Prologue: To Flow

[This is the prologue of my first novel The Mansion South of Maple Street available in English (2021) and Spanish (2020). A fictional story inspired in true events].

Leer en español, aquí.

To Sham Shui Po

This story was written in my head a long time ago, ever since I moved to Hong Kong, for the second time, in 2015. Before that, I had been living in Beijing for eight years. While working on the first draft of this novel, many people asked me if it was going to be an autobiography. It was difficult to say: the integrity of our being, our knowledge, as well as our creativity are the result of the experiences we have lived, the people we have met, the decisions we have made, and our dreams (which we must not forget either).

It is possible that the people who know of my adventures are, to a greater or lesser extent, going to enjoy trying to identify which parts of the novel are close to the truth of my life and which are a product of my imagination. I encourage you to play along. Besides, whether or not this is an autobiography is not important; it is a fictional story that takes place in what is, to my mind, one of the most magical neighbourhoods in Hong Kong: Sham Shui Po.

It is true that I lived in that area during my second stay in this Asian city. I was worried that progress might change it soon, even destroy it. Though that may seem far-fetched, it’s actually very possible. Rapid development due to globalisation is one of the greatest tragedies of our age. I decided to freeze in time the life on the streets of Sham Shui Po with this story. I used my imagination and creativity to express different world views that coexist in Hong Kong.

I spent many nights in apartment 10B of Nam Fung Mansion (The Mansion South of Maple Street, in English) writing notes and reflections on the neighbourhood. Unconsciously, I was already working on a story that wouldn’t fully take form until I made the difficult decision to return to Europe after having lived in Hong Kong and Beijing for over a decade.

During that crucial period of my life in Hong Kong, there was love, heartache, a lot of change and a single constant: Sham Shui Po and its people. By simply participating in the day-to-day life of this community, I made important decisions. My community was probably not aware of how much our conversations had an impact on my life. As I lived there, I turned thirty. I grew as a woman, and I became an adult. As I grew and my life changed, so did the narrator’s story.

My neighbours in Sham Shui Po welcomed me even though I was a foreigner, I did not speak their language perfectly, and my cultural roots were completely different; it didn’t make any difference. Kindness was the bond that united us from day one, and for a very simple reason: every human being lives with the same ambitions, joys and concerns. That’s the irony of life: it can be extremely simple and complex, but the foundations are the same for everyone. What makes us different, and the way we deal with the great unknown of what it is to live, is the beauty of our diverse humanity.

I made the decision to move to Asia at the age of twenty-one, with only a few months left to finish my bachelor’s degree at university. A few weeks before catching the first intercontinental flight of my life, I was given some wise advice: stay alert. I followed this strictly. I kept my eyes open; I became fully immersed in my surroundings. But during my first few years in China my youthful inexperience rendered me unwilling to draw aside the veil of Western perception that filtered my interaction with this new environment. The things that did not make sense to me at the time, my brain stored away as both strange and exciting. I resisted the intoxicating beauty that surrounded me, perhaps out of the unconscious fear of embarking on a totally unpredictable and irreversible journey.

It was thanks to the affection of the local people I encountered in my day-to-day life, at work, through friends or when I travelled, that I began to interact with the environment and understand Asia in a different way. Western beliefs, taught and rigidly held as true and reasonable, had to be unlearnt with great effort on my part.

I remember the feeling of frustration during my first Chinese lessons. None of that weird-sounding language made any sense. Until one day, suddenly, the words and the beautiful Chinese characters began to take on a meaning of their own. The language started to flow through my mind in a structured and spontaneous way. When that happened, my extremely patient Chinese teacher shared with me something very beautiful: "You have now entered the ‘room’ of Chinese." As she explained, this meant that my Western mind had stopped resisting pre-established structures of thought and had given itself permission to flow to a new way of communicating ideas. She was absolutely right.

Over time, that semiotic shift also changed my identity. Giving a clear answer to the question "where are you from?" became very complex. Access to other cultures and ways of thinking has shaped my identity. Consequently, I have become a more complex and sophisticated being. It humbled me and taught me never to take anything for granted.

Western world views tend to be communicated almost as hegemonic. In the collective consciousness, its narratives, lifestyles and norms are forward-looking, a result of progress and a more civilised world. Mysticism and traditional lifestyles have no place in a modern, post-industrial society.

The more we expose ourselves to the world and other ways of living, the more aware we are that we don’t know anything. It is my belief that human beings would have a better chance of a full life if they surrounded themselves with good people with very different lives, roots and histories, who could help them navigate the uncertainty of the future and the decisions that they make along the way.

I became obsessed with Asia. I let the people teach me their other points of view. I learnt that the world could be interpreted in many different ways. I didn’t hold anything back. I felt that life had given me such a special privilege that in order to appreciate it fully, I should not close myself off at all. I gave in to my heart and intuition and stopped rushing to get to a specific place in life. I began to wonder whether the idea of happiness had become a commodity in the West, born out of material desires and the need to conform, and based mainly on external factors that we labelled as guarantors of happiness. What was the real key to success in life?

If there was one thing that the people I met in Asia had taught me, it was that they understood happiness as a realisation that started from within, from the consciousness of our being and from how human beings relate to themselves and to those around them. That focusing on the present was key to being able to live and thus react with less suffering to the constant change around them.

Such wisdom is evident in the people of Sham Shui Po, a neighbourhood of entrepreneurs. It should be noted that although they do not work from co-working spaces, or run start-ups, this neighbourhood is mainly made up of local street-level establishments run by families who make their businesses their livelihoods and the foundations of their dreams and ambitions. This means they live without the stability of an employer or a guaranteed salary at the end of the month. Their financial security is predicated solely on the belief that their daily efforts will pay off and that these businesses will be the vehicle with which to follow the path of life during these years of dramatic historical change in Hong Kong.

However, the future remains unknown for this strategic location on the map chosen by many as an exclusive free port from which to realise their dreams and visions for the future. Just as the main character of this story, many of the inhabitants of this hyper-dense metropolis built their identity as immigrants at the same time that Hong Kong was (and still is) trying to find itself. The identity of the people of Hong Kong has grown during constant waves of immigration and shifting leadership right up to the present day, and now the plurality and diversity of voices that are characteristic of Hong Kong are at risk of fading away.

After Beijing took control of the territory from the British in 1997, a new weight of uncertainty descended on Hong Kong. Within months of completing the first draft of this manuscript, in June 2020, the Chinese Communist Party passed a national security law that destroyed the status quo that for decades had made Hong Kong a place of freedom and opportunity. What the future holds for Hong Kong remains a big unknown. While freedom of speech is being progressively eroded, many hold fast to the resilience and entrepreneurial mindset of the Hong Kong people. Like my neighbours, many carry a humble but powerful spirit of survival within themselves that, hopefully, will allow them to navigate the uncertainty of the future with grace.

The characters of Sham Shui Po featured in this book are fictional, but their stories are inspired by some of the people, conversations and points of view that resonated with me during my stay.

This story also wants to pay tribute to the qualities shared by all my dear Sham Shui Po neighbours, whom I miss so much: brave, honest, unique, authentic, sensitive, passionate, genuine, resilient, self-confident, focused, humble, optimistic, loyal, considerate, kind, loving and free from prejudice. To all of you, thank you!

(Both videos by Zapstudios with footage from Sham Shui Po from before I left Hong Kong in 2017).