48 hours in Hong Kong’s Chungking Mansions: life in another world
Follow us as we tuck into Turkish, Indian and African food, seek out secret restaurants, explore stairwells and rooftops and share lifts with people from all over the world, before crashing out in rooms just big enough to fit a mattress
There are no fancy signs or flashing neon lights. Just three words scribbled in black pen on white paper and stuck to a door with pink duct tape. “Mama Africa Here.”
It’s 7.30pm on a Friday and the past couple of hours have been spent exploring the five blocks and 17 floors of Chungking Mansions, the behemoth of a building on Nathan Road, Tsim Sha Tsui, that’s been a haven for the past few decades for travellers on a shoestring and phone and garment traders from mainly Africa and Southeast Asia. Completed in 1961, it’s one of the oldest buildings in the district, an unpolished nugget on the Golden Mile, juxtaposed with luxury hotels and designer-label shops.
It’s also home for about 4,000 people, gets about 10,000 daily visitors, produces about five tonnes of garbage a day (that’s about half a garbage truck), cleans 1,000 sheets a day and has “starred” in movies, most notably the 1995 Wong Kar-wai/Christopher Doyle collaboration, Chungking Express . Here you can get clothes washed, buy sex and drugs, book a flight, exchange currency, and get your hair, or your keys, cut.
