Hong Kong

Hong Kong hit me differently to anywhere else I'd been — it's a city that stacks itself vertically like it's running out of room, which in a way it is. From the top of Victoria Peak, looking down at that wall of towers pressing against the harbour, I kept thinking how a place this dense still manages to feel like it has breathing space. The sky was grey and low that day, the kind of overcast that flattens the light and makes the buildings look almost painted on.

The harbour is the real centre of everything here. Standing on the Tsim Sha Tsui promenade with the clock tower behind me and the IFC tower rising across the water on the island side, the scale of it all takes a moment to process. Ferries cut through, a cruise liner sat anchored in the middle distance, and the whole skyline just sat there, completely unbothered by how extraordinary it looked. At night, with the Symphony of Lights show going, the buildings along the waterfront lit up in sequences of blue and gold and white, and laser beams swept across the sky from the rooftops — I've never seen a city perform for itself quite like that.

Ocean Park took us away from the concrete grid and up into the hills on the southern side of Hong Kong Island. From the rooftop terrace there, the bay opened up below in that particular flat turquoise colour you only get when the sea is calm and the sky is hazy, with forested islands sitting in the middle of it. The dolphin arena had those same hills and water behind it, so even something as artificial as a theme park show had the real landscape folded into it. That mix of city and nature, crammed together on a small piece of land between mountains and sea, is what I keep coming back to when I think about Hong Kong.