhoods and shorelines we’ve invested in, here in Hong Kong, there in Tokyo. These are the middle years of life, and we are trying to pay attention, to be grateful.

On a Wednesday we refresh our phones constantly, hopeful for our country. Our own votes, cast the week before, are small offerings, as are our donations, likewise meager. We do not campaign, not this time. We do not call, though we receive dozens of calls and texts and emails in the run up. That’s all ok, it’s all worthwhile to build a nation that too is more compassionate, that too is seeking to improve. And the feeling when things break, the true exclamations of joy, the texts and hugs are wonderful. We have waited so long for this feeling, had almost forgotten what it could be like. Two thousand eight and two thousand twelve were an awful long time ago, I realize. We are no longer as young as we were. We are still hopeful, I am glad to find. Much later, sitting outside together in the cooler weather, appreciating our neighborhood and the day’s events, we smile and share a drink, so glad to be American, almost as glad as we have been these past eight years to be far removed.

And so on Saturday, after a run in the morning, I sit in the empty house and write. I think about the week slowly ending. I think about Friday, the early morning ferry drop off, the calls with folk in America, old colleagues and current ones, family yoga, a nap, early drinks at the world’s best bar, dumplings in an alley with an old friend, and an evening at home together. I think about this week, of the new possibilities for our home country. I think about the gifts of a clean apartment, of air conditioning, of pedestrian infrastructure, and I am grateful.

The journey is the joy, even through the hard times. That’s a hard thing for me to remember, most weeks. It’s a harder thing to feel, in the rough hours, the rough years. So, like everything, it’s a good thing to write down when it feels true, to ground the feeling with words for future versions of myself who might need the help remembering.

Fire to the face

Fire to the face

Injuries, I find, come in all packages. I once fell off a bridge in a park in Saitama while doing a handstand on the railing and hit my face on the stone of the bridge on my way into the water. I scraped my face thoroughly, cracked an orbital, and eventually broke two teeth. I once fell off the same trick move, jumping between slide and swing set on my elementary school’s playground, frequently enough that the fourth fall broke my nose. I once broke my pinkie while playing soccer, catching it on someone’s shirt while they tried to take the ball from me. I once laid out onto my shoulder while playing frisbee hard enough to tear two ligaments, and then climbed on it enough to tear another before surgery.

And of course there are other injuries that have their own posts, falling off a balcony in 2014 and crashing an e-bike in 2025.

The amazing thing, listing them, is how few were the injuries of a child. There are those, of course, but mostly without the attached pain of memory. The small scar on my chin from a hot cookie sheet. The scar on my ankle from colliding with the metal stake that marked the well while chasing a fly ball. I remember these injuries, but not the agony.

I’m reviewing them because 5’s came home from school with a burn on her chin. Her explanation, delivered slowly but clearly, went as follows:

She took a burning incense stick out of one of the pots used for repelling mosquitos at school and accidentally touched it to her chin. Why? Because she was trying to attach it to the tire swing and make a spinning device to keep the mosquitoes away.

Fire, we tell her, isn’t a toy, but we are also laughing inside, and trying to breathe deep. It’s a big burn, almost an inch by half an inch.

She’s obviously worried what we’ll say. No longer in pain, she’s mostly concerned about how much trouble she’ll be in (none) and how upset we will be (almost not at all). We ask her our family’s standard question, how much it hurt, which we measure by the gap between hands. Without hesitation she holds her hands as far apart as she can.

“Did you cry,” we ask?

“No,” she says.

“Why not,” we ask, surprised.

“Because I didn’t want the teachers to hear me,” she says. Suddenly the situation is clear. She’s almost proud of her bravery. So are we. The toughness to hide what she knew would get her in trouble may be dangerous, but it’s also impressive. All of this is a lot, wrapped up in a burn that’s still visible more than a month later as a red mark on her chin. As time goes on she learns to tell this story for laughs, to other adults we know, instead of being embarrassed about the burn. It’s a kind of pride I’m grateful for, and want to document.

A few weeks later in the taxi we are discussing flu shots and hospital stays and she says “I’ve never been to the hospital for an injury,” with the same pride. I think of all the hospital stays and breathe out. “You never have,” I say. It’s good to be proud of what we’ve made it through.

As for us, for the rest of the day we keep looking at each other, taking a breath together. We are grateful. We are also wondering what we will have to survive later.

