Photography by J.M. Hoffman

Hong Kong's soul lies far from the casual eye, modestly shrouded and demurely confident, or maybe just unwilling to fight for the limelight. Hidden. So well concealed, in fact, that most visitors miss it. I almost did.

Hong Kong

Hong Kong should have been exotic, with a history dating to the Qin dynasty of Imperial China and a modern mix of Chinese and British cultures. But nothing I saw when I arrived was new or unusual. I had traveled half-way around the world from New York only to purchase Perrier in 7-Eleven convenience stores, to order coffee at Starbucks, and to dine at almost-authentic Indian, Lebanese, and Thai restaurants.

At least Hong Kong was easy to manage. The taxis, Japanese Toyotas, were copious and their drivers trustworthy, just as public transportation was clean and efficient. The streets were safe. There was no significant language barrier. ATMs were plentiful and credit cards almost universally accepted. And the world's top brands and cultures were laid out before me. I was, it occurred to me after a few days, basically in a city-sized Eastern-themed shopping mall. And that's great for getting things done without too much fuss, but hardly worth 17 hours in a plane.

Or maybe, I thought, the Hong Kong that I saw was like Disney's Epcot center, melding the world's cultures into watered down caricatures.

It's not that I didn't like it. Hong Kong soars skyward on a steep mountain slope, yet it's still a fantastic walking town, with even an outdoor escalator running through the middle. Its paths are clearly marked. It's beautiful and surprisingly verdant, with way more nature than you'd expect in a city. It's graced by glistening waterways, and it's teeming with restaurants and galleries and markets and stores. Shiny during the day and lit-up at night, making full and beautiful use of all three dimensions, Hong Kong is without a doubt a fine city.

But where was her soul? Where was the Hong-Kong-ness? Mumbai is different than New York, just as Amsterdam is different than Sydney. What was Hong Kong?

It turned out I was staying in an area called Mid Levels, half way up the mountain that comprises Hong Kong Island. From there I'd walk upward to Victoria Peak — a relaxing, spacious park with panoramic views (and a multi-story shopping mall) — and down to the central business district and the harbor area. These regions, among Hong Kong's ritziest, host the highest concentrations of expats and other foreigners. But the island is only one part of Hong Kong.

So I headed across the water to the majestically named "Land of Nine Dragons" — Kowloon, in English — which even boasted a walled city. Maybe there I'd find Hong Kong's soul.

After all, the region's history is rich. Zen Buddhism sprouted less than 100 miles from Hong Kong Island, in Guangzhou, on the Chinese mainland, when in the 5th century a man named Bodhidharma arrived from India. Though the historical records are shrouded in myth (one major source pegs Bodhidharma's lifespan at 150 years), the likely spot of the Indian's arrival in the Far East is marked by the very real Hualin "Temple of 500 Gods." Built and re-built over the course of 1,500 years, the Temple still stands, welcoming visitors with its tranquil, otherworldly timelessness. Did Kowloon and her dragons have anything similar?

Kowloon

My first stop in Kowloon was the Taoist Wong Tai Sin Temple, dedicated to the divine form of the hermit Wong Cho Ping. The sprawling complex includes incense-infused prayer sites, a meditation garden, and an extensive market of prayer paraphernalia. Popular with religious pilgrims and tourists alike, it was a beehive of pre-New Year activity when I arrived.

Then I saw the Buddhist Chi Lin Nunnery. An island of calm in an urban sea, it houses a temple, various gardens and courtyards, and the world's largest handcrafted wooden structure, which was designed in the style of the Tang dynasty and built entirely of cypress wood. Not even nails were used, support coming instead from traditional interlocking wood cuts.

Both the Buddhist and Taoist temples were nice, but they were oddly out of place. It's not just that they were modern, built only last century. And it's not just that — unlike the Temple of 500 Gods in Guangzhou — they were plopped down on otherwise unremarkable sites. They seemed like facsimiles, like modern, sterile knockoffs of more authentic destinations elsewhere. They were museum-like, statue-like, celebrating greatness instead of being great. They were, I realized, like so many of Hong Kong Island's people. Expats.

What about the walled city? I learned that it began as a Chinese outpost in the Song dynasty about a millennium ago. In the 1600s it was reinforced with a handful of guards. In the 1840s it grew into a significant military fort as Hong Kong Island was ceded to the British. In the 1860s it proudly remained Chinese even as the rest of Kowloon joined the British Empire. Then in the 1940s Japan knocked down the walls and in the 1990s the rest of the thousand-year-old city was demolished.

Kowloon was mocking her majestic dragons. Or maybe they were mocking her.

Only two days remained for me to find Hong Kong's soul, both of which I devoted to the New Territories — the area between Kowloon proper and Mainland China. On the first day I had planned to visit the "Big Buddha," a well-known and highly-recommended destination that held significant promise. On the second, for lack of a more enticing option, I had arranged a tour of the more mundane parts of the New Territories.

Lantau and The Big Buddha

The Big Buddha sits on Hong Kong's largest island, Lantau, whose rural, mountainous, verdant landscape earned her the nickname "the lungs of Hong Kong." It's a place where indigenous forest takes the place of high-rise buildings, and where wild cows outnumber taxi cabs — except in the north, where the island was invaded by Hong Kong's main airport, by Disneyland, and by the bustling Tung Chung multi-use complex.

