A labor of love for HK's blue-collar workers

A huge number of people engaged in unskilled or semi-skilled jobs take turns to ensure that Hong Kong's civic machinery remains up and running round-the-clock. They could be street cleaners, cardboard collectors, sailors steering a Star Ferry boat, or managers of 24-hour convenience stores.

Hong Kong Shifts: Stories from the Streets of Hong Kong is an illustrated anthology offering a peek into the everyday lives of 50 people who earn their livelihoods through manual labor. The book's title is owed to the fact that most of them work in shifts.

The text, by Cynthia Cheng, appears in both Chinese and English. The short, spare first-person accounts are brought to life through Maxime Vanhollebeke's evocative photographs. The writer-photographer duo began work on the book in 2019, carrying on during the pandemic. Hence the stories help illuminate a unique chapter in Hong Kong's history, while serving as a heartfelt tribute to the city and its manual laborers.

Cheng writes that the idea for the book was sparked by her chance meeting with Fung Mei, a security guard at a residential building. Over lunch at a cha chaan teng, Fung had shared intimate details about her work life and much else with Cheng. The incident set Cheng off on a discovery trail, leading to meetings with workers engaged in a diverse array of professions. Those who made it to the book include a noonday gunner, a tram motorman, a cooked-food-center operator, and a public-toilet cleaner.

Expectedly, the workers' life stories are often about battling the odds. However, some of them also offer glimpses into the famous Hong Kong spirit of resilience. For instance, Yuk, a rice-dumpling maker, reveals that she is required to make around 200 festive rice dumplings every day for two months leading up to the annual Dragon Boat Festival. "My work is physically demanding and … particularly challenging in summer — we have no air conditioning," she is quoted as saying in the book. "Even though it's hard work, I still enjoy it and want to keep going as I'm used to staying active and using my hands." Hers is one of those stories in which the worker sees their job as a meaningful pursuit and doesn't seem to mind the hardship involved.

The book also shows that living a life of hardship does not necessarily rid people of the qualities of empathy and fellow feeling. Ho, who collects cardboard in and around the Pei Ho Street Market, often having to wake up at the crack of dawn and keep working past midnight, says, "I find that a lot of Hong Kong people tend to just ignore each other on the streets. Wouldn't it be so much more pleasant if people were open to just saying good morning or hello to each other?"

Since many of the Hong Kong Shifts figures work on the city's streets, they get to witness the transformation of different neighborhoods over time. Fruit-seller Wai So, for instance, has seen the gentrification of Sai Ying Pun over 48 years. "This street used to be lined with jade shops, tailors, opticians," she says. "See that MTR station? That used to be a quilt shop!"