Night market shopping (Hong Kong)

I’d asked a high school classmate, James, who was originally from Hong Kong, which places I should visit on my brief stopover en route to Taipei to start my new job.  Tong Choi Street (通菜街) was one of his recommendations.  It housed an interesting night market, he said.

In those days, people in the East didn’t tend to go to a foreign place equipped with a map.  They tended to go travelling with a package tour, where a guide was provided to take them from place to place — the Chinese nickname for travelling with a package tour is “赶鸭子 gǎn yāzi / herding ducks”.  Or they might have a friend at the destination who’d look after them.

So, mapless and clueless, I hailed a taxi on Nathan Road, Hong Kong's equivalent of London's Oxford Street.  One left turn, then one right turn later, we arrived at Tong Choi Street.  The taxi driver managed to remain poker-faced during the two-minute drive.

Tong Choi Street was a gaggle of hand carts groaning with wares, mostly piled on higgledy-piggledy.  One had to rummage around, jumble-sale-fashion, which is part of the fun of going around such markets.  

The carts each had a couple of naked light bulbs strung over the goods, all connected to one long overhead cable that ran the length of the street, presumably attached to some generator somewhere at one end of the street, or supplied through the back of the row of shops.

I bought five sweaters, all of which have survived to this day, 39 years later.  At the audio tapes stall, I was trying to decide which tapes to buy and asking the stall-holder for the price of each one I held out in turn, as and when I found one to my liking, when a shout rang out in the night air.  

Suddenly, there was a flurry of activity as all the stall-holders up and down Tong Choi Street switched off their light bulbs and disconnected them from the long overhead cable, lifted up the side flaps of their stalls to cover their goods, and beetled off with their carts down the side alleyways.  My audio tapes stall-holder snatched the tape out of my hand and threw it onto the pile of tapes just before the shut-down-and-get-out routine.  

Within something like 30 seconds, I was left standing in a dark and deserted street, wondering if I mightn’t have dreamt it all.

There was nothing left to do but go back to my hotel.  

Just as I was about to leave the spot where I’d stood rooted for another 30 seconds, wondering what to do, there was another flurry of activity as the carts all came trundling back, out of the back alleyways, each one to its exact previous spot.  The flaps were lifted and the naked light bulbs were switched on.  

The audio tapes stall-holder put the tape back into my hand, and said, “That one’s 10 dollars.”

Most surrealistic, I tell you.

(Hong Kong, December 1974)