MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
A strict national security law in Hong Kong, along with the COVID pandemic, pushed many Americans and Europeans to leave the city. But Jan Camenzind Broomby's visit to a famous shopping and lodging complex shows why the city is still seen as a place of opportunity for many.
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JAN CAMENZIND BROOMBY, BYLINE: If you wanted to take a trip around the world in just an hour, come to Hong Kong's Tsim Sha Tsui district. Among the throngs of tourists and high-end shops is Chungking Mansions.
GORDON MATHEWS: When you walk into Chungking Mansions, you're no longer in standard Hong Kong. This building is Indian and African - also Filipino and Indonesian. This is a building that functions as the center of the Global South.
CAMENZIND BROOMBY: This is Gordon Matthews, an anthropologist at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Today, I'm joining him for a tour.
MATHEWS: Let's go over to some of the...
CAMENZIND BROOMBY: He spent years writing about the building that has captured the imagination of film directors and writers since it was built in 1961.
There is a hubbub of activity as people come to buy, sell, make business deals - all over food that comes from all around the world.
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CAMENZIND BROOMBY: Hong Kong has long been touted as an international financial hub. The State Department says, despite a dip during COVID-19, the number of Americans in the city rebounded to around 84,000 in 2023.
MATHEWS: You can also see goods that you can't buy elsewhere in Hong Kong.
CAMENZIND BROOMBY: But as an American, Mathews says just walking into Chungking Mansions forces you to rethink what it means to be international in this part of the world.
MATHEWS: What this place shows is that international doesn't mean just Western and Global North. It means, instead, people truly from all over the world.
CAMENZIND BROOMBY: We're standing here on the ground floor of Chungking Mansions.
MATHEWS: Yes.
CAMENZIND BROOMBY: What are the shops that we can see around us?
MATHEWS: Right across the way, we see an African hip-hop shop. Then, right across here, we see mostly South Asian provisions, then Ghana Locals, which is a Ghanaian restaurant. So you see a whole array of places.
CAMENZIND BROOMBY: With the passage of a 2020 national security law, political freedoms in Hong Kong have been restricted. But to people from across the Global South, Chungking's shine hasn't dulled.
MATHEWS: This hall at night is going to be vast.
CAMENZIND BROOMBY: Mathews estimates that some a hundred nationalities pass through these corridors every year...
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CAMENZIND BROOMBY: ...Many of them looking to do business.
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CAMENZIND BROOMBY: That sound you're hearing is the sound of hundreds of mobile phones being packaged up, ready to be distributed across the world.
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CAMENZIND BROOMBY: In 2008, Mathews estimated that some 20% of all phones in Sub-Saharan Africa once passed through this building. Nowadays, a lot of that trade has shifted north into mainland China. But that doesn't mean that the entrepreneurial spirit has vanished.
FAHAD SIDDIQUI: (Non-English language spoken).
CAMENZIND BROOMBY: On the second floor, we run into Fahad Siddiqui (ph). He's only 19 and about to start university, but already he's hustling.
SIDDIQUI: He said, just come sit inside. Or wait for him.
CAMENZIND BROOMBY: We join him as he makes his rounds, trying to flog products to local shop owners.
So, Fahad, tell me. What brings you to Chungking Mansions today?
SIDDIQUI: It's a place of opportunities. You can be from any background, and you're going to be accepted here because you are one of them.
(Non-English language spoken).
CAMENZIND BROOMBY: He might feel accepted inside the confines of Chungking Mansions. But once he leaves, it's another story.
SIDDIQUI: Monday (non-English language spoken). No problem. He's busy.
CAMENZIND BROOMBY: Come back on Monday?
SIDDIQUI: Yeah.
CAMENZIND BROOMBY: Thank you, sir.
Many Hong Kongers still hold prejudiced views of the building's largely non-Chinese patrons like Siddiqui, whose grandfather moved here from Pakistan.
SIDDIQUI: (Non-English language spoken).
CAMENZIND BROOMBY: In 2024, some 60% of Hong Kong ethnic minorities said they felt their salaries were lower than white and Chinese counterparts because of their ethnic background.
SIDDIQUI: You will face discrimination. I feel like I deserve to be accepted. I'm born and bred in Hong Kong. I believe that I am a Hong Konger and I call myself a Chinese, even though my background is Pakistani.
CAMENZIND BROOMBY: Now, Chungking and its residents are pushing back against discrimination. On the top floor, a new cultural space, the Diversity Hub, has opened. It tells the story of Hong Kong's ethnic minorities, who make up some 8% of the city's population.
JEFF ANDREWS: It's created a new sense of pride for the community.
CAMENZIND BROOMBY: This is Jeff Andrews, senior manager of the Diversity Hub.
ANDREWS: The journey of Hong Kong was a multicultural effort, and the Hong Kong identity is not just language or color. It's values. And I'm hoping, in Hong Kong in the next 10 years, we're just called hoeng gong jan.
CAMENZIND BROOMBY: Hoeng gong jan - Cantonese for Hong Kong people, a label that Chungking's residents hope they can claim. After all, this building is a reminder that they, too, are a part of the city's story.
For NPR News, I'm Jan Camenzind Broomby in Hong Kong.
(SOUNDBITE OF ICHIKORO'S "ALLY") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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