The Cyberpunk Spirit in Hong Kong’s Scavenger Lanes
Urban Hong Kong is one of the most densely populated places in the modern world. With a unique cityscape and ambiance, and an East meets West ethos, the city is sometimes seen as a prototypical setting for the “cyberpunk” genre of science fiction. Cyberpunk fiction evokes a dystopian combination of low life on mean streets overlaid with menacing high tech. The Bladerunner films, and Ghost in the Shell, among other works, channelled this aesthetic.
While there aren’t any flying cars cruising the canyons of Hong Kong’s streets yet, the cyberpunk vibe is not hard to find. Venture into the depths of the scavenger lanes in Mong Kok or Wanchai at night and you’re there. You’ll find yourself in the company of denizens of the city who lurk in puddles of light and neon shadows; a world of decaying tenements squeezed between soaring monoliths of glass and steel. Stained walls crumble from the depredations of mould and moisture. Air conditioners on rusting racks drip onto grey laundry that hangs limply in the listless air. Cyberpunk indeed. No CGI necessary.
Scavenger lanes, narrow spaces that divide buildings from each other, are now more often referred to as service lanes, back lanes or alleys. They’re found everywhere in Hong Kong, but are mostly out of sight and out of mind. Back alleys are places where the decidedly low tech practicalities of garbage, sewage, water and electricity are on stark display. Most are utilitarian, gritty, sometimes odiferous places. But even in this practical, industrial realm there’s beauty to be found.
To walk in Hong Kong’s back lanes is to walk through a man-made jungle of pipes, wires and ducts that creep up and down the walls. A chorus of mechanical humming fills the air. There’s symmetry to be appreciated in these spaces and a dusky industrial beauty. Looking up, the lean spaces converge towards slivers of sky. The shadowy pools of light that illuminate the otherwise dark lanes at night are downright cinematic. Even dark lanes with little lighting are bathed in the warm glow of the overbearing towers.
Quintessentially urban spaces, the only signs of nature in most back alleys are the creatures that skitter at your feet. In the shadowy depths of others however, green leaves and the delicate fronds of ferns spring from concrete surfaces. Hardy banyan trees grow in impromptu and impossible places, their sinewy roots joining the wires and pipes that trail down to the earth. In these spaces, nature hasn’t quite yet succumbed to humanity’s urban onslaught.
The city’s back alleys provide an endless canvas for city dwellers to protest, comment and create. Graffiti, political and otherwise, adorns many walls. Spray paint is the medium of choice in the back lanes, but posters and signs abound. Some signs and stickers are functional and crassly commercial, but others offer more interesting wry social comment. Pause and look and there is found art to be discovered in the detritus abandoned along the lanes.
A few lanes have even been resurrected as formal art spaces. One such space, the Artlane project in Sai Ying Pun, is attractive and eminently instagram-able. The work’s not as dark and foreboding however as the un-curated, spontaneous and often subversive displays found in many back lanes. The anonymous urban artists who work in the shadows lend an air of mystery that cannot be replicated in a government-sponsored project.
Cyberpunk may be a product of fiction, but amid all the technology and sleek glass and steel, you can find it here in Hong Kong. Look no further than the scavenger lanes. No imagination needed.
