Blue House

The Blue House is a building in Wan Chai remembered by Andrew as his favorite place in Hong Kong. In the family’s account of their trip, it is both a visited landmark, home to a museum, and one of the images through which a familiar city returns during a television report about avian flu.

Setting and Museum

The Blue House stands in Wan Chai and houses the Hong Kong House of Stories on its ground floor. Andrew and Eric visited the museum on their last morning in Hong Kong, before heading north to Hubei Province. The detail anchors the building in a specific moment of travel: not an abstract city landmark, but a place they encountered together near the end of their stay.

A Shared Travel Memory

Andrew favored the Blue House, and a framed photograph of him and Eric standing in front of it hung above their computer desk back home. In the picture, both pose with their chests puffed out like Superman, their smiles equally heroic. The photograph makes the building part of the couple’s domestic landscape as well as their travel history: Hong Kong remains present in their home through an image of the two of them at a place Andrew loved.

The other photograph above the desk showed Jardine House, Eric’s favorite building. Andrew teased Eric that he liked it only because it was full of bankers. Set beside the Blue House photograph, the two images preserve their distinct preferences and the playful contrast between them.

Appearance in the Television Report

The Blue House reappears in a slideshow of Hong Kong images during a television report about the H7N9 outbreak. The sequence moves through recognizable city views before ending on a field reporter at Kowloon City Wet Market. For Andrew and Eric, the building on screen is not merely part of a news montage: it is also a place attached to their recent visit, their final morning in the city, and the photograph displayed at home. That overlap brings the distant public crisis into contact with their private memories of Hong Kong.