I once made an Instagram reel on this city, Sophronia (https://www.instagram.com/p/DU-3kDUExhJ/?hl=en). It still enchanted me when I reread the chapter for this blog post.
Sophronia consists of two parts, the carnival permanent and the institutional temporary. People pick their horses on the carousel; some enjoy the acrobatics performance. Meanwhile, the other side of the city exists with another ethos. It is ‘of stone and marble and cement’ (Calvino, 55). It houses ‘the bank, the factories, the palaces, the slaughterhouse, the school, and all the rest’ (55), though it is temporary and doomed to be removed according to the agenda. ‘[W]hen the period of its sojourn is over, they uproot it, dismantle it, and take it off, transplanting it to the vacant lots of another half-city’ (55). Joy prevails; practicality periodically falls into obscurity.
Central in Hong Kong, however, conveys an opposite sentiment. The AIA carnival, an annual event taking place from December to March, is the temporary half-city. Hong Kong would never let trailers take off its HSBC skyscraper and bring a halt to the harbour. Sophronia is a hard imagination for men of practicality.
Reference list
Italo Calvino. Invisible Cities (1997). Vintage Classics.