Ding dong, Hong Kong

Greetings from Hong Kong.

I live on one of the main drags of Hong Kong Island, Queen’s Road West. I’m about 5 blocks from Hong Kong bay, where all the ferry boats and cruise ships dock. To the east is the financial district, which looks like any financial district with glass skyscrapers, wide boulevards, and expensive restaurants catering to office workers. To the south is a wealthy residential area called Soho, whose modern loft buildings have names like The Butterfly and The Manhattan. At night, Soho is full of whites: trendy young couples and old, eccentrically dressed Brits.

As you get further into Soho, higher up towards the peak at the center of Hong Kong Island (called, appropriately, The Peak), the heat is tempered by a mountain breeze and real estate becomes more exclusive. The Peak was exclusively for Europeans until the 1950’s and today the condos sell for tens of millions of dollars.

My area is a bit more grimy but there’s a great variety of shops – a supermarket with an aisle of Western food like smoked salmon and sliced turkey breast, a bakery that carries fresh bagels, a cheap sushi takeout place, a central market with all kinds of Asian fare, and a Chinese diner that inexplicably serves French toast. My apartment is extremely small, but hearing from my colleagues that flats range from “just shitty” to “very shitty,” I’m at least content that it’s clean.

Hong Kong is a remarkable place. I don’t think it’s possible to truly explain it to someone who has never seen it. The congestion, the wealth, and the frenzied construction are unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Hong Kong makes a point to differentiate itself from China. Here, people are mild-mannered and well-behaved. There are strict penalties for spitting and littering, and even jaywalking is frowned upon. Some call Hong Kong “safe China,” which is correct as Hong Kong has practically no crime, but it might as well refer to Hong Kong’s well-rehearsed resemblance to Western culture.

I’ve learned a decent bit of Hong Kong history already. For instance, that the land mass on Hong Kong Island has been augmented by “reclaiming” bay area with dump trucks of sand. I’ve seen some of the resettlement flats built to replace tenement shantytowns in the 1930’s and 50’s, where I’m told families of 4-5 live in the same space that I struggle to cope in on my own. I’ve also been off the old British downtown, to new downtowns like Tsim Sha Tsui, across the bay, Kowloon City, across the bay and even further inland, and Stanley Market, an upmarket beach town on the south side of the island. One of my misconceptions going in was that Hong Kong is one city. To the contrary, it’s a fairly large territory encompassing multiple cities.

Adam Franklin has been visiting since the day I arrived and leaves tomorrow after 10 days. Adam Franklin is Adam Franklin, as the saying goes, but I couldn’t think of many people better to explore the city with. He’s particularly skilled at finding great local food. We’ve had lots of dim sun and noodles. These kinds of places are very Chinese and usually cost about $3-4 per person. One night we went to the big fish market and Adam cooked up a lobster and crab feast in my apartment.

We also spent two days in Macau, the former Portuguese colony which sits about an hour away by ferry. The ethos in Macau is very different than Hong Kong. Where Hong Kong is one of the most densely populated places on earth, Macau unfolds into lazy Roman-style plazas and there are wide avenues. It could be anywhere on the Mediterranean, except for the Chinese people. The casinos were not the high point, disappointingly, because they have mostly phased out poker and people can smoke anywhere inside. It’s actually hard to believe that Macau has more gambling revenue than Vegas because in my opinion it’s less opulent. Perhaps it’s just a reflection of how many Chinese there are, and also that Macau is the only legal gambling site near China, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, etc. – many of which have sizable Chinese minorities.

Tonight is my first class. Back to the real world.