Evolving space

Looking towards Hong Kong Island at night from West Kowloon’s open space, with people hanging out on the grass in the foreground

Evolving space

In West Kowloon we lie on the grass and watch people make smoothies by bicycle. It’s an inefficient method, the loading of both human and fruit a bit slow. As food services at a grassy area go it’s good company. No diesel emissions, no power consumption, and low noise, plus the amusing faces and failures, the friends video’ing and the staff trying to explain pedaling to those with a limited set of experiences. With this distraction and the view on the other side, that of Hong Kong Island across the water, I am entertained. In between the two, the children run and banter. Barefoot they chase each other, the soccer ball, bubbles, and each other again. After the smoothies two of our party walk along the water to a place that sells pizza and procure dinner for our group. A bit later, in the semi-dark of a million lights, I have a beer and stand barefoot on the sea wall, looking out at the city and the boats between us. Behind me people jog, couples chat and wander, families eat and debate how long to let their children roam, and folk with dogs follow their pets. Earlier in the day a man walked his cat, as comfortable as any I’ve ever seen, through the park in a long loop, accompanying a friend with a small dog. I wonder how long they’ve been doing that to have the two animals happy to explore together. It’s been a long time since Mr. Squish was comfortable with a dog, and thinking of those days makes me remember how far he’s come.

It’s the long weekend built out of China’s national day, and we mostly take it easy, one activity a day. On Thursday we climb Red Incense Summit for the fireworks, joining a hundred and fifty others to perch on the rocky outcroppings above the city for twenty three sweaty minutes of fireworks. I hold onto an edge with one hand, balanced on a boulder with one leg, leaning on another. Next to me, on the inside of the rock, a man with a huge camera tries to make space for us but there is none. We are in contact for the entirety of the show despite our efforts. My view is blocked by the youth, who stands on my bent leg while I hold her up with one arm to see. It’s precarious, all of us agreeing not to move in the dark on these rocks on this hilltop so we can share the view. For the twenty three minutes Fives narrates in the staccato style of the fireworks:

“Wow”
“I like that one-
“I love that one!”
“That’s the best!”
“Explosions!”
and at last
“What the!”

It’s a phrase she’s learned from a classmate, whose other famous saying is “Of course I can.” They’ve both been adopted. I’m grateful for the language exchange of kindergarten, for the words of Cantonese and odd slang for bugs.

Compared with the live-streamers, with their tripods set up ages before the sunset, with their multiple phones and constant Mandarin narration, her exclamations are a welcome overlay, though at times I’m conscious of her volume given the huge number of people. After the display we linger on the rocks for an hour, eating snacks and letting the youth climb things. She’s careful in the dark, not wanting to go up high or stand on slanty things. Eventually we leave the rock to a group of South Asian men with a bluetooth speaker. I wonder if they’re students or delivery drivers, or both. Either way I assume they need the space.

On Sunday we watch Fives learn rugby with a gaggle of other children, all local, on the pitch next to the library. She’s easy to spot among the crowd, of course, but more importantly she’s now at home, part of the group and aware of the rules of each drill, making faces with her friends while waiting their turn. She runs hard with the ball and without, though not always in the right direction. Youth sports are both an adventure in enthusiasm and an exercise in patience. I say hello to a couple of other parents, to a couple of other children, before we all go home to shower. It’s still hot here in the beginning of October. Cooler weather is coming and the temperatures no longer feel impossible, but we’re still glad of the aircon, still hunting shade.

In the afternoon, during quiet time, I finish a book I’ve been working through for some time, Karen Cheung’s memoir of Hong Kong. The Impossible City is the kind of book I read in small segments, requiring processing time. Her stories of protests, of music venues in Kwun Tong, and of growing up here uncertain of what Hong Kong is or could be, drift through my mind as I run along the harbor near Fortress Hill, to Quarry Bay and back. Against the backdrop of this long weekend the book feels like a good complement to all the kinds of Hong Kong we see, to all the people we know.

Later we meet at our favorite restaurant, a homey Japanese place in Quarry Bay. The staff is happy to see 5’s when she waves in the door before entering. We’ve been coming here since before she was born, hunting a feeling we’re both learning to rely on. It’s long been our Sunday spot, our place for a brief break before the week. 5’s orders 海老フライ (fried shrimp) and お好み焼き (okonomiyaki, a savory pancake) in Japanese, semi-politely, and we take our time with dinner, surrounded by families both local and Japanese doing likewise.

“I don’t want to be fancy,” my partner says, sitting on the bed one day in the apartment we’ve returned to. “I know what I like.” We do, I think, and it’s complicated, a mishmash of people and emotions, a mishmash of landscapes. From a junk a few weeks back filled with Ukranian women and their kids to the parents-run rugby club, from the promenade of West Kowloon with food trucks and bay lights to the Hakodate Japanese restaurant, from the Fire Dragon celebration that fills our neighborhood to the public bathrooms up the hill behind it, Hong Kong is filled with people and things we love. Like all cities everywhere, it’s filled with everything, somewhere. Riding the ferry home from Kowloon on Saturday we leaned on the rail, looking at the city, apartment towers all the way to the mountains, to the horizon. “So many boxes,” we say to each other. It’s a phrase we’ve used since moving here, since before moving here. Surely, with so many apartments in sight, we’d say, there must be one we could rent, somewhere here in this city we could build a life.

