Hong Kong: The Smell of Asia and the City That Wouldn’t Let Go

The World Traveller Series — Entry No. 7

by Brett Hayhoe

There are destinations you visit once and tick off the list. And then there are cities that reach into you, quietly and without warning, and simply refuse to let go. Hong Kong was never a tick on a list. Hong Kong was a pull — visceral, specific, and unlike anything else on earth. I went back, year after year, for over a decade. And every time I stepped off the plane, I understood immediately and completely why.

It began, as so many of the best things in life do, with a friend.

He was based in Hong Kong Central, managing a British-style restaurant — the sort of place that felt entirely at home in a city that had, at that point, been shaped by a century of British colonial life. The restaurant is long gone now, as so many beloved things are, but it was the reason I booked that first flight. A dear old friend in an extraordinary city: reason enough for any trip. What I did not anticipate was what would happen the moment I arrived.

Hong Kong claimed me before I had even unpacked.

THE HUB OF THE WORLD

Living in Australia, one develops a particular relationship with long-haul travel. We are, by geography, a long way from everywhere, and every trip to Europe or North America involves a transit somewhere. Hong Kong, for Australians of my generation, was that somewhere — the great hub through which the rest of the world was accessed. The airport was magnificent, the Airport Express train connecting it to the city was fast, efficient and everything an airport transfer ought to be, and Hong Kong itself rewarded every layover that stretched into something longer.

Which mine always did.

The ease of getting around Hong Kong is, quite simply, one of the great pleasures of the city. The MTR — the Mass Transit Railway — is spotless, logical, and runs with a punctuality that would make Swiss watchmakers envious. On the other side of the harbour, the Star Ferry between Hong Kong Island and Kowloon remains one of the great short journeys of the world: a handful of minutes across Victoria Harbour, with one of the most spectacular urban skylines on the planet arranged before you as though the city is performing specifically for you. It probably is.

I did the tourist things on that first visit, as one should — and they are spectacular enough to deserve doing properly. Lantau Island, with its scale and its quiet and its particular feeling of having stepped briefly outside the city’s relentless energy. The tram up to Victoria Peak. The night markets. The temples. Hong Kong is, for the tourist with any curiosity at all, essentially inexhaustible.

THE PRIDE THAT WASN’T QUITE

On one visit, I found myself — quite by accident rather than by any particular planning — in the vicinity of a Pride event. I say quite by accident because that is exactly what it was: I rounded a corner and there it was, and I joined it in the way one does when one’s instincts are stronger than one’s itinerary.

But the air was different to any Pride I had attended before. Charged, yes — but not with joy alone. The handover of Hong Kong from British to Chinese rule was approaching, and despite the assurances from Beijing that nothing would change, the community knew better. What had once been open, joyful, and unapologetically visible was becoming something more careful. Government officials were present — and not in the spirit of allies. Attendees were being photographed. The message, unspoken but entirely clear, was one of documentation and surveillance. The march continued, because Pride always continues, but the shadow over it was real and it was heavy.

History, as it turned out, confirmed what everyone that day already suspected. The promises held for a while, and then they did not.

THE THING THAT BROUGHT ME BACK

I could tell you about the skyline. I could tell you about the shopping, the temples, the harbour, the islands. All of it is true and all of it is worth your time. But none of it is the reason I returned to Hong Kong every year for a decade.

The reason is something that no photograph has ever adequately captured and no travel writer has ever quite done justice to, though many have tried.

It is the smell.

There is a particular smell to the streets of Hong Kong — to the streets of Asia, more broadly — that is unlike anything else in the world. It is the smell of street food vendors: of char siu pork and egg waffles and curry fishballs and roasted chestnuts and a hundred other things cooking simultaneously in the open air, layered over each other in an olfactory symphony that hits you the moment you step outside and simply does not leave you. It is the smell of a city that is alive in a way that is entirely its own. Every city has a smell. Hong Kong’s smell is an event.

I am not sure I can explain to someone who has not experienced it why a smell became the central fact of a decade of annual travel. But it did. Every year, stepping out into Hong Kong’s streets, that smell would arrive — and something in me would settle, the way you settle when you come home.

THE COMMUNITY

Hong Kong in the 1990s was, for the solo LGBTIQA+ traveller, a remarkably welcoming place. I travelled alone for much of this period and never once felt unsafe or unwelcome — which is not something every city in the world can offer, and which should be acknowledged and appreciated.

The community had its own language, as communities do. Two terms I learned in Hong Kong — and have carried with me ever since — give you a useful window into the culture. Sticky Rice refers to gay Asian men who prefer other Asian men. Potato Queens are gay Asian men who prefer Western men. The terms are used affectionately within the community, with the knowing wit that characterises queer culture at its best, and they speak to something genuine about the particular social geography of Hong Kong’s gay scene — cosmopolitan, international, and entirely its own.

THE SUMMARY

Where: Hong Kong — Central, Kowloon, Lantau Island, Victoria Peak, Victoria Harbour
When: Annually throughout the 1990s, for over ten years
Why it matters: Hong Kong is not simply a destination — for Australian travellers it is a gateway to the world, and for anyone with a soul it is a city that earns its place in the memory through sheer, accumulated sensory force.
Don’t miss: The Star Ferry across Victoria Harbour — always; the night markets; Lantau Island; the Airport Express; the street food, everywhere, at any hour
The vibe: Electric, efficient, spectacular, layered — and scented with something you will spend the rest of your life trying to describe
Who was there: A dear old friend in Central, a city of millions, a Pride march in a changing wind, and street food vendors who had absolutely no idea they were the reason I kept coming back

The World Traveller Series is published in Q Magazine and on ‘Ask Brett’ at bretthayhoe.me, where each entry is also available as a podcast episode. Entry No. 6 — London: Palaces, Pride, and the Perfect Comeback — is available now.