Spaced Out

So it turns out that The Parents actually rent their parking space and have been since they bought their current apartment. The previous owner sold their home but not their precious parking space, a commodity more valuable than gold in Hong Kong. As strange as that probably sounds to many of you, this is actually not such an unusual arrangement in urban Hong Kong. This is a city that is smaller than many Australian farms but with more than three times the population of Western Australia - it is one of the most densely populated areas in the world and land is at a premium. That means that in the city a parking space does not simply come with the price of the apartment – either you buy one or you rent it from someone else. What with the exorbitant price of petrol, toll fares and of course the cost of buying an imported car in the first place, owning and running a car in Hong Kong does not come cheap - the reason that it is such a status symbol there.


After renting the space in their car park for a number of years, The Parents have made the big decision to buy one of their very own. At the weekend, they went to view one – yes, just like you wouldn’t buy a property without first viewing it, it would be unthinkable to buy a parking space on a whim without the proper research. And, just like property, it’s all in the location, location, location. On what floor of the multi-story car park is it? Is it near the lift? How far from the street exit is it? All points one must consider when parking space-hunting. After several viewings, The Parents have found The One – it fits the brief and they snapped it up at the bargain price of HK$550,000 (£45,400 or AU$78,600). A steal really. No, really, it is. They also looked at one on the same floor which is on sale for HK$880,000. The reason for the huge difference in price? There is absolutely no reason. The owner simply, and rather cannily, thinks that he can get that amount because the figure contains two eights, a number considered by the Chinese to be extremely auspicious because both the Mandarin and the Cantonese word for it sounds like ‘wealth’. Double eight means double fortune. I expect that he will get it, too.

I sometimes sit here in our roomy house in Karratha, with our big drive (most here are big enough to fit your boat or caravan), speaking to The Parents on the saviour that is Skype, and contemplate just how far removed we are from their world. Or our old world for that matter. We, too, often had problems parking on our Victorian terrace-lined street. We didn’t have to part with a small fortune to buy one but not one house had their own off-street parking space so there was often a fight for a good space, or sometimes just for a space on the street at all – there were occasions when we had to park a street over. The Husband took to curtain-twitching out of the window in our front room, waiting for the car parked in the space outside our house to move so that he could race out to our car and promptly park it there. I would then not be allowed to take the car out until at least the next day. Space is definitely something to cherish out here, even if there is slightly more space than is strictly necessary. Several UKs and Hong Kongs more space really.