Inside her Wan Chai studio, perched comfortably atop floor cushions, Christina Ko is leading a fortune telling session. She shuffles a deck of cards and lays them out for a patron to choose three. The cards she picks read, “Mobile Softee: innocence”, “laundry lines: adapt”, and “wind: intuition.”
These certainly aren’t tarot cards, or any other familiar kind of oracle cards, for that matter. They’re Mali Mali Home, a new deck of 33 cards that Ko has spent the past four years creating before finally launching them last week. Their name originates from a magic spell uttered by Hong Kong children, meaning something along the lines of abracadabra, but with an origin that is said to come from “Om Mani Padme Hum,” a Sanskrit mantra. Each card is printed with the image of an iconic Hong Kong trope, along with an inspirational message: the Mobile Softee ice-cream truck, for instance, suggests taking a child-like perspective towards the issue at hand; while “laundry lines” act as a reminder to think outside of the box.
Ko recalls being inspired to create the deck in the early days of Covid-19, when social distancing and travel restrictions were still in place. The idea introduced itself during her solitary walks around Hong Kong, which gave her a new perspective on the city. “During those times, we were really thinking the world is changing so much, my city is changing so much,” she says. “What are the things that really ground and attach me to the city and give me that sense of comfort?”
The pandemic was a time of reflection for many living in the city, but for Ko, it was the beginning of an entirely new chapter of her life. “The day I finished Mali Mali Home was the day I decided to give up all of my writing clients,” she says. A seasoned journalist who has written for local publications like Prestige Hong Kong and the South China Morning Post, she exchanged her two-decade-long career for new ventures in spiritual well-being.
Currently a freelance writer and founder of Good Peoples, an urban wellness studio with a creative take in the form of unconventional weekly guided meditations, corporate team building and candid self-discovery writing workshops. Think intense pop-themed breathwork sets which aim for cathartic release instead of silent meditation. “In this studio we’ve swore many, many times, but we’ve never said ‘om’,” she says, referring to the classic yoga chant. Those who gravitate towards a more contemplative session may also opt for an intuitive card reading by Ko based on Mali Mali Home or other decks, which is faintly reminiscent of the art of local fortune telling.
Hong Kong is no short of local fortune telling in the Taoist tradition. A meticulous chart system outlines how someone’s fate is determined by your day and time of birth (baat3 zi6, 八字, “eight characters”). They may attempt to improve their fortune through feng shui or by doing good deeds, but their fate is mostly written in the stars. Mali Mali Home devises a system in which people have more free will. The reading represents the most probable reality based on the state of your life at the moment. But once you decide to change your mind, you change your future. Nothing is set in stone.
This emphasis on playing an active role in changing your destiny is not entirely novel: even according to traditional Taoist philosophy, you can move house or change your name for better feng shui. Unlike the charts and grids in Chinese fortune telling however, the Mali Mali Home deck bears a closer resemblance to a tarot deck. The long-standing European tradition has a set of 78 cards divided into two groups – the major arcana with 22 cards foreseeing major life events and minor arcana with 56 cards representing smaller everyday issues. Although loosely based on a tarot deck, Ko says Mali Mali Home channels what Ko calls a more “Hong Kong energy”: direct and efficient. It’s not a comforting hug, but it’s not rude, either. Ko says she once drew the si1 fu2 (師傅, “master”) card, reminding her to wire money to the plumbing sifu who had just fixed her toilet. It was exactly what she needed to know at that given moment – practical advice for a practical city.
Mali Mali Home is based on the idea that “Hong Kong is still Hong Kong,” as Ko puts it. She wanted to create something that reflected common local experiences, so she created each card based on her interpretations of typically Hong Kong things ranging from “ordinary to idiosyncratic.” Each reflects folk wisdom and shared experiences that have been passed down through many generations of Hongkongers: the Lion Rock spirit, shopping malls, illegal structures, the HK$3 surcharge for iced drinks. To those living beyond the city, these symbols can seem peculiar and arbitrary, even hard to decipher. But for many in Hong Kong, it is hard not to be amused by simply how relatable they are.
Despite showing an unmistakably native proficiency in interpreting Hong Kong themes, Ko describes herself as “kind of zuk1 sing1 (竹升)” referring to the bamboo pole metaphor used to describe overseas Chinese. Born in the United States, she moved to Hong Kong at the age of one and a half. Growing up, Ko attended an international school and says she does not have “perfect Chinese.” Working on Mali Mali Home, she wondered whether it would be considered inauthentic to put out a deck about Hong Kong in English. But through her four-year journey in creating the deck, Ko realised it did not matter how many years she has lived here. What truly matters is how many years she has loved the city.
With that in mind, Ko says her journey in creating the deck was a chance for her to rediscover why she loved Hong Kong. She hopes through these cards, people can feel the same way as well. Here are four specific cards from the deck that reflect the Hong Kong experience.
“+$3 for iced drinks: question”
This was the first card Ko came up with in the deck. It reminds us all to question what we see. Throughout Hong Kong, many cha chaan teng and other restaurants impose a HK$3 surcharge for iced drinks. It is remarkably consistent despite not being mandated by law. The card invites us to question this widespread practice: why is it accepted? Why HK$3 specifically? Does this reflect the extra cost of ice, or the use of a larger serving vessel?
“Bauhinia: resilience”
Over the past three years, Ko took it upon herself to photograph every single bauhinia tree she saw; the tree’s vivid flowers are Hong Kong’s official emblem. They enliven the city’s gloomy winter months and they also lend themselves to Mali Mali Home’s most brightly coloured card. As a sterile hybrid created by a French missionary, which can only be propagated by human hand, the bauhinia struck Ko as symbolic of Hong Kong because the city was “synthetically” shaped by its colonial history and handover. “So what came out of these wars and political interventions is actually our true identity,” she says. For the individual, the card is a reminder not to be ashamed to ask for help. You can be the product of someone and still flourish in your own way. The sterile bauhinia has to be diligently planted by hand, yet it is nonetheless spotted all across Hong Kong.
“Property market: invest”
The holy grail for many Hongkongers, owning a property is considered the most stable form of investment. In the city with sky-high buildings and property prices, one look at property prices tells you the state of the economy. Unlike dabbling in the stock market, no one in Hong Kong will ever question you when you tell them you’re paying off the mortgage on your flat. Even if you buy a haunted apartment, it’s never a bad investment, notes Ko. “People just tell you to hire a sifu to cleanse it, and then you sell it.”
It can also be a not so subtle form of judgement when it so happens that people ask which district you live in. Ko explains why she translated “property market” to the Cantonese metonym maai3 zyun1 tau4 (買磚頭), literally “buying a property brick by brick.” “It’s all about a slow and steady investment,” she says. When it comes up in readings, she says it is usually a reminder to invest in yourself, whether it be money, time, education, or simply something that makes you feel good.
“Cheung fun: embellish”
Even with the same two ingredients — rice flour and water — no two cheung fun are the same. Some are stuffed with prawns, others BBQ porks, not to mention the street snack version served with a customisable trifecta of sauces. It all boils down to your preference, from the sauce to the place you eat it. It’s a blank canvas. “We all have the same ingredients as human beings,” says Ko. “What you become is your sauce.” The card prompts people to think about how to add more flavour and individuality in whatever they do.
All photos are provided by Christina Ko.
Mali Mali Home is available through Good Peoples.