Those Were the Days
When I think of my list of favourite places, several categories immediately come to mind. Because of my background in journalism and architecture, these places tend to be landmarks, tourist attractions, great works of architecture and heritage buildings – the kinds of places that most people recall when asked to list their favourite places.
But when I think about it more carefully, I realize that my very favourite place must be somewhere I love to visit and stay as long as I can. A place is an objective and physical environment, however, my feelings towards that place are a totally subjective – even a mental – experience.
I tend to find the answer by recalling the places I visit repeatedly in my dreams, where the image of the physical space becomes blurred and unreal, yet my sensations, mood, and emotions towards that place are still so real and clear.
My favourite place turns out not to be a particular landmark – Instead, it is a place that gives me fond memories of childhood, playing with neighbourhood friends or spending time alone. The shattered memories of my favourite place are like a kaleidoscope of mirror-like reflections, where objects fall into a mysterious space where they might get erased, dismantled, mixed, grouped, and reassembled. I might not even be able to distinguish which things are real and which are mirror reflections in a dream-like dimension.
My favourite childhood play area was a generic, empty alley space that connected several apartments in our residential complex – a fairly commonly occurrence in urban areas of Hong Kong. The area was composed of several levels with irregularshaped outdoor concrete grounds, indoor stone tile space underneath the apartment buildings, stairs, curved ramps, mailbox areas, underground parking lots, connected rooftops providing different views of the city, as well as convoluted, sloped, covered, and uncovered corridors. For all the children who lived in the residential complex where I spent my childhood, This was a fantastic playground.
Children not only played badminton and rode bicycles in the open space, but they also imagined or interpreted those spaces as home, school, market, or restaurants. The handrail of the stairs became a slide. The small crawl spaces underneath the stairs were tents in a campground or individual “houses.” The concrete fence, which was about a foot high, was perfect for a countertop to serve food for a tea party or an imaginative street market place.
There were no limitations to communicating with neighbours and newcomers. We almost never used telephones. We just talked (or shouted) to each other from the space at ground level to another child who had to stay at home (several floors above) and was not allowed to go out until his or her homework was finished. Kids played together usually after school and especially during festivals like the Mid-Autumn Festival. To celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival, we grouped together after dinner to form a continuous line and walked through the alley space holding lanterns of different types and sizes. We also brought mooncakes and fruits to share with each other. That concrete fence, our usual imaginative countertop, became a real countertop to share festive foods. The candlelight from the lanterns made perfect temporary “restaurant” lighting for our gathering at night.
This play space is still my favourite place after all these years. It is the place where I escape to (in my dreams now); it calms me down and lifts me up at the same time.