Hong Kong is a tight spot. Have I mentioned that? Oh, a hundred times or so?

People on top of people. Something like 6.8 million people in the territory of Hong Kong, and something like 1.2 million of them living cheek by jowl in a stunningly narrow band of land on the northern edge of HK Island.

I have had moments when I could feel am irrational surge of concern about too many people in too small a place. “Give me some space!”

And then I wondered:

Would it be just the opposite for Hongkongers if, say, they were suddenly to find themselves in some open spaces?

If I am vaguely claustrophobic, and I suppose I am, especially when I spend too long a time in a small room (or sometimes even a packed freeway at a dead stop) … well, it’s probably mostly a function of a suburban upbringing in a horizontal city with open spaces within walking distance of wherever I have lived — and the beach a few blocks away from where I live now and as a child.

I expect to be able to extend my arms and not hit someone. I believe I ought to be able to leave one room and go to another — and still be inside my own house/apartment. I should not be able to hear your plumbing, your music and smell your food.

Had I been raised in Hong Kong, presumably I would have a far higher tolerance for tiny rooms, cramped apartments and the inability to swing a dead cat without knocking over a dozen of my neighbors.

I was on a jammed subway, or perhaps fighting my way through some crowd on a narrow sidewalk when it first struck me:

If we took someone from HK and put them in, say, a vacant lot in the Inland Empire … would they start feeling weird? Break a sweat? Feel a little panicky?

Would they discover they are agoraphobic?

Just going over the wikipedia entry, above, it doesn’t seem to indicate a connection between seriously high population density and agoraphobia.

But I wonder.  If you have spent your whole life living in 500 square feet with 3-4 other people … wouldn’t 600 feet of just you seem creepily empty?

If you have never walked down a sidewalk in midday without wading through people … wouldn’t it seem eerie to be in an empty field? Where no one can hear your voice?

I do know that a woman who once worked for me now lives in eastern Nebraska, which is, essentially, empty. And she has said that when she comes back to the Inland Empire, even to the High Desert (Hesperia, Victorville, etc.), she feels crowded. Hemmed in.

I think this might work the other way, as well. Parachute a Hongkonger into Barstow … and see if they freak out. Place a HK husband and wife in a 2,500-square-foot home and see if they begin acting oddly. Maybe call for a dozen relatives to move in with them.

Might make for a good psychology/sociology project. Go ahead and take this idea. I think it could yield some interesting results. I have a suspicion that living in wide open spaces would be as hard for a Hongkonger as living here has, at times, been for me.