After my visit in November, I made my way through Thailand and Australia before ending up in New Zealand for a working holiday stint that lasted several months. I eventually decided to return to Hong Kong in May after finding a role as Marketing Manager for Super Fashions Ltd. a men’s fashion brand (Senszio). The city can be dense and intense and I found the ease of nature-bathing to be a critical component for quality of life amidst the shoulder-to-shoulder city dynamic.
Coming from the USA, a melting pot of cultures, Hong Kong was a melting pot as well but in different ways. Definitely an Asian city, Hong Kong was not much more than a jungle fishing village roughly 150 years ago. Once a British colony, and since handed over back to China, the British years saw it rise to become one of the major financial powerhouses of the world. Many locals do not identify themselves as Chinese as a nationality, but rather Hong Konger. The sentiments I witnessed expressed a unique way of life and identity of their own. Not only is there an east-meets-west dynamic, but the push and pull of the political systems was apparent as my time there was just before the citizens’ major 2019/20 protests that brought the city and economy to a standstill. Inspired by the 2014 Umbrella Movement, what started as peaceful protests began to take a turn to violence and destruction as political changes caused tension.
My time in Hong Kong left a strong impact on my perspective of the world and my place within it.
