Taking a week off to recharge, but here’s a snippet from when you are walking on the street with a companion during the Hungry Ghost festival month!
Hungry Ghost walk.
You continue along Nathan Road, a rapid-fire chime accompanying the green pedestrian light. A smell like damp cardboard wafts out of a cul-de-sac, as large warm droplets plop on the pavement, splashing onto your shoes, steady drips from air-conditioning units high above. You look up at the tong lau with their protruding balconies, and sidestep the worst of the splatter zone.
Another pedestrian crossing, then you stroll past a plaster wall, empty but for the ghost of a pawn shop sign, the scar left behind where the lettering was removed. Just above head height, reflexology and foot massage billboards in simplified Chinese. On the street, sandwich boards in faded, coated plastic. Through a break in the phalanx of buildings above, you glimpse a bare metal frame, several storeys high, where the neon signs used to hang.
Ahead, clothes shops and property agencies and a burger joint. A vacant shopfront with an overflowing jumble of For Rent signs, Centaline and Midland and more you don’t recognise, enthusiastically pasted over each other, contoured like a three-dimensional map. You take a deep breath, the fresh air steadying you. A man approaches, hawking loudly, then sees you and redirects his spit to the gutter.
A bright orange cylindrical rubbish bin stands near the railing, the shallow metal bowl on top full of cigarette butts, some still glowing amber. Black-and-white road signs announce Ning Po Street, Nanking Street. A sign advertises karaoke, backlit by an array of white fluorescents, the right half gone dark. Pink and blue neons beckon you into a “health centre”, the blinking arrow pointing up a dark narrow staircase like bait. From a mahjong parlour comes the sharp crack of a tile slammed on wood.
An old woman blocks most of the sidewalk, an iron rod in her hand. She’s stoking the flames in a metal barrel alongside offerings of poached chicken and barbecued pork in oily styrofoam boxes. The makeshift furnace blazes, spitting out ash and embers and choking black smoke that overpowers the minibus exhaust at the kerbside.
Danny stands a few metres away from the old woman, giving her space.
“Not many young ones carry on the traditions now.”
He’s quiet, just watching the smoke curl up.
You confess that you’ve seen these furnaces around this time of year, but you’ve never thought about what they represent.
“The paper houses turn into real houses on the other side.” Danny gazes at the woman. “But really… it’s for us. A reminder.”
You want to ask what kind of reminder he means, but he’s transfixed by the flames.
The old woman gently lowers a paper Playstation into the fire. It crackles as it burns, too loud for something made out of paper. You don’t think about who it might be for.
Danny turns his gaze away. He moves to a gap between the concrete wall and the old woman, and signals with his eyes for you to come along. You squeeze past, and Danny follows, a last glance at the fire before he catches up.
