[Field-Homework 3] Mobile city – Dai Pai Dong

[Video Essay] Mobile city – Dai Pai Dong

A flare from the turnaround corner in the Shek Kip Mei Street caught my eyes, alongside some foggy smoke, a crowded yet lively picture came to me. The night comes, and so does the life of Dai Pai Dong ‘Oi Man Saang (愛文生)’ starts. The nostalgic, lively, crowded, unsorted and mobile representation is fascinating. Therefore, I would like to discover more with this video essay. 

In this video, I specifically choose to use an old DV camcorder to collect all the footage in order to build a nostalgic and lofi feeling in the entire video. The editing is without any input of background music or narration but all are the actual noises from the scenes. There is no special effect or filter applied but the adjustment on colour has been made. The video purposely creates a realistic atmosphere and allows the audience to see and observe the real life in Dai Pai Dong. The main purpose of the video is aiming to discuss one of the most significant characteristics of Dai Pai Dong – mobility. Hence, the video collects the scenes from the perspectives of the overview environmental setting, the diner and the kitchen (as the working environment). In particular observing the mobile movements of people, their actions, the pass-by pedestrians and vehicles, etc. These would then lead to the discussion on the mobility of Dai Pai Dong.    

‘Oi Man Saang (愛文生)’ belongs to Single Unit Type Dai Pai Dong, in which the stall owner will maximize the usage of space by layouting most use of the available street space, allowing for efficient stall operation and the establishment of dining areas. Dai Pai Dong has indeed been described as “architectural without design.” The government’s food stall licensing regime limits its basic geographic unit. As a result, Dai Pai Dong has integrated itself into the surrounding architecture and into the streets due to the extension of function and actual spatial needs in operating the stalls. Hence, these properties create a very unique and exotic street view. As shown at the beginning of my video, we can see that the diner is eating right down residential buildings with the open-spaced stall on the ground floor (00:00-00:42). We can imagine that during the daytime, the stalls are just regular size while the other stores are open for business. Yet, when night comes and other stores have been shut down from business, the size of the Dai Pai Dong will expand to occupy the whole street. It then creates a very classic nostalgic view: the diner is sitting in sharp-red-coloured plastic chairs with the polyester sheet covering the wood table, and the steel gates and the red-word-white-background store banner are just right beneath them (00:28-00:38). The property of extensive mobility in the change of size is interesting to think of. I believe it is somehow related to the significant property of Hong Kong that is about how people are trying to maximize their goods with only limited sources. 

Apart from mobility on store size, another mobility I would like to discuss is the kitchen space as a working space. Unlike our usual understanding that a kitchen should be presented at the back of a restaurant, Dai Pai Dong is having a very free and highly mobile working area in which everything seems can be done in the outdoor space. We can see that from the clips (01:11-02:42), from the food ingredients to the chef and the cookstoves, the setting is highly mobilized. Especially for the chefs who are cooking and dealing with the food. The cooking process is having a hidden system that motivates everything to work properly. The environment is exposed to the external environment which all the diner and even traffics are free to move. The clip from 02:15 is particularly worth seeing. We can see that the cookstove is on the right side while the cleaning area is in the middle between it and the recycling area. Despite the hygienic factor that we should consider, the significant characteristic of Hong Kong as a mobile and dense city is well shown – efficiency. All the things are unrestrained yet work together systematically and so organized even though it seems to be disordered. 

People come and go. Hong Kong is always a mobile city. Dai Pai Dong shows us the representation of how this land is working and how the people live and survive.

Fong Wing Sze 3035837701

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