Sensual Hong Kong - The Sounds and Smells of a City

Hong Kong, like all cities, is an accumulation of sounds and odors, many of them unique to that place.  Unlike vision, sound and smell are much more visceral senses, tied into more primitive parts of the brain than vision.  Vision requires interpretation by the higher centers of the brain to extract meaning, sound and smell do not.

Within the first 24 hours in Hong Kong, I was able to distinguish three distinct and pervasive aromas.  The most noticeable was a salty, extremely humid smell.  It appeared to be a mix of sea air and other things, perhaps car exhaust, cooking oil and pollution.  It was always slightly rank in character and was most definitely not pleasant.  This was the smell that I reeked of every night when I returned to the filtered, air conditioned air of my hotel.  Once extracted from the stew I had been marinating in all day, the odor was very obvious and permeated my clothing and clung to my skin.  If you mixed it with sweat, I noticed my skin would become slightly tacky.  If this were a science fiction movie, I would be worried that I had come in contact with some alien substance that would slowly poison me through contact with my skin.  Let’s hope, for the sake of my friends who live in Hong Kong, that this is not a toxic airborne substance.

The second, and decidedly more pleasant aroma I encountered all over the city was the salty smell of traditional Chinese cooking.  I first noticed it at the jook stand in the food court of the shopping mall attached to my hotel.  Then I smelled it over and over again in Mongkok and every other place that had traditional Chinese restaurants that opened out onto the street.

The third smell is very dry, an imitation of fresh air, air you might encounter in other places, but not Hong Kong.  It is typically encountered in high end shopping malls.  Perhaps this is the smell of filtered air, akin to the taste of distilled water.  All of the harmful pollutants have been removed, but something is most definitely missing.

Hong Kong is also a city characterized by a surprisingly distinctive soundscape.  The first time I really became attuned to sound in Hong Kong was when I walked by a crosswalk the first time.  Each crosswalk is equipped with a sound device that alerts visually impaired citizens of their approach to a crosswalk with an auditory signal that indicates whether the “walk” or “don’t walk” cycle is engaged.  When the “don’t walk” light is lit, the series of regular clicks is soft and slow.  As soon as the crossing light changes to “walk”, the pitch of the clicks is higher and the speed and volume increase, as well.  This is also an aid to sighted pedestrians.  You don’t have to be forever looking at the crossing light to know if it is time to walk or not; all you have to do is listen.

The escalators in MTR stations and shopping malls are also equipped with similar synthesizers that alert the visually impaired of the presence and location of escalators and alert you that you have reached the end of the escalator or the end of a moving sidewalk.  Again, this is pretty useful for sighted pedestrians, as well.

Another distinctive sound is made by the MTR trains as they arrive and depart the station.  Every subway station I have been in around the world has trains with distinctive sounds.  It seems to be a combination of the equipment and the acoustical properties of the space.  The Hong Kong MTR platforms seem to be designed to minimize the ambient noise generated by so many people in such a confined space.  What could have escalated to deafening cacophony during peak usage is kept to a manageable roar.

Equally distinctive are the announcements on the MTR.  Each announcement is given first in Cantonese, then in Mandarin, and finally in English.  At first it seemed odd that Mandarin was given pride of place before English in every announcement as the train departed each station and when it arrived at each successive stop.  One supposes this was done for a variety of reasons.  First off, esthetically, it makes sense to follow an announcement in Cantonese with one in another Chinese language.  Both are tonal and share certain sounds to give a general sound of Chineseness.  English, by its very nature, sounds totally distinct.  Secondly, there appear to be many, many Mandarin speakers in Hong Kong, whether as tourists or as residents.  You hear a fair amount of Mandarin in public spaces.  I also heard much less English (or other Western languages being spoken) outside of tourist areas such as The Peak or the streets of Tsim Sha Tsui.

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMIA3nt7qv8&feature=related