Coming to Terms with Stranger-friends
Having had an initial taste of chitchatting with Sham Shui Po neighbours, I find the experience both more challenging and rewarding than expected. It still takes some bold efforts for me to start a conversation with passers-by, yet once the barrier is down, things begin to move on fairly smoothly as if with a life of its own. I have met extremely talkative and relatively reserved people, and it is enjoyable to see the flow of dialogue take its natural course, feeding me with interesting, insightful stories.
Particularly for less outspoken ones, we had to engage them more to talk about themselves, meanwhile I could totally empathise with their passivity and elliptical silences. Perhaps it is quite rare for someone to take a genuine interest in a stranger and his/her everyday life (not for completing a survey or some grand “social impact projects”). It really takes time before people open up and ramble about their routines, habits and all sorts of idiosyncrasies. At one of our interviews, for example, a man was gaming on his phone at first and asked us to talk to him later, but as we went on prompting him from time to time, he put his phone down and spoke more.
What I have noticed, from my interviews so far as well as from stories others wrote, is that the neighbours really crave for peace and quiet. Sham Shui Po is bustling with all the conveniences and vibrant activity, but it is also too noisy and dense for its residents to enjoy a bit of privacy. Though basically all kinds of living provisions can be found in the district, a teenage boy still struggles to find a good, quiet place here to chill out with his circle of friends. A man residing above shops and restaurants is sick of the honking of midnight cars fighting for parking spaces.
It sounds oxymoronic to prototype an installation that may help neighbours restore the peace and quiet they want as individuals, while also enabling them to connect with others meaningfully as part of a bigger community, but how nice it would be if a library, a supposedly quiet place, can do that!
