[Field-Homework 3] Ghastly City – [Video Essay] Ghastly City: the Sheung Wan MTR station and the Central-Western District

Link: https://youtu.be/keA98Hq0m0w

The theme of the video essay is “Ghastly City”. Ghastly, in this project, does not equate to literally haunted, but instead it depicts the high stress and lack of personal development that most of the working class in Hong Kong are currently experiencing, thus raises the question of whether Hong Kong’s international financial centre status hinders the cultural diversity of Hong Kong. MTR stations are utilized as a medium to show the repetitiveness and high functionality of the city’s work culture, with most MTR lines having a frequency of 2-3 minutes per train on weekdays.

The film adopts the perspective of an average working class in Hong Kong trying to find moments of peace and quiet in the bustling central business district of Hong Kong, the Central and Western District. The pace of the film at the start with chaotic and fast disclaimers from the MTR broadcast system in the audio, but uncomfortably long still shots to give a perspective on the bleakness and anxiety that follows a worker even after his/her working hours. Symmetrical filming was used to show the compact and geometrical design in MTR stations to display how patterns and efficiency are often prioritized in Hong Kong.

The film then utilizes the closed Rumsey station as a metaphor for the discontinuity of culture in Hong Kong. The Rumsey station was an abandoned station, originally planned to be the terminus of the East Kowloon line in a proposal published in 1970. However, when the first MTR line (the Island line) was introduced, Sheung Wan became the last stop of the line instead. The unfinished railway of the supposedly Rumsey stop was left idle and fenced off next to the to Chai Wan railway platform until 2011, when the railway platform was eventually walled up as a pathway from the concourse to platforms. Reasons of the shelving were never disclosed, which prompted an urban legend amongst the public: Some suggested that the Rumsey station was shelved away because of a fatal injury of a construction worker. Rumoured sightings of a ghost jumping off the railway were circulated online, however these apparent fatal injuries were never recorded in official documents and newspapers. Historians speculated the real reason for the closing of the station was actually the shortage of costs instead.

There are several reasons why this urban legend has come about. Culturally speaking, the MTR is a relatively new way of transport as compared to trams and ferries, which had over 100 year of history. It is naturally disturbing to consider a place haunted by a relatively new soul. In a metropolis like Hong Kong, the train is a world of itself – it is a travelling city that encompasses its citizen’s different purposes, with every passenger hoping to reach a different destination. The thought of a person dying for his/her occupation itself is already well enough terrifying, but the idea of someone dying on the way, in this case literally, to reaching his/her desired destination fully reflects the obsessive work ethics and demanding work culture of modern Hong Kong, rendering the thought phantasmagoric. It is no coincidence that this urban legend has come from a station that is in the Central Western District, an area where economic activities and commercial exchanges are prevalent and working classes’ mental health are constantly declining from stress. It shares the same idea as most movies depicting Japanese apartment ghosts, where loneliness is presented in a form of a ghost in isolated but crowded apartment buildings. In this case, the Sheung Wan station E exit concourse today has a less efficient design than its counterparts in the same district, as any available platforms could only be reached by going down two floors, with a spacious but empty floor of separating the upper concourse and lower railways. Interestingly, the empty space is where the past abandoned railway is walled. In comparison, the Admiralty MTR station have escalators of varying length that lead to different floors of platforms respectively, with transit lines crossing opposite of each other. Moreover, the exit E concourse is separated from the rest of the exits A,B,C,D, and the two concourses are not directly accessible to each other. The inefficiency of this design creates an isolation from the rest of the MTR stations on the same line, such that although the MTR is often crowded, there seem to be an estrangement and separation both among its passengers and their destinations.

The soul of the city is its culture. The accelerating urbanization of Hong Kong has prompted its citizens to be constantly on the road and keeping up with the pace, which is the exact purpose of mass transit systems. The identity of Hong Kong is slowly fading away; constant renovations that overtake traditional methods of travel and renumeration of historical buildings like Victorian styled buildings and Tong Laus are all considered essential policies as economic development calls for more efficient land use and transport. The cultural elements that truly incorporate the collective memory of Hong Kongers could only be seen scattered around in the CBD; hawkers working in narrow alleyways amongst chain retail stores, Tong Laus existing only in small lanes instead of the main streets, wet markets renovated and deprived of its original purpose, and the old model of trams only available when in celebration. It is of no doubt that the constant chase for efficiency and perfection has burnt Hong Kong out of its own distinctiveness, manifesting itself as a ghost of what it once was.

References: