Theme
It was an ordinary Sunday; I took my mother around the Hong Kong since it was her first visit to this city. When we took a walk in Central, we saw a lot of people who are nor local neither from mainland sat around HSBC building and I guessed that they are from Africa. With a watching of a film called Still man, I realized that those people are Filipinos. Central is one of the most prosperous areas in Hong Kong and the HSBC Building is a fascinating architecture in the world. The poor attire and awkward activities of Filipinos, however, give a large contrast with the surrounding. Compared with that, Hong Kong people who dress neatly and have a very fast pace of life (RocApply) are more fit with the city. Therefore, there are many contrasts in this city whether between human and human, human and buildings. Especially, the contrasts are much more distinct in the busy areas and HSBC building which has a unique architectural design is one of the examples.
HSBC Building
HSBC building which is a revolutionary 99,000-metre-square architecture (Ravenscroft,2019) is located in Central. One of the reasons that I choose this building for my video essay is that the characteristic structure of the building is quite attractive to me. There are two lions in the front of the building and HSBC has installed two cannon shaped maintenance cranes on the roof, pointing directly at the Bank of China. However, I cannot understand the meaning of the design. What is more, between the structural columns, office floors are raised and there is space for people to pass underneath the building but I am quite curious that why people, the Filipinos, are concentrated at this space. Since, around HSBC building, there are lots of luxury stores such as Chanel and Louis Vuitton and Financial building such as JP Morgan so the activity of the Filipino in this place is not unmatched with the surrounding circumstance.
Method of conducting the research
I conducted my research by doing field visit and online research. By doing online research, I found that the construction of HSBC building is quite unbelievable and sophisticated. The architect of the building place’s structure and services on the edge of the building frees up interior space for large open-plan offices and natural light is the main source of lighting inside the building. However, it was quite pity that I had no qualification to enter the HSBC building so I could not see the interior structure quite distinctly. Instead, I took a video from the bottom of the building which is made of glass to see the indoor environment. I also took a picture of the structure at the top which was quite like a tank with two-gun muzzle pointing at the Bank of China by using wide-shot, so the whole appearance of the building can be seen. Besides, I found that the Filipinos only concentrated around the HSBC building on Sunday because they only had Sundays off. Therefore, I needed to take the video on a Sunday with my phone and I decided to record the HSBC building and the Filipinos separately at first. Then I recorded the building and the people in the same shot in order to emphasis the contrast and the feeling of strangeness.
Video production
The content of my video is consisted of three parts which are the HSBC building, the Filipinos, and the contrast between them. Most of the frames in the video are shoot by wide-angle mode. In the first part, I introduce the structure of the HSBC building from the entrance by the two representative lion figurines. Then the scene describes the underneath situation of the building and the interior structure of the building is seen through the vitreous bottom. After that, the audience can see the whole appearance of the HSBC building and the most interesting design which is thought by me, the two cannon shaped maintenance cranes pointing directly at the Bank of China, is showed. The second part of the video demonstrates the activities of Filipinos around the HSBC building. The Filipinos chat, eat, dance, and run a small business in the video and it is quite unmatched with the surrounding spaces which is showed by the third part of the video.
Reflections
Hong Kong is a highly prosperous free port and an international metropolis but the lifestyle of people in Hong Kong is quite different. Generally, people living in Hong Kong are thought to dress neatly and work in tall buildings with lots of salary. However, there are still many people who are homeless without jobs. Most of Filipinos in HK, labelled as “apathetic” about Hong Kong in addition to being poor and uneducated from a “backwards country.” (Constable,1997),are domestic workers and most of these workers were mothers, grandmothers, or eldest daughters, working to save money for their children, seeking better living standards with higher wages than in the Philippines (Hodder). Hong Kong is a city that does not have laws limiting the maximum working hours per day or week so the only time for Filipinos domestic workers to have a rest is on Sunday and that is the reason why so many Filipinos are concentrated around the HSBC building. Hence, the difference of living standard is very large in Hong Kong. The contrast is not only between the human and human and human and buildings, but also buildings and buildings. For example, the buildings in Central such as HSBC building are quite different with the buildings in Tsing Yi which is relatively poor and habitable. All in all, Hong Kong is a city that is full of contrast.
Reference
- Cable News Network. (n.d.). The Philippines’ migrant workers, and the children left behind. CNN. https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2020/11/asia/hong-kong-filipino-helpers-dst/
- Guardian News and Media. (2017, March 10). “that one day is all you have”: How Hong Kong’s domestic workers seized Sunday. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/mar/10/sunday-sit-in-inside-hong-kong-weekly-domestic-worker-resistance
- Hong Kong lifestyle and culture. Hong Kong Lifestyle and Culture – Apply & Study in | Universities. (n.d.).
- Nicole Constable,(Aug,1997), Sexuality and Discipline among Filipina Domestic Workers in Hong Kong
- Ravenscroft, T. (n.d.). Foster’s HSBC Building in Hong Kong is a revolutionary high-tech skyscraper. Foster’s Hong Kong HSBC building is a revolutionary high-tech skyscraper. https://www.dezeen.com/2019/11/27/norman-foster-hsbc-building-hong-kong-bank/amp/
- Rupert Hodder(n.d.). A Filipino community in Chinatown? Filipino migrant workers in Hong Kong
Student name: Lu Yibin
UID: 3035951973
I appreciate your investigation into the contrast between the skyscrapers in Central and the users of the public areas of the buildings on Sunday. Your video shows the occupation of domestic workers on their day off in the capital areas of the city. You can use a more rigorous approach in filming these areas, so as to have a clearer visual language. More analysis on the contrast demonstrated from this phenomena will help strengthen your argument, and avoid the stereotypical view of domestic workers, it will lead to better and more original insights.