TSIM SHA TSUI, Hong Kong — They bought flights for it, booked tours, braved injury, and shirked work. Some bathed in holy water; others prepared for a tsunami. Many waited on lines that stretched around the blocks that they always rushed by without a glance. A few bought welder’s plates and punched holes in cardboard. One woman forced her entire family out of the house at 5:30 a.m. to join the queue.
At 7: 15 a.m., I woke up—an hour later than planned. I ran with hair flying and reporter notebook pages as askew as my rumpled skirt, dashing through the metro tunnels out into the (possibly) blinding sunlight. I knew all about the dangers of “solar maculopathy” and was determined to not make eye contact with my subject—and usually, archnemesis—the sun. A hotline had been established in Hong Kong for the symptoms of eye damage—blurred vision, holes in visual field, afterimages, and reddened perception. Most people didn’t own the proper solar filters for dealing with the situation. If you look straight at the sun during a partial eclipse—like the 75 percent one that occurred in Hong Kong on July 22—the sun’s rays can penetrate and photochemically change the makeup of your retina, potentially causing permanent damage.
That was why hordes of people were coming to these solar observation parties, to get a quick look through a telescope or pick up some free eclipse shades and gaze at the sun, rather than being limited to stolen glances. Squinting and looking down, I probably didn’t make a very compelling image of the proverbial intrepid reporter. I saw the line winding around the space museum—the line I was supposed to be on an hour ago—and groaned.
Luckily, a press badge got me in even ahead of the earliest arrivers. I felt like a bit of a sham as I stepped in front of a chubby 11-year-old with glasses, braces, and a wide grin that never left his face. His grandfather spoke no English but hovered behind him and smiled toothlessly. They reminded me of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, as they carried the golden ticket of excitement through the nonchalant reporters piled onto the top deck, and were the first to look through the telescope that was about three times the size of the kid himself.
As the eclipse started, the people who remained waiting on line—unable to get onto the observatory deck with its fancy instruments and filters—abandoned caution and looked towards the sun with naked eyes. I was shocked that they would risk something so huge for something seemingly so unimportant. Nothing is worth irreparable eye damage. But I forgot my shock as I automatically turned with the crowd toward the perfect orange in the sky—eclipse shades luckily donned—and watched the moon ruthlessly vanquish it during the longest total eclipse to occur in Asia for 500 years.
Despite its status as only a partial eclipse in Hong Kong, people ooh-ed, aah-ed, clapped, and sighed with every rogue movement of a cloud or surreptitious inching forward of the moon. It was a show with no language and no tickets. I imagined, across the strip of land that was experiencing total eclipse, people turning in unison as the sky went dark and the sun billowed out at them around a deep black hole. There may be nothing tangible that can unite every person across that strip of land from Varanasi to Shanghai except, perhaps, the fact that for one instant of total eclipse they all lived where the sun chose to hide itself. I remember learning about how smiles are universal—a particular baring of the teeth occurs similarly across cultures and species even if they haven’t interacted with each other. I can imagine that the feeling you get when you turn to look at the sun, only to see it so obscured, is universal as well.
While staring at the sun was interesting off and on, the people who collected—and eventually dispersed—on the observation deck that day proved more intriguing. The high-heeled woman who took off work to watch the sun at 9 a.m. rushed back, and worked overtime. The little girl who jumped with glee as she faced the receding, glowing-red blob was hurried onto a school bus to sit behind a desk for the next six hours or so. People flowed back onto the escalators—letting themselves be moved instead of moving—to the next destination after destination, always looking forward and never around.
When the last curve of the moon moved out of the sun’s way, everyone clapped. That is, everyone but one. A six-year-old kid, who had sat videotaping the sky for hours, bawled. Maybe he was mourning the fact that everything was going to be the same again. We crave change, but we don’t make it happen: We expect it to happen to us.
And it does, for brief glimpses.
I left feeling I had witnessed something much more than astronomical alignment through pre-approved scientific tools. I had watched a coming-together, but it also made me sharply aware of a growing-apart, as the crowd that had so easily formed suddenly and easily dispersed. I was a little sad to return to my frigid office, with the constant background chatter of computer keys, and wrap up the event by writing my story. I wondered what it would be like to go to the moon instead, and look back on earth for that one day each century, to see the world eclipsed by the people coming out of their self-constructed havens in the tall city buildings to look up as one.
Vidya B. Viswanathan ’11, a Crimson news writer, is a social studies concentrator in Eliot House. Her co-workers have deemed her deficient in pop culture knowledge because she doesn’t know the song “Total Eclipse of the Heart.”
