Fieldwork 1: Soundwalk in Tsim Sha Tsui

Soundscape Project – A trip to Tsim Sha Tsui

You can find the soundtracks here: https://soundcloud.com/olympia-hui/sets/soundscape

In this soundscape fieldwork project, me and two of my groupmates went to Tsim Sha Tsui and do a soundwalk for about 2.5 hours. We wandered around the TST pier and some nearby places. Through this project, I’ve found that I hear more sound than I usually do, some even I won’t notice normally.

Tsim Sha Tsui is a place full of historical value. It was once the transportation junction of Hong Kong since the Star Ferry Pier and the Kowloon-Canton Railway (KCR) terminal both located at Tsim Sha Tsui. More than that, during the early 19^th century, an incident happened at Tsim Sha Tsui called the “Lin Wie Hee incident” which was one of the causes of the First Opium War. Therefore, it is said that Tsim Sha Tsui is actually witnessing the changes in Hong Kong history.

Apart from historical value, Tsim Sha Tsui is also famous for its cultural value. First of all, it’s the place where people usually go during festival time. The streets are crowded and packed with people during every festival. Lights and installations will be set up to decorate the street. Besides of festival culture, Tsim Sha Tsui is also known as the “United Nation” in Hong Kong since people can find different cultures there including the South-Asian, the British, the Korean and also the Muslim. There are different buildings representing these cultures including the Chungking Mansion, the Peninsula Hotel, the Islam Mosque and the Korean street.

Back to our project, we recorded a total of 9 soundtracks during the walk. Each soundtrack represents a specific culture or natural value which we found them interesting. First of all, for the cultural aspects, we recorded the sound of a wedding. One of the Hong Kong Marriage Registry is located at Tsim Sha Tsui, just next to the Cultural Centre, where many Hong Kong people choose to have their ceremony there because of the breath-taking sea view. From the soundtrack, we can hear the people are calling others to take a group photo. Although it’s noisy, we can still feel their excitement through their voices.

Secondly, we recorded two tracks of tourists speaking. The two soundtracks are tourists speaking English and Mandarin respectively. During our soundwalk, we met a lot of tourists from different places as can be told from their skin colours and their languages. Hong Kong always attract people from all over the world no matter which cultural background they’re from. This is because of Hong Kong’s history. Hong Kong’s culture is a combination of the Western and the Chinese since Hong Kong had been under the rule of British Colonial Government from 1841 to 1997. During this period, there are many cultural integration and it somehow shaped the tourism culture nowadays. The Western people hope to know more about the Chinese culture through travelling to Hong Kong and vice versa.

Thirdly, we went to the Star Ferry Pier. It could be the most remarkable spot in Tsim Sha Tsui. It has a very long history of development where it was built since 1898, which is about a decade ago. Before the Cross-Harbour Tunnel was built, it was the only transportation connecting Kowloon and Hong Kong Island. Therefore, it had a high usage in the past. Although the number of people taking the ferries is decreasing, it is still a favourable transportation among tourists. We recorded two soundtracks that are related to the Star Ferries. The first soundtrack is the ticket vending machine. The ticket vending machine has a longer history than the octopus card. Before the invention of the Octopus card, people all used the machines to buy the tickets for taking the ferries. All you need to do is to insert required amounts of coins and the machine will give you a plastic token which is sometimes blue or brown. The second soundtrack we recorded is the sound before boarding. There are mainly two types of sound in the soundtrack, one is the electric-controlled gate and the other one is the metal chain. Both are used to secure the people waiting at the pier. We can see a combination of the past and the modern here.

After that, we recorded the sound of the movements of luggage. In the soundtrack, there is muffled sound of the moving wheels of the luggage. As we wandered around Tsim Sha Tsui, we found that there are many tourists carrying luggage, which are usually Chinese tourists. We think it’s because there are many luxurious stores located on Canton Road which attracted the grey goods traders or the rich people in China. Also, it’s related to the implementation of policy on multiple-entry permits in 2009. The problem still exists even in 2017.

Another soundtrack is the Anti-Falun Gong. In the soundtrack, you can hear noisy and repetitive speeches saying that Falun Gong is bad for people. The sound is clamorous which makes people feel very uncomfortable and annoying. The reason why they chose to promote their beliefs in Tsim Sha Tsui is that there are many mainland tourists. The Falun Gong and the Anti-Falun Gong association are both from China which they mainly target on mainland people. They see Tsim Sha Tsui as a favourable spot for them to spread their messgaes.

Last for cultural sound, we also recorded the sound of the construction work at the Avenue of Stars. The construction work creates many noise which makes people uncomfortable. The sound is loud and annoying, and also earsplitting. It reduces the number of tourists. It comes from the renewal project of the Avenue of Stars. It was built in 2004 and now the government introduced the Augmented Reality (AR) technology there to increase Hong Kong’s competitiveness and can attract more tourists.

As for natural sound, we recorded the sound of waves. You can hear strong and repetitive sound of the big waves. The Victoria Harbour is renowned for its deepness and wideness. These are favourable for goods trading which the harbor leads Hong Kong economy and tourism for the past decade. However, rapid reclamation these years reduces its advantages and attractiveness.

To conclude, the sound we recorded in this fieldwork is mostly a low-fi environment. Yet, we can still find out a lot of cultural essence in Tsim Sha Tsui which helped construct it as a renowned tourist spot in Hong Kong.