SHORT STORIES: chungking mansions

Fake Rolex sellers, Indian highspeed tailors able to make a perfect suit in a couple of hours, guesthouse touts proposing "deluxe" dormbeds, drug dealers, foreign excahange offices, restaurants offering pakistani curries, kebabs, african dishes, halal or vegetarian food, filipino cleaning women, policemen, internet cafés ran by westerners with african staff, chinese travel agencies with chinese staff and religious organizations backing political refugees and much more perhaps less visible.

An obligated stopover for who arrives in Hong Kong in search of fortune, this is Chungking Mansions, a 17-floor five-block building of frenetic life, made famous as the perfect location for "Chungking Express", the masterpiece by local filmmaker

Wong Kar-Wai.