But if Karen Cheung, author of The Impossible City: A Hong Kong Memoir, were to read such an introduction, she might ask: who is this essay for? Because to write the city in 2022 is not purely a reportorial act but also a political one, especially if done from afar. My credibility - which is determined by many more factors beyond language - might depend on who you ask. Now what kind of narrator would that make me? Unreliable, for my limited view of a city where most people speak Cantonese? Or necessary, even neutral, using the only words in which you would understand the story? To do any of this, I would have to describe these scenes in English because this is the language in which I have best known Hong Kong. If it were summer, I could describe for you the impossible heat if winter, the cold that felt frigid until the year I left for places north of the equator, where winter meant snow and dying phone batteries and calling home.
HOW TO BEGIN this essay on Hong Kong? I could start by describing for you what it’s like to stand on a rock overlooking Victoria Harbor at noon, feeling the very Hong Kong brand of awe that stirs when a skyscraper reflects a curve in a nearby hill.
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