Symphonies of Lights

Hong Kong Island was ablaze with the 8pm music and light show. The grey concrete and glass skyscrapers of day suddenly took on individual personalities as they jovially flashed and jiggled their multitude of rainbow lights and sent lasers into the night sky in synchrony with the retro electronic beat of the music. All very Orbital and quite spectacular. (see video below)

Watching the show for a second time from the deck of our cargo ship the distant skyscraper disco paled in comparison to the dockyard rave around us. CMA CGM Hugo was being loaded up. Six thousand forty foot containers were being stacked like duplo blocks in the holds. Cranes the size of skyscrapers wheeled along the port side flashing and beeping as they went, picking up crates from the back of lorries, tugging them into the air and bringing them crashing down with a metal on metal thud on top of the layer below. The ship shook with each deposit.

There were six cranes dancing on our ship, hundreds more in the port moving and stacking boxes, and ships all around us being laden in a similar way. All glistening with flashing warning lights. Set to the accompaniment of a repetitive beats (engines thumping) and bleeps (reversing lorries, moving cranes) soundtrack with overlying noises (crash and click of containers) that would make Aphex Twin jealous.

It is a gargantuan operation and must have a powerful, logistical mind behind it all. Someone must know what is in the surrounding sea of containers (the officers on the ship do not), where they have come from and where they are going. Containers from the stacks stored on shore are lifted onto lorries that bring them around to the ship edge where a small man in a control box dangling from the top of a crane picks up, drags and drops the containers on board. The men operating these pods must be regular winners on the fairground snatch and grab games. Between them, they load thirty containers onto the ship every hour. It’s a long track.

This is the international world of shipping. This is how Made In China products arrive in our shops. And tonight I feel like a VIP guest at an exclusive underground party. Hong Kong International Port is where the Symphony of Lights is really at.