Journal: Hong Kong, Country Within A Country

When the boat finally put in, she had a chance at last to come up on deck and take in the ocean view. On that sweltering afternoon, the thing that most caught her eye as she gazed out were the huge advertising banners ringing the pier: dark red, bright red, pink, all reflected in the cool green water. Streak after streak, splash after splash of vibrant, discordant pigments leaping up and then falling back down into the fray, a wild melee underneath the water. Liusu thought, in this larger-than-life city [Hong Kong], even tripping over would probably hurt more than in other places...

— from Qing Cheng Zhi Lian, a short story by Eileen Chang written in 1943

It has been called the gateway to China. For me, it was the visa loophole to China. In any case, nobody suggests that it actually is China, because it's not. And after living two years in very ordinary chinese cities, how could I dislike Hong Kong?

The first thing I want to do is thank Jackie, a classmate from my CELTA course, who gave me a place to stay during the week I was in Hong Kong on my visa run. More specifically, it was a room on the 37th floor directly overlooking the harbour—a marvellous view.

The view from Jackie's apartment.

Although I had several guidebooks at my fingertips, in all the time I was there I only did one really touristy thing. Or maybe two, since shopping for a digital camera probably counts as a tourist attraction in Hong Kong (no sales tax!). I spent a lot of time running around town, first organising my visa and then trying to work out a cheaper way to get home than by air. The only sentence of Cantonese I learnt was "Please stand back from the doors", which I heard every time I rode the subway. Indeed I experienced almost every kind of transport in Hong Kong, from the double-decker buses to the star ferries, just to get from A to B. But I liked this way of getting intimate with the city.

Hong Kong has got money, and it's got charm. When I say it has money, I mean that it is a thoroughly developed city. People's lifestyles and careers are much the same as in any big western city. One time I went out with a friend and some other people about my age, and hearing them talk about countries that they had holidayed in, research work in Nepal, and online business, I had to keep reminding myself that I wasn't in China anymore. Of course Hong Kong has its poor too, but they are probably judged by a different yardstick than on the mainland, and you don't see people eking out some meagre living by collecting bottles for recycling or demolishing buildings with a mallet, as you would see in any city on the mainland no matter how tall and new the apartment blocks towering above them might be.

Lan Kwai Fong is one of Hong Kong's trendy bar and nightclub areas.

To some extent, money can buy good looks. In particular I admired the polished marble finish on some building entrances, elegant and not at all tacky. On the other hand, real charm is built up over years of slow growth, and Hong Kong has some of that too: narrow side-streets, a fleet of wobbling trams, and some fine examples of colonial architecture. It's all well maintained and clean though, certainly no detraction from Hong Kong's milieu of modernness and sophistication.

It's also quite a cosmopolitan city, with immigrants and visitors from almost every part of the world. Nobody stares at caucasians as they do on the mainland—if they did, they would have no time to look where they were going. Most people working in positions where they have to deal with the public have passable english levels, which is lucky because I don't speak any cantonese, although I found that with those people who couldn't speak english I was often able to communicate in mandarin. On the other hand, when I was shopping for a plane ticket I found that nobody could understand my mandarin pronunciation of "Xining" (actually, in the end I didn't catch a plane home, to save money I caught the train, which also gave me the chance to make brief stops in Henan and Shaanxi).

I've been to Hong Kong once before, when I stopped over for a night on my way to Dalian. I was only there for a short time, but I remember two things: firstly, that pedestrians travelled in three dimensions, with bridges over elevated walkways over roads, and of course that enormous elevator; and secondly, I remember eating the worst breakfast of my life. It was a set menu, which seems to be a common breakfast formula in Hong Kong, and there was a choice between either noodles or bread. That was two years ago when I first left Australia to begin a new life in China, and of course I chose noodles. It turned out to be boiled macaroni without even any seasoning, and the rest of the breakfast was on about the same level too. I thought Hong Kong cuisine was supposed to be famous!

Overpasses... ...and underpasses.

On this trip to Hong Kong, my first breakfast was a vast improvement. I tried to play it safe by ordering roujiangmian, a type of noodles that I've had before, but it turned out to be completely different to what goes by that name in northern China. It was also delicious: pork and lightly fried greens in a sweet and sour sauce atop thin egg noodles. Another difference I couldn't help noticing was that it cost at least 5 times as much as it would in Qinghai. (I was experiencing what the experts call "currency shock", a pleasant surprise for those who travel from a more developed country to a less developed one, but a bane for those moving in the opposite direction). However, what I really gorged on in Hong Kong wasn't chinese cuisine, it was the island's international flavours. Between Italian, Indonesian, Vietnamese, Turkish kebabs, and banana oatmeal porridge, I also managed to fit in coffee, chestnut cake, and a pint of Guinness.

Those delights were second only to having the chance to catch up with Jackie, and with Walter from Save the Children (an organisation which has funded several SDA projects). At Qinghai airport, I also met a group of young people from a Norwegian bible school who had just finished three weeks of volunteer english teaching in a Tibetan primary school. They were on the way to Hong Kong too, and we exchanged email addresses.

Part of the group I bumped into on my way to Hong Kong: (from left to right) Erik, Dominik, Carl (their host), Elizabet, Hanna, and Lindsey.

In Hong Kong, the group stayed at Crossroads, a non-profit organisation that collects discarded goods and distributes them to needy groups in Hong Kong and overseas. I visited my new friends there, pitching in to do a day's work at the same time. Coming from SDA, I was surprised to see the size of their operation: fifty full-time volunteers, including some who have come from those poor countries which Crossroads has helped, use five and a half hectares of buildings and grounds (an old army barracks leased from the government free of charge) to sort, repair, and package Hong Kong's superseded goods into containers for shipping. The goods they accept, from clothes to electronics to furniture (and even two big cartons of cake decorations once) are mainly donated by Hong Kong businesses and individuals, and much of it is either brand new or in amazingly good condition.

Hong Kong, it seems, it not only wealthy but generous too. Of course such things are not easy to measure, but Mick Yates speaking at the 2000 Pacific Rim Forum said "it is estimated that per capita charitable giving in Hong Kong is higher than in the US, the UK or Australia". Charities and NGOs seem to have quite a high public profile in Hong Kong, with numerous television and poster advertisements. And during the Red Cross's tsunami appeal, Hong Kong's population of merely 7 million people contributed an amazing 5% of the total 1.2 billion US dollars collected worldwide.

In the final analysis, Hong Kong was a great place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there: with all those modern conveniences plus a generous serving of efficiency and attention to detail (and streetname signs), there just wouldn't be any challenge.

In Hong Kong, even the dead live in multi-level complexes with ocean views! (The reason, Jackie tells me, is that according to tradition graves have to face the sea).