When German Julian Gaertner first met Chinese travelers in Europe when he was 17, he didn't know his life would be bound with the eastern country in the future.

Fifteen years on, Gaertner, now an actor, has found another home in South China's Hong Kong, where he hopes to play more roles and be a bridge of cultural exchange between the East and the West.

"Home is where you put hats in"

On a cruise ship in Norway, a group of Chinese travelers was playing cards, cracking melon seeds and chatting with friends. This was Gaertner's first impression of China, and left him with both amusement and curiousness.

They looked relaxed and entertained, which was a totally different life from what he had in Germany. Gaertner recalled, "I was wondering how life is going on in China."

Born in a doctor's family in Bavaria in 1987, Gaertner left his hometown to pursue a bachelor's degree at The University of Hong Kong (HKU) in 2008.

Since then, he has immersed himself in Chinese culture and language.

He speaks fluent Mandarin and Cantonese, and has a Chinese name, Yi Yuhang. In Chinese, Yi means "easy" and Yuhang is "space navigation." He defines his name as "a person who can find a suitable place to live in the universe, and make some contributions."

Having moved from a cramped apartment in downtown Hong Kong Island to a three-storey villa with a garden in Peng Chau, a one square kilometer island away from the urban glamor for four years, Gaertner has explored almost every corner of the tiny island. To better adapt to life on the car-free island, Gaertner bought a bicycle.

A few months ago, he injured his right knee while filming and had to walk with crutches. Before going to visit the doctor on the day, he stopped by a fruit shop, bargained with the owner in Cantonese, and bought a fruit basket for his doctor and a papaya for a friend.

"Hong Kong changed me. I didn't buy gifts before having a visit in Germany," he grinned, fastening the fruit basket to the nylon clasp of his backpack.

"In a Bavarian saying, 'home is a place where you can put hats in.' And I put my hats in Hong Kong too," he said. "I have friends here, I love Hong Kong and I want to see how it is growing and be part of it, for I have found a sense of belonging."

Hong Kong is one of the most densely populated places in the world with a fast-paced lifestyle. Having lived in the hustle and bustle for more than a decade, he had moments when he felt lost, but never considered leaving.

"Could there be a better place in the world to fuse eastern and western cultures?"

"Hong Kong is a place where the cultures can meet, and it is like living in the soup of life and the soup of things that happen to you."

Bridging East and West

In 2004, when he was a teenager, Gaertner watched 2046, a romantic drama film by Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai, a Cannes Film Festival award winner. He did not understand the language then but understood the story through frames and background music.

The idea to be an actor had emerged in his mind since then.

Film has the magic to display and engage people into a certain reality, he said. This is creating shared experiences and therefore mutual understanding and empathy.

Famous actors Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan also influenced his impression of Chinese culture and films, and drove him to be an action actor.

However, he temporarily "sealed the dream on the bottom of his heart" after graduation and launched a free language-learning platform.

"I felt like something was missing," he sighed.

Listening to heart, Gaertner joined Hong Kong's Television Broadcasts Limited (TVB) in 2013. Four years later, he played a British police inspector in Chasing the Dragon, a action crime film made by film-makers from both Hong Kong and mainland.

However, it's Billy, a demon of lies that he played in this year's TVB series The Exorcist's 2nd Meter, earned him a wider reputation among locals.

When a little boy recognized him on the street and asked him to take a photo with him, it was a fulfilling moment. "He knew the character, Billy. I hope he will further learn that other foreigners, like me, are nice, and be open to more people in the future."

Unfortunately, the filmmaking industry had been heavily disrupted since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"The world is split by the pandemic," he said when recalling a trip to visit his family in Germany early this year.

Gaertner realized that Eastern and Western countries tend to have different approaches in dealing with the pandemic, which, he believed, is partly attributed to cultural differences.

"I feel a sense of responsibility to be a bridge between the East and West," he said.

He wants to make films to express himself in one way that may spark different emotional reactions, yet bound by a common sense of resonance and connection.

"PR agency" for China

Over the past decade, Gaertner traveled frequently between the mainland and Hong Kong for academic exchanges and business cooperation.

He had a one-semester exchange program in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen before attending HKU, and visited many mainland cities for working purposes in recent years.

For Gaertner, Hong Kong has an irreplaceable role as a creative center through blended art and history. "There is a lot of divergent thinking between eastern and western ideas in Hong Kong, and we can combine them. I think that's what the real role is of Hong Kong."

Hong Kong can make use of its unique geographical location and policy advantages to be a "PR (public relations) agency between the world and China," offering a distinctive window for the world to learn about Chinese culture and promote cultural exchange, he said.

As one of the six creative industries, the film industry in Hong Kong has faced a prolonged downturn for almost two decades since the early 1990s.

To change that, Gaertner believes Hong Kong's film industry needs to break away from the traditional model of producing stylized content to revitalize the ecosystem.

"Hong Kong should attract talents from all over the world, develop cultural and creative industries, and give young people more opportunities to realize their dreams."

Also, the government should proactively support such subsidies and projects that give people in Hong Kong the confidence and mental wellbeing in "making things" like paintings, handwork, podcasts, entrepreneurship, film, media, among others, and turn that into a viable career choice, he said.

The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government has since 1999 established the Film Development Fund to finance projects conducive to the long-term development of the film industry. The scope was expanded in 2007 to provide financial support for the production of small-to-medium budget films.

"The difficulty would be that these initiatives would need to be carefully monitored and subsidized in the right direction while being very bold and daring for the better good. But I think that is where our efforts should go."