YAU MA TEI - Essay by Claudia Astarita

What is Yau Ma Tei, and what is Hong Kong? Do they reflect the past and the future of the same place or does the former represent the authentic soul of the latter?

Each of us may answer these questions differently.

Hong Kong usually represents the hub of Asian financial system, the hearth of Chinese economy, and a multiethnic and glamorous place able to leave us breathless thanks to its sumptuous skyline, its extreme efficiency and the apparently never ending energy of its people.

Is “this” Hong Kong the real one, or is the previous description suitable only for Central and Admiralty, the two core districts of the local business community? In order to try to answer these questions, let’s go for a walk: we take the Star Ferry, cross Victoria Harbor and see what kind of Hong Kong is waiting for us there…

How is the skyline in front of us? Not as imposing as the one on the other side of the harbor. However, the large number of bamboo scaffoldings immediately remind us that the Tsim Sha Tsui district is also booming, and sooner or later it will complete the “catching up” with the island.

If we pay attention to the details rather than to the high buildings that are rapidly growing all around us, what can we hear, what can we smell, and what can we see? Look at the people: no more black ties, fewer and fewer high heels. And further, some new and disorienting odors are mixing in the atmosphere. Incense? Rubber? Food? Too difficult to guess. Look at the name of the streets: Sai Yee Street, Yim Po Fong, Sai Yeung Choi, or Tung Choi. What do these words mean to you? Probably just strange sounds difficult to pronounce, and this is actually the more spontaneous reaction of every non-Cantonese speaker. Despite that, let’s try to go beyond appearances, and reflect on their meanings: laundry, dyeing plants, watercress and water spinach!

The crowded districts you are walking through were once the heart of a completely different society, based on agriculture, fishing, wholesale trade and small manufacturing. The wave of development experienced all along the twentieth century has radically transformed Hong Kong. Its past seems gone, and who wants to flavor it has to close the eyes, and let his or her imagination free to catch the sketches of a past still hidden in some coins of the city.

But not every angle of Hong Kong has already been swept from the waves of industrialization, modernization, and progress. Indeed, you need to walk just a few meters inside the southern part of Kowloon peninsula to realize it. This is Yau Ma Tei. You will suddenly start seeing people packed in few square meters at work, tiny apartments on top of each other, strong smells, no space, and no air. But people do live, do trade, do give their best, and at the same time they can relax and take care of themselves. Don’t be surprised if you will be captured by the eyes of a smiling person passionately taking care of his or her business. Don’t judge local habits by your own paradigms. Don’t see carelessness and mistrust in a messy shop: it’s just the raw and unrefined normality of a city that is showing you its soul and its personality.

What is Hong Kong? Probably a place where the past, the present and the future are mixed together, a metropolis whose soul is impregnate of joie de vivre, strength and perseverance, qualities that the people living in Yau Ma Tei can express better than any other skyscraper or glittering infrastructure: these are “simply” buildings, but the hearth and the engine of Hong Kong remain in the hidden corners of the metropolis.

If you had time to read this introduction, it means that you are at the Fringe Club, or somewhere else with a photographic book in your hands. Never mind: you still have the opportunity to test whether everything has been described here is true or not. How? Easy to answer this time: looking through the pages of this book, you will be suddenly catapulted in Andrea Oschetti’s Yau Ma Tei, and thanks to his moving snapshots you won’t feel any light, any fragrance, and any colour than the ones that these images will convey to your mind.

After completing such an amazing photographic journey, I closed my eyes to keep on thinking on a past that actually is still present. Now it’s your turn to relax and listen to the authentic beating of Hong Kong’s hearth.