Hong Kong Part II

I touched down in Hong Kong for the second time and was greeted at the airport by the girl who had given me a reason to return. Immediately I was hesitant to be in her company. We hopped the train from the airport to Wan Chai and upon entering her neighborhood, was once again greeted with Hong Kong’s incredible humidity. On top of high 80 degree temperatures, I felt like I had stepped onto the surface of the sun. Crowds of people did their best to separate us, as I followed her with my overly packed duffle bag. She led me through the maze, down busy streets, through the district, among the sounds of construction to her front door.

The door stood out to me because it was freshly shined aluminum, with bars where a window might have once been. Four stories up, in a an elevator fit for two at it’s maximum, and we had finally arrived at her front door. A black cat ran down the hallway as we entered her apartment.

“My roomies are gone for the week!”, she excitedly said. “Care for a Tetley Tea?”

“I’d love one.”

As she prepared the tea, I dropped my bag, and exhaustedly sat on her bed. The flight from Portland to Hong Kong took about 18 hours, and I was ready to sleep. With the time change and it being the middle of the afternoon, we both decided that it would be smarter to push through and go to bed at a normal evening hour to avoid throwing my sleep pattern off completely.

I wanted to smoke a cigarette, in which case she showed me her rooftop balcony. As I stepped outside into the noise and heat, I sat down. Four stories above street level, I looked directly across the street at the construction site, which was louder than I had ever heard. Jack hammers, drills, cranes, and power tools hummed as I inhaled what seemed like 1,000 drags. As fast as I had sat down, the sooner I returned to her air conditioned bedroom.

After brief conversation and pleasantries, we hit the streets to grab a bite to eat. As we sat down, she was overly excited to see me. Leading up to seeing her again, the week prior she had attempted to FaceTime with me at least 30 times. Her night was my early morning, and vice versa, so anytime she called, I was either asleep, or tired, and conversation was short.

We argued about our status, and who cared more, or less on my end. Her overly eager FaceTime regime had annoyed me, to say the least, and by the time we finished our first meal reunited, I was ready for an early retirement. We made it back to her apartment, and I quickly fell asleep. Right before I dozed off, I sensed her frustration. She could sense something was wrong, but she couldn’t tell what. I didn’t care enough to fill her in.

When I woke up, it was the middle of the night, and the construction had stopped. She awoke, as well. Through her paper thin walls, I heard what sounded like a clicking.

“What is that sound?”, I asked.

“She must be using her cutting board!”, she laughed.

I laughed as well, but after at least an hour of the knife tapping the cutting board, I was ready to leave. She turned on music, some of which I hadn’t ever heard, and fell back asleep.

Several days passed, and we both went across town to meet my friends from college. After a short introduction, we all headed out to a bar to play beer pong together. I couldn’t help but notice the large number of hookers walking the streets. Some of the girls looked as though they were 14 years old.

“The laws here are a lot different”, the British girl said.

As the night went on, I drank more and more, which made me smoke more and more. Tonight I would stay with my friends from home in their rooftop apartment, and the girl I had returned for and already grown old over, went back to her apartment alone. I didn’t feel bad, which actually made me wonder why I had returned to Hong Kong for a second time in the course of a few months. My friends!

They showed me their new place, and it was wonderful. I remember it being on the top floor of their building, what had to have been at least 20-30 stories high. They had their own balcony overlooking the city and the streets below. During the days, they went to their jobs, which left me alone to explore the city’s parks, views, restaurants, and shops, as well as relax. At this point in my life I seemed to be on a permanent vacation, even though to others I was an “artist”.

I woke up one morning, and the apartment was empty. Ramen was the meal of the day, with an added egg, which I had recently become a fan of. As I ate my ramen noodles on the balcony, sipping a beer to wash it down, I peered down to the streets below in awe at the amount of people on their daily commutes. I had brought along a camera, and began snapping photos of the city skyline, as well as the 30 story drop below. This routine combined with city strolls continued for a few days, until my life changed forever.

For some reason on this day, the street was not as busy. I took a photo of my feet dangling from the rooftop over the streets below. As I was editing it from color to black and white, a sudden feeling came across me I had never felt. My heart sunk, and I stood up as I lit a cigarette. I cannot explain why, but the thought of “what if someone jumped from here?” crossed my mind. As I looked across the street at the high rise building above the 7-11 across from the outdoor soccer courts, I saw a girl.

She was a smaller woman, young in age, and she was looking out the only open window on the entire building’s facade. Forty stories above the ground and she was dangling her arms with her head against the window’s edge. I stared at her for no longer than 20 seconds. It was then that she climbed up, placed her knees on the window sill, as to balance, and jumped. I watched her fall from at least 40 stories, hurling towards the ground for what seemed like an eternity. As she fell, her body spun and flipped, until she crashed into a glass awning above the 7-11.

I could not believe my eyes. It was as though I had an intuition that this was going to happen, and unfortunately for me, I was probably the only person who saw the suicide happen from start to finish. I grabbed my camera, and raced towards the elevator. Down to the street level floor I went, and as I hit the lobby, raced across the street to the scene. As I came within 5 feet of her, dangling above me, her head closest to the sidewalk and her hair slowly dripping the water that had collected on the glass awning, I snapped a photo.

At the time I took it only so I could prove to my friend’s what I had seen that day, but I failed to think of the disrespect I was doing the victim by doing so. Her body was contorted, as she dangled bright white, with zero traces of blood, as onlookers franticly called the authorities. It was a spectacle, and I had seen the entire thing develop from beginning to end. I had never witnessed death, and up until that point I had always felt invincible, but that had quickly become a mindset of the past.

When the scene became too chaotic and taped off by police, firetrucks, and paramedics, I returned to the apartment, cracked a beer, lit a cigarette, and sat on the balcony once again. I was in shock, and the first thing I did was text my friend a photo and brief description about what I had just witnessed.

“Are you ok?”, he asked.

“Just shook up. I can’t believe I saw the whole thing happen!”, I replied.

“I’m really sorry you had to see that. I’ll be home in an hour.”

For the next hour I couldn’t help but stare at the 3 or 4 photos I had snapped among the madness. She looked so peaceful in that state, She went from a person with no hope and seemingly zero reason to live, to painless, as her soul entered into a world of no pain and silence. I, on the other hand, had been witness to the most traumatic event in my 27 year old life, and my capability of processing the trauma was little to none. I had never witnessed death, and the only funeral I had ever been to was one of remembrance for my grandpa, in which his body was not present.

The following week crawled by, as I tried my best to enjoy the city. I sat at the outdoor courts as a spectator, watching the soccer match unfold, as a man in a striped shirt, fedora, and black framed glasses approached me with a camera. He told me that I stood out to him because of my beard, and that most men in Asia did not grow long beards. My energy to him was creative, and we quickly began exchanging photos of our artwork. After about an hour, I had told him what I witnessed, and upon responding, said, “We have a legend in Hong Kong that when a person dies, the first person to see them after they pass is the body that their spirit enters into, so that they can live on.”

“I must get going! Very nice meeting you!”, he said, as we shook hands, and he left as quickly as he came.