茶 FIRST IMPRESSIONS
茶 REVIEW OF BOOKS & FILMS

[ESSAY] “Finding My Own Silent Friends: From the Botanical Garden to Hong Kong’s Streets” by Jennifer Eagleton

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on SILENT FRIEND.

Ildikó Enyedi (director), Silent Friend, 2026. 147 min.

The “friend” in the film’s title never speaks. A magnificent ginkgo tree living in the heart of a botanical garden in a medieval German university town, it silently witnesses humans come and go, subtly transforming them in the process.

The film interlaces three stories of scientific curiosity and personal isolation, each a product of its own time and place, as these individuals explore the mysterious nature of plants. Given the nature of the film, it is a quiet, slow-moving work with sparse dialogue; one might call it a “botanical meditation” of sorts.

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In 2020, a visiting neuroscientist from Hong Kong (Tony Leung), researching the minds of babies, is stranded and isolated on an empty campus during the recent pandemic. Unable to continue his usual work, Wong frequents the garden, where he grows fond of the ginkgo tree and begins an unexpected experiment with it.

In 1972, Hannes (Enzo Brumm) lives in a shared house near the campus, spending his time near the ginkgo tree. His neighbour, Gundula, researches human-plant interactions. He is tasked with watering her plants while she is away, particularly a geranium in her room connected to a sensor. He is greatly changed by the simple act of observing and connecting with this geranium.

In 1908, Grete (Luna Wedler), the university’s first female botany student, who often sits on the bench near the ginkgo tree, must find work after being evicted from her accommodation. She takes a position as an assistant in a photography studio, where she discovers, through the camera’s lens, sacred patterns of the universe hidden within even the humblest of plants.

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It is no accident that Ginkgo biloba (a species common in East Asia) is the film’s principal “actor”. It is the last living species in the order Ginkgoales, which first appeared over 290 million years ago. Such long-lived plants deserve our respect, and our efforts to learn from them. This also brings to mind the recent discovery of mycorrhizal networks: underground webs formed in forests and other plant communities by the hyphae of mycorrhizal fungi joining with plant roots, connecting individual plants to one another. We are only beginning to understand our place within these botanical ecosystems, and new technology now allows us to learn far more about them. As the director Ildikó Enyedi has said, “this film speaks, with the help of light and sound waves available to the human eye and ear, of worlds of perception beyond these limits.”

What is it like to be a tree? We do not know, and so we will not show it.

What is it like to be a tree? We do not know, and so we will not show it. Instead, we show human curiosity: touchingly imperfect attempts at connection, at acknowledging the “other” while accepting that, to them, we too are the mysterious “other”. We glimpse more than a hundred years in the life of a university’s botanical garden, a place that has always been (universitas) the hub of free and limitless human curiosity, of science itself. At a time when such inquiry is so dangerously questioned and attacked, we wish to draw attention not only to its importance, but also to the beauty and the naive, daring force of scientific research.

Hong Kong is home to many beautiful trees, yet how many people pause to consider them, or sit beneath them?

When asked by Tammy Lai-Ming Ho to write a review of the film, I began to think about my own relationship with trees in Hong Kong, my home city. Despite being a place of dense urban living, Hong Kong is home to many beautiful trees, yet how many people pause to consider them, or sit beneath them? Echoing the director’s question, “What is it like to be a tree?”, I confess I do not know, but I have attempted a relationship with some of them in my own way.

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The Hong Kong government numbers and codes nearly all trees for maintenance purposes, and provides a QR code through which one can learn about a tree’s history, uses, and other points of interest. A number in place of a name struck me as unsatisfactory, so I began naming them myself.

Allow me to introduce Charlie, the weeping fig, who lives at the entrance of Hong Kong Park. Nearby stands Wayne, a paperbark tree (tree no. 36-0011-0703), found outside the British Consulate in Admiralty. I also made friends with an ivy tree in Statue Square, whom I named Lucy.

For fun, on 7 October 2022, I wrote to the department responsible for Hong Kong’s trees:

You give trees in Hong Kong a number, along with their scientific and common names, accessible via QR code. This is good, but wouldn’t it be nice to give each tree a proper English name too, for example Bruce or John? How would you like to be called a number?

I hope you will seriously consider my request.

Regards,
Long-term Hong Kong resident and tree enthusiast
Jennifer Eagleton

The first reply:

QR codes and the naming of trees (Case Ref: 3-7427126388)

Dear Jennifer,

Thank you for your email to 1823 dated 07/10/2022.

Regarding the matter of QR codes and the naming of trees, we have referred your email to the Development Bureau. You will be informed of the outcome in due course. Should you have any further enquiries, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Best regards,
Roy Tsang
Customer Service Officer
1823

The second reply:

You may wish to know that the Hong Kong Government maintains millions of trees. The purpose of assigning an ID number to each tree is to help the public identify a tree’s exact location by referring to its Tree ID number when making a suggestion or complaint. It would be difficult to give each tree a unique name, given that millions of distinct names would be required; this might confuse the public and distort our original intention.

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Oh, I am not so sure about that. I rather think the general public could get on board with this.

Trees can, it seems, mock humans quite cunningly and botanically. Can you guess what body part these three images I found on Hong Kong trees suggest?

To close this piece, I would like to mention the tenacity of trees in the face of human interference and natural catastrophe.

You cannot kill me that easily, says the urban tree:

Below left: the tree at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in early January 2019, following the mega typhoon of September 2018. Below right: the same tree on 22 June 2022.

^{How to cite, Eagleton, Jennifer. “Finding My Own Silent Friends: From the Botanical Garden to Hong Kong’s Streets.” Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, 3 Jul. 2026. chajournal.com/2026/07/03/silent-friends.}

Jennifer Eagleton, a Hong Kong resident since October 1997, is a close observer of Hong Kong society and politics. Jennifer has written for Hong Kong Free Press, Mekong Review, and Education about Asia. She has published two books on Hong Kong political discourse: Discursive Change in Hong Kong(Rowman & Littlefield, 2022) and Hong Kong’s Second Return to China, A Critical Discourse Study of the National Security Law and its Aftermath(Palgrave Macmillan, 2025). Her poetry has appeared in Voice & Verse Poetry Magazine, People, Pandemic & ####### (Verve Poetry Press, 2020), and Making Space: A Collection of Writing and Art (Cart Noodles Press, 2023). [All contributions by Jennifer Eagleton.]