How Belgian musician Bolis Pupul reconnected with his mother’s Hong Kong home

Seven years ago, following a long-haul flight from his home country of Belgium, Bolis Pupul landed in Hong Kong alone. Still adjusting to the humidity and time difference, he headed to To Kwa Wan, the historically low-income Kowloon neighbour­hood an unlikely choice for a first-time visitor.

Despite having been part of a synth-pop band called the Hong Kong Dong for more than a decade, it was his first visit to the city. His destination: Ma Tau Wai Road, mentioned twice on his late mother’s birth certificate as the location of the maternity ward in which she was born, and her subsequent address.

Now 39, Pupul – real name Boris Kor Tom Zeebroek – had spent most of his 20s imagining the moment he would finally see where his mother had spent the first few years of her life. As he got closer, he began to notice more and more people resembling his mother, and to recognise smells he could not name. This formerly industrial enclave, once a popular landing place for mainland migrants, felt somehow familiar.

Arriving at Ma Tau Wai Road that January, he stopped at a traffic island, surrounded by high-rise buildings that muffled the sounds around him, and in an instant became a child again, longing for his mother to be by his side.

It’s a moment captured in “Letter to Yu”, the opening track of Pupul’s debut solo album of the same name, which featured last year in Pitchfork magazine’s 50 Most Anticipated Albums of the Year and Best Music of 2024 So Far.

On the track, with a vocoder distorting his voice, Pupul reads out part of a letter he wrote to his mother that day in To Kwa Wan: “This is where you were born / 59 years ago / And I’m finally here / Why did it take me so long?”