Tai Po Memories
I lived in Tai Po for over 10 years. Since I moved to a different part of the city, I don't go back often but when I do there are a lot of good memories.
Two weeks after I moved into Tai Po, I want to move. I had lived in a big, massive city in Seoul for 7 years before that, in Toronto. Tai Po is small and an hour away from my friends, who are on Hong Kong Island. I started looking for places to get out.
It was too much of A burden to move, so I stayed and fell in love with the place. It is more like I found someone to make me love the place. Tai Po is not an expat-friendly place. It is hyperlocal, meaning most people are Cantonese speakers, English is rarely heard, and finding things from the West is even more difficult. Yet I stayed because of one person who showed me a different side of Hong Kong in a place I loved. I grew to love Tai Po because of him, which made me understand Hong Kong differently.
I lived for 11 years. The last two were the hardest, which made me want to leave. You see, 2019 was a horrible year for many reasons. My father passed. This city changed, and what came was COVID. When my love left, I wanted a clean break, so I quit my job, moved to a different part of the city, and started over to cleanse. It took me a while to come back to Tai Po. I still think it's a place I could never live because of 2019 to 2021.
When I come back, there's a flood of memories. It is nostalgia. It is full of memories of the protests, the COVID lockdown, and many restaurants I used to go to that have changed. There are many more signs for sale and more boarded-up places, but it's still safe and different. I don't come back that often, mostly because it brings pain, and yet I still come back. I need to return to get used to that pan to make it less painful and build resistance to heal.
I will need to move again to buy a place to live permanently. I don't think it will ever be Tai Po, there's too much history