I think of the Lorde lyric I quote often when people ask me about how long we’ll be here, about Hong Kong and what it feels like now. I think about what we’re looking for, and how we feel when we find it. And I think about all of the people we’d never imagined meeting, who we now spend so much of our life with, in small bits and large ones, on pitches and at school, in water and on concrete.

“What the fuck are perfect places, anyway?”

At last adrift together

Looking towards Hong Kong in the sunset from the eastern mouth of the harbor, on the water

At last adrift together

On a Saturday towards the end of September I once again step off the top of the boat as the anchor drops. As my body hits the water two stories below my first thought is “at last”. We’re back on a boat, adrift in Clearwater Bay up around the north west edge of Hong Kong. It’s been longer than I’d expected, some six years now since the last time. In so many ways those six years are what I talk about when I say “I am no longer making five year plans.” Our lives are brief and the future hard to see.

Especially with my eyes closed in the ocean under water.

From the surface, with nothing in sight save boats, waves, hills, and the couple of public beaches, there’s not much to think about. Except where the four-year-old is. And I see her, grinning like mad as she climbs down the stairs to the boat’s back deck and steps off into the water, holding her life jacket tight like a pro. This is the other side of the speed of our lives: suddenly, here we are, adrift in the ocean together. I’ve been excited for this day for years, and here we are. And while I am still looking forward to more swim lessons, to less need to watch for drowning, I’m also so grateful we have made it this far, laughing and splashing each other. I watch her balance on the floating mat, doing her best to surf the waves and the impacts of the other children before tumbling into the ocean. This, I think, is how we are meant to be. Soaking wet, mouths full of salt, having to think to breathe.

Life in Hong Kong is good, I hear from people over and over during the day. Life in Hong Kong is relaxing. It’s not the first thing people say, when asked about time here. It’s not the first thing people think in a city of 7.5 million that’s among the world’s densest. It’s true though. When we’re walking home down the fire dragon path from rugby on a Sunday, or when we’re having breakfast together in the coffee shop downstairs, we are at peace. When we’re on a beach on Lantau or on a boat, when we’re on the ferry to Lamma for school or at the beach on Repulse for the Mid-Autumn lantern celebration, there are a lot of moments of peace, of being able to look around and say yes, this is good.

Especially when trying to throw a frisbee from the water to someone jumping from the second deck.

Six years is too long. I won’t make any plans, but I’ll try to say yes to more time in the water, wherever it may be.

The neighborhood wakes

The neighborhood wakes

In the early afternoon of a Thursday I use the public toilet up behind Tai Hang, near the temple. As always I am grateful for the infrastructure, for the cleaning staff, for the rubbish removers, and the maintenance workers. Living in Tai Hang for much of our eight years here, and working mostly from home, I’m familiar with their faces, if not their names, and much of the neighborhood’s rhythm, the bustle of early morning school busses and taxis, the ebb and flow of the coffee shop crowd, the dai pai dong crowd, the grocery shopping folk. I’m comfortable with the other folk that work from coffee shops in the afternoons sometimes, hunting variety and caffeine.

So it is that this week I feel the neighborhood come alive. Workers hang lanterns and flags for the upcoming Fire Dragon dance. They erect a large sign proclaiming it with lights that shine in our window all night, an odd outlier in a world where most of the large neon and commercial signage turns off at ten pm or latest eleven. Around these signs, at most but not all hours, clusters of visitors stand, chatting or taking photos. They bring a new energy to most shops, people who have to read the menu, who aren’t sure of the hours. In the mornings new groups of runners gather alongside those for whom Tai Hang is their normal loop, both having coffee covered in sweat. In the evening the pizza shop has a line, as does the Vietnamese place, and several of the smaller local establishments. The mix of groups is welcomed, everyone in Tai Hang happy for the businesses to make money, for their friends to be busy, for their shops to be full. This is a small community, and we all need each other, and are aware that a rising tide can do little harm, not in a single week, or two.

Mostly, we appreciate the change in weather. July and August in Hong Kong have been alternately rainy and intensely humid, the type of weather that does not reward exploration. And so when, in the middle of September, the temperature tops out at 30ºC and the humidity drops to 70%, we rejoice. Part of this awakening is the season, is the upcoming fire dragon dance, is the national holiday for October first. Part of it is more human: we are suddenly happy to be out of doors.

Typing this with my feet up on a bench, in the shade of a coffee shop’s awning, I am glad to be at home after the summer’s whirlwind, glad to be back in this neighborhood again, eyes open in the changing weather.

⌂