Spending her university years in the UK, Varty came back to Hong Kong every holiday because she felt homesick for the city. Upon graduation, she made a beeline back home and felt a sense of loss when some of the local, cultural things her mother had advocated for her to learn and love slowly disappeared from the city.
In particular, she remembers walking past the same man every day while on the way to work, a vendor stationed at the bottom of Lan Kwai Fong who sells small white flowers. “They’re $10 a flower for your top pocket, you know?” she laughs. “And every day, my dad would buy one and I would see the flower in his pocket.
“One day, my dad came home and there was no flower in his pocket, and when I walked down the next day, the man was gone and I never ever [saw] him again. It made me realise these people are passing away and nobody is replacing them. I discovered a whole bunch of people like him that would never be replaced, that would take a slice of Hong Kong culture with them [when they pass].”