Book Introduction

//Every time I mention the High Street, I always think of this passage. The gray-black cathedral is exquisitely built and grand, but the nearby area is almost all square, featureless stone houses, unrelated to delicacy and elegance, the difference between the two is really worlds apart. I later learned that during World War II, the Allied forces heavily bombed the city of Cologne, leaving only a pile of ruins on the High Street and all nearby streets. The old buildings no longer existed, only the grand cathedral remained almost intact, with its twin towers still solemnly standing. However, the church's survival was not due to its beauty and solemnity impressing the Allied forces, but because the Allied forces needed a prominent building as a reference point for air raids. After the reconstruction, Cologne was completely different, no wonder the writer Heinrich Böll, who was born in Cologne, could never adapt to this city after the war. For him, this was both his hometown and a foreign land.

Thousands of miles away, the High Street in Hong Kong is also extremely unfamiliar to me. I have walked the High Street in Cologne far more times than I have walked the High Street in Hong Kong.//