Street markets in Hong Kong’s Wan Chai district celebrated in mobile exhibition that folds up just like actual stalls
- The ‘Come’n Chill at Wanchai’ project includes art, trinkets and videos that reflect the deep sense of community that surrounds Wan Chai’s hawker stalls
- The exhibition includes 18 sketches of the stalls by Charlotte Lui, of the popular Instagram account @moving_drawing, drawn on white plastic shopping bags
The hustle of bustle of Wan Chai’s street markets doesn’t make them an obvious place to chill. But a Hong Kong designer and her friends want to show that traditional hawker stalls are nice places to hang out around, or to hea, Cantonese slang for lazing about.
Zoe Siu, the 37-year-old owner of local accessories label Zo-ee, came up with the idea of a roving exhibition with art, interview records and videos that give people a chance to appreciate these stalls – not just as places of commerce, but for the deep sense of community that surrounds them.
The project, called “Come’n Chill at Wanchai”, was inspired by American sociologist Ray Oldenburg’s theory of “the third place”, Siu says.
Whereas “first places” are our homes and “second places” are our workplaces, “third places” are public areas such as parks, cafes and sports centres where people can gather and enjoy each other’s company. According to Oldenburg, these informal spaces are fundamental to a community’s vitality.
The market stalls south of Wan Chai’s Johnston Road are a kind of “third place”, Siu says. She spent three months interviewing 36 store owners to discover that they and their regular customers form a tight-knit network.
