Observation of Legislative Council/HSBC/Prince Plaza

While the commercial, photographic, entertainment and picnic area of the Indonesian females in Hong Kong all appears within the boundaries of Victoria Park, the program of the ephemeral Filipino city occurs in different areas throughout Central. (One can argue that the boundaries of Victoria park is arbitrary, where the relationship between programs are more correlated to the relative distance between programs rather than the boundaries themselves). In Central, the actual chores occur in World Wide Plaza and the pinicking occurs within the internal area of HSBC plaza. The plaza between HSBC building, Prince building and the Legislative Council functions as the photography, hawking and mini trading as well as picnicking. In this area, there are far more signs that warns of illegal activities such as smoking and hawking in Tagalog, clearly targeting a certain group. Even though there is picnicking that occurs in this area, they are not grouped in circles but in lines along the bench due to the arrangement of the facilities in the area. Because benches and standing do not encourage long term interaction for larger groups, people are gathered amongst two or three persons and most are not permanently located but appear to gather in the park momentarily to consume food. This area appears to have good circulation, where most Filipino females are seen to gather in designated sitting areas without inhibiting the flow of pedestrians. There are administrators who are stationed here in the plaza in the afternoon.

While there are main areas where domestic workers will congregate around Central, there are other areas such as the park behind the Legislative Council, underneath bridges and on sidewalks. To facilitate the use of public space by Filipino female workers, the Charter Street was also closed to enclose the area for this purpose on Sundays. Besides this main area of gathering, there is a large group of domestic workers who uses the underpass that leads to the Star Ferry is also crammed with large number of foreign female domestic workers. From my observation, areas that provide shade to protect the area from rain and strong sun are more popular as compared to open spaces. This is apparent as the empty and clean Charter Street is empty while the bus stops, the HSBC internal plaza and underpass is filled with campers. Because of this observation in Central, one sees the lack of shade and shelter in Victoria Park as a potential issue on rainy days for the Indonesian population. That is why large numbers of picnickers are found on the pedestrian overpass and underneath bridges near Victoria Park despite the relative cleanliness, pleasantness and increased facility within Victoria Park. Perhaps this behavior is also related to the preference to station and not to shift throughout the day. In areas where it is sheltered (with the exception of HSBC plaza), it is observed that there is a higher need for privacy amongst this group, where most would use umbrellas or other equipment to hide card playing or semi gambling activities.