HONG KONGISH
Chungking Mansions has been called many things, but never ‘fashionable’. Could that be about to change? CATHY ADAMS is worried
Chungking Mansions going hip? Please don’t. By CATHY ADAMS
港人．港語
重慶大廈會變得新潮起來嗎？希望不會。撰文： Cathy Adams
ONE FRIDAY NIGHT last March, there was an Art Basel afterparty.
This one was defined, by a partygoer, as a ‘rager’: DJs from LA and Seoul kept the crowd going until 5am. But this party didn’t take place at any of Hong Kong’s grand hotels like a regular Art Basel bash.
The location: Chungking Mansions, where local DJ collective United Airwaves threw a party for the city’s young arty things inside Emmanuel’s Fried Chicken Shop.
Most Hongkongers know the city block Chungking Mansions only for its pirated mobile phones and cheap curry. This gig – with a line-up packed with ‘heat and wavey surprises’ – attracted a young, wealthy crowd, the likes of which had likely never wandered through Chungking’s wide entrance.
Is this a sign of changing times for the five towers, 17 floors and over 4,000 people of Chungking Mansions, on the lip of glossy Tsim Sha Tsui?
In short: probably not.
For anthropologist Gordon Mathews, who’s spent decades visiting Chungking Mansions, the building is ‘one of the more peaceful places in Hong Kong’ and ‘the centre of the developing world’. The author of Chungking Mansions: Ghetto at the Centre of the World tells me that thanks to its extraordinarily multicultural make-up, residents of all nationalities live happily side by side. It’s a microcosm of Hong Kong; a city within a city.
When I moved to Tsim Sha Tsui in 2015, Chungking Mansions was the place I went to get HK$10 cups of masala chai from first-floor restaurant Sher-e-Punjab, cheap plates of sag paneer from Taj Mahal on the third floor and highly competitive foreign exchange on the ground floor.
On a Monday afternoon in 2017, here’s a typical ground-floor Chungking Mansions sketch: visitors and residents lean over its forex counters; makeshift stands hawk sim cards and cut-price Samsung phones (an oft-quoted statistic: in the early 2000s, up to 20 per cent of phones sold in subSaharan Africa were trafficked through this place); East Africans dressed in beige thobes chat among themselves; South Asian men sit behind stalls selling chicken curry and gulab jamun. It’s a study in noise: different languages, lift shafts beeping with overspill, the clatter of curryhouse promoters.
At Shop 33A on the first floor, something different is happening. Amid some artlessly stacked cardboard boxes and an Indian food store is ‘creative collective’ IT’sOKAY. According to its website, it ‘strives to produce meaningful works’. In person, owner Mikee Poon shows me his tiny design studio. It’s littered with woodcuts and smells like tree branches. He’s in Chungking Mansions because the rent is cheap and nobody makes a fuss if he makes a load of noise late at night.
I go further up.
The upper floors are accessed by sets of dingy lifts (you can only go from one block to another via the ground floor) and are typically home to more deluxe restaurants – the unoriginally named Delhi Club is a favourite of mine – alongside Chungking’s main economy: guesthouses. A quick glance at the lift panels reveal faux-luxe names: Four Seasons, Paradise, Everest, Shangrila. (A visiting friend stayed in one 去年3月某個星期五晚，上香港巴塞爾藝術展舉行了一個餘興派對。
一名參加這個派對的客人以「狂熱」來形容當晚的盛來況： 自洛杉磯和首爾的DJ令整晚氣氛持續高漲，直至清晨5時加參者才盡興而歸不。，過 這次派對跟巴塞爾藝術展平時舉行的派對不同，地點並非在香港某家豪華酒店之內，而是在重慶大廈。
本地DJ團體Uni ted Ai rwaves在Emmanuel’s Fried Chicken Shop炸雞店裡香，為 港的年輕藝術愛好者舉行派對。
屹立於鬧市的重慶大廈，對大部分香港人來說，只是個盜版手提電話充斥的地方，以及可以在吃那裡 到價廉物的美 咖哩。那次現場音樂表演陣容充滿「狂熱和令人亢奮的驚喜」，吸引大批富裕年輕人到場；這些人以往可能從未跨過重慶大廈寬闊的入口，踏進裡面一看究竟。
重慶大廈位於五光十色的尖沙，咀區由五幢樓高17層樓組的 宇 成，住客超過4,000人巴。塞爾藝術節的餘興派對是否代表這幢建築物正在改？變
簡單來說，應該不是。
人類學家Gordon Mathews花費數以十年的間計 時 到重慶大廈進行研究，他認為這幢建築是「香港其中一個較為寧靜和諧的地點」，而且是「發展中國的家 核心」。Mathews是《世界中心的民貧 窟：香港重慶大廈》一書的作者，他解向我 釋，由於重慶大廈的民自湖居 來 五 四海，背文化景極其多元，但卻能夠不分國籍，融洽共處。有如城中之城，更是香港的縮影。
我於2015年遷居至尖沙，咀 當時總會前往重慶大廈，在位於一樓的獅王印度餐廳買十港元一杯的印度奶茶，在三樓的皇宮印度餐廳吃廉宜的印度芝士菠菜，或到地面的外幣換找，店 以極為相匯宜的 率兌換外幣。
2017年某個星期一午後，重慶大廈地下一如往常你， 可以見到訪客和住客倚在
that will remain nameless, and found the ‘window’ was a set of curtains drawn over a concrete wall.)
