Hong Kong: an audio postcard
Strange Angels, episode #98
In 2005 Wendy Benitez was living in Hong Kong and working on the massive costuming project for Hong Kong Disneyland which would open that September. Wendy invited me to spend July at her place on the 26th floor of Gold Coast Apartments in Tuen Mun, New Territories, Hong Kong. I showed up equipped with my trusty Sennheiser shotgun microphone and my minidisc recorder. Anybody here old enough to remember minidiscs!? 😀 They were pretty cool.
I recorded dozens of hours of phonography (field recordings) and also of interviews with amazing locals. Interviews with peeps like Mark Tilden of WowWee Robotics, Myth & Meg from the Hong Kong Punk band Dzap Dau Dau, Harsha Harjani from the HK Trade Development Council, and that British business guy from Shanghai who was walking the length of China, had translated a kung fu novel, and liked to get a new laptop every 6 months.
In August I started editing all those hours of recordings. My 1st cut was an introduction and then I just slapped the unedited interview with Stanley Wong / Another Mountain Man on the end of it. I mixed that down to have a file to listen to and get a sense of where I wanted the piece to go. And then at the end of August I started teaching at CSU Long Beach. I ran out of editing time and the Hong Kong recordings have sat for (OMG) 11 years now! I’m not actually sure where all those source files are ATM, if I find them I’ll add some to this page. Meanwhile, here’s that original rough cut. It’s a pretty imperfect audio postcard, but it’s still a nice taste of the experience there.
Or, download it
Music
This broadcast was originally produced for KBeach radio, and the artists featured on this recording are:
- Ahy / Homemade
- Dzap Dau Dau / Dog Days
- Pixel Toy / Science of Love
- Takako Nishizaki, Hong Kong Phiharmonic Orchestra, Peter Breiner / From Shanghai with Love
- Teresa Teng / The Voice of Teresa Teng
Hong Kong Strong
Here’s an incredible Hong Kong video by Brandon Li that I found on Harsha Harjani’s Facebook page. Harsha apparently only posts on Facebook once every three years (still more frequently than I finish Hong Kong audio postcards)(and also a pretty smart way to use FB) but this was worth the wait:
