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| Ilustration. Best Western Hotel, Kowloon Hong Kong (Emage: Hotelmix.id) |
Urbanspace.asia, KOWLOON, HONG KONG - On a
spring bed in room 1617 of the 4-star hotel called Best Western, I lay down my
body for a moment to unwind. A moment later I grabbed the food package on a
table and enjoyed it. A halal menu of Indonesian-style fried rice with a mixture
of sea food, egg omelettes and Javanese crackers. For an empty stomach and very
hungry, of course this menu is quite tasty.
I couldn't finish the menu. Isn't
it delicious? Of course not. Maybe it's because meal time has passed, so
appetite starts to decline slowly. Finally, half of this wrapped fried rice had
to be left over and I wrapped it again with a rubber band. Not to be thrown in
the trash waiting to go stale and then become consumed by ants, but it will be
a friend to stay up late that night.
Staying up a bit late for the
first night in Hong Kong, I think is important for a scientific mission. There
is a foreknowledge of the reading that I have to encounter and even dialogue
with the facts I am encountering now. Apart from that, I also received the
mandate to make a journalistic report (travel notes) about Hong Kong which will
be published on the Tebar News news portal. Even writer friends in Makassar
City, via SMS, always remind them not to forget to bring souvenirs when they
return from Hong Kong, namely writing.
So far, I only know about Hong
Kong through reading East Asian history books, newspapers and newsletters, through
internet sites, as well as oral stories from people. But now all of that is
manifested in the form of direct experience because I had the opportunity to
visit here. And I have enjoyed a small part or half of it along the
approximately 45 minute journey from the airport.
Hong Kong is only a small country
and the Island of the Gods, Bali, is wider. As I have read, the area is only
2,755 square kilometers, while the area of Bali Island is 5,780 square
kilometers. This narrow area is what "forces" the Hong Kong
government to maximize its country's development. Creating spaces for reclaimed
products to grow skyscrapers and new city spaces.
Inevitably, Hong Kong has become
the most vertical city in the world. It is famous as one of the countries in
Asia that is visited by many tourists and has even earned the title of being
the 11th most famous tourist destination in the world.
Who doesn't know Hong Kong?, it
is one of the world's most famous cities located in the southeastern part of
China, precisely on the Pearl River Estuary and the South China Sea. This city
is sprinkled with skyscrapers and has Victoria Harbor which is Asia's largest
port and is ranked 3rd in the world after San Francisco in the United States
and Rio De Janeiro in Brazil. That is how history explains the development and
progress of this country.
The cold night started to bite my
body. Seeped into the pores of the skin, pierced the bone marrow and I
shivered. The combination of the Hong Kong climate at night which reaches 19
degrees Celsius with the cold air conditioning in the room, made my body unable
to fight it.
I immediately grabbed the jacket
that I had previously hung in one corner of the room and put it on. This jacket
made from thick fabric helps warm some of my body. Meanwhile, next to me, I saw
my beloved wife, who was also on this trip, asleep in her dreams, with a 90
percent thick blanket covering her body because of the cold.
I saw a bottled instant milk
drink available on a small table in the corner. I immediately approached it and
drank half of it. I hope that a glass of drink and a bit of this pastry will
help me find various writing inspirations so that I can really bring writing
souvenirs to my friends like they asked for.
Unlike usual, I use the night to
improve the products in my online shop, that night I continued the process of
contemplation again. I try to organize forgetting and organizing memories about
history. About the Hong Kong of the past. And as a former student who studied
the city from a spatial sociological perspective with a historical approach, I
am interested in starting the process of rediscovering the city of Hong Kong
from the aspect of geographical space.
I tried to recall several
concepts of urban space that I wrote about when completing my doctoral program
studies in 2011.
"Cities are socially formed
not without human intervention, but are full of the dynamics of institutions
and social relations. "In fact, various spaces in the city that have been
given and have meaning in such a way, are actually formed by a social process that
is constantly changing from time to time," that is more or less like the
pre-discourse I once wrote.
Imagine again how Hans Dieter
Evers, the author of the book "The Meaning of Power in Social Spaces in
Southeast Asia" wrote 3 (three) construction designs (emic construction,
cultural construction, and economic construction) which were used as a
conceptual framework for viewing changes. city.
From here I imagined the figures
of tough architects and visionary city planners who were behind the magnificent
mega development projects of Hong Kong City which is said to have more than
7,600 skyscrapers.
"But never mind, I'd better
save this list of questions while waiting for tomorrow's visit," I said to
myself.
My continued curiosity about Hong
Kong's geography, which was still nagging at the back of my mind, prompted me
to grab a gadget from a bag.
I immediately opened the
Wikipedia site and read it. From there I learned that Hong Kong's geographic
position is in the South China Sea, 60 km (37 ml) east of Macau on the opposite
side of the Pearl River Delta. Hong Kong is surrounded by the South China Sea
to the east, south and west, and borders Shenzhen City to the north, across the
Sham Chun River (Shenzhen River).
I also read Wikipedia and found
that most of Hong Kong's land area consists of mountains with sharp steepness
and this causes less than 25 percent of the area to be built up. The remaining
around 40 percent of the land area is used as city parks and nature reserves.
One interesting thing from this
information is that the low-altitude vegetation in Hong Kong is dominated by
secondary rainforest, because the primary forest was destroyed during World War
II. So where is the concentration of city development?
This online excyclopedia explains
that most of the city's development in this area is on the Kowloon Peninsula,
precisely along the north coast of Hong Kong Island and throughout the New
Territories. The highest point in this country is Tai Mo Shan, which is 957
meters (3,140 ft) above sea level.
Hong Kong's spatial structure,
with its long coastal area, means it has many rivers and beaches. It is not
surprising that UNESCO, on September 18 2011, included the Hong Kong National
Geopark in the Global Geoparks Network. The Hong Kong Geopark consists of 8
geo-areas divided along the Sai Kung volcanic rock area and the northeastern
New Territories sedimentary rock area.
From Room 1617 of the Best
Western Hotel, at least the process of "feeling the universe of Hong
Kong" continues, albeit through a combination of historical reading
memories and reading an online encyclopedia called Wikipedia. My pilgrimage to
Hong Kong's past took me to the peak of night and Hong Kong time was already
24.00 WH. I then............
*** Ahmadin's travel notes in
Hong Kong (2017) and in full can be read in the book "Meraba Semesta
Hong Kong"