Invisible Background of Hong Kong
When you walking in Hong Kong, looking at the urban jungle and bright lights of shopping mall, it may become the first impression that this city give you. However, I think tiles are essential factor hides in our memory that when you think of Hong Kong. They are tiny and meaningless. Everyone just ignores these thousands of tiny square hiding in the city. When you visiting the romantic Victoria harbour, tasting delicious food at a corner Cha Chan Teng, or catching the train which busy all the time, tiles present as colourful background everywhere before you realise it. It feels like invisible because a few people take glance at it. But it already became a part of peoples memory of Hong Kong.
Tiles here are fragmentary but in order. Hong Kong people prefer to use small square tiles to decorate their city. Most of building had been built for several years, as time goes on, stains and cracks at tiles show up gradually. Looking at these tiles, it’s not hard to know that someone sticked something on it but was teared off one day, sewage streamed down the wall, or rust left on it. However, even if these walls are a little bit old and shabby, they can still maintain its functionality. And lined orderly all the times. Just like the busy city, though some small parts are not perfect, people here live their life regularly and diligently. They respect and follow the rules here. We can see people standing on the right and walking on the left. Don’t eat or drink on the train. Smoking around yellow rubbish bin. Sharing table at restaurant in busy time consciously. But in imperceptible place, it still has somewhere that rules cannot be completely covered. When I once went to Wah Fu Estate where is a quiet community facing the beautiful sea far away from central, I saw a mass of shrine and pot plants placed on hillsides. Though government has claimed that it’s illegal to put personal things here, these objects just in there and melt in one with nature over the years. Like fragmentary tiles, they in there simply and telling the story about themselves, become a part of this busy and orderly city, no matter people notice or not.
（Noticeable at Wah Fu Estate)
After standing close and look at tiles one by one, it shows us different spectacle if we stand back a little bit. Thousands tiny squares can not only apply to protect the wall, but also become carrier that afford people to give it special meaning. Functional objects are usual and common to see on the wall. Unlike most city uses pale wall as background, Hong Kong chooses colourful tiles as background. It endows the information temperature. The informations are not lifeless and cold when people look at it. In general, apparently, people don’t care about style of wall. But it do affect whole feeling of city. It presents humanistic feelings of Hong Kong – a beauty that be filled.
Except conventional information, there are also some special objects show on the wall. Advertising sticker, pipes, or sundries are some common things appear together with tiles. For advertising sticker, people don’t really care how these sticker will be in the future. Their aim is only stick on the wall arbitrary and hope someone can notice it probably. From my opinion, the reason why this situation happened is because this kind of behaviour is low-cost, low-risk, and high coverage. Cheap advertising stickers are easy to produce and stick. In this densely populated city, in order to meet high requirements, this kind of job can see everywhere. What’s more, it’s fairly difficult for government to contain this phenomenon.
Similar situation happened to sundries also. Comparing to advertising stickers, it’s hard to define legal or not to put sundries on the narrow roadside in a city lack of space. Chairs, empty cardboard, garbage bag… Interesting thing is that these objects are usually regard as between useful and useless. People putting it in public space because some of them are not valuable personally, but still wait to be disposed. Or just like those chairs, someone putting there because it’s value is cheap enough to loose.
No matter chairs or sundries, they all be placed at the side of wall. This way of placement do not obstruct pedestrian and vehicular access. Also, making people feel their things may not moved by other. I call this phenomenon “ free stage”. Tiled wall possess ability to gather objects that dissociating between personal and public space. Standing in the front of varied tiled wall, looking at the different shades of objects left there, it looks like painting on colourful canvas. In the painting, we can learn about habits of this city.
Like the crowed city filled with mass of things, tiles was constructed in every corner of city. The city is too busy to stop and look at it carefully. So it becomes invisible background and epitome of Hong Kong that reveal this city’s story.
