Today, South Asians number around 85,000 in Hong Kong according to government census statistics. That’s about 1 per cent of the total population and the third highest group of immigrants after the city’s Filipino and Indonesian domestic helper workforce. It’s a number not to be ignored, though many do.

My family first came to Hong Kong in the 1960s, during the ‘Indian gold rush’, when people like tycoon Hari Harilela built his empire. My grandfather found great success here as an importer, partly through dealings with Harilela. My father? Not so much – 1987’s ‘Black Monday’ wiped out his electronics shop in Chungking Mansions.

My early recollections of Hong Kong are the sights and sounds of this building, later immortalised as a den of iniquity in Wong Kar-wai’s Chungking Express. The smells of reheated samosas and stale spices sitting on dusty shop shelves, the cacophony of a dozen dialects all spoken at once, the calls of touts trying to entice you into semi-legal restaurants.

If there was ever a place where time stood still, it’s here in Chungking. It all feels much the same as it did when I was a kid. And if I don an old hoodie and don’t shave for a couple days, I easily blend in, seemingly fresh off the boat like any other.