Mar Sánchez-Cascado |
Hong Kong (EFE)
Among his customers, Crystal Wang, who since she was a child played in the street of Ki Lung, in the district of Sham Shui Po, where the market originated. Together with her neighbors, she made dolls, jewelry with plastic beads and leather accessories.
They didn’t have to travel far from home to find the materials: in 1970s Hong Kong, Crystal bought everything she needed at the flea markets around her tiny apartment.
“Pang Jai was much more than a peddler’s market. It was part of the unique social fabric of the city, it was a symbol of self-determination and the ingenuity of the people in the face of bureaucracy”, the designer comments to EFE.
And it is that, in the former British colony, street creativity has always been present in this populous working-class neighborhood.
A woman searches for goods at a stall in the Pang Jai cloth market in Hong Kong, China. EFE/EPA/Jerome Favre
But with rising rents, gentrification and a deteriorating economy following strict restrictions during the pandemic, old Hong Kong has succumbed in favor of skyscrapers or public housing buildings.
«Unfortunately, it has not happened as with fabrics, that the stronger the union of the threads, the longer the fabric survives. That the market closes is a terrible loss for the union, without a doubt, “says Wang.
The artist explains that the ramshackle street bazaar, the oldest in the open air, earned her the nickname “Pang Jai,” which translates into Spanish as “little shacks,” because of its appearance.
With its awnings and patched sheet metal, it had the look of a temporary camp that had somehow managed to hold out for almost half a century.
A Hong Kong that no longer exists
Moving through the narrow aisles of the market was an experience similar to going through the digestive tract of a great textile beast.
With its chaotic maze of rolls of fabric stacked to the ceiling and transformed into stalls, each stall seemed improvised, with an informal structure, unusual in a city that increasingly favors order and regulation.
There was no way to distinguish one stall from another and, apart from the occasional homemade sign, it was very difficult to correctly associate a stall with its owner.
It all started with the construction of the subway in the late 1970s, when vendors located at the corner of Yen Chow Road and Lai Chi Kok Road.
Over the years, the merchants have helped designers, hobbyists, film and theater producers, or DIYers find something unique among their endless collection of surplus textiles.
But space in Hong Kong is a precious commodity, and the number of independent hawker stalls began to dwindle steadily as the city began its own gentrification process.
Thus, the Government saw an opportunity to develop the area, although it initially recognized the ‘unique contribution’ of the market to the local heritage, economy and fashion industry.
Yet no one has been able to save it: despite a consortium proposing a plan to renovate it and move it to other nearby areas, many of the merchants asked for more affordable rents or relocation plans that never came.
This Tuesday, the most famous Hong Kong market comes to an end, and with it who knows if the possible end of a modest but unique district, characteristic of the houses without elevator or “tong lau”, the classic low houses of the 20th century.
Anyone coming out of any subway station in the neighborhood can still find all those street markets flanked by concrete buildings, their once-glossy layers of paint now faded and peeling.
Walking through its narrow streets, one gets an idea of its history, defined by grimy buildings and stairways dotted with graffiti, as well as the charm of the old port, a wet market that still emanates pungent odors, pawnshops and even Chinese junkyards that are part of what remains of the local culture that has survived.