The Hong Kong That Doesn’t Exist

Something happened in pop culture recently that completely caught my attention. The Weeknd just dropped a new single, and its title is as direct as it gets: “Hong Kong.”

What makes this track so fascinating is its aesthetic DNA. The single’s cover art was shot by Christopher Doyle, the legendary cinematographer behind Wong Kar-wai’s most iconic films. But the real emotional core of the song lies in its sampling: a haunting loop from Faye Wong’s 1993 Cantonese classic, “Monsoons” (季候风).

When you listen to it, there’s a bizarre sense of dislocation. You have The Weeknd’s dark, melancholy R&B vocals weaving through Christopher Doyle’s signature neon-soaked, motion-blurred green tones, anchored by Faye Wong’s voice floating through the stereo field:

“That monsoon blew so empty, as if everything in this world was about to fade away...”

It makes you pause and ask: How does a global superstar born in Toronto, who spends his life on tour buses and in luxury hotel suites, develop such a deep obsession with Hong Kong?

Then came the line that hit me right in the chest:

“I’m so used to weathering changes / So if you ever change your mind, I’m waiting in Hong Kong.”

As a long-term digital nomad, someone who essentially lives out of a suitcase, that line cut deep.

People like us are professional leave-takers. We get comfortable treating every city as a temporary pit stop. Moving from China to New Zealand, then to the UK, Portugal, and back to Asia... on paper, it looks like ultimate freedom. But beneath that mobility, there is often a quiet, heavy sense of rootlessness.

Listening to that song, I realized something: The “Hong Kong” in The Weeknd’s track isn’t a physical set of geographic coordinates. It’s an imagined sanctuary constructed out of cinema light and collective nostalgia.

And this phantom ache for a “fictional home” that is something I know all too well.

Growing up in mainland China, I didn’t understand the geopolitics or the history of Hong Kong. I just fell head over heels for Cantonese pop culture. The very first cassette tapes and DVDs I ever bought were by Danny Chan and Beyond. Their melodies and lyrics felt like a chisel breaking through the mundanity of my everyday life.

Then came the cinema:

• Andy Lau in A Moment of Romance, speeding down the highway on a motorcycle with blood streaming from his nose while Wu Chien-lien clings to him in a white wedding dress.
• Tony Leung and Andy Lau on that rooftop in Infernal Affairs—trapped on the razor’s edge of identity and reality, bound by that hopeless plea: “I just want to be a good guy.”
• And, of course, Wong Kar-wai’s universe. Brigitte Lin navigating the chaotic labyrinth of Chunking Mansions in Chungking Express; Leslie Cheung’s famous monologue about the “footless bird” in Days of Being Wild; and the rain-streaked neon lights reflecting off Nathan Road.

Even the language itself—Cantonese, with its nine tones and six inflectional patterns—sounded like a melody designed specifically to express a bittersweet, golden-age heartbreak.

Back then, I naively believed that if I just traveled to that island, I would find that world waiting for me.

Shortly after the Handover, I finally went on my long-awaited pilgrimage to Hong Kong. What greeted me instead was a profound sense of disillusionment.

The wind over Victoria Harbour blew past red flags. The shopping malls were gleaming, and hyper-commercialized. The frantic rhythm of the crowds didn’t match the atmospheric tempo in my head. Temple Street still had its neon signs at night, but the energy felt performative, like a set built for tourists. Pushed around by selfie sticks and tour groups, the Hong Kong of my imagination quietly withdrew into the background.

Standing in the middle of those crowded streets, I felt a wave of emptiness. Hong Kong was just another modern concrete jungle, swept along by the relentless currents of commerce and time.

After that, whenever I returned to Hong Kong, my mindset shifted completely. Since the city couldn’t hold my childhood illusions, I stripped away its romantic halo.

In my twenties, Hong Kong simply became a convenient layover on my way back to mainland China, a place to shop, drink, and indulge. If I couldn’t have the mythical Hong Kong, I settled for the hedonistic playground it offered on the surface.

Then came a moment that changed everything.

Years later, while living as a nomad, I was traveling in Buenos Aires. I was wandering aimlessly down the street with a friend when I suddenly stumbled upon Bar Sur, the exact bar where Tony Leung and Leslie Cheung danced the tango in Wong Kar-wai’s Happy Together.

I stood at the doorway and froze.

Buenos Aires is physically the exact antipode to Hong Kong. It is literally on the opposite side of the planet. When Wong Kar-wai brought two rootless Hong Kong characters all the way to Argentina, it was precisely to capture that extreme sense of displacement.

Yet there I was, thousands of miles away in an unfamiliar South American neighborhood, unexpectedly recovering a piece of my Hong Kong memory that I thought was gone forever.

That was my epiphany: My connection to Hong Kong was never about geography. It was entirely spiritual.

Isn’t that the core dilemma for all digital nomads and modern drifters? We travel the world looking for the next landing pad, but true safety rarely comes from a physical location. It comes from the cultural symbols we carry, the art that shaped us, and the human connections forged along the way.

Just like The Weeknd sampling Faye Wong in a studio half a world away—he doesn’t need to stand in the crowds of Tsim Sha Tsui. The moment that sample loops, he’s already in “Hong Kong.”

When I visited Hong Kong again recently, many of the old shops that held decades of memories were shuttered, marked with “For Rent” signs. The neon lights seemed dimmer than before.

Walking down those unfamiliar streets, I realized the city I had carried in my heart for decades no longer existed. Or perhaps... it never truly existed in the physical world to begin with.

This realization brought me back to one of my favorite writers, the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa.

After returning to Lisbon from Durban, Pessoa barely left his city for the rest of his life. He understood that the entire universe can be contained within a few familiar streets, and that the physical act of searching often destroys the essence of what we seek. Instead of traveling, he created over seventy distinct heteronyms, fully realized alter egos with different personalities and backgrounds to explore infinite worlds from a single room.

The Hong Kong in my mind, built out of Cantonese melodies, TVB dramas, and rain-slicked neon nights… was never meant to be found on a map.

It exists in a realm beyond geography, untouched by time, politics, or economics. In the sanctuary of memory, it remains forever suspended in a golden dusk.

As digital nomads, we spend our lives physically departing, yet spiritually searching for roots. Nostalgia isn’t just a passive longing for the past but a bridge connecting different worlds. It proves that even in an era of constant movement and uncertainty, certain emotional truths can transcend time and space—becoming the anchor that keeps us grounded.