But it does exist on Bridges Street in Sheung Wan. For now, at least. A lot of people visit the Chinese YMCA on Bridges Street to take photographs -- during spring and summer, you'll see a lot of betrothed couples posing around this area in their wedding finery. Sometimes, you'll also see a fashion shoot. But mostly, a lot of amateur photographers come here to practise.
This area is quite packed with places to look at. Man Mo Temple and Cat Street are just around the corner, the Museum of Medical Science is a couple of streets away, and above that is the Sun Yat Sen Museum.
Maybe I'm just ungrateful because I've seen this place enough times that its beauty has kind of faded for me, although I used to avail of the YMCA's services, especially the use of their indoor basement pool. A really awesome place, by the way, although a bit too many splashing kids sometimes.
The Y has been open since 1918 and is currently used as a centre for the mentally challenged. Before the Japanese Occupation, it was a refugee centre. During the Occupation, it provided pro-Japanese and pro-German education services to the community.
Isn't it kind of weird to walk around somewhere with a lot of history? When I lived in Florence, there were times when I walked past the Battistero di San Giovanni thought, "Dude, Dante was baptized here." Or that Michelangelo had touched the doors.
It was freakier in Beijing while walking around the Forbidden City and the Great Wall (where I got lost for eight fucking hours, by the way). I mean, it's just so bizarre peering into the imperial chambers and thinking how emperors and their families lived and died and did all these normal human things there for a couple thousand years. Or walking on the Great Wall and thinking how some dude took a leak five thousand years ago probably right at the corner where I was standing.
I have a few Chinese artifacts from the Neolithic Era -- the motherfucking Neolithic! -- and sometimes, I just touch them in awe, you know?
Anyway, I think about these things sometimes when I'm in the Y.
