Pictured here is half of the vast area underneath HSBC, which is full to bursting with thousands of migrant workers (helpers, domestic maids, cleaners etc). Sundays are their only day off, and several hundred thousand of them spend this time occupying public spaces en masse.
This occurrence locally is known as ‘the twittering birds’. Initially, I assumed this was some half-patronising, half-racist imperial throwback term…I imagined a jowly general blaring “Golly, I say, look at all those Filipinas out there cluttering up the pavement again. Gadzooks, they’re like a pack of twittering birds, what? Ha! Where’s my gin?!” But actually, the tone and pitch of the languages spoken in these gatherings, especially when confined under a roof as they are here, sounds exactly like passing through an excitable aviary.
The extent is staggering – imagine, Londoners, perhaps an area from Westminster to Embankment, across to Oxford Street and down to St.James Park. There’s something satisfying that the group that usually waits on the rest of HK hand and foot dominates the most expensive parts of HK for the day.
The thing I find most fascinating is the diversity of what people are up to. Some build small ‘rooms’ out of cardboard boxes, which become impromptu nail/beauty salons, photography booths, union representative sessions, health clinics of sorts. There’s a lot more happening than meets the eye.
And yet, these workers were barred this week from ever gaining permanent resident status in HK. I, however, could get such status if I stay here 7 years. Even I never work a day during that time.
*Yes, I am aware the term is ‘tweeting’,
but the title didn’t work if I wrote tweeting rather than twittering…!
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