I skipped the built-up northern destinations and headed for the Big Buddha. One approach is via a 25-minute ride in a soaring glass-bottomed cable car on the "Ngong Ping 360." At 3.5 miles, the run isn't quite the world's longest, but it's up there. And it provides sweeping views of Lantau Island and beyond. I opted for that.

The journey has a pilgrimage-like feel to it. Landscape that begins as concrete and industry rolls into hilly forest and nature. Then the cable car shifts direction at a way station, all but leaving civilization behind. Another turn of the car unveils the Buddha in the distance, rising out of the distant haze as if beckoning his followers home. The ascent terminates at the Ngong Ping Village, which is walking distance from the Big Buddha.

I had read that the village was culturally themed and carefully landscaped to integrate into nature. But what I saw was a place where pavement covered the forest, where cliche music blared from hidden speakers, and where Starbucks and Subway defined the view. I had arrived not at a spiritual destination but at a Disneylandesque knock-off.

It's not that it wasn't nice. The Big Buddha was, indeed, big. And the nearby Po Lin Monastery was colorful. But like the Eastern-themed shopping mall that was Hong Kong Island, here in the pristine mountain forests of Lantau was a Buddha-themed playground.

I returned to my hotel by way of Tai O, a quaint fishing village, the classic "community that time forgot." I saw markets with fresh seafood next to stilt houses rising from placid water, here and there punctuated by old temples to old local gods. "The Venice of Hong Kong," some people call it — but only from afar, I fear. Up close it is marked by poverty and age. I liked it nonetheless, both for what it was and for what it had been: unpretentious, honest, and true to itself. But wouldn't it be sad, I thought, if this tiny, aging island of 1,200 people was all that remained of Hong Kong's soul?

Hong Kong's New Territories

I had one more day, now in the more pedestrian regions of the New Territories. Covering over 80% of Hong Kong's land and housing about half of her population, the New Territories are "new" because they didn't join the British Empire until 1898, half a century later than Hong Kong Island. But the real story of the New Territories begins with real estate.

By some measures, housing is more expensive in Hong Kong than anywhere else in the world, and on average each Hong Konger dwells in but 161 square feet. (Americans occupy twenty times that.) Though tiny, typical Hong Kong units present a financial hurdle even for the middle class.

To help, the government offers subsidized public housing, where some nine percent of Hong Kong Island's population lives. In the New Territories, the percentage is a whopping fifty-seven. And that is the difference between Hong Kong Island and the New Territories.

Even on the Island, only the most lavish private dwellings are roomy enough for guests. So especially in the New Territories, social interaction shifts to the public square. Hong Kong's markets and restaurants and parks are not mere destinations. They are extensions of the tiny homes — the family room, the den, the salon, the porch.

It is here that a grand public experiment is playing out, for the locals are heirs to an uncanny combination of cultures. In June of the year 1215, Genghis Khan conquered Beijing, ultimately upsetting the rigid Confucian hierarchy there and paving the way for upward social mobility. That same month, 5,000 miles away, King John of England reluctantly set his seal to the Magna Carta, ultimately checking the power of the elite there and paving the way for universal human rights.

These otherwise unconnected events represent turning points in the world's two most influential power centers, whose direct reach once spanned some 20 million square miles of land, and whose impact continues to extend even further. But they overlap only in the 427 square miles that is Hong Kong. (Oddly it was opium that brought them together.)

So Hong Kongers, still cloaked in the Magna Carta and having expelled the Mongols, are uniquely free to express and celebrate the fullest richness of their Chinese heritage. On the surface, they speak Cantonese but incorporate English words, ride bicycles but surf the Internet, eat Eastern food but wear Western clothes. Here the lunar and solar calendars live side by side.

A closer look reveals the ongoing impact of Hong Kong's unmatched history. Like a traditional Chinese penjing tree (precursor to the Japanese bonsai) — whose intricate beauty emerges from the free and organic growth of its branches — here in Hong Kong the ancient roots of Chinese culture are finding new life. Hong Kongers forge their own paths forward, and, perhaps unknowingly, together craft from their various backgrounds an exquisite mosaic with a surprisingly unified theme.

And in the mosaic is the real Hong Kong. She is the modern reincarnation of a very old soul, intrigued by the 21st century but not smitten with it. I imagine she remembers equally the Shang Dynasty from 3,600 years ago and the Opium Wars from the century before last, the second world war and the first time jade was fashioned into art. Perhaps she even recalls King John, and now wonders why she didn't pay more attention at the time. Certainly she wonders what will unfold in this newest, and in some ways most exciting, chapter of her long and diverse journey through time — a chapter, she knows, that can only be penned here.

My visit was in January of 2020. In the months since, I've sadly come to fear for Hong Kong's future. I hope she makes it. I really do. Because I — and many others, I suspect — am eager to read the glorious, unfinished chapter of her remarkable life.     

Epilogue, Summer of 2022. I wrote this piece in early 2021. In the year and half since, it has become clear that Hong Kong is the final battleground of the Magna Carta, and that the Magna Carta is losing. Forces set in place nearly a millennium ago have shaped the world and, against all odds, have now come to the fore in a tiny Asian region. There