Hong Kong is a transient place. People come, people go. Some stay (after all, a favourite expat anecdote goes something like, “I came here for 6 months… in 1978”). But among my peers, there is always talk of where we’ve been and where we’ll go next. Thus, long distance relationships are not uncommon here.

There was a time when war was the only thing that separated lovers for long; now, an internship will suffice. I’ve watched friends conduct painful and frustrating relationships between far parts of the world – Hong Kong and Boston, San Francisco and Sydney, Montreal and London – and survive them.

The three pairs are still together and happy. Each relationship peaked with a move by a partner for their other half, to end years of gritted teeth and tears, and timed reunions.

A long distance relationship takes guts and, often, a stubborn unwillingness to face the towering odds of failure. To succeed, one friend revealed, it takes a quiet and seldom-wavering belief that you could spend your life with the other person. Otherwise, she said, you will not find the patience or the honesty to get past the first two months.

In an ever more globalised society, there are practical reasons for our itinerancy. People come to Hong Kong for work; people leave Hong Kong for school. Then, there are those who are unsettled being settled, who keep moving because they understand that they can. Choice is the joy and trouble of our generation. And wanderlust is a very selfish thing.

Photography: Alexandra Leese