I eventually find Mathews’ peaceful Chungking Mansions in the place most people don’t go – the roof. After taking the lift to the 17th floor and tiptoeing up a narrow spiral staircase, I end up looking at the back of the white lettering of the China Construction Bank, gazing across the water to Hong Kong Island’s neonlicked harbourfront.
The still air and faint noises from Nathan Road below is the most un-Hong Kong moment in the most unexpected of Hong Kong buildings. Whatever new, hip things are happening here, Chungking Mansions will always be, as Mathews says, ‘all kinds of interesting things’. 外幣找換店的櫃檯上；小販的臨時攤上擺著sim卡和特價Samsung手提電話一（有 項經常被人引用的統計數據說，2000年初代 ，在非洲撒哈拉以南地區出手售的 提電話，有近兩成是由這裡走私出去的） ；穿身 米色穆斯林袍東人長 的 非 聚在一起閒聊個；幾南亞人男 坐在攤檔後售， 賣咖哩雞和玫瑰炸糕。這裡也是研究聲音的好地方，你可以聽到不同的語言混雜在一起，梯電 因超載而發出刺耳警號，還有咖哩屋推廣員高聲招客，譜成獨特的重慶大廈交響曲。
一樓33A號舖卻有點不尋常。疊在堆得無毫美感的紙皮箱和一家印度食店之間，隱藏著「創意共同體」IT’sOKAY。他們的網站表示「致力製作有意義的作品」。主人Mikee Poon親自向我介紹這家細小的設計工作室，裡面到處放滿木刻版畫，散發樹枝般的氣味。他選擇在重慶大廈開作工室，是因為該處租金廉宜，而即且 使他在晚上工作時發出大量噪音，沒也 有人理會。
然後我前往更高的樓層去。
乘搭燈光昏暗的電梯，就可前往大廈較高樓層；不過留要意，五座大廈並不相連，如從要 一座大廈前往另一座，須必先到地下，再電搭 梯。上去 大廈樓上遍佈多家格調比較豪華的餐廳（名字毫無新意的新德里餐廳是我的最愛） ，以及重慶大廈的主要經濟命脈館：賓 。匆匆望一眼電的梯旁 水牌，就會發現許多模仿高級酒店的名字，包括「四季」「、天堂」「、珠穆朗瑪峰」，以及「香格里拉」。我的一位朋友到訪香港曾時， 入住大廈內某家賓館（名稱不在此公開） ，然後發現所謂「窗戶」是一組掛在混凝土牆上的窗簾。
終於，我在重慶大廈一處人跡罕至的地方，感受到Mathews所述的寧靜和氣諧氛，那就是大廈的天台。我電乘 梯到17樓，然後躡手躡腳地爬上一道狹窄的螺樓旋梯。踏足天台，映入眼簾的是中國建設銀行的白色招牌背，望面 凝 著被虹霓 燈映照的維多利亞港，以至香港島海傍。
四周空靜氣 止，腳下的彌敦道傳來隱約可聞的聲音。我完全沒有料到，在這樣一幢香港有表的最 代 性 大廈裡，竟然像不 置身香港無。 論這裡有什麼時尚新鮮事發生，重慶大廈仍然如一 Mathews所言：「集一切有趣的事物於一身」。