It doesn't really smell dirty because everything is immaculately well kept: household and commercial rubbish and recycling are collected routinely; litter isn't an issue and it's even illegal to eat or drink on public transport. But having lived in Switzerland and Denmark (I'll leave France out of that list for obvious reasons), I must say there is something comparatively unfresh about the HK air - and it looks pretty hazy too. But perhaps hazy air is unavoidable in one of the most densely populated places in the world - and in fact the haze isn't overly noticeable on a daily basis because the sky only peaks through the gaps between the high rises and sky scrappers very occasionally. What is noticeable are certain smells...
The smell of soup evaporates into the streets and lingers steamy and salty like a big thick vat of stock is constantly bubbling away on a hill above us. Whenever I leave our apartment, the little man who 'looks after' our building (we're not really sure what he does apart from wearing blue overalls and occasionally pressing the button to call the lift when we arrive) is always slurping away at a bowl of soup. When I walk out onto the street the soup smell gets stronger and stronger as the aromas from all the kitchens and chinese restaurants and cafes along the way come together to create a cacophony of congee fumes (a popular cantonese dish which is basically porridge made from rice cooked in a lot of water).
The smell of soup evaporates into the streets and lingers steamy and salty like a big thick vat of stock is constantly bubbling away on a hill above us. Whenever I leave our apartment, the little man who 'looks after' our building (we're not really sure what he does apart from wearing blue overalls and occasionally pressing the button to call the lift when we arrive) is always slurping away at a bowl of soup. When I walk out onto the street the soup smell gets stronger and stronger as the aromas from all the kitchens and chinese restaurants and cafes along the way come together to create a cacophony of congee fumes (a popular cantonese dish which is basically porridge made from rice cooked in a lot of water).
Another distinct smell is moth balls- or at least some of the pungent chemicals used to produce moth balls. It hit me when I entered the lift in our apartment building for the first time and I was immediately taken back to a memory of me at about eight years old at my Grandmas then new house, helping her to unpack boxes of excessively moth balled clothes. In Hong Kong the smell lingers around the main entrances and lifts to most buildings, as well as in the markets and local clothes shops in the city. The Moth ball pong was particularly present last weekend as we trailed from market stall to clothes store searching for cheap items to create the perfect Bollywood costume for Martin's Christmas party. We put a pretty decent outfit together in the end but not without exposing ourselves to some highly -stinky not to mention toxic - smells.
Star Anise is another key player on the Hong Kong aroma front. A rather dominant member of the spice family, it appears to be an essential ingredient in chinese medicine and in most chinese cooking, especially where meat is concerned. Whole (and partial) grilled/ steamed chickens and ducks hang for sale in windows almost everywhere and while the smell of cooking meat can be overpowering, it tends to be sweetened by the star-anise marinade shining and crisping around it as it cooks. Star anise for medicinal purposes is sold in small stores of which there are literally thousands, all seemingly selling exactly the same produce stocked in huge jars or barrels and can only be compared to Olde Worlde Chinese versions of Holland and Barrett. They have nuts and dried fruit, dried mushrooms, endless spices and most surprisingly (and smelly) dried seafood bits. I could often smell fish as I walked past these shops but it took me a few days to realise that some of the barrels and bags at the shop fronts were actually filled with shriveled up dried prawns, dried sardines and packs of what I now recognise as freeze dried shredded cuttle fish. The range- and stench- is endless.
Incense is another very popular - much more pleasant- HK scent. It burns almost constantly in Buddhist temples- two of which are located on our street: one is quite big and bling with statues and altars and offerings while the other is much more subtle and it took me over a week to realise it was a temple, not a scruffy little cafe. What both temples have in common is that their ceilings are covered with huge incense spirals which hang down, burning for days on end and perfuming the streets below. You can also find many small scale hand made Buddhist shines which people put outside their shops and apartments on street level. Every evening as night sets in, the locals light the little red lamps inside the shrines and set alight to incense sticks which they tuck inside them. For me, this gentle evening waft of incense is perfect because it helps disguise some of the more disagreeable notes which also intensify at this peak time when the shop keepers push around the buckets and bags of dried fish stock and move them inside for the night and fill up the meat racks with peking duck to sizzle and attract the punters on their way home.
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| Smelly sticky chicky |
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| Dried fish bits |
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| Drying fish bits |
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| Sweet smelling incense shrines |
