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China, Design

Keys to the Past

Sun Hing


Opening the door to the old family village home, aunty unlocks history and brings it alive. Stories and memories are recalled as we move from room to room, object to object. Your grandma lived here, your great-grandfather made these to catch massive fish…

I had returned to the ancestral home of my mum’s parents, and it was over these 3 days that 3 worlds gathered to dine and laugh together. We had arrived from Hong Kong, a world of stability, in search of stories that linked us to the past. We were looked after by our relatives in Sun Hing, who living in a world sprinting into development, were creating the future. And we found distant relations, who were living in a world that was clearly the result of a complex political not so distant past.

 

Graphics, Hong Kong

Kung Hei Fat Choi

Ladder Street, Sheung Wan


I have only spent Chinese New Year in Hong Kong once before, and I was too young to remember. In the build up to the big day, I felt a flutter of excitement every time I left the house and past stands of calligraphers painting good wishes, streets lined with little orange plants and doorways surrounded by bright lanterns. My aunts tell me “it’s not the same anymore, it’s so commercial these days, many of the old traditions have been lost”. Walking past the 10 dollar shop (the 80p shop) filled with various red clothing items adorned with cutesy bunny rabbits, and yet another political party dressed in costume surrounded by suited men shouting propaganda through megaphones, I hoped that not all had been lost.