When Hong Kong residents retire to bed at night, most are blissfully unaware that the working day is just beginning for an entire workforce. In our 24-hour city, an army of people starts toiling after the sun has gone down, their path to work lit by the glow from a thousand bulbs. They keep the city's commercial wheels turning, its streets free of grime and crime, its supermarkets stocked and its neon lights burning. Bar staff, taxi-drivers, cleaners and emergency workers: these are the foot soldiers of the graveyard shift. But there are a host of others, from a wide range of trades and professions, who live a nocturnal life, greeting their children good morning at the end of their day, or saying goodbye to friends in a bar as they head to the office.
For some, it is economic circumstance that drives them into night-shift work. With many staff either migrant workers or school drop-outs, and with Hong Kong's labour laws favouring the employer, working nights rarely brings a better salary than a day job. Most shift workers are happy simply to have a job. Others relish the unusual perspective on life that working at night brings.
Whatever the reason, a work day that stretches from 6pm to 6am is a quirky and surreal experience, filled with the kind of incidents likely to occupy a nine-to-fiver's dreams: unconscious ferry passengers; musicians who take their instruments to breakfast; spinning goldfish. It all happens in our 24-hour city.
THE RESTAURANT MANAGER
At the newly opened, 24-hour breakfast bar, the Flying Pan, Sagar Paudel is polishing glasses with a tea towel. It's 2am on a Tuesday and, except for himself and the chef, the restaurant, in Old Bailey Street, Central, is deserted. As general duty manager for the 7pm to 7am shift five days a week, Paudel will clean, take orders and serve throughout the night as revellers and shift workers drop in for eggs, bacon, beer and tea. Despite the prospect of another five long hours in front of him, Paudel is optimistic about working the nightshift. He arrived in Hong Kong in 2004 and this is his first job. 'I'm new here. I'm raw, with no experience and I need to get that experience,' says the 32-year-old Nepali. 'I'm trying to struggle with these things. Ask me in two months' time.'
The Flying Pan is the brainchild of Tammy Greenspon, who knows what it's like to work nights, having put herself through college by working part-time. She refers to Paudel as her 'graveyard guy' and says it's people like him she is trying to cater for. 'Hong Kong's a real 24-hour city and there's a lot of stuff going on that people don't know about,' she explains. 'We get the clubbers who are so drunk they probably don't know where they are, but I did it for those people who work odd hours. Where do bar tenders go to wind down at 4am after a 10-hour shift? They don't want to go to bed. We get cocktail waitresses, bar managers, musicians and even taxi-drivers. If you're working the graveyard and you wake up at 3pm, where do you go for breakfast?'
Paudel describes his life now as work and sleep, five days a week. Married for nine months, he sees his wife only briefly during the week, snatching conversations with her before heading to bed when he returns home at 8.30am or when he wakes at 5pm. He sees friends when he can.
