Built Landscape | Desmond Bliek

So, today, after a slow rainy morning wandering around Mong Kok, watching glistening workers snap on their gloves and set about raising tents for the ‘ladies market’, I went back to my room somewhere tucked away in the depths of the Mirador Mansions on Nathan Road in Tsim Sha Tsui, put on a pair of shorts, ducked into the metro, and headed for Central.

I find it fantastic that in Hong Kong, downtown isn’t called the Central Business District, or downtown, or Central Hong Kong, but just Central.  It just is.

So I took the Central-Mid Levels escalators up, past the Krispy Kreme where many of the short-wearers take a break (though I did miss out on a place where I thought I could get an iced coffee, I’m sad to report…) and then walked up.  No tram for me- apparently the waits are long, and really, it’s not that high up.

After what felt like at least an hour or more of sustained and sweltering summit-searching, I arrived at the ‘gap’, which isn’t the summit, but is nevertheless the destination of the Peak Tram.  After marvelling at such an odd placement for a shopping mall/bus depot, I went off into the clouds in search of the Victoria Gardens and ended up doing the loop formed by the Governor’s walk.  I’d hoped to come down the other side of the Peak, over towards Aberdeen, but, no such luck.  The views were, well, grey and opaque, so I’m not sure how much I missed.

At any rate, perhaps I just didn’t do the Peak as one should.  I found the Victoria Gardens a little bit lacklustre (between the rainforest humidity and the British legacy, shouldn’t this be a sure thing?), but what puzzled me most was the architecture of the apartment houses at Hong Kong’s summit.  More of that vertical brick that is so popular on the mainland, and some questionable finishing quality.  I understand that these buildings need to be on stilts in order to accomodate the (extremely valuable) cars of their residents, but really, why are they using the same smoothed-over vertical brick that I saw on police stations in Hua Qiang Bei, or on a weird building with a deer-head protruding from it, on the side of a rural highway outside of Tianjin?  Why?  If anyone can inform me as to its appeal or noble cultural heritage, please don’t hesitate.

Tomorrow, plans depend on the weather.  I’ll be heading to either Macau (if rainy/grey) or to a beach off Sai Kung, in the New Territories (if clear/blue).  I’ll be meeting up with Carla, who’s coming in from Melbourne in the evening, and it looks like we’ll waste little if any time heading for Kunming.

Again, if anyone has any picture resizing tips, please let me know.  I’ll do some updating to my flickr page from time to time, but no promises, as internet’s proven pretty slow and costly here.  Maybe things will improve as the journey progresses, or if I figure out how to make the files smaller for this site’s purposes.

Well, I made it through just under three weeks of study-coordination in Shenzhen, coupled with an odd side trip to Guangzhou.  I’d say that the trip was a success.  The neighbourhood, Hua Qiang Bei, proved more interesting than I could ever have expected, and I met some fantastic people along the way.

The participants of the course, undergrads in urban planning/studies at Concordia in Montreal were all fantastic and I managed to learn quite a lot from them.  As a group and over the course of a great dinner and night out, I was able to meet a few of the planners from Shenzhen, who are a remarkably young, well-poised, and curious bunch, who seem likely to have a significant impact on the fast-growing city in which they live.

I’ll post a bit more on the street life, history, and character of Shenzhen’s Hua Qiang Bei in the next little while.  If anyone knows how to resize photos without Photoshop, feel free to let me know, and the posts will flow faster!

Hi,

So life currently finds me in the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone, just north of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.  This fantastic (in all senses of that word) place used to be where a large share of China’s electronics and textile production took place, but much of this activity has now vacated Shenzhen Shi (city) for more outlying areas in the SEZ.  I’m here with a group of Concordia University students to study what’s happening with the areas left behind by these shifts in industrial geography.  We’re staying/eating/studying/living in the Hua Qian Bei neighbourhood, close to the heart of Shenzhen.  It’s a great place (pictures will come soon!) with a huge amount of energy and activity, that contrasts fairly significantly with much of the fairly manicured, hyper-planned, and highly impermeable, disconnected, and pod-like city around us.  Electronics is still hugely important here- I heard a figure of about 11b USD in electronics being sold/warehoused/distributed in this neighbourhood on a yearly basis - and judging from the surging crowds pushing overloaded dollies with seven, eight, or nine computers, or bicycles balancing just as many boxes of circuit boards, chips, and leds, I’d believe that figure if it was on a weekly basis.

So, let me get back to the study I’m helping to coordinate (we’re looking at activity patterns, people flows, and the patterns of public spaces and building types), figure out a way to upload the many photos I’ve been taking, and go through my notes, and I’ll come back with a more thorough update.

Woo-hoo!!!!!

I spent all afternoon today trying out different image gallery plug-ins, and finally got one to work. It’s called simpleflickr and you can check out its latest application on my photos page. So far I’ve only got one gallery/flickr set (Travel 2004) up and running, but there will be more to come soon.

Cheers,

Des

Hi,

I’m still looking for a plugin or fix that will let me create another page on the site that can serve as a photo blog. Maybe I should just create a normal page and only do image postings on that page? But surely there’s a sexier solution that will allow for galleries in each posting and the ability to browse images by category.

In the meantime, check out Lins’ and my flickr pages.

Hi!

It’s been a stretch of time since my good friend Peter helped me figure out the installation and hosting of Wordpress (prior to a beer at Vices et Versa). But given that soon I will have some interesting research to publicise, a study trip to China to record and inform friends about, and a year in beautiful Fernie, British Columbia to document, I’m getting my act together and generating content.

The idea for this site is to host pages featuring a portfolio, my research, an image gallery, and my resumé, as well as a blog of my semi-regular musings and happenings. Feedback and suggestions are welcome. Like Hillary, I want to have a ‘conversation’ (though perhaps not with the entire American populace).
Cheers,

Des