Interesting fact - up until the age of 9, I was a part time resident of Baker Street. No, not the…read morerelatively new part of Baker Street near Whampoa Gardens, it was the other end of Baker street near Chatham road and the funeral parlors. Small, dinky overcrowded apartments in the old downtown core of Kowloon, close to light industrial shops (making aluminum fixtures is a thing there), and shops catering to the funerary industry - you know, coffins, flower arrangements, stuff like that. A dinky 300 square foot, one bedroom apartment were the home for 8 - the place for gramps, aunts and uncles. Before my Cantonese chef father decided to immigrate to the US, I used to stay with grandma at the old apartment during the weekends. At least by then most of the family have moved stateside to seek a better life.
Being Hong Kongian means that we are born to run - we are mostly immigrants, and because of the modest beginnings and tight quarters, we all aspire to climb as quickly as possible, either through hard work, higher education, or both - the outward looking, open minded, creative, polite and hardworking Honker folks that we are today were underpinned by the blood and toil of those before us. I think that partially, that success was due to the rich assortment of toys that we have access to when we were young. Just think about it - we were taught since an early age to share, and that we are constantly bombarded by the latest trends in Europe, Japan and the states. We were mostly denied green space and fresh air, and at some point, our imagination will have to kick in to fill the void. You need toys to allow for a healthy outlet to your imagination. Back in the old days toy stores and stationery stores were pretty easy to come by - nowadays, you pretty much need a Facebook group to track their comings and goings - most places fail, some survive while others thrive.
Take, for instance, Wonderland (this is their HQ/flagship store in Hung Hom near the MTR stop). It's a toy store, stationery store, and a place to pick up a bag of potato crisps. They can sell you that 800 HKD Authentic Lego set, a 500 HKD Gundam model from Japan, a 70 HKD TinyHK city bus (which looks like the real thing running on the road today, and everyone in HK has ridden a bus), a 30 HKD F-Toys trade model that you can build and put in a cabinet, all the American Girl models that you can shake a stick at, and you can certainly go inside for a notebook and a color pencil set to doodle upon. Basically, there is a thing for every price range and can fit anywhere. Hell, I've been to 3 Wonderland locations, and both me and the missus both agree that the pricing and breath of selections for toys and stationery is second-to-none when compared to the poor selections stateside (well, Tai Yuen street is close but it's not a one-stop shop). I've happily purchased plastic model building supplies, notebooks, model kits and TinyHK items in the store and bought it back stateside with me. For a high functioning adult with a high stress IT job, some of those items I got provide me with seemingly endless joy...and let's face it - joy and fulfillment of nostalgia or homesickness is the primary function of any great toy store, and Wonderland is a great toy store. I'll come back here again and again.
