Hong Kong’s vistas are of particular allure. Smooth lined mountain tops literally merge with surrounding high rises, while hazy sunbeams pinch through the tight urban canyons and struts of gigantic harbour-crossing bridges. From afar the verticality in both architecture as well as its mixed ocean-mountain-isle topography emerges like a funnel through which dreams, money and people are siphoned day by day. A city that is like a clockwork, made to be money and to make more of it. Despite its constant roar from air conditioners and ear-numbing street noises, one can almost gain silence a short leap away on many of its overarching mountain ridges.

Encompassing a completely different ambience from afar - bathed in an ocean of orange and red haze, high rises become toy sized miniatures, and the city acquires the look of the pearl, which it is often named for. Even in its calmer coastal areas with small coves, arrays of aquacultures and formations of anchored ships the verticality of the many skylines is hard to escape. While at night most building silhouettes disappear somewhat in the glowing aura of straying lights, the repeating vertical arrangements of illuminated windows, vibrant neon signs and animated LED screens densely cascading along the coastlines materialise like endless starfields, basically showing the millions of souls that run this astounding clockwork everyday.