Thoughts from across the Harbor

Most people call Hong Kong the Gateway to the West, which it has earned from its inception as a British colony and decades after its transition back to a Chinese territory. It’s a label that still fits, depending on where you’re looking from. It’s a city that thrives in preserving culture with an openness to innovation and a vision for growth. But on my second visit to the city, I started to see it less as a gateway and more as a layover.

This, of course, is a visitor’s perspective. I’m not here to stay. My relationship with the city is brief and circumstantial. Marked with impermanence. Transitory.

To me, it makes sense: Hong Kong thrives in the in-between. It’s one of the busiest business hubs in the world, a linchpin for the Asia-Pacific operations of global conglomerates. Think of the world’s biggest companies, I guarantee that three-quarters of them have a presence in Hong Kong.

Its airport alone is a machine built for movement: 85 airlines, over 150 destinations, a nonstop churn of passengers and cargo. Even at rest, Hong Kong is on the move.

But its transitory nature runs deeper than logistics. It’s baked into the city’s DNA. This is a place that promises opportunity but not belonging. It doesn’t offer itself up easily. Locals have a reputation for being rude. While I don’t think that’s entirely fair, I get it. Hong Kong is a city that has learned not to get too attached. It has seen too many people come and go. Maybe that’s why it can’t wait for you to leave.

Not that I ever felt that Hong Kong hated me—far from it. In fact, looking unmistakably Filipina has its small advantages, at least at the Ladies Market. The shopkeepers were all telling me about how there were so many Filipinos in Hong Kong that they knew where I was from just by looking at me, and that familiarity earned me a discount.

Yet despite these warm interactions, this transitory atmosphere lingered. Even as a tourist, I felt compelled to keep moving and keep up with the city’s pace. To not move is to be stuck or to be lost. I thought that this feeling was mine alone, but through conversations with friends—some who had just passed through, others who had spent years building lives here, I found that my sentiments had been somewhat validated.

Whether you’re plotting a relocation or packing up after a decade-long career, the consensus is surprisingly consistent: Hong Kong isn’t where you plant roots. It’s where your branches stretch out, searching for light, while the ground always shifts beneath you.

I’m well aware that these thoughts come from someone whose roots lie elsewhere. For those who’ve grown up here, who’ve made and remade their lives in this city, I’m sure “belonging” means something far more grounded and more complicated.

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But if there’s one part of Hong Kong that made me want to linger, to forget my outbound flight and pretend I had more time, it was the art.

Not the shopping (though I did plenty of that too), not Disneyland (which was nostalgic but felt out of place in Hong Kong), not even the food (which I loved, but I didn’t pay too much attention to). It was the museums, the artist-run spaces, the quiet radicalism, and honest personal reflections tucked between the malls and financial towers. In a city constantly in motion, the art felt like a pause. A space that asks questions instead of just hurtling toward answers.

At M+, a contemporary art museum, I found myself unexpectedly emotional. Hu Xiaoyuan’s Mine, a series of Braille Bibles painted with intimate images from her life (clothing, food, sex), stayed with me long after I left because of how this work resists full comprehension. Those who read Braille can’t see the images. Those who see the images can’t read Braille. It’s art that exists in a gap. You would think it requires translation, but I think the point is finding comfort in only grasping part of the story. That very Hong Kong feeling of proximity without possession.

Hu Xiaoyuan’s Mine, exhibited at M+

Another work by the same artist, which moved me to tears, was entitled In The Times, a textile piece in which she stitched together cherished objects from three generations of women in her family, her grandmother, her mother, and herself, onto three long panels of fabric. The piece was grand in scale, easily ten feet long by my estimate, yet delicate in presence. Two layers of white translucent fabric softened the objects underneath, muting their colors and giving the entire work a dreamlike quality. To me, it spoke volumes about what women hold close, and what we carry forward from those who came before us—whether keepsakes or quiet trauma.

Me posing in front of Hu Xiaoyuan’s In the Times, exhibited at M+

I’d be remiss to not mention how everything at M+ was meticulously put together. The space is generous, and the exhibitions were thoughtfully curated. I’m sure it's well funded, which made me feel a mix of envy and awe. It’s rare, almost unimaginable, to see art supported in ways that value not just beauty, but complexity, critique, and vision.

In the Philippines, we overflow with talent, but often have to fight for art to be seen as more than decoration. At M+, it was celebratory to step into a museum so sure of its purpose and so fully equipped to realize it.

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I didn’t expect my second trip to Hong Kong to be eye-opening. Honestly, I just needed a break from work and took the first flight I could to get out of the country. I was looking for a change of pace, and I didn’t think I’d come back with more than egg tarts and refrigerator magnets.

I left with a souvenir I didn't expect: perspective.

Of all the things I thought I’d find in Hong Kong, that was the last on my list but one that I needed most.