π RETURN TO JUST ANOTHER DAY
I take the old ferry across the harbour for the first time in five years; I think of water. Theyβre talking about stopping the ferry service even though it has brought locals from peninsula to island for over a century, which is, in one narrative of this cityβs history, since time immemorial. In another narrative, this ferry represents all evil and is a rude reminder of foreign influence on the cityβs development. In mine, itβs a childhood joy more extravagant than the cityβs two amusement parks, now a tourist trap just like those rollercoasters and panda bears.
The city growing downwards, MTR stations accumulating new and deeper platforms like a reverse tiramisu. New islands rise, failed Atlantises, inverted on litter. Some werenβt here five years ago; weβre breaking new ground. Pooling between the valleys of skyscrapers, light floods a vertical lake for modern Narcissi. There is always sunlight glinting off a surface here, it makes us blind.
I love this city so much but I wonder what sheβd be like if our skyline wasnβt artificially jagged, and instead followed the curve of our hills. Sinking in a flood of colonial tongues by the waterfront, I pinpoint the squat greyness of the General Post Office. On another island, in another colonial capital a century ago, the GPO was the bloodstain of a rebellion that ultimately led to a Free State, and then a Republic. There are postcolonial precedents for that. There are no postcolonial precedents for what is happening here. What waves rolled in this harbour while those rebels nailed fresh, untorn constitutions to their cityβs crosses?
If I align my eye along the top edge of the GPO, I can imagine it, the jail and the legislature and the earliest trading offices. How the mountains dominated. A ferry spews black smoke, and I think about how terrible they must be for the environment, yet how resistant I am to the idea of their change. Anywhere else, Iβd be furious at such disregard, but my love for this place makes me lenient. How many Styrofoam boxes waterproof the bottom of the harbour? Itβs the same: the cityβs cheap food joints are so emblematic of local culture that to remove them, for whatever other benefit, would be to destroy a part of an already submerging history. Trash floats, freedom drowns. Soon weβll be able to walk across the harbour ourselves, on a bridge of bodies from thirty-four years ago, and from today. A city of infamous Jesuses.
How to cite: Suen, Michelle. βJust Another Day: Michelle Suen.β Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, 4 Jun. 2023, chajournal.blog/2023/06/04/michelle-suen.
Michelle Suen is from Hong Kong and lives in Dublin, Ireland. She is studying English literature and history at Trinity College Dublin and is an assistant editor of fiction forΒ Asymptote. [All contributions by Michelle Suen.]
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