Mapopo Community farm sits unassumingly beside a busy road in Fan Ling, a town in the New Territories of Hong Kong. At the entrance to the farm is a small stand selling fresh vegetables, locally made body products, a number of imported organic dry goods, and a few varieties of craft beer.
If you follow the blue line on the paved path, it will take you through the village, called Ma Shi Po, to a wide cloudy river where young men fish from a 100 meter bridge. The village is comprised of small farms where elderly women hoe new roes in the dirt and elderly men ride past on bicycles stocked with seeding flats. I met a number of friendly dogs and goats beside the path who roamed together in a grassy field. At the end of the blue line I watched two young men catch fish in a net beside a sign that stated “no fishing” then headed back the way I came to buy some Choi Sum and Bak Choi at the Farmstand. There are a number of farms like this in Fan Ling that I intend to stop at next time I have a day to spend in the ‘countryside’ where there are still 14 story in plain sight.
Mapopo is engaged in a fight with Hong developers who have forcefully removed villagers in the past, and intend to do so again. The plots where forced evictions occurred are overgrown and vacant. Mapopo hopes to preserve the 3rd generation farming village of Ma Shi Po despite developers plans to build more standard housing on the ground they have made rich with years of composting and sustainable farming practices. Only 7 square kilometers of land in Hong Kong are made up of actively farmed land, Mapopo says they simply want to keep their small part of that to preserve the lifestyle they have worked hard to keep.
“Monica Washington – I would say more accountability all around. Law makers, schools, the way we teach, the way we structure our systems, there is no accountability. It’s like the people who set it all up have an agenda and no one holds them accountable for their agenda, but they package it all up to look like it’s something that it’s not. To see this happening in the justice system is unfortunate because it is supposed to be a sort of moral center and we see that it isn’t and people around the world see it that we don’t practice what we preach in this country.”
In Mong Kok, on the Kowloon side of Hong Kong, there is a street called Goldfish street. On Goldfish street vendors have been selling tropical fish, aquatic plants, and aquarium supplies to Hong Konger and foreigners alike since the 1970’s. The dealings started as a makeshift market a few blocks from what is now Goldfish central, then evolved into a more permanent collection of shops that have clearly established themselves. The 2007 and 2008 Grand Champions of the International Aquatic Plants Layout Contest both have storefronts on Goldfish Street. In the 80’s and 90’s Hong Kong was in the top five exporters of tropical fish.
Coco – 22
Tsukiji Fish Market is the largest fish and seafood market in the world. The bustling starts at 3am with the unloading of trucks and unpacking of extremely fresh seafood. The live auction begins at 5:20am and ends around 8. Only 120 visitors per day are allowed to observe the auctions. At various times visitors have been banned altogether. Gigantic frozen pieces of tuna are cut with band saws while fresh fish are sliced with sword-like knives over a meter long. Walking along the narrow paths from stall to stall between people prepping, marking, packing, and inspecting, my attention was completely absorbed in the excitement of it all.
“Contrast” this was what Chris and I dubbed our attempts to do things differently and not simply stick to the things we knew and liked while we were in Hong Kong. We spent 25 days in Sheung Wan then decided to mix up our HK experience by moving to another neighborhood four subway stops away. At the bottom of Happy Valley, Wan Chai is a very wet neighborhood steeped in liveliness. In the past it was nick-named Hong Kong’s red light district. I wouldn’t have guessed from my experiences there, but I was not out and about late into the night. Not every image in this post was taken in Wan Chai, some are from nearby places like Aberdeen and Central that we walked to during our contrast stint in Wan Chai. 
Fioravanti is a couture clothing store and studio in Beacon Hill where Mia Fioravanti and her daughter Wysdom design and sew pieces meant to endure. “I am not interested in trends.” Says Mia. “I think it’s important to be on some sort of trend so that your stuff is relevant and modern and someone will want to wear it. The thing about us is, we are much more interested in something that lasts. That is one thing I have always tried to stay true to.”
Their studio is filled with pieces that have a timelessness about them, from classic sleeveless black dresses to sheer navy ponchos and impeccable white button-downs.
The duo will soon be moving to a space down the street on Beacon Ave. where they will quadruple their space. “We are looking to create more of a lifestyle store rather than just clothing, so we are going to have other people’s work, we’re going to have events, and I’m looking for artists, photographers, people like that who want to do shows. I have three people slated to do shows and art openings once a month, so it’s going to be a much more dimensional kind of place.”
Mia Fioravanti taught herself to sew at age 8. Daughter to a father who ran a woolen mill in the Midwest, Fioravanti was introduced to the family business lifestyle at a young age. “I went to art school and was doing graphic design and advertising, and I hated it so I went back to sewing.” While working with a dry cleaner in Denver, Fioravanti brushed up on her sewing skills, then spent a year apprenticing with a woman from Russia who specialized in couture. With intermittent careers as a stylist and a Waldorf teacher, Fioravanti is now running her business on Beacon Hill with her daughter Wysdom, who graduated in May with a bachelors degree in technical design.
Wysdom grew up around design and sewing then went on to study the more technical side of the craft. “I’m trying to get experience but I’m also leading the technical part because she [Mia] is not very technical. That’s a challenge, because I don’t know everything, I just know a little bit. Coming straight from school and jumping into this business is pretty major, but it has allowed me to do so much. Working with pattern making, making things from scratch and seeing something finished that I made the pattern for, is pretty amazing.”
The Fioravantis are quite the creative household. Their oldest daughter Julia is an artist as well and often models the Fioravanti line. Their closeness as a family and common ground as artists eliminates the need to sugar coat their opinions about one another’s work. Wysdom says of working with her mother, “She has more super creative craziness sometime and I’m more of the editor. I say no a lot, and it works because we’re family so we can be honest. We care about each other’s feeling but we get over things really quickly.”
Viola Jean Photography 