I’ve just returned from Hong Kong. The Netherlands Radio Chorus was there for two concerts and a recording of Wagner’s “Der Fliegende Holländer” with the Hong Kong Philharmonic and their conductor, a true flying Dutchman, Jaap van Zweden.
On our first morning I set out for Kowloon Park, to find the group I had trained with during our 2019 trip. They did exactly the same version of the Yang Chengfu 108 form as ours, had seen me doing the form nearby and had invited me to “play taiji” with them. I had gone there each morning. They were the inspiration for our morning taiji group in Utrecht.
Kowloon Park is electric this morning with a deafening noise. It’s romance time for cicadas. Even now at six in the morning, the temperature is above 30°C, and it’s suffocatingly humid. “My group” is nowhere to be seen. There are a few individuals exercising here and there. Is my group perhaps taking the hot months off? Our 2019 trip was in May. It’s now the end of June. Friends from Hong Kong warned me it might be too hot to exercise outside.
The previous trip was in fact just at the beginning of the protest marches against Mainland China’s new extradition law – a law which proved to be just the thin end of the wedge. In March of this year Hong Kong passed and began implementing Article 23, an even more far-reaching anti-protest piece of legislation. Now, any public demonstration can be considered an “act of treason, secession, sedition, subversion against the Central People’s Government.”
Our hotel boasts a wide outdoor terrace. I begin coming here in the mornings, instead of going to the park. The eternal traffic, four floors below, is quiet compared to the park, with its cicadas. Each morning I greet a little Chinese woman who comes to the “Podium Garden” to exercise. We agree that daily movement is important for health. “I don’t want to get sick,” she says. “Doctors are too expensive!” She stretches, then walks briskly back and forth – all the while watching a soap opera on her phone. She’s happy to see me practicing taiji. “It is Chinese exercise,” she tells me. After her 6 a.m. walk, she swims for half an hour. She’s not a guest of the hotel, but a member of the YMCA, which is located downstairs. It has an indoor pool my group has largely avoided – because they make you wear a shower cap. Or head condom, as we begin calling it.
After an hour outside, I’m dripping with sweat, but at the same time the warmth allows me to relax and stretch all the large muscles. I feel flexible and every limb is buzzing with energy. I bring a hand towel from the room to wipe my face and neck. After taiji and before breakfast I’ll wash my shirt and underwear in the sink, and hang them to dry in the shower. Later I’ll put the now merely damp clothing on hangers, and they’ll be dry by the next morning.
The ubiquitous air conditioning has made some of the singers sick. One baritone misses the second concert. Another baritone misses both concerts and the extra recording session. Several women have sore throats, but don’t lose their voices. The new director of the SOM (Stichting Omroep Muziek), which is to say everyone’s new boss, loses her voice completely.
It seems to me that compared to what I remember of five years ago, a lot of the activity has moved underground. There, in the air-conditioned passages to and from the metro, there are lots of new shops. The city is bursting at the seams, and retail has pushed itself into every available space. I find that you can get around quite well without ever returning to the surface. The underground passages connect with a lot of the (air-conditioned, new and expensive) malls. Perhaps everyone who can afford to just moves inside during the hot months?
From the breakfast room of the hotel we can see across to the massive Hong Kong Cultural Arts Centre building. One Saturday we notice a group doing taiji in a covered space in the Arts building. They’re at it for more than an hour, and towards the end of their session we see the flash of metal. They’re practicing taiji sword form. I resolve to try and find them, but the next day they’re gone. Perhaps they only meet on Saturday?
